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Stephanie Lenz's YouTube video of her tot dancing to an old Prince song was pulled down at the request of Universal last year after the music label said that the clip infringed on its copyright. Not content with simply having Universal retract its claim, Lenz and the Electronic Frontier Foundation are out to put the squeeze on Universal for issuing a bad-faith DMCA takedown. But Universal told a judge this week that, even though the clip may in fact be "fair use," it was still "infringement" and therefore the initial takedown notice was made in good faith.
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This is due to Vista's design. "The next generation controllers need to basically compensate for Vista shortfalls," he said. "Unfortunately, (SSDs) performance in the Vista environment falls short of what the market really needs and that is why we need to develop the next generation, which we'll start sampling end of this year, early next year," Harari said. Harari said this challenge alone is putting SanDisk behind schedule. "We have very good internal controller technology, as you know...That said, I'd say that we are now behind because we did not fully understand, frankly, the limitations in the Vista environment," he added.
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ASE Labs prides itself on giving you fair and honest reviews for all types of computer products. This is one of the reasons that ASE Labs has been around for over seven years and keeps going strong. Today ASE Labs has the Eagle Tech N-Series Pro Serial ATA to USB2 Hard Drive Enclosure on the review bench. The fair and brutally honest review follows.
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Logitech is a company that should be well known to the readers of ASE Labs. The company specializes in computer peripherals which include their line of mice and keyboards all the way to webcams. The focus of the review is the newest webcam from Logitech, the Quickcam Vision Pro which is billed to be Mac ready with ease. In reality, it works on every operating system.
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As readers of ASE Labs, you know that I have always said that it is very important to have proper backups and have redundant storage. While we have seen the MS2UTN+ from Sans Digital, this new model contains a LCD screen to easily setup and manage the unit. It is really amazing what a two line LCD can give you in terms of piece of mind.
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DDR3 is finally coming to a price where many mainstream system builders will be willing to pay. Manufacturers must provide mainstream DDR3 solutions to fill in the gap between the high end (and inexpensive) DDR2 and the very expensive, high speed DDR3 modules. While the HyperX line from Kingston may not be the mainstream product, the KHX12800D3K2/2G kit is described as the mainstream overclocking kit. It is far cheaper than speedier kits but lacks the tight timings as well. This could be the kit that kicks off DDR3.
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Leadtek was nice enough to send us a Winfast GTX-260 to take for a test drive. Having heard the cries of our readers we decided to take a different tack at this test drive and do a direct comparison between the Leadtek GTX-260 and an XFX 8800 GT Alpha Dog. Going more in depth with a head to head comparison between an old favorite and the new kid on the block.
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* When we last looked ATI's HD 3650 architecture in Asus trim, we found the home theater-centric videocard wanting when it came to gaming. And while not geared towards the hardcore gamer, we expected a little more oomph than what we got. This time around we're getting down and dirty with HIS's HD 3650 with twice the amount of RAM than the last version we looked at. Will it be enough?
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Coolmax was kind enough to send over one of their more powerful power supplies. The CUQ1350 is the big dog from Coolmax and guaranteed to power the most extreme systems. The CUQ1350 is a small cry from the CUG950 we reviewed a few weeks ago. The CUQ series is not totally modular like the CUG but still modular. And a stunning brushed aluminum enclosure encloses all the power the unit has to offer. This is just some of what the new CUG1350 has to offer. What else does the CUG has to offer? Lets read the review shall we.
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Today I will be looking at ASUS' workstation motherboard based on the X38 chipset, the P5E64WS Professional. It is similar to the earlier board in that it has the capability for a quad of graphics cards, DDR3 system memory, and other features that will satisfy the enthusiast as well as the engineer. This one has even more features for the enthusiast, and a much more serious heatpipe cooling system. Fortunately, I will be able to pack more than one GPU onto this board, so hopefully I'll be able to better see the graphics capabilities of the board. Stay tuned to see!
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* *The Axiom Audiobyte speakers with EPZero subwoofer are certainly not for everyone. These speakers sit in a niche market that attracts audiophiles or audio connoisseurs if you will. The sound quality is impeccable and the clarity is amazing. While there certainly are many other companies that offer louder speakers for less money, they certainly don't sound near as nice. . .*
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Gigabyte has truly stepped up to become a serious contender for the top manufacturer of quality motherboards. Gigabyte has aggressively pursued ways to produce the best choice in quality and enthusiast motherboards. They've brought us features like Dynamic Energy Saver, complete solid state computing, and some of the most consistent extreme overclocking to date. These kinds of features have culminated in to two recent Best Choice Awards at Computex 2008 for the GA-EP45-DQ6 and GA-EP45-DS5 Motherboards. All of that and more have been combined once again to bring us the Gigabyte GA-X48-DQ6 Motherboard. There's plenty of features and bonuses to be had.
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Today on the desk we have Cyber Snipa's latest in hardcore gaming accessories; the Tracer backlit mouse mat, Stinger Laser gaming mouse and the Gamepad v2. This lethal setup will fit right at home for most gamers looking to have some dedicated hardware to bring home the headshots. Now let's look at the specs for each item. Looking at the setup overall; I think Cyber Snipa are on to something good here. The dwarf keyboard is great for hardcore gamers and the mouse is a serious contender for anyone who needs a laser mouse. Coupled with a mouse mat that keeps the mouse gliding smooth, there's no way you can loose, unless of course you're like me and suck at games...
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As the world changes so do the demands of consumers -- this is particularly true with technology. One of the most pressing issues today is that of digital television. But to most this subject is shrouded in mystery. Why are we being forced to convert to digital signals? What does going digital even mean? Most importantly, how will the shift to digital television affect me? These are all excellent questions, ones I hope to address sufficiently, and thereby purging the digital switch from its aforementioned shroud of mystery.
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"Building on our strong commitment to online safety, the cable industry wants to help combat child pornography and exploitation," said Kyle McSlarrow, President & CEO, NCTA. “By signing the NCMEC MOU, cable Internet service providers are reaffirming their strong commitment to online safety and Internet literacy for all American families." "We are deeply grateful for this industry-wide attack on child pornography," said Ernie Allen, President & CEO, NCMEC. "It is not possible to arrest and prosecute every offender. We must be creative and build new public-private partnerships to address this insidious problem more effectively. Today's announcement represents a bold step forward."
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Logitech is a company that should be well known to the readers of ASE Labs. The company specializes in computer peripherals which include their line of mice and keyboards all the way to webcams. The focus of the review is the newest webcam from Logitech, the Quickcam Vision Pro which is billed to be Mac ready with ease. In reality, it works on every operating system.
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As readers of ASE Labs, you know that I have always said that it is very important to have proper backups and have redundant storage. While we have seen the MS2UTN+ from Sans Digital, this new model contains a LCD screen to easily setup and manage the unit. It is really amazing what a two line LCD can give you in terms of piece of mind.
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DDR3 is finally coming to a price where many mainstream system builders will be willing to pay. Manufacturers must provide mainstream DDR3 solutions to fill in the gap between the high end (and inexpensive) DDR2 and the very expensive, high speed DDR3 modules. While the HyperX line from Kingston may not be the mainstream product, the KHX12800D3K2/2G kit is described as the mainstream overclocking kit. It is far cheaper than speedier kits but lacks the tight timings as well. This could be the kit that kicks off DDR3.
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The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 retail box is black with red accents. This is the case it should be since ATI graphics are known to be red. Also, red and black are my favorite colors. While the box says it supports some stuff, there is no mention of Linux support even though AMD has said it wants its partners to include a penguin or other open sourcey stuff on the box. The Catalyst 8.6 drivers for Linux support this GPU and were released last month.
