Computer & Technology news for enthusiasts and professionals

Find The Most Suitable Place To Stay

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 21:11:00 +0000

Many people prefer to have a great resident during their stay in other country or city so that they would be able to enjoy their existence in the recent country or city they are lived in. If you also wanted to have a great residents or even place to stay at night that would be able to give you such comfortable living and also affordable based on your budget, you need to plan and search it through the internet connection. Do not hesitate to visit the cheaperthanhotels.com right after you open your internet connection because this website address is the greatest answer for you in finding the most suitable place with the most suitable prices for your budget.

If you prefer to live in apartment in order to get the comfortable, authority and opportunity to get closer to your family, the website address would recommend you to choose the Quest Apartment which is consist of 110 Quest Property to be chosen so that you do not need to worry about the building, services or even price offered by this apartment. You would be able to book the existed Quest Apartment after you clicking the existed account of Quest Apartment.

Feel free to visit this website address and explore the available information that existed in this website address.

Reliable Source for Web Hosting

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:34:00 +0000

Web Hosting will hold an important part in the efforts of making your website lives. You can search through the internet and examine any offers from the web hosting companies but that can be a time consuming activity and quite tricky. Some of the offers might be just affiliates or contains biased information. You need a reliable source that will assist you getting the best result for your research of a perfect web hosting with complete service for the needs of your website. At webhostingrating.com you will find the fair guidance for determining a web hosting provider. As a beginner, you may start with the web hosting tutorials that contains various articles and information about web hosting. You can also find the guides to evaluate the needs of your website that will be important to deciding what kind of web hosting service that most suitable for you.

If you take a look at the web hosting rating provided in this website, you will get good recommendations for the web hosting providers who get the best appreciation by the users. The data is based on the customer satisfaction, affordability, reliability, uptime and technical support. You can read the customers feed back that bring the particular web hosting providers getting higher rating as a referral to find the favorite choice of the user. The better services a web host provides, the more appreciation will be given by the customers. Don’t forget to investigate the reliability and the budget you should prepare. See also the availability of email for your business domain, databases or multi-media services for streaming media.

If you want to get the best for any category you choose, the web hosting awards will be the perfect referral. The awards given by this website are based on customer’s reviews. They will give you fair and unbiased information and can be a trusted source for web hosting providers you can rely on. If you have already determine what kind of web hosting you will take, this directory will be useful to find the best web hosting provider that will give you what you need.

Lenovo Netbook Fray With IdeaPad S10

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Fri, 29 Aug 2008 06:06:00 +0000

Looking to get in on the hot low-price notebook market, Lenovo is launching its own bargain laptop offering to compete with small notebooks, such as the MSI Wind and Eee PC. The new laptop, the IdeaPad S10, will ship in October in time for the Christmas season. It will retail starting at $399.

The new notebook features a small footprint with a 10.2 inch LCD screen. The dimensions of the notebooks are 9.8 x 7.2 inches. Weight is 2.4 pounds with the lightest configuration. The notebook is also "super-slim", according to Lenovo, measuring in at approximately 1 inch thin. The device features a slightly-shrunk keyboard which is 85 percent of the size of a standard full-function PC keyboard.

As far as looks, the IdeaPad looks rather slick with a variety of finishes. It can be ordered in "classic white", "bold black", or glossy "ruby red". The white models will have a grayed base.

A couple steps are taken with the design to insure long battery life, a big concern for ultra-portables. First, it uses LEDs to backlight the LCD more effectively than traditional designs. Secondly, it uses Intel's popular Atom processor, in particular the 1.6 GHz N270 with a 945 GSE express chipset.

As the laptop is designed to be used primarily as an internet/word processing machine, connectivity is another major focus. Lenovo added WiFi (b/g), Bluetooth, Ethernet, and an Express Card slot, in order to allow users to get broadband by a variety of methods. The device will also feature 2 USB ports, a 4-in-1 multi-card reader, and a built-in web camera for video messaging. Graphics will be provided by an Intel Integrated Graphics GMA 950 chip.

The notebook will be sold in two different configurations. The first has 512 MB of memory and an 80 GB hard drive. The second, which likely be priced somewhat higher, ups the memory to 1 GB and features a 160 GB hard drive. No solid state drive options have been announced yet. Both configurations come with Windows XP preinstalled, courtesy of Microsoft's stay of retirement on XP for ultra-portables.

The notebooks will be available through a number of major retailers, through Lenovo's partners and direct through Lenovo's website.

Liu Jun, senior vice president, Consumer Business Group, Lenovo states, "IdeaPad netbooks are the latest in a string of recently announced Lenovo products, designed specifically for consumers worldwide and developed through our heritage of technological innovation and exceptional engineering. As rapidly as the technology changes, today’s consumers are looking for mobile products that feature the best of basic computing functions in an extremely compact and affordable form, and Lenovo designed the IdeaPad netbooks for that purpose."

Lenovo also hinted that some countries will have 9 inch screen smaller version available and that Linux preinstalls would also be available in some countries. It is unclear whether the U.S. will get any of these options.

One key factor in the notebook's success or failure will be the battery life. Initial metrics place the life at around 3 hours with 3-cell battery, and up to 6 hours with 6-cell battery, but final measurements remain.

