The Test Bed

Why we may never see a Core i7 Apple machine

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 12:11:22 GMT

With the recent crop of new Apple desktop hardware - The Mac Pro, iMac and Mac Mini (all of which we reviewed in Personal Computer World) - we noted the use of Intel's older Core 2 Duo processor rather than the newer and more powerful Core i7 chip. The Mac Pro is an exception, but Apple's high end workstation doesn't use Core i7 either, as it's built around Intel's Xeon 5500 processor (which is similar, but not identical, to Core i7)

It's a certainty that Apple will upgrade its range to use Intel's newer processors at some point, but it may be the recently announced Core i5 and Core i3 that it chooses rather than Core i7.

If you haven't been following Intel's roadmaps, Core i5 will use a completely different socket to current Core i7 processors, using 1,156 pins rather than 1,366, meaning if you want to use a Core i5 processor, you need to fork out for yet another new motherboard. Intel's decision to bring another socket to the market has been met with confusion and some disappointment from those who have already invested in Core i7.

The good news is that Core i5 processors and components should be much less expensive than Core i7, but still offer high performance, partly thanks to an integrated memory controller that gives better memory performance than its predecessor.

This leaves Apple with a choice of processors for its next mainstream desktop line. We'll bet on them choosing Core i5 for the iMac, Core i3 for the Mini and sticking with Xeons in the Mac Pro, meaning LGA 1366 Core i7 processors end up never used in an Apple computer.

Of course, Apple hasn't even announced a new desktop line, and Core i5 processors aren't on the market yet, making this little more than speculation on our part. However, as long as Core i5 is relatively affordable and offers a reasonable performance boost, we'll call this an educated guess on what Apple's next move will be.

Rays Per Pixel - the new benchmark for graphical realism?

Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:13:10 GMT

While reading New Scientist's summary of how computing power is being used to create more realistic virtual worlds, I stumbled across a term that could be a major discussion topic over the next few years.

Currently, the majority of software that creates and draws a 3D scene in real time (games being the main example) uses a technique called rasterisation. This involves splitting complex 3D objects into triangles, which can be easily processed by a graphics card. The visual complexity of a 3D scene depends on the number of triangles used, while the performance of graphics hardware can be measured by how many triangles it can draw per second. The more triangles, the more detail and realism in a scene.

However, the next decade could see rasterisation thrown out of the window, as real-time ray tracing could become possible. Ray tracing is a rendering technique used by film studios (such as Pixar) which produces far more believable visuals than rasterisation. Ray tracing a 3D scene involves calculating the paths of individual rays of light, and how each ray affects the appearance of objects. The amount of calculations a computer has to perform for any ray tracing algorithm is phenomenal, especially when taking into account how multiple rays can bounce off objects onto others.

During the early 1990's, films such as Terminator 2 and Jurassic Park, which made heavy use of ray tracing (more commonly known as CGI, or computer generated imagery) became the most expensive films ever produced, partly because ray tracing required super computers that cost millions of dollars each. Even with these monsters of graphical computing, such as Silcon Graphics' workstations, rendering a single frame would take a very long time, and the idea of ray tracing at 30 frames per second was pure fantasy.

Computers are far more powerful now, and computer hardware design is currently on the verge of a renaissance, which could potentially see both CPU and graphics card merge into a single entity. One of the advantages of such new hardware, such as Intel's Larrabee, is that it will allow games to be drawn using ray-tracing, in real time, with a massive improvement in visual quality and realism.

Although this is still some way off, and may not even be possible with the first generation of Larrabee cards, the metric for measuring ray-tracing performance is already in place. In the same way that increasing the number of triangles raises graphical detail, so too does increasing the number of rays (which adds an enormous amount of calculations for your poor computer to keep up with).

Intel's Daniel Pohl states that the number of rays used, per screen pixel, determines how realistic the appearance of a scene is. He argues that photorealism (where a computer generated image is indistinguishable from a photograph) would require 100s of rays per pixel. Intel's demo of real-time ray tracing, including impressive reflection and refraction effects, uses around 10 rays per pixel and is only a 512 pixel-wide video. Even then it doesn't run at 30 frames per second.