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Quote: The BIOS might not offer the most exhaustive set of tweaking options, but you do get more than you might expect. Couple the overclocking potential with onboard reset and power buttons, as well as other desirable features for desktop and HTPC usage, and the GF8200A definitely has an appeal that can cover a wide array of users.
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Today on the review block I've got the Dopod / HTC FM Transmitter with handsfree functions from our friends over at USBFever and it not only enables me to play my mp3s that are stored on my phone through my car stereo, but it features a built in microphone that allows you to use it as a handsfree device...
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Aten, have you ever heard of them? If you haven't, it's not because they are a newcomer to the market place, as they actually have been around for nearly 30 years, but they focus all of their efforts on manufacturing KVM switch solutions. These KVM switches just aren't limited to simple multi-port analog switching, but they have a variety of enterprise-grade switches, IP-based switching, embedded solutions, HDMI switches, and many other products. One of Aten's newest products is the CS1782 DVI KVM Switch, which is designed for homes and small offices and has support for not only handling two systems with keyboard, mouse, and DVI monitor switching, but it goes beyond that to offer surround-sound audio and USB switching as well. In this review we are looking at the Aten CS1782 KVM DVI Switch.
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The rationale behind NVIDIA's decision is that while we need a super powerful graphics card in games, the computer system is actually not going to need all that graphical power while it is running desktop applications. In many cases, enthusiasts are using computers for web browsing, working, and running non-graphically intensive applications. It would be wasteful to have a powerful 3D graphics card sitting idle during these applications, wasting precious electrical power. Thus, by incorporating mGPU and combining it with NVIDIA's Hybrid power, the computer is able to reduce the power usage (and energy bill) by switching off the discrete graphics card and using only the integrated graphics for low-demand applications. When the demand for graphic power increases, the dedicated graphic card will then kick in.
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I have been using Linux in one capacity or another since I first downloaded a Red Hat ISO a number of years ago. What finally allowed me to go full-time with my chosen distro was not so much the progression of hardware detection and self-mounting partitions but the applications. Today, I would like to share some of my personal favorites with you.
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OCZ's EliteXStream 800W is an all-around solid unit. The unit handled our tests without a sweat and held stable even in the harshest environment. As we have seen today, its performance is on par with much more expensive units.
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* *Summer is in full swing here in North America and the temperature outside isn't the only thing starting to really heat up. The battle for DDR3 market share is also becoming a more hotly debated contest with every passing day. The most sought after memory kits out there appear to be 2x2GB PC3-12800 DDR3 modules for their performance and reasonable price. So here at Hardware Canucks, we figured, why not fan those flames and bring in another hot ticket item from one of the favorites in the industry and a first timer here; Mushkin Inc..*
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Over the weekend the Linux 2.6.26 kernel was released. This quarterly update to the Linux kernel introduced Kernel-based Virtual Machine improvements, new One Laptop Per Child support, a new video web camera driver, updates to the Direct Rendering Manager, and other improvements. In this article we have done some quick benchmarks of this new kernel from within the Phoronix Test Suite.
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From the very beginning many of us could have figured the P45 chipset was going to be the chipset of chance as it is price considerably cheaper than the older X38 and the X48. And from the early reviews the P45 overclockers pretty well. We have seen able forum post and web reviews with front side buses reaching the 600MHz range on Core2Duo processors. But for the non-overclockers out there another advantage over the older P35 is the two 8x PCIe slots when attempting to using ATI video cards in Crossfire mode. Today, we will take the EP45-DQ6 through a ring of benchmarks and see what type of FSB numbers we can achieve.
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Today I'm reviewing the Silverstone. I respect Silverstone. Their products are attractive and perform well, but I'm not going to take it easy on the DA850. For this PSU to garner a good review from me, it will have to stay stable while providing power to all my hardware.
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Quote: Overall, the BlueAnt Z9i is a very good headset. We found the noise cancellation to just slightly better than its older sibling the Z9. In a crowded and noisy room, the Z9i will definitely perform better than that of a normal everyday headset. The dual microphones that BlueAnt equipped it with will isolate your voice and suppress background noise. The Jawbone and Plantronics headsets will perform this function much better, but with a much higher list price. When it comes to noise cancellation we have found that you certainly get what you pay for...
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Well before NVIDIA had any plans for DDR3, EPP or Extreme Performance Profile DDR2 memory was making its way into the mainstream. These modules were really designed to work with 680i chipsets, since any AMD solutions have the memory controller moved to the CPU, this eliminated any offerings NVIDIA can give. EPP has made its way into DDR3 with EPP 2.0; this being the DDR3 variation. Today we have Corsair's monster 4GB DDR3 kit (2x2GB) supporting EPP 2.0. Let's see how it copes.
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In short, this inexpensive motherboard is fast, stable, and features a ton of opportunities for expansion. While the lack of firewire is indeed a disappointment, I believe that this can be taken as a non-issue for gamers. Considering the features present, the speeds attained, and the stability of the system overall during the testing procedures, I feel that this motherboard is a good buy if a user is looking to assemble a low cost, reliable gaming machine. It's just a shame that this product doesn't have what it takes to break free of just what it was meant to do, but given the fact that it costs just shy of $110 - or rather, is shockingly cheap, I would say this is a good candidate for the great value award!
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Digital video has become extremely popular with websites like YouTube. With YouTube anyone can upload a video and make it viewable to the world in minutes. YouTube makes it easy for you, but most digital cameras do not. For one some digital cameras only let you take 30-second clips and the usually they are in some weird format that only your camera software can read. So you have to have some knowledge and software to convert the video. Pure Digital, makers of the Flip Video decided to make things easier for you with a standalone digital camcorder that is extremely easy to use. Read on as we check out the Flip Video Ultra!
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It's a tough place to be, having six hundred dollars to spend on a single video card. It's rough, and if you're there, may God have pity on your soul. You're about to buy a GTX 280. Some of the glimmer has blown away; this is the fastest single-GPU card of all time, but HD 4000 is a whirlwind. It's all value, though, and the best has and will always require a price premium. NVIDIA people won't be dissuaded, and the GTX 280, despite competitive pressure, is selling well. A lot of work went into making this a new card, not a streamlined or overclocked G80 part. It's beastly, costly, and if you've any doubts about buying this card, they're warranted. Fortunately, you can know this: it's powerful, and there probably won't be anything like it for some time to come.
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As readers of ASE Labs, you know that I have always said that it is very important to have proper backups and have redundant storage. While we have seen the MS2UTN+ from Sans Digital, this new model contains a LCD screen to easily setup and manage the unit. It is really amazing what a two line LCD can give you in terms of piece of mind.
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DDR3 is finally coming to a price where many mainstream system builders will be willing to pay. Manufacturers must provide mainstream DDR3 solutions to fill in the gap between the high end (and inexpensive) DDR2 and the very expensive, high speed DDR3 modules. While the HyperX line from Kingston may not be the mainstream product, the KHX12800D3K2/2G kit is described as the mainstream overclocking kit. It is far cheaper than speedier kits but lacks the tight timings as well. This could be the kit that kicks off DDR3.
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The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 retail box is black with red accents. This is the case it should be since ATI graphics are known to be red. Also, red and black are my favorite colors. While the box says it supports some stuff, there is no mention of Linux support even though AMD has said it wants its partners to include a penguin or other open sourcey stuff on the box. The Catalyst 8.6 drivers for Linux support this GPU and were released last month.