Lenovo's computer lineup, for those unfamiliar, is actual derivative of IBM's former offerings. The Chinese company purchased IBM Personal Computing Division from IBM and rebranded it to launch its computing efforts, back in 2005.

[Source]

New Toshiba Laptops With Modified PS3 Cell Processor Inside

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Sun, 10 Aug 2008 10:40:00 +0000

The Cell processor first debuted in the Sony PS3 and now is starting to see uses outside of the PS3 gaming console.
Toshiba announced a pair of laptops that will use processors derived from the Cell processor used in the PS3. The Toshiba Qosmio G50 and F40 notebooks will use four of the Synergistic Processing Elements (SPE) from the Cell Broadband Processor. By comparison, the Cell processor in the PS3 has eight of the SPE cores (seven functional) and uses a Power PC main processor.

The modified Cell processor SPE cores will handle the heavy calculations required to handle processor-intensive duties like processing HD video. The main processor in the pair of notebooks will be an Intel Core 2 Duo.

PC World says that by integrating the modified Cell processor into the notebooks Toshiba will be able to offer features not seen on competing notebooks. The new features will include the ability to upscale standard definition video to HD, real-time transcoding of digital video to MPEG4 and the ability to burn video to DVD in half the time needed by current machines.

One particularly interesting feature the Cell processor allows is called face navigation. The notebooks will be able to recognize faces in a video and display them as thumbnails allowing users to find chapters and scenes using faces.

PC World reports that the Cell processor will also allow the onboard webcam to be used to control video playback with hand gestures. The Qosmio G50 will have an 18.4-inch screen, GeForce 9600M graphics, 500GB HDD, dual digital TV tuners and more with a retail price of $2,700. The F50 will use a 15-inch screen and have a 250GB HDD with a retail price of around $2,300. The notebooks will be sold in Japan, but details on the launch are unavailable.

IBM’s record breaking Roadrunner supercomputer also takes advantage of a modified Cell processor to speed its performance.

[Source]

Broadband Research with Broadband Expert

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:22:00 +0000

Get an easy way to find the best broadband provider and packages with the comparison and reviews from Broadband Experts at broadband-experts.co.uk. This website will help you to research the broadband providers by provide the data from each broadband providers such as true cost including any hidden extras. After that, you will be able to compare the broadband packages by analyze the limits, speeds, set up fee, first year cost, minimum contract and read the advise for the type of usage in each package. This website also provide consumer guides, forums and blog to facilitate the users in their research as well as providing a broadband speed checker and monthly download estimator. Don’t worry about your data’s security everytime you submit your data on this site, because the data collected will only be used for the purposes intended such as running a check for broadband availability in your post code. They take your privacy seriously by comply with the data protection act.

For the Mobile broadband, you can choose from four providers reviewed here. There are T-Mobile, Orange, Three, and Vodafone. Those providers are mobile phone operator that currently operate in the UK market and use their networks to allow access to broadband from anywhere with mobile reception through 3G technology. There are various offers available for the contract length, typically 12, 18 or 24 months. You can also consider the pay as you go offers with higher set up charge.the comparison are also available in this website including the consideration speeds, download limits, price and contract length.

The speed test in the speed checker in this website are available to reveal your actual broadband upload speed and download speed, it is designed to give the most accurate results by enter the details of your current package and run the speed test, the result will show your actual speed compared to the speed your provider quotes. The result will be defined in two types that is broadband download speed which is important for downloading music, video, email attachments, etc. and broadband upload speed which is important for online gaming and internet phone calls. This speed test is best suited to UK broadband, but will be work in other counties. It will reports the actual internet speed and work for any type of connection including ADSL, cable and mobile broadband. With those services from this website, you will be able to find the best broadband deals available in your area.

Ridata Announces Low Cost SSDs

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 03:20:00 +0000

SSDs still have a way to go before they are on par with traditional hard drives as far as price and storage capacity goes. Ridata, however, today announced three new SSDs that are at least helping to push the price barrier down to more affordable levels.

The new Ridata SSDs use multi-level cell (MLC) technology that allows the storage of two data bits per cell making for fast read and write speeds with low power consumption. Low power consumption is the key to longer battery life in a notebook and utility savings in the enterprise environment.

The line of SSDs is called the Ridata Ultra-S Plus series and will be available in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB capacities. The drives have a mean time between failure of 4,000,000 hours and data integrity is enhanced with static wear leveling and Reed-Solomon ECC. Ridata says that SMART features work to provide a write endurance cycle of up to 1,000,000 times depending on the drive capacity.

According to Ridata, the drives have a read speed of 128MB/sec and a write speed of 80MB/sec.

The Ridata SSDs connect to notebooks and PCs via a traditional SATA connection. The line of drives will be available in late July and according to Engadget; the 32GB SSD will sell for $169.90, the 64GB for $294.90, and the 128GB will sell for $537.90.

The pricing for the 32GB is right in line with OCZ's new Core Series SSDs, however, the 64GB and 128GB models are a bit more expensive. Samsung announced a line of SSDs that also use MLC technology in July.