Can't live without Aero Peek

Fri, 26 Jun 2009 15:03:28 GMT

Of all the new additions to Windows 7, Aero Peek and the new taskbar are the biggest change from previous versions of Windows. If you haven't tried Windows 7 yet, then the new interface could use some explanation.

In Windows Vista, XP and all other versions of Windows since Windows 95, if you have multiple windows open for the same application, such as two Word documents, or three Firefox browsers, they each appear as individual entries on the taskbar. Windows 7 does away with this, in favour of a tidier taskbar where only a single icon appears, even if you have multiple documents open. Hover the mouse over the icon and it pops up visual previews of each window, so you can select which one you wish to view.

The new approach takes some time to get used to, and some early adopters found it confusing and immediately disabled it. However, after using Windows 7 for a few weeks, I now hover my mouse over the Quick Launch icons on Windows XP without even thinking about it, subconciously expecting the preview windows to pop up in the same way as they do in Window 7.

I find these visual popups improve my workflow, as there's little chance I'll forget which of my open Firefox windows has the tab open that I want to refer to, a problem I found with the old interface.

It's important to mention Firefox though, on Windows 7, it doesn't make use of Aero Peek as well as Internet Explorer. In IE8, if you have a single browser window with multiple tabs, Aero Peek will show each tab as a preview, so you can go straight to the open page. Firefox doesn't support this yet, so a single browser window with multiple tabs will only show as a single preview. It doesn't sound like much, but Aero Peek is a very useful tool and we think every Windows application should support it as much as possible.

The web is your shrink

Mon, 15 Jun 2009 14:16:06 GMT

A new Australian study showing that web-based therapy programmes can be as effective as human therapists at treating depression comes as little surprise. Programs simulating the work of cognitive therapists have been around for nearly two decades, to my knowledge - I reviewed one called Overcoming Depression way back in 1991.

It was inspired by the old Eliza natural-language processing program which was capable of holding a semblance of conversation with you. Eliza often goes wildly awry but is humbling in how often it can sound rational and human - you realise how much conversation consists of ritual exchanges.

Sometimes Overcoming Depression functioned uncommonly well as a cognitive psychotherapist, whose job (as I understand it) is to talk you out of you depression, or get you to talk yourself out of it. One technique is to throw what you have said back at you for examination and comment - something Elisa can do with rather mixed results. You can try an online version here

All these electronic techniques are designed to complement contact with a "real" therapist, rather as a substitute, but they might still help people who hesitate to seek professional advice or can find nowhere to get it.

I am not a depressive but I know people who are, and that there are not always easy solutions. Some depression may have pathological roots and can be alleviated only by drugs, if at all. Some people's lives are so dreadful there is no way they can be happy. But if you are unhappy out of habit, which appears to be the case with many people, anything that snaps you out of your mindset is worth trying.

Symantec in the doo-doo again - but Apple remains unbitten

Thu, 11 Jun 2009 16:03:12 GMT

News that Symantec and McAfee have been fined for billing customers for upgrades without their consent will resonate with many users who find themselves having to stay alert for dubious practices by well-known brands.

PCW regulars may remember Test Bed had issues with Symantec early this year about misleading screens and messages that could lead desperate virus-hit users to pay for support they should have got for free.

I have stopped using Apple's Quicktime on my PC since it tried to get me to buy software to replace functionality it had itself disabled in Windows; if I have to watch a Quicktime movie, I fire up my Mac on the assumption that Apple, even at its most arrogant, would not risk antagonising its core users. For the record, more than a year after posting two blogs on the subject, and writing a piece in PCW, I have yet to have a whisper of apology leave alone an explanation from Apple.

Perhaps I should have taken up Britain's Advertising Standards Authority's invitation to submit a formal complaint so that the issue could be officially investigated. But I did not want to engaged in an unseemly feud and it is tiresome fighting off flames from Mac users who believe the company can do no wrong.

In the sun with the Cool-er ebook reader

Fri, 05 Jun 2009 00:01:08 GMT

Yes, it may be raining today, but last weekend we tried out the Cool-er ebook reader in the blazing Surrey sun to see how it performed. As you can see fairly convincingly from the pictures, the E-ink Vizplex display technology is pretty impressive compared to real paper, and perfectly readable in bright full-on sunlight.