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Western Digital is well known to system builders and end users for providing excellent storage solutions matched with a good warranty and support. I only recommend two hard drive manufactures to people, Western Digital is one of them (the other being Seagate). The latest and greatest things in terms of technology have moved out of the computer case and into portable storage. The My Passport Studio comes in at 250GB and this one is preformatted for Mac. Don't let that scare you, though.
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Besides functioning as an FM transmitter, the Monster iCarPlay Wireless 250 also works as a USB charger. The USB cord detaches from the Cigarette Lighter Adapter and can be used as a transmitter around any FM radio/device. Plus the USB cable can be used as a charger via any USB 2.0 enabled port or with a Monster iSlimCharger or iCharger Travel USB wall charger.
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You'd think we would have looked at all 9600GT cards on the market, but I can guarantee there are more out there. The particular one we're looking at today comes from ASUS and carries with it a silent cooler. We've seen GIGABYTE offer the 9600GT in silent form, sporting both 512MB and 1GB of GDDR3. MSI also has a card where the fan only spins when the card needs it. During our testing, however, the fan never actually spun. Silent cards are becoming quite the rage and everyone wants good performance without any noise. In the past, the design used to be reserved for low-end cards, but these days we seem to be able to get a good performing card that outputs not a single dB. In the highly competitive market that is the 9600GT, we will today see if ASUS are able to do anything that helps them stand out from the pack and if it's a card worth looking at.
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Today I will be looking at a DDR2 4GB kit marketed towards gamers, the A-DATA Gaming Series DDR2-800 5-5-5-12. A-DATA probably isn't your first choice for high-performance memory, but in a mere 7 years, they have become the second largest vendor of memory modules in the world. Will the Gaming Series memory impress? Read on to see.
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A few short weeks ago NVIDIA released to the masses a GPU that redfined high-end gaming. The GTX 260 and GTX 280 has taken gamers to new levels of performance that were out of reach only eight short months ago. Of course, this level of performance doesn't come cheap and many people have a hard time swallowing the cost of these cards that ranged anywhere from $400 USD all the way up to $650 USD. Thankfully in the past few days we have seen substantial price reductions bringing the GTX 280 within the reach of many more gamers. With 240 unified stream processors and a 512-bit wide memory bus there is a lot to like about this card. When a company like Leadtek jumps in and starts offering this card then that becomes the icing on the cake. With lots of accessories and a free game, Leadtek is positioning themselves to offer a top notch product with all the extras we've come to expect from the high end.
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* *Just recently OCZ released a new and improved version of their award winning Vendetta CPU cooling solution aptly named the Vendetta 2. While this name is not what you would call imaginative, we certainly understand why they would want to keep such a distinguished brand name alive. Unlike the original model which also had an exposed heatpipe base but was only sized for a 92mm fan, the Vendetta 2 is a full size 120mm design but it has kept the unique double V look and feel of the original.*
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The Sprint Instinct from Samsung is one of the hottest new phones on the market, thanks to its slim profile, vibrating touchscreen, and standard headphone jack. It also has features that are now standard fare on midrange phones, like GPS, a Web browser, and a microSD slot. The Instinct's lack of built-in WiFi means prospective iPhone buyers probably won't be swayed, and its live TV streaming pales in comparison to that of the LG Voyager. But Samsung has clearly been listening to consumer complaints about the competition (and its own Glyde) and has made a reliable, satisfying handset with a stellar accessory bundle.
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If you're spending your hard earned cash on the new DDR3 standard, then you expect nothing short of stable, dependable performance whether you're using a 32-bit or 64-bit system. The memory must be reliable if you just play games or if your system is a serious number crunching SETI beast. The Patriot Viper 4GB PC3-12800 Dual Channel Memory Kit thoroughly tested here offered nothing short of those expectations. The memory is fully backward compatible with your 1066 MHz and 1333 MHz Core 2 series Intel processors. The extra performance gained from the memory's timings at lower 6-6-6-18 setting should be a pleasant bonus which also equates to plenty of bandwidth.
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* With the need for a steady and stable supply of power to fuel the most power hungry of PCs nowadays, we are starting to see an increasing number of power supplies with high wattages that claim stability and silence as well. One such product is the Tuniq Miniplant, which boasts an impressive 950W of power and was for a time the highest wattage PSU in the 80+ category of standard PS2 sized units. Today I will be taking this one for a spin to see just how efficient and quiet it really is.
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The curtain of Computex 2008 has fallen and with the show ended, we are going to see many product showcased products start to appear in the market. The show brought many interesting products and one of such products are motherboards for AMD processors based on NVIDIA's new chipsets that feature an integrated graphics processor. Motherboards with integrated processor is nothing new to the computer world but NVIDIA's latest implementation is something new which they brand as HybridSLI. NVIDIA is planning to implement this feature in all of their future chipsets and we have seen motherboards with such feature with nForce 780a chipset. NVIDIA has just released two new chipsets, nForce 750a and GeForce 8300, which also features HybridSLI. Starting with this review, we will have more AMD motherboard reviews coming that features either one of the two chipsets. To start things off, we will be looking at the XFX nForce 750a motherboard.
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DDR3 is finally coming to a price where many mainstream system builders will be willing to pay. Manufacturers must provide mainstream DDR3 solutions to fill in the gap between the high end (and inexpensive) DDR2 and the very expensive, high speed DDR3 modules. While the HyperX line from Kingston may not be the mainstream product, the KHX12800D3K2/2G kit is described as the mainstream overclocking kit. It is far cheaper than speedier kits but lacks the tight timings as well. This could be the kit that kicks off DDR3.
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The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 retail box is black with red accents. This is the case it should be since ATI graphics are known to be red. Also, red and black are my favorite colors. While the box says it supports some stuff, there is no mention of Linux support even though AMD has said it wants its partners to include a penguin or other open sourcey stuff on the box. The Catalyst 8.6 drivers for Linux support this GPU and were released last month.
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Western Digital is well known to system builders and end users for providing excellent storage solutions matched with a good warranty and support. I only recommend two hard drive manufactures to people, Western Digital is one of them (the other being Seagate). The latest and greatest things in terms of technology have moved out of the computer case and into portable storage. The My Passport Studio comes in at 250GB and this one is preformatted for Mac. Don't let that scare you, though.
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I have always been a bit weary of doing reviews of things very subjective and a Bluetooth headset is just one of those things. When Lubix offered to send a review sample over, I was hesitant until they insisted. I'm glad they did since the UBHS-NC1 is a great stereo headset. I'm not a headset kind of person, but as standard Bluetooth headphones, they rock.
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The case is virtually a tool free design, in fact with the exception of the screws I used for the PSU installation. Managing the cables and wiring was a snap and Thermaltake even provided the cable management supplies and need space in the chassis. Installation in the Thermaltake Armor+ MX was simply the easiest I have done in a while.
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This baby comes stacked with 2-way SLI, native 1333 FSB support, PCIe 2.0, LEDs, and onboard reset / power switches. It is geared towards the consumer who wants maximum performance without the bells and whistles that tends to drive up costs. If you drool over high end hardware but scoff at high end prices, this might be the motherboard you've been looking for. The best way to find out is to let HardwareLogic do the dirty work for you as we run the 750i SLI FTW through our benchmark suite to find out if this really is the one you can count on for the win.
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The TS-409U is a powerful embedded Linux system featuring a 500MHz System-on-Chip (SoC) CPU and 512MB of DDR2 memory. It fits in a 1U rackmount space, and has four SATA II hotswap bays supporting RAID 0, 1, 5, and 6. On top of this, the TS-409U is a multi-functional all-in-one NAS server supporting various functions from webserver, to MySQL server, to an iTunes server.
