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Asus Eee PC 1005HA review

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The Asus Eee PC 1005HA netbook features an excellent balance of size and battery life. At a glance, the netbook looks virtually identical to the Eee PC 1008HA, but it’s both thicker and heavier. The added depth gives the 1005HA room for a full sized VGA port, and a high capacity removable battery, both of which are missing from the 1008HA. Yet the Eee PC 1005HA is still thinner and lighter than its predecessor, the Eee PC 1000HE which Asus will soon phase out.

But does the Eee PC 1005HA offer enough advantages over the 1000HE for existing users to upgrade? Read on to find out.

Ubuntu 9.10 beta released

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The Ubuntu team has now delivered the beta version of Karmic Koala aka, the Ubuntu 9.10 operating system. Coming after six alphas, the beta build is based on the 2.6.31-11.36 kernel, it includes the GNOME 2.28 desktop environment and features improved startup times, the Ubuntu Software Center, the Ubuntu Enterprise Cloud (in the server edition), the Ubuntu One file sharing service, GRUB 2 as the default boot loader, an improved iSCSI installation process and lots more.

You can download the Ubuntu 9.10 beta (in all its flavors) from this page or have patience and wait until October 29 for the full release.

Check for RAM Error in Windows 7 and Vista with Windows Memory Diagnostic

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Memory or RAM is one of the most important electronic hardware component on a computer systems, not only in term of speed or clock frequency and size, but also the reliability of hardware ecosystem of the RAM sticks or memory modules and its subsystem. For RAM to operate optimally, reliably and stably, there shouldn’t by any physical error or defect problem or issue on the memory chip, or else data processed may corrupt, programs may crash, or computer may hang, freeze, reboot or restart unexpectedly, unpredictably, and erroneously.

Secrets of Nikon's Coolpix S1000pj projetor camera revealed

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Perplexed by the mystery of Nikon's Coolpix S1000pj projector camera? Like the puzzle of free energy or Google Wave, it's a quandary that has perplexed researchers and common folk alike for decades (or at least a few months). It looks we can now finally lay this particular quandary to rest, however, as leading scientific journal Tech-On! has finally revealed how something can be both a camera and a projector at the same time. It turns out the key is a new L-shaped projector module developed by Nikon itself, which is just the right size to fit inside the camera alongside some repositioned optical components, and some new heat control measures that keep the whole thing from getting too toasty. Still skeptical? Hit up the read link below for a closer look and some additional details.

Final Release of Windows XP Mode Coming Soon

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Microsoft announced today via its Windows Blog that it has released Windows XP Mode (and presumably, Windows Virtual PC--these guys never explain anything correctly) to manufacturing. The final version will be delivered to customers on October 22, the day of the Windows 7 launch.

Thanks to everyone’s feedback, we’re happy to announce that Windows XP Mode has RTM’d today. We expect to make the final release of Windows XP Mode available via the Microsoft Download Center on October 22nd. OEMs will be able to offer Windows XP Mode on their PCs based on their manufacturing schedules.

For more information on Windows XP Mode, including feature highlights and quotes from some of our partners, I recommend reading this blog post.

Twitter tests Lists feature to group tweets

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Twitter is trying out a new feature designed to make it easier for users to group the people they follow by organizing them into lists.

Nick Kallen, manager of Twitter's Lists project, said in a blog post Wednesday night that the company is testing the new feature (see image, below) with a small subset of users. The Lists could organize the people you follow into groups of, say, friends, colleagues, industry luminaries and celebrities.

While the lists can be made private, Kallen said they're public by default, allowing other users to subscribe to any of your lists that they're interested in.

Consumer group: 'Free' Windows 7 upgrades not always free

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The free Windows 7 upgrades that Microsoft has promised buyers of new PCs powered by Vista are not always free, a consumer watchdog Web site said today.

"To me, whether it's $12.99 or $17.03, the charges are all outrageous," said Edgar Dworsky, the editor of Consumerworld.org and Mouseprint.org. "It's just a single disc they're sending, and with media mail rates, it costs just over a dollar to mail." Last June, Microsoft kicked off a marketing campaign dubbed "Windows 7 Upgrade Option Program" to keep PCs sales ticking. The program, a rerun of a similar deal in 2006 before Windows Vista's launch, gives people who buy a PC equipped with Windows Vista Home Premium, Business, or Ultimate a free or nearly-free upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium, Professional, or Ultimate once the new operating system ships Oct. 22.

ASUS intros first 'Marine Cool' motherboard, the SABERTOOTH 55i

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ASUS is good for canning concepts just before they've had a chance to truly thrive, but thankfully the company has made an obvious effort to bring its "Marine Cool" mainboard to life. After peeking said device at CeBIT earlier this year, the SABERTOOTH 55i has become the first actual, working product to be based around the technology. The newly-developed TUF series is designed to handle "extreme conditions," and while ASUS claims that it'll survive "military-style testing," we wouldn't recommend submerging it under liquid or blasting it with a railgun. For those looking to piece together a new Core i5 / Core i7 rig, feel free to give the read link a look for all the details, but don't bother searching high and low for a price or release date.

Nvidia Demos Next-Gen Fermi Graphics

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Nvidia has developed a next-generation graphics processor code-named Fermi, and CEO Jen-Hsun Huang demoed some of the first working Fermi silicon at Nvidia's GPU Technology Conference in San Jose, Calif., Wednesday.

"Fermi is a radically different way of designing GPUs," Jen-Hsun said following his keynote to open the GPU Technology Conference. Nvidia hosted a similar, more gaming-oriented event called Nvision last year but changed the name of the conference and tightened the focus on GPU-based parallel and cloud computing this time around.

5 Windows 7 Issues Microsoft Needs To Address Now

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Here are five issues that we feel Microsoft should get resolved either before or sometime soon after Windows 7 is released to the public in a few weeks.
There has been ongoing debate on Microsoft's TechNet site about an issue with Windows 7 RTM x64 and incremental backups. It seems as though Windows 7 x64 is not performing incremental backups as it should by design. Per Microsoft Help: "After you create your first backup Windows Backup will add new or changed information to your subsequent backups ...
Windows Backup keeps track of the files that have been added or modified since your last backup and then updates the existing backup, which saves disk space." In other words, after a full backup, Windows 7 should only back up changed data.