TechConnect Magazine

Gateway dropping the direct sales model for good

Acer's $710 million summer 2007 purchase, PC builder Gateway has now confirmed that it is putting the direct sales model to rest and that it will exclusively sell its hardware creations through retailers, e-tailers and channel partners. This shift is said to "dramatically simplify" Gateway's business model and help the company save money.

"We believe that our retail and e-tail partners offer consumers the best, easiest and most effective way to purchase Gateway products," said Mark Hill, Acer Group U.S. General Manager. "Customers can rest assured that they will continue to get the award-winning products and outstanding technical support theyâve come to expect from Gateway for the last 23 years. Moving forward, we are pleased to be able to offer Gateway products through thousands of retail storefronts and major online and telephone-based channel partners both in the United States and abroad."

In the US Gateway products can be found at Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, Costco, HSN, Newegg, Tiger Direct, Office Depot, OfficeMax, Wal-Mart and others.

GPU Caps Viewer 1.5.0 released

The oZone3D team has updated its graphics card information tool and all-round utility dubbed GPU Caps Viewer to version 1.5.0. The new release features:

- New: added new demo: HW Geometry Instancing. Works with GeForce 8 (and higher), S3 Graphics Chrome 400 series (430 GT, 440 GTX). This demo requires the support of Shader Model 4.0
- New : added command line parameters to set the default size of demos's window. Example: c:\>gpucapsviewer /width=1920 /height=1200
- New: added a simple splashscreen to give some startup information.
- New: added NVIDIA PhysX driver detection.
- Change: improved HDR demo with radial blur.
- Change: density of mesh plane (500k triangles) in the Vertex Texture Fetching demo. This demo works fine with NVIDIA GeForce 6+, S3 Graphics Chrome 400 (430 GT and 440 GTX).
- Change: added ForceWare 177.66 and Catalyst 8.7 to database.
- Change: added detection of GeForce GTX 260/280 and Radeon 4850/4870/4870 X2.
- Bugfix: render target init for ATI and S3 Graphics (HDR demo).
- Bugfix: msaa was set to 2X at initialization and this value prevents a correct init of S3 Graphics Chrome 430 GT.
- Bugfix: small bug in the detection of GPU Caps Viewer version.
- Bugfix: in opengl extensions list box, driver information was not correct.
- Bugfix: small bug in drivers detection (XP and Vista).
- Bugfix: small bug in GPU Caps Viewer installer (new version tries to install into old folder).

To download the fresh GPU Caps Viewer 1.5.0 visit this page.

Rambus, well in the red in Q2 with $144 million loss

Legal battle lover Rambus Inc. has reported its performance in the second quarter of this year and by the looks of it, winning a high-profile patent case (BEd: We're not pointing fingers here) might come in handy right about now. Getting to the actual numbers, Rambus' Q2 revenues were of just $35.7 million, down 10.1% compared to Q1 and 24.9% on-year with the total revenue for the first half of 2008 being of $75.5 million, down 22.8% compared to H1 2007.

Q2 also came with a net loss of $144.7 million, significantly up compared to the same period of 2007 when Rambus reported a loss of $2.7 million, and to that of Q1 which stood at $12.6 million. Even after announcing these number though, Rambus' CEO, Harold Hughes, remained diplomatic and hopeful - "Despite the obvious headwinds faced in the quarter, we remain committed to a strategy that focuses on long-term success," said Hughes. "We will continue to invest in technology development and fully fund our legal efforts."

Although nothing has been decided yet, Rambus said that it is considering several cost cutting techniques including downsizing its workforce.

Infineon planning to cut 3000 jobs

Semiconductor specialist Infineon Technologies has just reported a net loss of 592 million Euro and a diluted loss per share of 0.79 Euro for the third quarter of its fiscal year 2008 and since bad news comes in pairs, the company has also announced its intention to extend the IFX10+ cost-reduction program so as to include a round of job cuts.

After analyzing the current market conditions Infineon has decided that it will have to lay off just over 10% of its workforce which means about 3000 people will be given the pink slip in the coming year. Nobody is safe from the cuts unfortunately as they will affect all of Infineon's divisions - Automotive, Chipcard & Security, Industrial & Multimarket, Wireline Communications and Wireless Solutions.

ECS unleashes the Hydra GeForce 9800 GTX+ bundle

Aiming to impress more than please, Elitegroup Computer Systems or ECS for short, has made and now introduced the GeForce 9800 GTX+ Hydra Pack, a bundle that includes two watercooled GeForce 9800 GTX+ graphics cards. Dubbed N9800GTX+-512MX-W, the two cards in the package are powered by thr 55nm G92b GPU and are equipped with waterblock and hooked up to a watercooling system (the BigWater 760i) made by the one and only Thermaltake.