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Without a doubt the iPod is the most popular MP3 player out there. If someone you know has an MP3 player most likely it is an iPod. With the popularity of the iPod there are a plethora of accessories made specifically for the iPod. None is more popular than iPod speaker systems. Today we will be taking a look at the Orb 2.1 Stereo Speaker System from mStation. Read on to see why it is called the Orb and if it the perfect iPod speaker system for you.
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Quote: Centrino 2 is made of of three major components, the processor, the wireless card and the chipset. Intel Centrino 2 processors are 45nm Intel Core 2 Duo and Quad processors with up to 6MB L2 cache and a 1066MHz FSB. Intel is introducing the Intel Core 2 Extreme Mobile Processor X9100 is now the highest performing flagship processor for the Centrino 2 platform and operates at 3.06GHz. Just like other Extreme mobile processors the X9100 has 'Overspeed Protection' removed, so consumers will be able to overclock the processor if the notebook allows it. When it comes to TDP ratings the X9100 is mobile friendly at just 44W...
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Intel added what it termed XMP or Extreme Memory Profiling to its X38 and X48 chipsets; this in terms of technology is the same as NVIDIA's EPP which adds extra instructions into the memory SPD, allowing the memory to tell the system how fast it can run, what extra voltages it needs and what timings can be used for certain extreme profiles. Today we have A-DATA's Vitesta Extreme Edition DDR3 modules designed for XMP with a rating of 1600MHz; the fastest that Intel currently supports on its X series chipsets. Let's see how well it performs.
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Last time we tested RADEON HD 4850 in games. Now we got hold of the higher-end HD 4870 with GDDR5 memory. Even though it has the same architecture and the same number of processing units, we decided to compare it to GeForce GTX 260, its competitor in terms of price.
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In their known style, Asrock re-invented the 680i platform by creating the only official 45nm and 3-Way SLI supporting 680i motherboard. Let's see how this relatively cheap motherboard performs against the newer 750i platform.
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* When buying a fan, there are two main factors which we look for: Performance and Silence. Normally though, a quiet fan isn't so good in the performance department due to a lower RPM and thus less airflow. However, today we have a fan which strives to offer both these factors. Introducing the Xthermal BTF120PRO LED.
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We've already looked at nVidia's flagship product- the GeForce GTX 280 and today we have the more affordable GTX 260 card- two of them actually. Both these cards are overclocked out of the box giving better performance than your stock card would. Like most of their previous overclocked cards, ASUS called their product the TOP edition while Zotac sticks to its own terminology- the AMP! Edition.
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Quote: Most headsets can handle phone calls just fine, but they fail to address the stereo audio playback features found on many modern phones. Lubix offers an innovative line of Bluetooth headsets capable of handling your communication needs, while also letting you enjoy the multimedia capabilities of your phone.
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The word is out and every enthusiast dreams of the day they get to install a shiny new solidstate drive into their notebook or desktop. We have all seen the videos of a pair of notebooks booting into Windows; the solid state drive boots like it is coming out of hibernation and the platter drive, well, you know how that goes. Just as impressive are the claims of 30% more battery life for those on the go. In our recent reviews, TweakTown has documented just how quickly the technology has come down from the clouds and landed right in the laps of enthusiasts. For users, the only thing that has held back wide spread adoption of solid state drives has been the enormous costs associated with the innovative technology.
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I always thought that the little security system signs that people place in their landscaping and on their windows at home looked a bit goofy. I mean, yes, it may deter some of the more novice thieves, but like they say, 'locks only keep the honest people out'. It also seemed like putting up the signs was almost an advertisement that shouted 'Hey! Look at me, I have goodies inside!' These thoughts all came to me before I actually owned my own house, but now that I am in my second house, I see the appeal of a security system. One thing that most security systems do not come with however, is any sort of camera or video recording features, and if they do, they are outrageously expensive. This is where the NVR-1012 Network Surveillance System from QNAP comes into play. The NVR-1012 pairs the NVR-101 Network Video Recorder with two ICS-1013 IP cameras for dual-zone monitoring, with the ability to expand the system if needed. Follow along to see just how the QNAP NVR-1012 can help! you get started with monitoring your home or office.
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Corsair, legendary provider of computer memory, has expanded their range of quality products from memory hardware and flash products. With the introduction of their various series of power supplies they have proven that they, too, belong among the big guys in the power supply market. Corsair's new CMPSU-750TX is one of two recently released units for the gamer, overclocker or enthusiast and high-end system builder. Here at Bioslevel we take a look at the higher-end 750TX.
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When it comes to ATI products Sapphire has always offered the most influential graphics cards available, and the new Radeon HD 4870 is no different. For the first time in this industry, we have a fully-functional product equipped with 900 MHz GDDR5 video frame buffer. The Sapphire 100243L model offers 24x custom filter anti-aliasing (CFAA) on its 750 MHz 800-core RV770 GPU. Benchmark Reviews tests the Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 graphics card against the closest competition, and even compare CrossFireX performance in this performance review.
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Today I will be looking at Gigabyte's latest mainstream LGA775 motherboard, the EP45-DQ6. Based on the P45 chipset, and utilizing DDR2 memory, this board boasts advanced energy-saving features, something we all have to think about nowadays. Will this motherboard really save energy? Will it have the overclocking features and capabilities that we enthusiasts require? Read on to see...
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* Today, HardwareLogic takes a look at NZXT's newest small form factor (SFF) offering, the NZXT Rogue. In a bid to capture the SFF chassis market, the Rogue ups the ante with a highly competitive SFF enclosure where NZXT has left nothing to chance when designing and manufacturing their newest SFF case. Does the NZXT Rogue have what it takes to be named the top dog in the SFF enclosure kingdom? Will it succeed in an arena dominated by big name players that offer their own wildly successful small form factor enclosures? Let's get to it and find out!
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Interestingly, there seem to be few, if any drastic, architecture changes for HD 4000. It's all scale down, add more. PowerColor, a long-time board partner, shows just how well this strategy pays out for the HD 4850.Even side-by-side, this card looks just like a 3850. That's really superb, because not only was its predecessor small, clean, and fast, it was also quiet. The sticker's adornment is a busty, armored model in Viking chic. But it's a stock card, with the same design that you'd get with any 4850 currently available.
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Nvidia said Sunday night that the GeForce GTX 280 is now available for $499 and the GTX 260 for $299. The high-end GTX 280 was originally $649, while the 260 was priced previously at $399. Both products were rolled out less than a month ago. Nvidia's graphics boards are now more in line with ATI's newest offerings. At $299, the GTX 260 price now matches that of ATI's comparable HD 4870.
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A company that measures Internet service reliability has given Microsoft the top score in a test of operating system update services.
Microsoft's Windows Update was available 100 percent of the second quarter of 2008, Pingdom said in a blog posting Friday. Apple's service was down 2 hours and 34 minutes, with 99.9 percent uptime, and Canonical's Ubuntu version of Linux was down 1 day, 5 hours, and 45 minutes, for 98.64 percent uptime.
"Microsoft wins this one hands down," Pingdom said. It noted that Ubuntu's service also is available through mirror sites, however.
The company tested the three services every five minutes.
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"The newest version of the iPhone is due out Friday. The App Store will be preinstalled on the new iPhone 3G, but it will also be available as a download for owners of the current iPhone.
The App Store has 27 pages of applications, including games like FreeCell and Sudoku, as well as applications for Facebook, MySpace, The New York Times, Pandora, PayPal, and Twitter."
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"The news is out that Best Buy is selling Ubuntu Linux retail for $19.95. It's a nice step forward for Ubuntu, but not for Linux. It used to be possible to buy Red Hat Linux and SUSE Linux retail. That's actually where I bought my first copy of SUSE Linux while working at Novell.