What's quite weird is that is mimics paper a bit too well - backlighting isn't possible with E-ink, so you need good ambient light to read it. So don't throw away your torch or booklight for those late night reading sessions in bed.

Although the E-ink display is outstanding, unfortunately we can't say the same about the quality of the literature on show in these pictures. But purely in the interests of science we were wading through Dan Brown's atrocious Angels & Demons, downloaded from the Coolerbooks ebook website that's run by the Cool-er's UK manufacturer, Interead.

Vista SP2 frees up disk space

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 23:38:38 GMT

After running Vista SP2 beta on one of our test systems since March, we decided to remove it and install the final release version that appeared last week. To our surprise, after the tediously long process, we found that about 30GB of extra free space was available on the 250GB C: drive - it had increased from 58GB to 88GB, a handy amount of useful space.

We know that SP2 comes with a service pack cleanup utility (compcln.exe) that can clear out previous service pack uninstall information and duplicate system files, but we're not sure whether this is involved.

Whatever the reason, it's nice to see a service pack that actually gives you back some disk space. We're fairly sure this isn't an isolated case, as we're seeing similar reports from the US.

If you've had a similar experience, or encountered any problems while installing SP2, let us know in the comments box below or drop us an email at letters@pcw.co.uk.

Moonwalk One: Classic Apollo 11 documentary restored to DVD

Thu, 04 Jun 2009 12:41:38 GMT

Great news for space buffs - on 21st June, a fully-restored DVD version of Moonwalk One - The Director's Cut will go on sale at Amazon UK for £19.99. This contemporary documentary about the 1969 Apollo 11 mission was commissioned by NASA and filmed by Theo Kamecke, and is widely regarded as one of the best documentaries about the Apollo moon landings ever made.

This newly restored 2-disc DVD version includes both the original 4:3 version and a widescreen 16:9 version with full 5.1 surround sound and includes several extra bonus features.

The original film won awards at Cannes, but to date the only DVD version available is a warts-and-all copy sold by the US National Archives. This restored version was made from Kamecke's own copy of the original film. The restoration was carried out as part of the celebrations to commemorate the 40th anniversary of the moon landings in July.

It can be pre-ordered by phone on +44 (0)845 053 0323.

First Looks - The Athlon is Back

Tue, 02 Jun 2009 11:35:28 GMT

AMD have announced two new dual core processors, both built on a 45nm process with the surprising news is that one of them carries the Athlon name. The first member of the new Athlon II X2 family is the 250 which has a clock speed of 3.0GHz. Based on the Regor core the 250 has no L3 cache which makes it smaller (117.5mm²) and cheaper to manufacture, but to make up for this AMD have given it 1MB of L2 cache per core.

Launched at the same time is the first dual core Phenom II, the Phenom

II X2 550 based on the 410mm² Callisto core. As the flagship of the new line, the X2 550 is a Black Edition meaning that it's unlocked so it can be overclocked past its 3.1GHz reference clock speed. It comes with 1MB of L2 cache and 6MB of L3 cache shared between each core.

Both cores have a 2.0GHz HyperTransport bus frequency and support both DDR2 and 3, up to DDR2-1067 and DDR3-1600. The TDP of the Phenom II X2 550 is 80W while the Athlon II X2 250 is rated at 65W

We managed to overclock the Phenom II X2 550 to a stable 3.958GHz with ease, while the Athlon II X2 250 was more problematic, but eventually we got it to run stably at 3.72GHz.

UK pricing for the Athlon II X2 250 is around £69.99 while the Phenom II X2 550 costs approx. £80.99

For full test results see our results database reportlabs.com

Sony Ericsson keeps us in the dark

Wed, 27 May 2009 15:54:32 GMT

Sony Ericsson tells us it has set up a gig on June 15 featuring a group called Friendly Fires who will play in absolute darkness. The idea is to "heighten the senses of the audience and increase their listening experience." The location is secret and we have not been invited; tickets are available via competitions and a MySpace channel. But their press relations people have asked whether we want "post event" pictures of the gig. We can go one better by heightening your senses with this exclusive pre-event picture (click to enlarge).