[Source]

Sony Announces $399, 80GB PS3

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:12:00 +0000

Microsoft has been making the rounds lately with news of its Xbox 360 price cut. The Redmond, Washington-based company dropped the price of its 20GB Xbox 360 from $349.99 to $299.99. In addition, the company announced that a new 60GB Xbox 360 would occupy the $349.99 price once stock of the 20GB models is depleted.

Not to be left out, Sony today announced some product shuffling of its own. The “non-special edition” 80GB PS3 is returning to the lineup in September – but this time, the console will be priced at $399.99. The 80GB “Core Pack” as it will be called will mirror the existing 40GB model in everything but maximum storage capacity.

The $399.99 price doesn't leave much room for the existing 40GB which occupies the same price point. Sony could make a move similar to Microsoft and reduce the price of the console to $299.99 until the stock is depleted, and then drop the SKU altogether. On the other hand, the company could set the price permanently at $299.99 and leave the SKU in the product mix.

No matter what option Sony ends up choosing, better-equipped and cheaper consoles are a win-win for consumers.

[Source]

Fácil de reserva de hotel easytobook.com

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Fri, 08 Aug 2008 15:05:00 +0000

Si usted tiene un plan para pasar sus vacaciones con su ser querido en un lugar especial, le sugiero que vaya a Europa. Hay muchos animales exóticos lugares en Europa, se puede visitar París, Milán, o incluso Londres. Por ejemplo, cuando usted viene a París, se puede visitar la torre Eiffel y ver toda la ciudad de París el alta. También puede llegar a Milán, la ciudad más famosa en los zapatos de estilo y diseño. Usted puede comprar algunos extraordinaria zapatos. Tal vez sólo para sentir nueva atmósfera en Londres y Barcelona, su hasta usted.

Si usted no ha establecido aún su plan, usted puede comenzar a partir de ahora. Estas ciudades son muy hermosas y se lamenta si atornillado hasta sus vacaciones porque su preparación engañar. Si necesita ayuda para reservación de hotel, puede visitar easytobook.com donde se puede encontrar información sobre hoteles en toda Europa. Puede buscar famosos de París hoteles, o barato Milán hoteles, este sitio web realmente realmente le ayudan a configurar su plan de vacaciones. Puede reservar su hotel a través de este sitio.

Cada vez que usted quiere, este sitio web le mostrará los más asequibles y adecuados para usted los hoteles, Barcelona hoteles de Amsterdam hasta hoteles. Este sitio web está abierta las 24 horas y 7 días a la semana, por lo que será fácil para usted. A lado de, sino que también da servicio de llamadas internacionales, de modo que cada uno puede acceder a su servicio. Te sugiero que reserve sus hoteles ahora, porque le puede dar precio especial. Ahora, usted tiene especial lugar para visitar y ningún problema con su plan. Visita ahora solo libro y sus hoteles.

Microsoft Announces Futuristic Mouse For Holiday Season

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Thu, 07 Aug 2008 15:31:00 +0000

The future of mice arrives this year

It’s not every day that you see a mouse design that really makes you do a double-take. Truth be told, many mice do little to excite. While some performance-oriented gaming companies have debuted special mice with adjustable weighting, high accuracy scanning, and extra buttons; most mice look remarkably similar.

Among these modest mice department, as well as in gaming, Microsoft has long done quite well, with a solid line of utilitarian offerings. Now Microsoft is looking to go in a different, more radical direction, and is sending shock-waves through the peripherals market following its announcement of a wild new design.

A picture of the arc mouse in action -- the new mouse will be about standard size, with a hollowed out underbody, which will allow it to fold for storage. It will retail for $59.95. (Source: Microsoft)

Microsoft will release an unusual design appropriately titled the arc mouse. This wireless mouse features a curved form that is hollowed on its underside, allowing it to bend closed for ultra-compact storage. The new design will debut in time for the 2008 holiday season.

While the new mouse will likely operate in a pretty standard fashion, it's the look that really stands out. The design almost leaves one to wonder whether the mouse will tip or have balancing issues during use. However, if Microsoft can perfect its design, it may have the iPod of the mouse world ready for sale just in time for the holiday season.

[Source]

IPhone 3G Launches

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 09:29:00 +0000

The launch was truly an intriguing global phenomenon.

The lines were shorter than the original iPhone release at Apple's 5th Avenue store in New York, according to initial reports, but the crowd exuded a much stronger sense of desperation. Apple employees were on hand to start wild rounds of cheering, whipping the crowd of Apple lovers into a frenzy.

In New Zealand, first to get the iPhone due to time zone mechanics, huge crowds formed. The typically sedate Kiwis went wild, some of them camping out, forming crowds as the moment approached. Japan was among the next to get the phone, with even larger crowds of up to 1,000 forming. Reporters spotted many of the ever-studious Japanese youth reviewing textbooks while they waited.

Across Europe, in Sweden, the Netherlands and elsewhere, similar excitement was seen. In Europe iPhones were delivered by armored car and handed off to the store manager.

