The PC Report

Google, now with Instant search updates

Tim Schiesser — Thu, 09 Sep 2010 12:14:13 +0000

Not so long ago we saw a preview of this new search technology, and today it is getting released to the public. Google Instant is what the search engine giant is calling its new technology that updates your search results almost instantly after you type them.

This type of searching is unique to Google currently, and is only available on Google’s main site at google.com. Localized Google sites such as google.com.au and google.co.uk are waiting upon implementation of Instant.

Google claims these statistics about the new Instant system:

Before Google Instant, the typical searcher took more than 9 seconds to enter a search term, and we saw many examples of searches that took 30-90 seconds to type.

Using Google Instant can save 2-5 seconds per search.

If everyone uses Google Instant globally, we estimate this will save more than 3.5 billion seconds a day. That’s 11 hours saved every second.

15 new technologies contribute to Google Instant functionality.

Take a look at the video above to see Instant in action (best viewed full-screen), or head over to the non-localized google.com.

IBM claims “world’s fastest processor”

Tim Schiesser — Tue, 07 Sep 2010 12:10:25 +0000

You might think an overclocked Intel Core i7-980X is fast, but just wait until you see IBMs new “world’s fastest” processor. The self-crowned title is currently being claimed by IBMs z196 processor – a 5.2 GHz four-core monster that can handle more than 50 billion instructions per second.

The chip has been made using IBM’s 45nm process and contains a tidy 1.4 billion transistors on the inside. The z196 is also capable of running at its nice and fast clock speed of 5.2 GHz without liquid-nitrogen or liquid-helium cooling but something a lot more modest.

While the chip won’t be making its way into your home PC any time soon, it will be finding its way into business mainframes that need to handle large workloads on September 10th. Unsurprisingly this chip hasn’t got a specified price, but we expect that price to be steep.

Interestingly, as Engadget points out, Fujitsu’s Venus CPU can handle a supposed 128 billion calculations per second – several times that of IBM’s z196 processor. Whether or not this new IBM processor outperforms it will have to be seen.

Take the 1080p vs 720p test

Tim Schiesser — Sun, 05 Sep 2010 07:51:45 +0000

With a lot of content these days moving over to high definition, it is not hard to find a movie that has been converted to a Blu-ray Full High Definition (1080p) movie. In the future most likely everything will be at least 1080p or higher with new technologies such as Ultra High Definition (4320p or 8K) being developed currently.

Still, a lot of people are confused about what the differences between 720p and 1080p are. Many would simply respond to this question by saying that 1080p is twice as good as 720p, however can you really tell which one is better?

Below, we have three images – two are native 1080p images and one of them is a 720p image upscaled to 1080p using S-Spline XL. See if you can pick out which one is the 720p image out of them.

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A simpler UI for the new Chrome 6

Tim Schiesser — Fri, 03 Sep 2010 10:48:35 +0000

Google Chrome, which turns a happy second birthday today, has celebrated by releasing version 6 to the world. The most noticeable change in Chrome 6 is the slightly revised user interface, which has been made simpler through merging of the two menus into one, removal of some unnecessary interface features and a brand new color scheme that is now a grey instead of blue.

Other than the user interface update, Chrome 6 brings improved syncing tools with new support for syncing of web form data and extensions along with bug fixes, patched security holes and speed improvements. Google claims Chrome’s JavaScript performance is three times faster than it was in 2008.

Why the Chrome team has decided to release a major version number Chrome update (5.0 to 6.0) with relatively minor changes is odd. Usually version number schemes leave the first number for major versions and subsequent numbers after decimal places are reserved for minor changes and bug fixes.

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Sandy Bridge shows the power of IGP

Tim Schiesser — Thu, 02 Sep 2010 11:13:19 +0000

The new Sandy Bridge architecture from Intel is sure looking to be a great solution for the future after a sample has been tested by AnandTech. The hardware analysis site got their hands on a sample Core i5-2400 processor – a quad-core Sandy Bridge chip running at 3.1 GHz and with 6 MB of L3 cache.

Overall, the chip performed around 10% faster than similarly clocked CPUs available on the market today without consuming any more power. This isn’t the shining area of the chip though. The integrated graphics processor (IGP) present in the Sandy Bridge processor was faster than a discrete ATI Radeon HD 5450 by a fair margin and is powerful enough to play current games such as Dragon Age: Origins on lesser-quality settings.