So, the real news isn't that it's being sold retail. The real news will be if it stays. Red Hat didn't see the value in keeping a retail distribution of Linux. Will Ubuntu?"
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The Sapphire Radeon HD 4850 retail box is black with red accents. This is the case it should be since ATI graphics are known to be red. Also, red and black are my favorite colors. While the box says it supports some stuff, there is no mention of Linux support even though AMD has said it wants its partners to include a penguin or other open sourcey stuff on the box. The Catalyst 8.6 drivers for Linux support this GPU and were released last month.
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Western Digital is well known to system builders and end users for providing excellent storage solutions matched with a good warranty and support. I only recommend two hard drive manufactures to people, Western Digital is one of them (the other being Seagate). The latest and greatest things in terms of technology have moved out of the computer case and into portable storage. The My Passport Studio comes in at 250GB and this one is preformatted for Mac. Don't let that scare you, though.
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I have always been a bit weary of doing reviews of things very subjective and a Bluetooth headset is just one of those things. When Lubix offered to send a review sample over, I was hesitant until they insisted. I'm glad they did since the UBHS-NC1 is a great stereo headset. I'm not a headset kind of person, but as standard Bluetooth headphones, they rock.
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While the next generation of graphics cards from ATI are just around the corner, you can get some amazing performance with full open source support for a great price. Some of the readers might also be looking for a silent solution while having good performance and the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate steps up to provide that. It combines a truly massive heatsink with the powerful 3870 GPU to create a fast and completely silent graphics card for your quiet PC.
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Over the next thirty days I will have only one thing on my mind; USB thumb drives. Thumb drives started out as small devices that were a little pricey, offered a small amount of storage and had very low transfer rates. Even with limited space and transfer rates that felt like we took a step back to 1.44 MB floppy disk days, people quickly adopted the technology based on their ease of use and convenience. TweakTown is working on gathering as many USB thumb drives as possible for a massive round-up review that will put products from every major manufacturer in the ring with one another. Some drives stand out for their high transfer rates, while others have high capacity. Other drives use a very small enclosures; about the size of your thumbnail.
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The product I have today for review is from our friends at Aerocool and it's called the Modern V. What the V stands for I'm not sure, but it's an LCD Display Fan Controller and Temperature Monitor that looks pretty cool when it's installed in your PC, oh and it works great as well...
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Quote: The Thermalright IFX-14 uses eight heatpipes to move heat from the base plate to the cooling fins, and these pipes are larger and more numerous than on many of the other big coolers on the market. Overall it is larger than any other cooler I have had a chance to use, including some titans like the Tuniq Tower 120 and Zalman CNPS 9700, which we will see compared side-by-side in this review.
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Power supplies have moved from the ugly box in the computer that no one paid any attention to, to the heart and soul of modern enthusiast systems. There are a lot of power supplies out there marketed as high-end enthusiast power supplies and are little more than cheap and not worth using in nice looking housings.
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Palit recently sent us the GeForce 9600GSO Sonic, which is an enhanced GeForce 9600GSO. Palit has added its own cooler, as well as factory overclocked the unit, and improved upon the power phases. The 9600 GSO is nVidia's latest foray in the mid-level 9000 series of GeForce cards, and is also the cheapest for a performance card. Despite the price point, the 9600 GSO should be a fair competitor to both the GeForce 9600 GT and Radeon HD3650.
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The X-Supra is a new mainstream case from Apevia, which features all the usual extras like a handful of colorful fronts, screw-less design and fan controller. On top of that you can go for a huge 250 mm side fan or a windowed variant with a smaller 120 mm fan. The special edition features a solid side panel.
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Alienware is a name we know for the top of the line gaming machines and laptops. Today we will be looking at one of their latest offerings the m15x 15.4-inch laptop. Alienware has really pulled out all the stops with this laptop, making it both visually appealing and packing some serious components inside to play the latest games. We've had the m15x for about a month now and we love it. Read on to see how powerful this machine is and how it will catch everyone's attention at the next Lan Party you attend!
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It used to be that counterfeit CD and DVD media originated from overseas and found its way onto popular auction websites. But in a wake of widespread technology developments, anyone is capable of creating completely indistinguishable copies of their favorite audio CD or movie DVD. Do most people still purchase the original content, or is everyone stealing from the artists? In this article, Benchmark Reviews offers a candid look into Consumer Home Piracy as we present the Research Findings for July 2008 as provided to us by Futuresource Consulting in partnership with Macrovision.
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If you take a budget chipset and mix it with a company like ECS you will get an incredible priced motherboard. In this case you will get the P43T-A2. The P43A is ECS's first P43 motherboard on the market. Even with all its short comings compared to the P45 this board offers the everyday Joe with everything they would need to build a stable and very complete system.
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It's amazing to think that a Pico-ITX board is part of a system that monitors oil rigs - or helps to regulate power plants. Embedded computing might sound boring to some, but it's a vibrant and innovative industry, where tough and small hardware designs get put into the most unlikely roles. Merlin CSI is a company who have become experts in the production of hardware platforms, industrial I/O devices and software applications, that form a complete package that can be integrated into various uses.
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Pioneer has introduced a system that appeals to not only the distinguished ear of the audiophile, but to those that are willing to spend a little more for a lot more sound. Pioneer's X-Z9 is an all-in-one stereo solution that brings audio fidelity into the digital home with its Apple iPod interface, XM and Sirius satellite radio support and networking capability so you can stream music from your home PC.
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We took our big, hard, $800 sofa out of our media/game room at ICHQ and replaced it with the Sac and three Omnis. The end result: more room, more comfort, and the ability to open up the room and rearrange things on a whim. Is it worth $199? It depends on whether or not you have room for it. If you do, then I say a resounding
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Today we are going to take a look at at products made by Gainward and Forsa. The former is a well-known manufacturer, while the latter is a startup. I cannot say that it's super, but it manufactures good products for minimal prices possible. There are both pros and cons. Today we are going to examine one card from Forse that is already replacing the regular reference 9600 GT.
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The OrigenAE T12 is a 12 touch screen that will set you back 800$. It is capable of processing up to 1080p resolution - perfect for that home theater. Thanks to the umbilical cord, you not only have a mouse at your fingertips, but also an IR receiver and USB 2.0 hub. Best of all the OrigenAE T12 does not even require an external power source, everything is integrated in the single cable.
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The Thermaltake Armor+ MX we will be looking at today is different from the Armor cases of the past as it is not a full or super tower case, but a mid tower. The Thermaltake Armor+ MX VH8000BWS Mid Tower Case was designed to accommodate the Thermaltake Big Water line of water cooling kits, which makes it nice for those building a DIY gaming system. Read on as we take a closer look at the Thermaltake Armor+ MX and install a water cooler in it.
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This last month has been filled with press releases from companies promising high performance solid state technology at prices that are up to 30% less than any of the drives we have previously tested. The cost reduction has to do with memory manufacturers starting to ramp up production of the memory chips used, and according to DRAMeXchange, prices are down 26% for many MLC memory sizes popular for use in SSDs. Super Talent is the first to send us their latest MLC Solid State Drive that takes advantage of the new lower contract prices on memory. The MasterDrive MX Line is available in sizes ranging from 8 to 120GB. Our sample 60GB model is available at Newegg right now for less than 400 U.S. Dollars. Let's have a look and see how these new low cost Solid State Drives perform against our trusty Western Digital Raptor 150GB and Samsung's SATA II SLC drive.