The exception seemed to be Canada. In the normally busy city of Calgary, the Canadians seemed somewhat apathetic towards the launch, perhaps due to recent dissatisfaction with Rogers, Canada's leading service provider who picked up the cell phone. Or perhaps it was the hailing storm that pelted the city overnight. Nonetheless, citizens reported small crowds camping out over the course of the night. Quebec was similarly quiet.

One curious phenomena that arose was the iPhone EDGE model fire sale. Patrons of the iPhone were offering their obsolete models for as little as $50 to would be buyers. While some might be wary, it seems that it might be a fair deal for some, living outside AT&T's more limited 3G coverage, but within the EDGE network coverage.

Finally getting their sweaty palms on the new iPhone, Apple fans were perhaps a bit surprised to discover it looked amazing like... their old iPhone. Perhaps among the cuts that dropped the price from $399 to $199 was the removal of the chic aluminum casing. In its place is a shiny black (or white, optional on the 16GB model) plastic, a magnet for fingerprints. The move to plastic may also have been made to deal with Apple's ever growing list of radio frequencies supported -- GSM, EDGE, HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS.

In the end, the phone still looks pretty much like an iPhone, and people report the plastic to feel solid, and not at all flimsy. The phone is now curved, fatter at the center and thinner at the edge, a popular design trick to give the illusion of thinness. Unfortunately, this means that when tapping out an email on a table, the phone rocks back and forth.

In a move that angered some, Apple replaced the old dock, which is no longer compatible with the iPhone. After Apple "sells" customers on the iPhone, they are in its clutches and it slams them with a $30 fee for their new phone. Another minor gripe is that the phone does not automatically detect GSM or 3G networks, the user must configure it themselves.

The new phone sports noticeably better quality on 3G and GSM, according to early adopters. Battery life weighs in close to expectations from Apple with 10 / 5 hours talk on GSM / 3G (respectively), 5 hours 3G data, 6 hours WiFi, 24 hours music and 7 hours video. The camera is reported to be slightly sharper, but unimpressive, overall.

Music fans will be happy -- the iPhone now has a flush 3.5mm jack. This will allow normal headphones to be used. The speaker, which many complained was too quiet, has also been pumped up.

IPhone tests have showed it to be a speedy performer, with data rates of 300 - 500Kbps in the U.S. and 700-800Kbps on faster foreign networks. The GPS is also very fast, supplementing satellite acquisition with cell phone tower triangulation. Also the GPS uses Skyhook's proprietary WiFi-based location system, the only known phone on the market to do so. Microsoft Exchange, now supported, works well for email, but can only support personal/corporate coexisting accounts, not personal/enterprise. PowerPoint presentations now can open automatically on the phone as well.

In other iPhone related news, the 2.0 Firmware for the iPhone/iPod Touch which enables the new Apps feature and such goodies as Nike+Apple was leaked for free. It has now been officially released for $9.99, but it is still floating around for free. There have been some reports of problems with the free version. Expect a rapid crackdown from Apple as well.

All in all it was a busy day for Apple worldwide. No real surprises, no riots, but still the iPhone launch was an impressive display by Apple of its market might.

[Source]

Belkin FlyWire Streams HD Signals From Any Source Wirelessly to an HDTV

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:24:00 +0000

Belkin announced the FlyWire HD device that does two things for the home theater user. First it allows for three HDMI sources to connect to the TV via one HDMI port on the TV, projector, or other display device. The other thing the FlyWire does is allow for custom-looking installs without having wires run from the TV to the components.
Belkin says that its FlyWire device operates in the open 5GHz band and manages its own wireless connection. It is capable of adjusting both the frequency and power to avoid interference on the available bandwidth and to overcome interference and impedance that might affect image quality.

Belkin says that thanks to this management technology that users can stream video games wirelessly to a TV without any lag being introduced due to wireless streaming. The FlyWire will be introduced in two models: the FlyWire and the FlyWire R1. The normal FlyWire will be available in October and the FlyWire R1 will be available in Q1 2009.

The FlyWire will retail for $999.99 and offers range suitable for operating in the entire home through walls and windows. The device has an IR backchannel to allow the control of AV devices hidden inside closets or other areas. An included remote allows for control of inputs and components. Those preferring their own remotes can use the IR receiver and IR blaster.

The FlyWire R1 is an in-room solution that includes a remote for switching inputs and automatic frequency hopping. Both versions of the FlyWire require the use of a FlyWire receiver that connects to the TV. The devices can support resolutions on 1080p, 1080i, 720p, 576p, 576i, 480p, and 480i. In addition to the three HDMI inputs and one HDMI output, the devices also have two component and one composite or S-Video input.

The FlyWire is significantly more expensive than systems like the Philips Wireless HDMI, but the FlyWire offers a wealth of features not seen on the Philips system.

[Source]

Home and Garden Accents

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:18:00 +0000

Mailbox and address plaque not only can be used as house necessities, but also will increase the aesthetic value with the unique and decorative designs. You can set personalized mailbox or address plaque to décor your house and garden. Find those decorative products you can purchase in mailboxandbeyond.com.

This website offers the widest selection of home accents and garden décor with various types, design and come with affordable price and great customer service. Take a look at the mailboxes collection; they are consisting of three categories, residential mailboxes, mailbox posts and Whitehall mailboxes. Each category offers various designs you can choose as your desire.