£200 Atom-powered XP netbook

Wed, 27 May 2009 11:38:15 GMT

Supermarket chain Netto is offering an 8.9in netbook with 1GB of RAM, a 1.6GHz Atom N270 processor and 60Gbyte hard disk for £199.99 from June 4 "while stocks last". The Hercules eCAFÉ, which originally cost £279.99, comes with Windows XP Home Edition, and the OpenOffice.org office suite.

First Looks - Cooler Master HAF 922

Tue, 26 May 2009 15:17:34 GMT

Cooler Master's HAF 932 is a popular case amongst enthusiasts but only if you have the room for it, so Cooler Master have launched a case based on the design of the 932 but in a smaller form factor, the HAF922.
Solidly built from steel, with a well executed black finish, the HAF 922 has some nice design features including a separate tool free PCI slot situated to the side of the seven main tool free expansion plates. This spare slot is handy if you are using multi graphic card setups and run out of access to the main plates. The motherboard backplate includes a cut out for the base unit of a third party CPU cooler and cut out's at the top and bottom of the plate and help with tidy cable runs.

There's plenty of cooling built into the HAF922 with two 200mm fans, one sitting behind the front bezel, the other housed in the roof while a third fan, a 120mm unit sits on the rear panel. A third 200mm fan can be fitted to the side panel if needed and all the 200mm fans can be replaced by twin 120mm fans if needed

All of the drive bays are tool free with the five 5.25in bays using

a locking button, while the five 3.5in bays have locking latches which when opened allow the whole drive bay to be slid out, making the fitting of hard drives a doddle. Each of the four pins that hold the drives are rubber mounted which helps keep drive vibration and therefore noise down.

Disappointingly there are only two USB ports, housed in the top of the front bezel along with two audio ports and an e-SATA port. Coolermaster have even included a button to turn off the fan LEDs which is a great idea as sometimes they can get very annoying and distracting.

Priced at £89.99 Coolermaster's HAF922 represents very good value for money and is well worth looking at if you're in the market for well featured midi tower

Netbook confusion remains as Microsoft backtracks on Win7 Lite

Tue, 26 May 2009 14:34:14 GMT

Confusion still reigns in the netbook arena, with Microsoft reported to be backtracking on its decision to limit the devices to three running application under the Windows 7 starter edition. The same site also says Microsft had made it impossible to change the Windows 7 wallpaper but has thought better of it.

Techarp, apparently drawing on information from computer manufacturers, says there will be starter editions designed for two categories, a netbook and a small notebook PC, as well as a special edition for China. Microsft defines a netbook as having a screen diagonal of 10.2in or less.

Techarp says limitations on graphics and touch capabilities on netbooks have been removed.

Microsoft is keeping mum on the subject but with at least three open-source projects - Android, Intel's Moblin and Ubuntu - targeting the new formats it must be wary of allowing its rivals to gain critical mass in a potentially huge new market.

The fixation on categories - netbook and small notebook - has more to do with software pricing than technology. The cheaper the hardware gets, the higher the software costs as a proportion of the selling price, and the more likely it will be that people will choose open-source if Microsoft does not cut its prices. Hence the idea of a Windows 7 Lite, which allows the company to undercut its own products on price.

Microsoft has no option but it's a risky strategy, especially as people may have different expectations of emerging true portables and don't necessarily want a "pocket Windows". This is especially so as first generation non-x86 formats are likely have the edge over Wintel products on portability and battery life (see below).

Apple, which broke one mould with the iPhone but has so far ignored the new formats, could also spring a surprise; but it is not chief executive Steve Jobs's style to go downmarket and any Macnetbook is unlikely to be challenging on price.

Meanwhile, Lenovo has launched a 12.1in machine using nVidia's Ion platform, which couples a GeForce 9400M graphics processor and Intel Atom processor on a Pico-ITXe motherboard. Ion gives the IdeaPad S12 (pictured above left) the performance of a gaming machine capable of playing HD movies to an external display using an HDMI link. It is described as a netbook, contrary to Microsoft's definition, which just goes to show that where the marketing men lead, the public is not always sure to follow.