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Quote: The Hiyatek CF-6160-1 Laptop Cooling Pad is extremely lightweight, and becomes quite compact when the plastic tray is retracted. Those two features make it appealing for use on the go, while the integrated USB hub could be of interest to mobile or stationary users. But while it may operate in near silence regardless of fan speed, you might as well just leave it turned off since it isn't really cooling anything.
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Silicon Power has big dreams, but this a cruel world we live in and being the new name in competitive North American computer industry usually doesn't help dreams come true. Making matters more difficult - even beyond the obvious start-up hurdles - is the latest product focus of Silicon Power: Solid State Drive (SSD) technology. But all of this isn't to say that I don't think they can do it, because there have been many a new name made by fresh companies introducing product with a dramatic improvement over the old. But will Silicon Power enjoy this luxury? Benchmark Reviews tests the Silicon Power 64GB SATA SSD model SP064GBSSD25SV10 against nearly a dozen other Solid State Drives to see how well their SSD performs.
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On the review block for today is the Consus D-Series dual SATA hard drive external storage system from Eagle Tech. The D-Series has the ablity to use JBOD (Just a Bunch Of Disks) spanning to combine your odd sized disk drives into one larger drive, or you can run it plain old RAID 0.
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list for a notebook, the Asus M70S should be a system you need to be looking at. The M70S offers a fantastic movie watching experience thanks to its huge, crisp display, excellent sound system and Blu-ray drive. You can also store an unbelievable amount of your own movies and music on the M70 too, thanks to its unheard of (on a notebook at least) 1 terabyte of storage space. The systems only major drawback is the annoying media controls embedded in the touchpad. Not only are they difficult to control, but they include an area that disables the touchpad if you touch it accidentally, which was highly annoying.
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Quote: The In Win B2 is an excellent choice for anyone who wants a rather unique computer case. There aren't any other cases I know of that are modeled after a stealth bomber, or that have a front door that opens like this. Tool-less design features can be found everywhere, and except for mounting the motherboard, there is no need to get a screwdriver out.
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Quote: By taking the decent features and specifications that the ATI Radeon HD3850 GPU offers on its own and enhancing it with a few tweaks here and there, Sapphire just might be able to deliver on the marketing hype found on the box for this card... Delivering mayhem to the mainstream.
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For Miguel Nicolelis, a professor of neuroscience at Duke University Medical Center, the backbone of mind-machine interfaces is the ability to analyze neural activity. Sure, the system demonstrated at Pitt in May accessed information from 100 neurons at once. But Nicolelis’s lab has managed five times that amount, with data coming from up to 10 different brain structures. "We're able to look at brain dynamics on a scale that no one else has been able to," he says. "You're transferring information into motion. When more neurons are recorded, it allows you to extract many more parameters from the brain, to look for more elaborate output." The result is more fine-tuned movement for devices-and more data recorded from a given subject-to help researchers analyze the relationship between brain signals and physical activity.
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The proprietary world feels the need to rebuild everyone else's software in order to create walled-garden ecosystems. Unfortunately, the open-source world builds even more variants of the same products, though for different reasons.
Are we the world's least efficient market? Imagine what would happen if we could all pull behind a few credible alternatives, rather than inventing 585 of them?
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"By releasing the full PDF specification for ISO standardization, we are reinforcing our commitment to openness", says Kevin Lynch, Chief Technology Officer at Adobe. "As governments and organizations increasingly request open formats, maintenance of the PDF specification by an external and participatory organization will help continue to drive innovation and expand the rich PDF ecosystem that has evolved over the past 15 years.”
PDF, a digital form used to represent electronic documents, allows users to exchange and view the documents easily and reliably, independent of the environments in which they are created, viewed and printed, while preserving their content and visual appearance.
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Western Digital is well known to system builders and end users for providing excellent storage solutions matched with a good warranty and support. I only recommend two hard drive manufactures to people, Western Digital is one of them (the other being Seagate). The latest and greatest things in terms of technology have moved out of the computer case and into portable storage. The My Passport Studio comes in at 250GB and this one is preformatted for Mac. Don't let that scare you, though.
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I have always been a bit weary of doing reviews of things very subjective and a Bluetooth headset is just one of those things. When Lubix offered to send a review sample over, I was hesitant until they insisted. I'm glad they did since the UBHS-NC1 is a great stereo headset. I'm not a headset kind of person, but as standard Bluetooth headphones, they rock.
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While the next generation of graphics cards from ATI are just around the corner, you can get some amazing performance with full open source support for a great price. Some of the readers might also be looking for a silent solution while having good performance and the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate steps up to provide that. It combines a truly massive heatsink with the powerful 3870 GPU to create a fast and completely silent graphics card for your quiet PC.
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I've always been keen to recommend Crucial in the past when people wanted RAM with a lifetime warranty that works as expected. Not until a few years ago did Crucial start offering their Ballistix overclocking RAM. Fast forward to the new DDR3 days of today and we find a new Ballistix PC3-16000 kit that offers speeds of 2000MHz! You'll be pressed to find a board that can even handle this speed, I know I didn't have one.
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Intel Core 2 Extreme CPU got a special treatment from the Intel thermal management department; a fancy large CPU cooler with 110cm LED fan and copper heat column. How does it compare to the other Intel reference coolers? Is it an alternative for 3rd party heatsinks, let us find out!
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DirectX is a programming interface that allows programs (like games) to talk with your PC hardware (like your video card). There are several DirectX versions available and in this short tutorial we will explain what the main differences between them are.
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ASRock has placed the nForce 780a SLI on their flagship AM2+ board, the K10N780SLIX3-Wifi, only one of a small handful of nForce 780a SLI boards on the market. Actually, this one is not yet for sale in the states. A quick glance at this board will tell you it isn't the typical ASRock motherboard with some features you might expect from Asus, Gigabyte, or the like. Today, I will be looking at the K10N780SLIX3-Wifi. Will nVidia's geForce Boost, an onboard GPU working in conjunction with the PCI-E video card(s) prove to be a true innovation, or will it be the let-down that the naysayers predict? Will the K10N780SLIX3-Wifi move ASRock from the ranks of the econo-board to the big boys? Stay tuned to see!
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Welcome to another session of void-your-warranty, as today we will look at upgrading the stock heat spreaders on a pair of Kingston DDR2 memory modules. What we will do here is run through a step-by-step of removing the plain flat aluminum spreaders that come with most RAM modules and upgrading them with some Nexus HXR-550B Heat-Pipe memory coolers.
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* *The HD4850 is a product which is aimed straight for the throat of Nvidia's 9800GTX and has actually incited a quick and dramatic response from the boys in green. After the initial performance reports of this card were released, Nvidia quickly knocked nearly $100 off the MSRP of their then $300 GTX so it could compete mono a mono with ATI's new wunderkind. Not only is the HD4850 seemingly perfectly suited for budget-minded gamers in the $200 price bracket, but it also offers a bevy of other features including audio out through HDMI as well as Havok physics support. The more features the better we say.*
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Mmm, Mac hardware. Sharp. Purposeful. Tasty. Downright industrial designelicious. Half of the people who make the vaunted switch do so because of this keyboard. I mean, not literally this keyboard, but because of the engineering and style that this wireless device is the apex embodiment of. The keyboard is small because it's cut down; the keys are standard but a lot is sacrificed to make the whole package as miniscule as possible without cramping digits. I see a lot of potential in this input device, and not because it's portable. But I also can't help but wonder, can design be taken too far?
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AMD was busy last month with the launch of the ATI Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 graphics cards, which have both proved themselves to be price versus performance winners. This month, AMD is starting off by launching three new processors: the Phenom X4 9950 processor and the energy-efficient Phenom X4 9350e and 9150e processors. Read on to see how these new processors do!