The address plaques collections are also available in various types and designs. You can even ask for personalized address plaque with exclusive design only for you. Forget about the usual designs of house numbers. By setting artistic house numbers available in this website, you are not only decorating your house but also make it looks more striking than the other house. This website is an authorized dealer from many famous brands including Whitehall Products. That is why you don’t have to worry about the quality. It is guaranteed as the best among the other home and garden accents factory.

Seagate First to Announce 1.5TB Desktop HDD

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 02:01:00 +0000

It's only been approximately a year and a half since the first 1TB disc drive* got to make the marketplace. Hitachi was the first to bring out its 1TB HDD in January of 2007.
Just this week Hitachi brought out its second generation 1TB HDD with a 43% power savings equated to the first generation. The Hitachi drive applies 3 discs to bring the 1TB capacity and economize energy. Nowadays, Seagate declared the world’s first 1.5TB desktop disc drive known as the Barracuda 7200.11 1.5TB.

As you are able to gather by the name, the drive spins around at 7,200 RPM and applies four discs to gain the massive 1.5TB capacity. Seagate says that this is the biggest growth in store capacity in the latest 50-years and the 500GB growth in capacity is thanks to improved perpendicular magnetic recording technology.

Along with the 1.5TB 3.5-inch desktop HDD, Seagate as well declared new 500GB 2.5-inch HDDs for use in notebook computer*. The 500GB notebook computer drives will ship in 5,400 and 7,200 rpm varieties. The drives are called the Momentus 5400.6 and Momentus 7200.4 HDDs. The 5,400 RPM drive applies an 8MB memory cache and the 7,200 drive has a 16MB memory cache.

Seagate executive VP and general manager of PC Business Michael Wingert told in a statement, “Organizations and consumers of all kinds worldwide continue to make, share and consume digital content at stages never before seen, giving rise to new markets, new application program* and requirement for desktop and notebook computers with unprecedented storage capacity, performance and reliability. Seagate is committed to powering the next generation of computing nowadays with the planet’s quickest, highest-capacity and most reliable storage solutions.”

Seagate declared in 2006 that it expected capacity of HDDs to hit 2.5TB by 2009. The Seagate 1TB HDD was declared a bit over a year ago in June 2007.

[Source]

Samsung 128GB MLC SSDs in Mass Production

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Thu, 31 Jul 2008 00:56:00 +0000

Samsung announced that its latest SSDs are now in volume production. The new SSDs will be available in 128GB and 64GB capacities. The capacity isn’t what sets these drives apart, rather it’s the multi-level cell (MLC) technology used in the Samsung SSDs.

According to Samsung the new MLC SSDs are capable of providing read speeds of 90MB/s and write speeds of 70MB/s -- performance on par with SSDs using single-level cell technology. The difference is that SSDs built on the MLC technology offer about a 20 times improvement in the typical 4-5 year lifespan of a PC hard drive. Power consumption is another big feature of the MLC SSDs with requirements for 0.2 watts in standby and 0.5 watts in active mode.

Jim Elliott, VP memory marketing for Samsung Semiconductor said in a statement, “With the 64 GB and 128 GB MLC SSDs, we are satisfying the density requirements of most business users and many PC enthusiasts, who will appreciate not only the performance gains and added reliability, but also the more attractive pricing.”

Samsung says that the MLC SSDs will use a 3 Gbps interface and that the 128GB uses 64 MLC NAND flash memory chips of 16 gigabits each and is enclosed in a brushed metallic casing measuring 100mm x 69.8mm and 9.5mm thick. Samsung declined to comment on the pricing of the SSDs.

Samsung first announced the 128GB MLC SSD in January and it is just now entering mass production.

[Source]

ECS G10IL Coming in September

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:44:00 +0000

When ASUS first launched its Eee PC the term netbook was coined to describe the small, low-cost systems with roughly enough power to only surf the net. As time has gone by, ASUS and other manufacturers have introduced new models with more features and the price for a netbook has slowly began to creep up into real notebook territory.
Laptop Magazine sat down with ECS vice president of sales Henry Kwan to get some information on what the ECS G10IL netbook will bring to market to set itself apart from the netbook masses. Kwan says that the G10IL will feature EDGE, HSUPA, and HSPDA mobile broadband support, but will not feature support for WiMAX.

The ECS netbook entry will be produced in 8.9-inch and 10-inch size systems, but the version most likely to hit the U.S. will be the larger 10-inch version. The ECS G10IL will hit stores in the U.S. in September with prices for basic systems lacking mobile broadband capability starting at $399.

The G10IL will be available in versions running Linups Lite 9.4 Linux on an 8GB SSD -- likely to be the $399 version -- and systems will also be sold with an 80GB HDD running Windows XP. ECS says that the G10IL is the first netbook designed specifically for the business user, not the education customer.

DailyTech first reported on the specs of the ECS G10IL in March of 2008 when specifics were scant and pricing was rough. Later in March DailyTech confirmed the ECS netbook would use Intel’s Atom CPU.