Netbook confusion remains as Microsoft backtracks on Win7 Lite

Tue, 26 May 2009 14:34:14 GMT

The Techarp site, apparently drawing on information from computer manufacturers, says there will be starter editions designed for two categories, a netbook and a small notebook PC, as well as a special edition for China. Microsft defines a netbook as having a screen diagonal of 10.2in or less.

Techarp says limitations on graphics and touch capabilities on netbooks have been removed.

Meanwhile, Lenovo has launched a 12.1in machine using nVidia's Ion platform, which couples a GeForce 9400M graphics processor and Intel Atom processor on a Pico-ITXe motherboard. Ion gives the IdeaPad S12 the performance of a gaming machine capable of playing HD movies to an external display using an HDMI link. It is described as a netbook, contrary to Microsoft's definition, which just goes to show that where the marketing men lead, the public is not always sure to follow.

Why the Cool-er e-book caused excitement at PCW Towers

Fri, 22 May 2009 09:35:18 GMT

For some years now mobile handset manufacturers have been packing more and more features into devices patently too small to cope well with them (particularly in the matter of text input), while PC manufacturers have been selling what they called portable machines that would be more accurately described as luggable. More recently the two industries have been converging towards a format that is both small and light enough to carry in a jacket pocket or handbag and yet has the computing power and connectivity of a desktop.

This evolution of what will surely be the iconic platform of the early 21st century still has years to run but we are at last beginning to get the technology that will allow it to happen, notably powerful frugal processors and systems-on-a-chip (SoCs). These have already given us ultra-portable netbooks and over the next few months we should see the release of a number of devices in a still smaller category Intel has called the Mobile Internet Devices, or MIDs.

Vendors including Intel have tended to talk down the capabilities of these true portables, fearful both of undercutting the value of their own larger machines and of raising people's expectations too far. But remember that even a low-powered device with a relatively slow Wifi link can use harness full PC power by acting as a front-end for a machine on the network. And very-low-drain SoCs, whether ARM or Intel based, are perfectly capable of running office apps.

The constraints are thus more ergonomic than technological. But while people may end up using these pocketable devices as workhorses, particularly if the input problem is cracked (which is a subject in itself), the exact way they will be used is almost impossible to predict.

One certainty is that they will act as a content delivery platform, more usable than today's iPhone and iPod Touch. This will be a major cultural change, creating incidentally a new communications medium with elements of the website, newspapers, magazines and TV. Computing, arguably, is at the start of the most important transition since low-cost mainframe power hit the desktop.

These musings explain why the arrival at PCW Towers of a new low-cost e-book reader called the Cool-er caused a lot of excitement. It is the first machine we have seen in what might be called a sub-netbook format. It is similar in functions, interface and technology to the current generation of e-book readers (see my review) but as you can see from the picture at the start of this blog it is truly pocketable. And, at £189, it's also much more affordable than the competition.

I compared it with a small, rather battered paperback that was the closest I could find to the size of the Cool-er. The paperback was slightly thicker but lighter (110g compared to 180g). The Cool-er was only marginally heavier than my HP 914 smartphone (158g) and appreciably lighter than my Panasonic DMC T-23 compact camera (258g). So it fits well within my personal definition of a true portable, which is something light enough to carry by choice rather than necessity.

E-book readers are the easiest category to fit this format because their bistable displays use power only when changing state. This means batteries can be smaller and last longer, and no heavy cooling is required. And the Cool-er has no wireless, which would save a little weight.

But it shows what is possible: an electronic notebook the size of a paper one. Time will tell whether this will become the dominant size for ultra-mobiles, even the dominant computing platform. For sure it raises the question of what the smallest practical size for a working platform is.

Why the Cool-er e-book caused excitement at PCW Towers

Fri, 22 May 2009 09:35:18 GMT

All access points are one to Extricom mobile clients

Wed, 20 May 2009 22:11:32 GMT

It is rare for someone in the Wifi industry to talk honestly about the snags as well as the advantages of the technology. They will boast of the range of the latest 11n links but omit to point out that doubling the range quadruples the area of contention (and that is not counting interference between networks in the vertical plane - ie on different floors).