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Back in March we had looked at the Intel Core 2 Duo T9300 mobile processor with its Penryn core and 6MB of shared L2 cache between its two cores clocked at 2.50GHz. We were very pleased with the performance of this mobile processor on Linux, which was found within a Lenovo ThinkPad T61 notebook, and today we are looking at the Penryn's desktop counterpart. Intel's Core 2 Duo Wolfdale E8000 series processors were released earlier this year with 6MB of L2 cache, 45nm manufacturing, a 1333MHz FSB, and support for SSE 4.1. The processor from the Wolfdale series we are looking at today under Linux is the Core 2 Duo E8400.
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Shoppers today are faced with many options when choosing where to store their valuable data: from traditional optical media and hard drive based storage, to flash drives and even more exotic third party online storage - each with its own advantages and disadvantages. In this article Benchmark Reviews will look at one such option that's recently emerged in the storage market; the network-attached storage (NAS), in the form of the QNAP TS-209 Pro Gigabit SATA NAS. The NAS has lately gained popularity as more and more consumers realize the need for a reliable, cost effective, and easy to access centralized way to store their data.However, with so many competing products it's not always possible for buyers to easily compare what's on the market. Read on as Benchmark Reviews puts this all-in-one NAS through its paces.
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QUOTE: Samsung is one of the largest memory suppliers in the world, so it is natural to find them playing in the Solid-State Drive (SSD) market. Their latest offering, the MCBQE32G5MPP-0VA00 is a 2.5-inch 32GB drive with big potential and a new low price tag. From the get go we were told to expect MTRON MOBI performance at a 15% reduced cost.
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Put simply, Corsair's TWIN2X4096-8500C5DF is a great kit. The DHX cooling system is still the best I've seen to date, cooling both a specially designed PCB and the ICs themselves. BGA based DDR2 modules conduct quite a bit of heat back into the PCB, so this is a very intelligent design that will likely prolong the life of just about any IC under the hood. Corsair's included
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This time we will show you a graphics card that has evolved to be something more than its forefathers. Sure, the pixel pushing ability is still there and benchmarks will show that clearly but what more can a graphics card do? Up till now, nothing much but this is about to change...
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AMD's new Radeon HD 4870 is the first graphics card to feature GDDR5 memory. GDDR5 offers twice the memory bandwidth over previous GDDR generations which helps the HD 4870 gain a nice performance advantage over the HD 4850.
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We have seen many cases here at XSReviews ranging from the conservative silent types to the somewhat more extravagant. When looking for cases many people want to have the best of both worlds: silence and looks. Yet although there are solutions available for such a customer, many fall short of delivering a truly silent gaming case. With this in mind and the hope of filling this gap, Zalman have crafted the GS1000 -- a quiet case that looks to have been designed with gaming in mind.
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AT&T will begin offering the iPhone 3G phones at its retail stores beginning July 11 at 8 a.m. local time. AT&T is the exclusive iPhone carrier in the United States. Under its offering, the lower price will be available to only customers who purchased an iPhone before July 11, or are activating a new customer line with AT&T, or are eligible for an upgrade at the time of purchase. Customers also are required to sign a two-year contract. AT&T customers who are not eligible for an upgrade discount can buy the iPhone 3G for $399 for 8GB model, or $499 for a 16GB version, under a two-year contract. Customers who purchase the phone without a contract would pay $599 for 8GB or $699 for a 16GB.
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I have always been a bit weary of doing reviews of things very subjective and a Bluetooth headset is just one of those things. When Lubix offered to send a review sample over, I was hesitant until they insisted. I'm glad they did since the UBHS-NC1 is a great stereo headset. I'm not a headset kind of person, but as standard Bluetooth headphones, they rock.
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While the next generation of graphics cards from ATI are just around the corner, you can get some amazing performance with full open source support for a great price. Some of the readers might also be looking for a silent solution while having good performance and the Sapphire Radeon HD 3870 Ultimate steps up to provide that. It combines a truly massive heatsink with the powerful 3870 GPU to create a fast and completely silent graphics card for your quiet PC.
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I've always been keen to recommend Crucial in the past when people wanted RAM with a lifetime warranty that works as expected. Not until a few years ago did Crucial start offering their Ballistix overclocking RAM. Fast forward to the new DDR3 days of today and we find a new Ballistix PC3-16000 kit that offers speeds of 2000MHz! You'll be pressed to find a board that can even handle this speed, I know I didn't have one.
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My first orb was the Thermaltake Golden Orb way back when the Abit BP6 was the thing to have. Imagine having to shave a bit of a heatsink off to have it fit on your motherboard. Those were the days when you had to work hard for every once of performance. These days, you can squeeze so much out of new CPUs. Thermaltake has released a brand new orb, the DuOrb. It combines heatpipes and two huge orb coolers.
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Super Micro, are you familiar with them? Chances are that unless your focus is on the workstation and server markets, you probably haven't heard of them. However, this company has been around since 1993 and they have been producing a variety of different motherboards, servers, computer enclosures, and other products to fit the needs of their customers. Super Micro manufacturers a variety of different Intel server motherboards -- and they are one of the few that offers quad-socket Xeon motherboards -- but they also have a growing selection of Core 2 desktop motherboards. The C2SBX+ is one of their newest motherboards and with our first Super Micro review at Phoronix we are looking at this product. This Intel X48 motherboard is designed for digital entertainment, gaming enthusiasts, and other high-end applications.
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With the Xaser VI, Thermaltake has an aluminum full-tower chassis that will rival the best in it's class. The innovative tool-free features are well executed and make working in this Xaser a real pleasure. Arguably the best feature is the sliding motherboard tray. Or maybe the hard drive mounting solution. What about the densely populated front panel I/O plate? Or the outstanding cooling design? There's a lot of stuff here to like, and I like the vast majority of it.
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We have seen many newcomers to the computer cooling industry; and lately, many of these newcomers have been making a name for themselves, like Noctua and Zerotherm. These companies are now competing against well-established manufacturers like ThermalRight and Zalman, and today, we will be reviewing another heatsink and fan from SilenX - even another manufacturer that is quickly becoming a big player in the PC cooling industry.
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Founded in 2005, Mvix USA is a company who believes in the concept of digital entertainment. With a product line that offers different versions of this ideal, Mvix is about getting your digital content displayed where it should be, on your television. Sure, you can watch your ripped movies on the PC monitor, but why not take it to the next level and enjoy that same content on a large screen TV? Enter one of their latest arrivals, the MX-780HD. While having many similarities with the older 760-series media center, MVix has raised the bar and brought newer technologies to the scene. On top of this, they have also improved output as well. So kick up your heels as we take a look at the Mvix MX-780HD. We will look at the features included, then take it for a test drive by displaying digital movies on a 37
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We mainly know Lenovo for their line of ThinkPad notebooks, but consumers really do not like those laptops because of their plain styling. Luckily for consumers Lenovo has released a new line of notebooks called their IdeaPad series. We first got a look at Lenovo's Ideapad series at CES earlier this year. Out of the 3 new notebooks we were most interested in the very tiny U110. This small laptop has a lot of very innovative features like a LED backlit screen and facial recognition. At only 2.92lbs it is a perfect notebook for traveling and mobile users. Will all these features make the U110 worth its price tag? Read on to find out.
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Yuin's PK1 earbuds were all the rage when they first hit the market quite a while ago. Since then Yuin has further upped the stakes by introducing the new and improved OK-series earphones. Today we take a look at the PK1s to see if the former earbud champion can still compete in today's market.