[Source]

Acer Unveils Aspire X1200 Small Form Factor Desktop

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Sun, 27 Jul 2008 14:40:00 +0000

Desktop sales have slowed due to the rise of notebooks across most manufacturers over the last few years. Despite that fact, a market remains for desktop computers -- especially those that are small and low-cost.
Acer, the third largest PC maker in the world, added a new X1200 model to its Aspire line today that is both small and cheap. The systems are very small with the case measuring 10.6-inches high x 4-inches wide x 14.4-inches long. This helps maximize desktop space and can allow the systems to fit into cramped entertainment systems for those looking to surf the web on their big screen.

Despite being a small system room for expansion is available inside the chassis with two PCI Express slots. One of the slots is an x1 design and one is an x16 slot. The X1200 has five available USB 2.0 ports, a 14-in-1 memory card reader, IEE 1394 port, and audio jacks all on the front of the PC for easy access.

Several different X1200 configurations are being offered with prices starting at $450. The X1200 which retails for $449.99 has a AMD Athlon X2 Dual Core 4850e CPU, NVIDIA 8200 on-board graphics, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a 320 GB HDD, and runs on Windows Vista Premium 64.

Stepping up to $459.99 gets an Athlon X2 5000+ CPU in addition to the aforementioned specifications. For $699.99 a version using the 4850e and a 500GB HDD and shipping with a 22-inch LCD is available.

[Source]

Fast Hotel Reservation

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Thu, 10 Jul 2008 00:42:00 +0000

Find the most complete options for online hotels reservation on the website at EasyToBook.com and have a better plan of your vacation around the world. The service provided by the website allows you to save your time in finding the hotels available to book in many destinations around the globe. You will not have to be worried about getting a place to stay when you get to your vacation place.

If you would like to look for Vienna hotels, you can find them all there in large selection delivered in various specifications. If you wish to have a luxurious hotel stay in United States you may want to try the New York hotels with special offer of discount and along with stylish boutique properties that you can enjoy at once. You can also find London hotels selection no matter if you are looking for the luxurious ones or the cheap ones that match your backpack budget. Enjoy staying in comfortable hotels after exploring the culture of your vacation cities.

This site provides you with complete service of comparing and booking the hotels online. You can also see the details of each hotel in the website. Compare them based on the price, star rating, facilities, and the strategic locations.

Creative Muvo T200 4 GB Get new Color

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Thu, 26 Jun 2008 04:38:00 +0000

Creative added a new color (White) to its 4GB MuVo T200 line-up. This white Muvo T200has similar specs to black Muvo T200 4GB (there is also a 2GB version) like MP3/WMA compatible, Bass Boost function, FM Radio Tuner, Built-in mic. The White Muvo T200 4GB will be available this month with 40 EUR price tag.

Dell's 2709W 27-inch LCD

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Wed, 25 Jun 2008 01:06:00 +0000

Dell just busted out a new member in its storied line of LCDs, the UltraSharp 2709W. The 27-inch LCD is Dell's followup to the 2707WFP, and features the same 1920 x 1200 resolution, 9-in-2 media card reader and 6ms response time, but bumps the contrast ratio to 3000:1 and goes for some new all-black stylings. Brightness is a mean 450 nits, but the real fun comes with ports: Dell squeezed just about everything known to man in here, including HDMI, DVI-D, VGA, component, composite, and DisplayPort. There's also a nice collection of USB ports, plus HDCP for good measure. With a three year warranty the display sells for $999, quite the steal compared to the 2707WFP's intro price of $1,400 last year.

Roadrunner Dominates Top500 Supercomputers List

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Tue, 24 Jun 2008 02:06:00 +0000

Second place on the list goes to a system with a max speed of 478.2 teraflops

IBM’s latest supercomputer – Roadrunner -- sits atop the Top500 supercomputers list that will be released at the International Supercomputing Conference in Dresden, Germany this week.
Its rise to the top of the list comes after it was able to break the petaflop barrier last week. News.com reports that Roadrunner was able to reach 1.026 petaflops, a bit over one quadrillion calculations per second.

The Roadrunner supercomputer dethroned IBM’s own BlueGene/L -- last year’s most powerful supercomputer -- pushing BlueGene/L to the number two spot on the list. BlueGene/L was able to reach 208.6 teraflops last year. This year it more than doubled its performance to 478.2 teraflops, but was still unable to match Roadrunner.

Roadrunner is based on the IBM QA22 blades that use an advanced version of the Cell processor found in the Sony PS3. The processing cores used in the Roadrunner are from AMD and make the machine the world’s first hybrid supercomputer.

Roadrunner is comprised of 278 refrigerator-size server racks and has 6,562 dual-core Opterons. IBM is the manufacturer of 210 of the 500 supercomputers on the Top500 list. Other well known makers with systems making the Top500 list include HP with 183 systems on the list and its top performer taking the number 8 spot on the list.

Sun has its Ranger system on the list at number 4, the Jaguar from Cray is number 5, Encanto from SGI is number 7, and Altix from SGI is number 10. Intel is the dominant processor in the supercomputer market powering 75% of all systems that made the Top500 list and 90% of ranked quad-core processor machines.