They will tell you that the speed is 300Mbits/sec without pointing out that much of that goes on network overheads, and that the top speed anyway depends on bonding two channels which you are not supposed to do if there are other networks in range. In cities, of course, there are always networks in range so the only way you can get top speed is by playing road hog.

"People don't notice the problems because Wifi, particularly 11n, is so resilient. All they see is a drop in performance," said Phil Belanger, who worked on the 11n spec.

Belanger can talk about these things because his company, Extricom, offers a technology that addresses problems associated with Wifi networks that use multiple access points. There is apparently no standard way of setting these up - the Wifi specs do not cover it. But the usual way is to site access points to give minimal overlap in their coverage and ensure that neighbouring ones use a different channel.

There are some problems with this. The signal strength is erratic and tails off with distance, and 11n performance can be hit badly if the system has to cope with legacy 11a/b/c devices, which will inevitably be present on large public or campus sites. Also there can be an appreciable hiatus when a user crosses from one access-point area to another.

Extricom's approach is to connect all access points to a smart switch and present them to the roaming clients as a single device. The switch can decide, packet by packet, which access point to draw the data from; this can also help it decide which access point to use to send data. There is no channel contention because all access points use the same channel. To use the jargon: Extricom separates the MAC and PHY layers, putting the former into the switch.

There are no boundary problems within the network area because there are no boundaries. Moreover, using a system called Channel Blanketing, the overheads of coping with multiple protocols can be avoided by assigning a different channel to each of the different WiFi flavours: one for 11b/g at 2.4GHz, one for 11n at 2.4GHz, one for 11a at 5GHz and another at 11n at 5GHz (click in image to see larger version).

The latest development, announced at the Wireless and Mobile 09 show in London yesterday, is a cascading switch that allows you to double up two Extricom networks, each with 16 access points. This can be either to double the coverage area, or to provide resilience in places like hospitals where the network cannot be allowed to go down.

If Extricom has to go through all this trouble to avoid problems campus sites where access points can be carefully sited and managed, there must surely be questions about how 11n will scale up in crowded cities and blocks of flats where the siting and use of Wifi equipment is chaotic and people are being encouraged to throw HD video around.

But at least we are finally going to get a firm spec. Belanger tells me the one for 11n will be finalised this September, and that all current Draft 11n products should be compatible with it.

BNP junks its manners

Tue, 19 May 2009 12:38:57 GMT

Could the BNP be trying a new defensive tack following the leak of its membership list last November? It has taken to sending its press releases to PCW, and therefore presumably to every other magazine in the realm, and repeated requests to be taken off the list have no effect. Hardly behaviour calculated to improve its image with hacks who already have screeds of junk mail to negotiate. But there could be a cunning plan here: if it includes everyone on its mailing lists, no harm could be done by further leaks because there would be no way of distinguishing people really involved in the party.

On the other hand, perhaps the BNP simply has no manners.

Wolfram and Spotify shift paradigms

Mon, 18 May 2009 16:37:23 GMT

The new WolframAlpha engine may be limited in its knowledge base but it does extend the general ability to mine the world's knowledge base beyond Google-style listings. This is because it can extract, process and present information from different sources that Google would simply list and leave you to derive the data that you want.

Its limitations are obvious from when you start to use it. For instance when I entered the string "GDP UK 1930 to 2009" it did not understand the full request. But when I entered "GDP UK" it charted the figures since 1970 with the option of extending the dates. So it could do what I asked but I had to ask in a non-intuitive way.

These stumblings do not make it a failure. These are early days and WolframAlpha is going to raise expectations about what can be done with web searches. It happens that I've been talking the co-creator of another Web 3.0 search engine called Facility, which also goes beyond straight keyword searches, and will write more about it shortly.

Over the weekend I was rather belatedly trying out another proclaimed paradigm shifter, Spotify, and was an immediate enthusiast. It comes closest yet to what the musical web could and should be: a jukebox of all world music. It doesn't offer every single track ever made but it came up with a version of just about everything I requested.