Sandy Bridge processors will also have a naming scheme that will be easy to follow. Simply take a look at the chart below to get an idea of how the naming scheme will work. K suffix processors denote unlocked multipliers, S will denote “performance optimized lifestyle SKUs” and T denotes power optimized.

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Disable the Open File Security Warning prompt

Tim Schiesser — Tue, 31 Aug 2010 11:10:25 +0000

After prolonged exposure to pointless and irritating prompts such as the Open File Security Warning in Windows 7 it is easy to get so frustrated that you want to remove the prompt completely. Luckily this is very easy to do thanks to an editable list of “safe” file types.

In case you’re worrying about compromising your system, this method poses no risk to your system as your anti-virus should clean up infected files before you can open them. It’s surprising that Microsoft includes annoying warnings like this that are rendered useless if you are running AV.

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Best Music Player #2: iTunes

Tim Schiesser — Mon, 30 Aug 2010 13:08:45 +0000

The second in our Best Music Player series is here and today we’ll be taking a look at Apple’s iTunes music player. iTunes is a music player you’ve all heard of – it’s one of the most used music players available thanks to Apple’s iPod and iPhone range and marketing for their products.

iTunes was announced back in 2001 and started out as a Mac OS 9-only application until it was available for OS X from version 2.0. The latest version, 9.2 (the one used for today’s article) was released along with the release of iOS 4.0 and the iPhone 4, adding support for both. You can download iTunes from Apple’s website now.

One of the most annoying things about iTunes that you notice before you install the application is the massive file size for the download. With a size of 93 MB it’s just ridiculous that there is also a separate installer for those of you running 64-bit Windows like us, the download link of which is hidden in the fine print down the left hand side.

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ATI Catalyst 10.8 driver released

Tim Schiesser — Sat, 28 Aug 2010 10:56:04 +0000

As per every month, ATI has released a new Catalyst driver for their range of graphics cards. Version 10.8 brings with it full OpenGL ES 2.0 support for Windows XP and up as well as Linux, anti-aliasing for StarCraft II and performance improvements for Far Cry 2, Left 4 Dead 2 and Stormrise. The usual amount of bugs have also been fixed.

Interestingly enough, in these new drivers from AMD a number of code names for as many as 35 unreleased ATI graphics cards have been uncovered. These code names are for the upcoming Radeon HD 6000 Series GPUs (codenamed “Southern Islands”), and include a number of related codes including Cayman, Antilles, Blackcomb, Barts, Whistler, Onega, Turks, Seymour, Caicos, and Caspian.

While we await more details of the HD 6000 series, head over to the AMD Game website where you can download the latest ATI Catalyst 10.8 driver. Head below if you want the release notes for the driver.

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Microsoft Russia shows us upcoming IE9 interface

Tim Schiesser — Thu, 26 Aug 2010 11:11:07 +0000

Microsoft Russia has made a major blunder today after posting a screenshot of the upcoming interface of Internet Explorer 9 – the next big revision of Microsoft’s infamous browser. So far Microsoft has teased us with some platform previews showing the JavaScript and HTML5 power of IE9 through the new Chakra engine, but no interface has been revealed.

The image in question, as you can see above, has since been pulled from Microsoft Russia’s press website but they weren’t quick enough for blogs around the internet to download the image and re-post it. Futhermore, Neowin claims to have confirmed the screenshots as real after coercing with sources close to the project.

This single image tells a lot about Microsoft’s direction for IE9. The user interface team has removed the chunky and clunky interface present in Internet Explorer 8 in favor of an ultra-minimalistic design similar to that of Firefox 4 and Chrome. Microsoft has moved tabs to the top area, removed the large Favorites bar to a button on the right hand side along with Home and Settings, removed the search bar and slimmed down the UI as much as possible

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Teclast W900 Wireless Webcam Review

Tim Schiesser — Wed, 25 Aug 2010 12:30:02 +0000

Teclast released a few months ago what it claims to be the world’s first wireless webcam: the W900. Well, we’ve got our hands on this webcam from Chinese manufacturer Teclast and put it through our tests in our labs to see whether it’s just as good as a wired webcam.

Some of the features this webcam has include a 200 metre wireless range, VGA (640×480) video capturing, noise-cancelling microphone and a night vision function. Read on to see if the manufacturer’s feature list is as good as it looks at first glance.

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