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It seems as of late the nForce 790i is finally making its rounds through our labs, most likely because of the GTX 280 performing as well as it does, especially in SLI and Tri SLI configurations. So far we have had the ZOTAC board cross us; now it's time for MSI, one of the biggest motherboard makers in Taiwan, and one of the biggest presences here in Australia to have its time in the sun. Today we have been given the P7N2 Diamond motherboard. This baby is aimed at being the top gun of all 790i SLI boards out there. While that's a good aim, does it perform? - Let's see.
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Quote: The graphics on the Qismio x305 will be powered by the yet to be announced NVIDIAGeForce 9800M GTX graphics card, which has 1GB of video memory. For those that still want to game, but save some hard earned dollars we overheard that consumers can customize the notebook with the less expensive GeForce 9700M GT graphics card rather than the GeForce 9800M GTX. NVIDIA hasn't said much about this un-released graphics card, but they did have the Toshiba Qosmio x305 notebook on display at a Microsoft Corporation event this week called the Games for Windows Presents: The Big Picture...
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If you've never heard of Meridian, well, I hate to say it, but it's probably because you're just like me and can't afford to spend your entire annual income on a pair of loudspeakers. While I think it's safe to say that the F80 won't set you back that much, it's definitely not a cheap audio solution either. Let's take a closer look and see what kind of value the unit has to offer...
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drive technology only in terms of notebook products, then recently, Western Digital probably helped expand your horizons a bit. With the release of their VelociRaptor 300GB SATA hard drive, mainstream users were exposed to the advantages of the high transfer rates associated with 2.5
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* Gaming peripherals are something that not many hardware enthusiasts spend much time on; as the title suggests, it's more of a gamer thing. However, many underestimate what effect a simple mouse or keyboard upgrade can have on their PC usage in terms of comfort and features. The peripheral overlooked most of al however, is the mouse mat. From it's humble beginnings as a poorly held-in-place piece of foam, gaming mouse mats were born and today, I'm testing one that's been causing a stir with it's flashy looks; bring on, the Roccat Sense: Adrenalin Blue.
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Quote: The Asus 9600 GT TOP edition is obviously not the fastest card in NVIDIA's line up but that is not the goal here. As of this writing, the Asus 9600 GT is selling for $129 after a $20 Mail-in-rebate, which is an astounding value! You get a card with a great cooling, low-noise heat sink, and an overclocked card for the same price as a reference model. Though the performance differences weren't that large compared to the reference card the heat sink easily makes this card the, forgive the pun, TOPS in its class...
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How many times do you get than you bargained for? Sure, when you're taking a risk you can end up worse of then you started. But we're talking about the other end of the spectrum. When was the last time you went shopping for something only to realize it was on sale or it was a two-for-one day? It's times like these that you really feel like you got your money's worth. In the world of computing these feelings occur even less often. Not because of lack of deals or overpriced equipment but rather the pace of innovation. What is a good deal today will be next to nothing in a few months making the decision of when to buy a daunting one.
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Quote: Despite the Kingston HyperX 2GB DDR3-1600 dual channel memory kit having fairly loose timings (9-9-9-37), it manages to keep pace with other kits rated much more aggressively (7-7-7-18). The performance at 1600MHz and higher was just fine, the only issue I had was that getting there was not as easy as with other kits. Of the five kits used in this review, the one from Kingston was the only one to lack an XMP profile in SPD.
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Crucial being one of the most realized and a respected name in memory reproduction has graciously offered a set of Ballistix PC3-16000 for reviewing. With 9-9-9-28 timings being rather high latency can we adjusted with a little tweaking and voltage. But hitting 2000MHz isn't something many of us have seen from other own system. But Crucial today will give us that opportunity.
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A few weeks ago we looked at the Sunbeamtech Core-Contact Freezer, our first crack at a heatpipe to Integrated Heat Spreader (IHS) direct contact CPU heatsink. In retrospect, nothing other than the base was very remarkable; at least nothing that would lead us to believe anything other than the contact point would cause such great performance. The fan used from Sunbeamtech was a silent type that does not push a large amount of air, and this only confirmed that direct heatpipe to CPU technology is more than just a marketing tool. Today we will be looking at another direct contact cooler, this time from SilenX. The SilenX iXtrema IXC-120HA2 is very similar to the SBT CCF; they even share the same mounting hardware. While the two are similar, they are not identical. The SilenX version is more robust, giving us the option of using two 120mm fans (one on each side of the fins). This is a feature that SBT did not include with their offering.
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AMD/ATI has released two new high-end graphics chips recently, Radeon HD 4870 and Radeon HD 4850, known by the codenames RV770 XT and RV770 PRO, respectively. As you can guess by the numbers, HD 4850 provides a lower performance compared to HD 4870. In this review we will benchmark HD 4850 from Sapphire and compare it to its main competitors from nVidia. Is this video card a good buy? Check it out.
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The In-Win B2 is without a doubt a gamer orientated ATX chassis. Designed with aspects and features to resemble a B2 stealth bomber plane this military looking case is apt to turn some heads. It has a fully functional automatic hatch at the front and comes with four case fans to keep your hardware inside running cool.
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Today we are going to review a graphics card that has the same dimensions and weight as the GTX 280, but it has a narrower bus and fewer unified processors. Besides, it's noticeably cheaper. Meet the GeForce GTX 260.
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The 790i is the first chipset from NVIDIA to be re-designed totally. 790i has its own PCI Express 2.0 controller built into the chipset along with a new memory controller for DDR3 memory with support for EPP 2.0, and today we have ZOTAC's high performance motherboard to play with. ZOTAC has definitely made its mark with us. While our first board we received from them based on the GeForce 8300 chipset failed to impress, the 790i Ultra SLI board really got us going.
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The Radeon HD 4870 is the first retail graphics card to use GDDR5 memory and the 512MB of memory uses Qimonda branded ICs. GDDR5 introduces features and functions that go beyond previous GDDR standards and enables GDDR5 to operate at data rates up to 6 Gbps, three times the performance of todays high speed GDDR3. The memory ICs feature adaptive power management, error compensation, adaptive interface timings and date eye optimization. The ICs being used are part number IDGV1G-05A1F1C-40X, which are entry level GDDR5 chips and are rated for just 4 Gbps. ATI has them clocked at just 3.6 Gbps, so these should have some overclocking head room left in them...
Said By Yahoo Games
Think you paid too much for your Playstation 3? Don't expect any sympathy from Sony.
In the company's fiscal 2008 annual report, Sony revealed that they've now lost roughly $3.3 billion (that's billion with a B) on the Playstation 3 since its launch. That breaks down to $2.16 billion in 2007, followed by a notably smaller but equally daunting $1.16 billion loss in 2008.
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In the letter sent to "Windows Customers" and titled "An Update on the Windows Roadmap," Veghte said "our plan is to deliver Windows 7 approximately three years after the January 2007 general availability launch date of Windows Vista." Veghte wrote, "You have told us you want a more regular, predictable Windows release schedule" and he said that was the impetus for setting the 2010 the ship date. Vista has been slowly gaining steam, but is still drawing fire from critics who say it has not lived up to promises.
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"We...consider any closed-source Linux kernel module or driver to be harmful and undesirable," the official statement begins. "Vendors that provide closed-source kernel modules force their customers to give up key Linux advantages or choose new vendors." But Bottomley gets much more specific than this. "Their (Nvidia's) binary module is one of the top causes of kernel crashes, which makes Linux look bad," he said. "Nvidia does a reasonable job of Q-and-A-ing (quality assurance) of a certain number of configurations but the problem is that their configurations (are) a lot less than what's actually out there on the market," Bottomley said.