[Source]

NVIDIA Launches GTX 200 GPU Family

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Mon, 23 Jun 2008 14:09:00 +0000

The GPUs in the series include the GTX 280 and GTX 260

NVIDIA launched a new family of GPUs today called the GTX 200 series. Within the series there are currently two GPUs -- the GTX 280 and the GTX 260. The NVIDIA GTX 280 is now the flagship GPU from NVIDIA and sits in the line above the 9800 GX2.
NVIDIA is stressing with the new GTX 200 family that the GPUs go beyond gaming and are one of the most powerful processors in a PC and can be used for rendering video and other functions. NVIDIA says that its goals with the architecture of the GTX 200 series were to design a processor twice as powerful as the GeForce 8800 GTX, rebalance the architecture for future games with more complex shaders and more memory, improve efficiency per watt and per square millimeter, provide enhanced CUDA performance, and add a significant reduction in idle power requirements.

NVIDIA says that the GTX 200 line provides nearly a teraflop of computational power. The GTX 200 family also offers support for PhysX powered physics processing right on the GPU. Both the new GTX 280 and GTX 260 support SLI and 3-way SLI. The previous NVIDIA 9800 GX2 could not support 3-way SLI.

Key features in the new GTX 200 GPUs include support for three times the number of threads per flight at any given time. A new scheduler design allows for 20% more texturing efficiency. The memory interface for the GPUs is 512-bit (GTX 280) and full-speed, raster-operation (ROP) frame blending is supported. The GTX 200 series also features twice the number of registers for longer and more complex shaders and IEEE754R double precision floating-point. The GTXC 200 line also supports 10-bit color scan out via the DisplayPort only.

One of the main goals with the GTX 200 line was improved power management. Both the GTX 200 series GPUs have idle power requirements of about 25W; during Blu-ray playback power requirements are around 35W; full 3D performance requirements vary with the most power needed being 236W (GTX 280). The GTX 200 line is compatible with HybridPower, which makes the power needs of the GPU effectively 0W.

The GTX 280 is built on a 65nm process and has 1.4 billion transistors. The stock video cards have a graphics clock of 602 MHz, processor clock of 1,296 MHz, and a memory clock of 2,214 MHz. The GTX 280 has 1GB of GDDR3 and 240 processing cores and 32 ROPs.

The GTX 260 is also built on the 65 nm process and has 1.4 billion transistors. The graphics clock for the GTX 260 is 576 MHz, the processor clock is 1,242 MHz, and the memory clock is 1,998 MHz. The memory interface on the GTX 260 is 448-bit and it has 896MB of GDDR3 memory. The GTX 260 has 192 processing cores and 28 ROPs. The maximum board power is 182W.

Both video cards will support PhysX processing on the GPU. NVIDIA purchased Ageia in early 2008.

[Source]

Roadrunner Supercomputer Mimics Brain Function, Sets New Speed Record

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Sat, 21 Jun 2008 00:54:00 +0000

IBM & Los Alamos supercomputer might be as fast as your brain.

Not even a week after the new Roadrunner supercomputer was juiced up and put to work, scientists are hard at work trying to push the machine to its limits. Housed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory, the primary goal of the supercomputer is to model the safety of the United States' aging nuclear weapons stockpile. At over a certified petaflop, the machine renders calculations in a day that would take every person on Earth a calculator and 46 years to accomplish.

A supercomputer of this power will be incredibly useful for modeling things other than nuclear decay and global climate. At over a quadrillion – a million billion – calculations per second, Roadrunner is the only computer on Earth that can keep up with one of the few things more amazing than itself: the human brain.

Los Alamos researchers are putting this power to work with a program dubbed PetaVision. The program was created to model neuron and synapse interaction in the visual cortex of the human brain. The brain uses over a billion neurons and trillions of synapses alone to process the visual information it receives and is one of the most complicated processes known to exist in grey matter.

Supercomputers like Roadrunner bring new possibilities for modeling human recognition systems, and the advances are not likely to stop there. In the past, computers have been unable to flawlessly perform cognitive tasks that the human brain does easily; tasks like picking out a face in a crowd, or detecting oncoming vehicles in traffic. Such a large step up in processing power may enable scientists to breech this difficult wall in mimicry.

The researchers used PetaVision to set a processing record with Roadrunner, spinning up to an astonishing 1.144 petaflop/s. "Just a week after formal introduction of the machine to the world, we are already doing computational tasks that existed only in the realm of imagination a year ago,” explains Terry Wallace, associate director for Science, Technology and Engineering at Los Alamos.

The supercomputer's architecture is based on a hybrid node system. Each node contains two AMD Opteron dual-core and four PowerXCell 8i processers. The PowerXCell CPUs are derived from the same Cell processor used in the Sony Playstation 3 and act as computational accelerators for the Opterons.

Source from DailyTech

Intel Responds to AMD, NVIDIA USB 3.0 Allegations

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 13:10:00 +0000

Intel says open host controller specifications have cost gazillions of dollars to develop

According to Intel’s Nick Knupffer, there are a lot of myths going around concerning USB 3.0 and Intel’s involvement in the development of the specification. Knupffer wrote a blog post on Intel’s website in an attempt to dispel these myths.