Boasting 128 Steam Processors, the 9800 GTX+ cards feature DirectX 10(.0) support, PCI-Express 2.0 x16 interfaces and have the ability to disappoint us with their use of stock GPU, shader and memory clocks - 738, 1836 and 2200 MHz respectively. The Hydra pack also includes Ubisoft's Tom Clancyâs Rainbow Six Vegas 2. No word on price or retail availability unfortunately.

Microsoft to acquire DATAllegro

With the development of Windows 7 going as planned, Microsoft went out shopping recently and, wouldn't you know it, it returned with an agreement that will see California-based data warehouse appliance provider DATAllegro. Specialized in large-volume, high-performance data warehouses, DATAllegro is said to help extend the capabilities of Microsoft's mission-critical data platform and enable the Redmond company to offer a new, flexible architecture powered by SQL Server.

"DATAllegro is a tremendously innovative company that has started to redefine the data warehouse market," said Ted Kummert, corporate vice president of the Data and Storage Platform Division at Microsoft. "Microsoft SQL Server 2008 delivers enterprise-class capabilities in business intelligence and data warehousing, and the addition of the DATAllegro team and its technology will take our data platform to the highest scale of data warehousing."

Follwowing the completion of the acquisition deal DATAllegro's HQ in Aliso Viejo, California will become a Center of Excellence for data warehousing.

Chaintech intros new, low-voltage DDR3-1800 memory kit

Walton Chaintech has now stealthy added a new product to its Apogee GT memory line-up. Featuring the Blazer brand, Chaintech's release is a 4GB DDR3 memory kit which consists of two 2GB modules rated to work at 1800 MHz with 8-8-8-24 latencies powered at 1.8 Volts, which, although lower than other, similar offers, it is still higher than the 1.5V JEDEC has approved for DDR3.

Equipped with Cool It Smart heatsinks, the new, low voltage memory modules make use of 128Mx8 DRAMs from Samsung and feature EPP (Enhanced Performance Profiles) 2.0 support. The new DDR3-1800 kit is expected to hit the stores next month.

Yahoo Music DRM key servers to be shut down on October 1st

Following the path laid out by Microsoft a little while ago, Yahoo has just decided to stop offering support for DRM-loaded music purchased from the now defunct Yahoo Music service. September 30th will be the last day of support which means that, from October 1st, those who'll want to get a new DRM key that will enable the playback of the DRM tracks will be left to choose one of three actions. One would be to 'transfer' the songs to the Rhapsody service, the second, to burn the tracks on a CD and then rip them and third, send Yahoo an angry letter and curse the day DRM came into your lives.

Whatever option embraced, the clock is ticking for both Yahoo Music and DRM.

HP working on cheaper Mini-Note

We're not sure how much of a bang the VIA C7-powered HP Mini-Note 2133 made but Dell's rival is planning on expanding its netbook offer so as to include more affordable models. With the cheapest Mini-Note priced at $599, HP is looking to offer netbooks that will be more competitive in terms of price and with products like the Asus Eee PC and MSI Wind.

The slightly redesigned, lower-cost Mini-Notes are expected to arrive later this year and may utilize Intel's increasingly-popular Atom processors. While HP has yet to say what prices its upcoming netbooks will have, a first guess will be around $399 to $499.

Kingston introduces more DataTraveler flash drives

HyperX promoter, Kingston Technology has now updated its flash drive offer by releasing 16GB DataTraveler 400 and DT 100 models and a new drive family, the DT 101. The 16GB DataTraveler 400 drive comes with Windows ReadyBoost support, a capless design and Plug & Play functionality. Measuring 65.76mm x 17.98mm x 10.7mm, the fresh release offers read and write speeds of 20 MB/s and 10 MB/s respectively, comes pre-loaded with the MigoSync data synchronization software and has a recommended retail price tag of $196. The 16GB DataTraveler 100 measures 59.7mm x 22.3mm x 9.5mm, has a retractable USB connector and goes for just $85.

As for the newly-introduced DataTraveler 101 series, it is all about joy, color and love of life and it consists of drives that feature a swivel design and come in 2, 4 and 8GB capacities. Measuring 55.65mm x 17.3mm x 9.05mm and weighting in just 12 grams, the DataTraveler 101 drives are available in three vivid cyan, pink and yellow. The 2, 4 and 8GB drives are priced at $14, $23 and $44 respectively and, as all other DataTraveler flash drives, are backed by a 5 year warranty.

Todays BIG Fail - Classic: Bill Gates Blue Screen of Death [Digg]

Fri, 11 Jul 2008 16:03:06 -0500

Here is a classic we will always enjoy. Bill Gates does not seem very confident from the beginning, and then this happens...