I didn't try the £9.99-a-month premium service and relied on the advertising-financed version. The ads were infrequent and mostly promoted Spotify itself, so how it is going to pay royalties I can't imagine. For people who listen to music only at home or work, it bypasses the need to own copies of tracks.

Clearly there will be ways to copy the streamed music, though you cannot officially do so, but there is really little point circumventing the system when you can hear the tracks for free anyway.

Spotify could, as some have claimed, provide a model for how the music industry goes forward but I'd guess that it will need to change its business model. The advertising should pick up once people latch on to how good the service is, but it may then become so intrusive as to drive people to buying a subscription.

Actually £120 a year is very good value for all the music that you want to hear, considering that people will pay that for a weekend festival. But it's a lot for people like myself who listen to music mostly over the radio and would use Spotify less often; I suspect that some kind of pay-per-listen system will have to be introduced.

This is a subject close to journalists' hearts, as our industry has been hit as hard by the web as the music business and we too are having to find new ways to pay our way. You can buy annual subscriptions to newspaper and magazines but you cannot usually buy a single issue or article on the web because the mechanisms are not yet in place.

This is one reason why so much on the web is available for free, and newspaper magnate Rupert Murdoch is not alone in wondering how long this can continue to be so. As the Americans say: you pay peanuts, you end up with monkeys.

RDS for GPS

Fri, 15 May 2009 12:18:58 GMT

There's a group test of sat-nav devices coming up in PCW's August issue, and I've spent some time driving round the nether regions of North East London testing them. One of the features increasingly found on higher end units is an FM transmitter, so that the instructions can be broadcast to your car stereo, and you'll hear them through the main speakers, rather than relying on the built in speaker for the satnav unit - and all too often, those can be a bit on the quiet side, especially if you like to drive with the windows open.

There's a niggle with using the FM transmitter, though. When there aren't any instructions to be read, you just have silence (or hiss, depending on the frequency you've chosen and the quality of the gear involved). So, many satnav makers include music players, and the ability for the instructions to override the music when necessary. Frankly, I can't be bothered with transferring all my music to yet another device, when I have a perfectly decent CD player in the car.

So why don't satnav makers include RDS functionality within their FM transmitters? If the satnav was able to use the traffic flag then it could tell your car radio to switch from CD to the FM channel when instructions are due - just like you can tune an RDS radio to, say, Radio London, and have that override a CD when a travel bulletin is broadcast.

Given the short range of these devices, it shouldn't cause any problems with other systems nearby, and it would be a great addition to the FM transmitters. They could even include the satnav name, so it would show up on the radio's display, making tuning simpler.

Is there some technical reason that makes it hard to add the necessary RDS information to these low power FM signals? Or does it require more complex (and expensive) parts to include RDS. The TMC information used to provide travel alerts on many satnavs is based on RDS too, so the manufacturers must surely have at least some knowledge of how the system works.

Confusion as GPUs hit 1GHz

Thu, 14 May 2009 15:47:14 GMT

There's some confusion about an AMD announcement today of the world's first 1GHz graphics processor, evidently timed to coincide with the ninth anniversary of the launch of its first 1GHz CPU. AMD said that a 'factory-overclocked' version of the HD 4890 is the first to hit 1GHz using standard air-cooling systems - ie a heat sink and fan. The difference between an AMD GPU 'factory overclocked' to 1GHz and a 1GHz AMD GPU is not at all clear, as both are presumably guaranteed to run at that speed whereas you might break warranty by clocking up the HD 4890 yourself.

There is no word yet on how the "factory overclocked" HD 4890 will be branded, or how much it will cost. The confusion is compounded by the habit, not confined to AMD, of calling GPUs and cards using them by the same name. This happens because AMD provides manufacturers with a GPU and a reference design for cards that can be used as a basis for products. Vendors differentiate themselves in what they do with the GPU and (if they use it) the reference card.

As it happens Sapphire announced an HD 4890-based card clocking 1GHz two days before AMD and demonstrated it last week at the Digital Summer product showcase in London. But the Sapphire HD 4890 Atomic Edition uses its Vapor-X vapour-chamber cooling which is much quieter than using a fan. You will be able to read PCW's verdict on the HD 4890 in our August Edition, out next month.