Knupffer points out that Intel is not developing the USB 3.0 specification. What Intel is developing is the host controller spec which Knupffer describes as a “Dummies Guide” to building a USB 3.0 compatible piece of silicon.

Knupffer says in the blog post that Intel has invested “gazillions of dollars and bazillions of engineering man hours” in developing the open host controller and despite its significant investment still plans to give the specification to competing manufacturers for free. Knupffer also says that Intel loves it when CPU performance is used to the max and the huge increase in bandwidth of USB 3.0 will mean larger file transfers and more processor usage. This in turn is expected to lead to an increased demand for faster processors.

AMD and NVIDIA leveled allegations at Intel recently that claim Intel was withholding the open host controller specifications in an attempt to give itself a market advantage. Intel and AMD claim that by withholding the specification the lead Intel will have in bringing USB 3.0 compliant products to market will be in the six to nine month range.

Intel denied the allegations of withholding the open host controller specifications at the time AMD and NVIDIA made their charges public and announced they would be designing their own open host controller. In Knupffer’s blog post, he again says that Intel isn’t holding the open host controller specifications back from competitors.

According to Knupffer, the significant investment in the open host controller specifications is specifically to get USB 3.0 into the market faster, so why would it withhold the specification. Intel still maintains that the specifications aren’t ready and that it plans to give the specifications to other manufacturers in the second half of 2008.

The final myth that Knupffer addresses in his post is that USB 3.0 technology borrows heavily from technology used in PCI Express. Intel points out that it was involved with both the PCI-SIG and the USB-IF at the design stage for both PCI Express and for USB 3.0. The insinuation form Intel is that the technology that is similar in both devices was developed on its dime.

Source from DailyTech

Next Gen Washing Machine: One Cup of Water, Fifty Pounds of Plastic

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Fri, 20 Jun 2008 02:16:00 +0000

Water conservation has been a widely encouraged practice for the better part of six or seven decades. Though along the way various forms of water transport and purification have sprung up, making life a little easier for people in climates that often experience droughts or simply live in deserts, it still remains an important part of day-to-day life in some of those. Most denizens of cities are probably familiar with the idea, but as most modern cities are well-plumbed, it doesn't add up to quiet the level of importance.

In Europe, according to English nongovernmental organization Waterwise, the water used by washing machines in the UK has risen 23 percent in the last 15 years, accounting for some 13 percent of daily consumption. Overall, the daily usage weighs in at around 455 million liters.

While 13 percent doesn't seem like a great deal and some may say that other things, like sanitary appliances should be examined for efficiency first, being more wasteful on the whole, the fact that nearly every single resident of a village, town, burb or city will have to at some point wash clothes, a more efficient machine to do so could be well-received in many locals.

Enter the Xeros. The washing machine, developed at the University of Leeds, breaks all previous efficiency records. It uses just a single cup of water for an entire load. The revolutionary machine could be in production as early as next year, according to Xeros Ltd, a company created specifically to develop and market the appliance.

Instead of soaking the load in water and detergent, the Xeros uses about 20 kilograms of small plastic chips to gather dirt and other particles which are dissolved by the single cup of water throughout the wash cycle. The chips measure about half a centimeter in size and though the developers recommend using fresh chips in each load, can be reused up to 100 times.

“This is one of the most surprising and remarkable technologies I've encountered in recent years,” said Dr. Rob Rule, director of Xeros Ltd. “Xeros has the ability to save billions of litres of water per year and, we believe, the potential to revolutionise the global laundry market.”

Source from DailyTech

Toshiba Boosts 1.8", 5400 RPM HDDs to 160GB

noreply@blogger.com (M3ele3) — Thu, 19 Jun 2008 01:58:00 +0000

Traditionally, 1.8" HDDs were only available with a 4200 RPM spindle speed, but the boost to 5400 RPM was a welcome addition to help improve performance on the smallest notebooks and UMPCs.
At the time of the announcement, Toshiba announced the availability of 80GB and 120GB models. Today, Toshiba's 5400 RPM 1.8" lineup is expanding to include a 160GB model and a revamped 80GB model.

The new 160GB (MK1617GSG) drive uses two platters while its new 80GB (MK8017GSG) counterpart used a single platter -- Toshiba's 80GB offering launched in February required two platters to reach the same capacity. Both drives feature 8MB of cache, 15ms average seek time, a micro-SATA connectors and comply with SATA 2.6 specifications.

"Toshiba's eight years in perfecting 1.8-inch HDD technology puts us in a unique position to address explosive growth in the mobility segment with proven products that deliver the performance and capacity that system manufacturers need," said Toshiba Storage Device Division Marketing VP, Maciek Brzeski.

At these capacities, our 1.8-inch HDDs are enabling the miniaturization of mobile PCs by providing better power consumption efficiency and improved ruggedness over larger form factors."

Toshiba’s new mobile HDDs will be available to OEMs in August of this year.

Toshiba's recent development in the area of 1.8" HDDs should give it more ammunition to go up against the increasing performance and falling costs of solid state drives (SSDs). Super Talent is currently leading all players in the SSD field by further driving down costs and recently introduced 30GB, 60GB, and 120GB 1.8" SSDs priced at $299, $449, and $679 respectively.

Source from DailyTech