More trouble ahead for Intel

Wed, 13 May 2009 16:54:49 GMT

Intel's protestations of innocence (see below) about the EU anti-trust ruling seem unlikely to stave off trouble nearer home. Martin Reynolds, managing vice president and fellow of analysts Gartner, said the EU ruling would have minimal effect on market conditions but could pave the way for an AMD civil action in the US state of Delaware, scheduled to be heard next year.

And the Obama administration is taking a harder line on anti-trust issues than that of President Bush. US Assistant Attorney General Christine Varney said on Monday that there would be a return to "vigorous antitrust enforcement action".

The US Federal Trade Commission last year formally launched an investigation into Intel's trading practices and, according to the Wall Street Journal, its officials have been coordinating with their European counterparts.

Meanwhile computer buyers may be wondering whether the EC action will bring down the price of chips by stimulating competition, or make them more expensive as the cost of the fine is passed on to customers.

We played fair, claims Intel's top wig

Wed, 13 May 2009 15:02:00 GMT

Intel's senior lawyer issued a statement rebutting the findings of the EU competition commissioner that resulted in today's £968m fine.

Bruce Sewell, senior vice president and general counsel, said the case resulted from a complaint by AMD, Intel's biggest competitor, predicated on the claim that alleged restrictive business practices threatened AMD's survival.

He went on: "Eight years later, our competitor and the sole complainant in this case, is alive, healthy, and claims to be expanding its business. Moreover, in real terms, the cost of the products over which Intel is claimed to exercise monopoly power has fallen faster than that of any other of the 1,200 products tracked by the US government."

Yet the EU had determined that Intel had violated its antitrust laws, and ordered Intel to modify certain alleged sales and pricing practices.

"We take great exception to the conclusions reflected in this final decision and we are dismayed that in a time of such acute economic turmoil the competition authorities have seen fit to intervene in what is by all objective measures an innovative, dynamic and competitive market," the statement said.

"The basic allegation against Intel is that it used lower prices, in the form of rebates, to prevent customers from buying or supporting AMD, or to punish customers when they did so. Such claims are false. Intel has never required a customer to agree not to buy from AMD in order to obtain a discount, nor raised a customer's prices when it decided to buy from AMD.

"Like every company Intel competes to win as much business as it can, and every time Intel wins a sale, or secures preferential marketing terms, one of our competitors loses out on that sale or marketing relationship. This is the essence of true competition. Intel provides incentives for customers to purchase our products and for customers to promote our products -- incentives which can and have been matched by AMD at various times in the past.

"Intel believes that consumers benefit from lower prices. Regulations should not prevent one company, no matter how large that company is, from offering discounts or providing incentives. Today, the part that Intel might sell to computer maker for €10, provides the same computing power that in 2000, when this case began, would have cost more than €1000."

Searching at the blink of an eye

Tue, 12 May 2009 16:22:09 GMT

Test Bed sadly could not make it down to Yahoo's Open Hack Day at the weekend, which the company says was attended by 300 developers from 15 countries.

The winners, a team from Dundee University, Yahoo!s BOSS (Build your Own Search Service) platform to create an application to allow people with disabilities to search the web using the blink of an eye via an on-screen keyboard.

Second was an application providing online real-time translations of proceedings in the European parliament. Sadly it doesn't appear to translate double Dutch, which many EU handouts we get are written in. But perhaps we shouldn't be flippant about these things, coming from a country with the impertinence to expect foreigners to speak its language.

Another winning app speeds up searches for musicians, music broadcast and tracks. The Hacker's Choice award went to an application called Open Freecycle, which searches for items across all Freecycle groups that make unwanted items freely available.

Corsair announce large SSD drive

Tue, 12 May 2009 08:12:23 GMT

Corsair's latest addition to their SSD family of hard drives is the P256, a high capacity, high performance drive with an equally high price tag.

The P256 has a 256GB capacity and uses specially selected Samsung MLC flash memory and the high performance Samsung Controller IC together with 128MB of cache memory and NCQ to produce quoted read speeds of up to 220MB/sec and write speeds of up to 200MB/sec.

Play.com have it listed at £569.99 including free delivery.