IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 27/07/2009

Western Digital intros new, high capacity portable HDDs
Putting its new 2.5-inch HDDs to good use, Western Digital has now added two more models to its My Passport Essential family of portable hard drives. Boasting 750GB and 1TB of space, the fresh duo come in a 126 (W) x 80 (L) x 15 (H) mm enclosure with a titanium silver finish, weight 180 grams, have a USB 2.0 connection interface, and are bundled with the WD Sync software which enables users to quickly sync the portable drive with their PC.

"The enormous capacity of these new My Passport Essential SE drives makes them the perfect travel-friendly storage device to hold all the rich media content generated by higher resolution photos and HD videos and music," said Dale Pistilli, vice president of marketing for WD's branded products group. "Carrying digital files close at hand continues to be a growing consumer interest and this new drive offers a sleek and stylish solution with plenty of storage capacity for people on the move."

Backed by a three-year warranty, the 750GB and 1TB My Passport Essential SE drives are now shipping and cost $200 and $300, respectively.

PowerColor readies new custom cooled Radeon HD 4890
Bored like heck waiting for AMD's released (RV740) and unreleased (Evergreen) 40nm GPUs, PowerColor has developed one more Radeon HD 4890 model. Codenamed AX4890 1GBD5, the new RV790 card features a custom dual-slot cooler, 800 Stream Processors, a 256-bit memory interface, and stock clocks for both the GPU and 1GB of GDDR5 memory - 850 and 3900 MHz, respectively.

The Radeon HD 4890 obviously comes with DirectX 10.1 and CrossFireX support, dual-DVI connectivity, and should hit stores soon with a price tag of just over 150 Euro.

Zalman rolling out the CNPS9900A LED CPU cooler
Zalman is now really to let loose the CNPS9900A LED, a new CPU cooler that strongly resembles the CNPS9900 LED. Seen below, the CNPS9900A LED measures 94 (L) x 131 (W) x 152 (H) mm and weights 730 grams, has a pure copper base and heatsink, three Omega-shaped heatpipes, and a (2-ball bearing) 120mm blue LED-equipped fan that can operate at speeds between 800 and 2000 RPM, and boasts a sound output of 18 to 38 dBA.

Zalman's cooler is bundled with the ZM-STG2 thermal paste, has support for AMD Socket 754, 939, 940, AM2, AM2+, AM3, and Intel Socket LGA 775, 1156, 1366 processors, and has a recommended price tag of $64.90.

Averatec N3400 13.3-inch notebook start shipping
TriGem USA has now rolled out a new PC under the Averatec brand, the slim and light N3400 13.3-inch notebook. Aimed both towards business users and students, the 1.72kg N3400 has an aluminum clad enclosure and features a WXGA LCD screen, a 2.16 GHz Intel Pentium Dual Core T3400 CPU, 3GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and GMA X4500HD integrated graphics.

"As one of the thinnest and lightest notebooks on the market, the N3400 meets the demand of consumers who require the ultimate in portability and a little flash of style without breaking the bank," said Henry Hewitt, vice president of sales at TriGem USA. "Although it is small in size and weight, the N3400 is large in power and performance. This notebook is sure to stand out from the crowd with its low weight, small footprint and affordable price point."

The new notebook also boasts a 1.3 megapixel camera, a 4-in-1 card reader, is powered by Windows Vista Home Premium and is bundled with an external 8x DVD writer. The Averatec N3400 is backed by a one-year warranty and costs $799.

Spotify iPhone app submitted to Apple
Still in beta and less than one year old, the increasingly-popular music streaming service Spotify will be getting its own iPhone app soon as the software has recently been sent to Apple for approval. Set to be available as a free download only to Spotify users with a premium account, the upcoming app offers similar functionality to the desktop software and even enables people to store playlists with songs that can be played even when the iPhone is not connected to a network.

Spotify currently provides a music catalogue of over 6 million tracks to 6 million users in Europe and is planning to launch its service in the US by the end of this year. In addition to coming for the iPhone, Spotify is expected to befriend Android devices later this year.

Apple, music labels working on plan to boost album sales
No matter how many songs iTunes sells, there's always room for improvement, and so Apple, together with all four major record labels are reported plotting an initiative that would boost full album purchases. iTunes, as well as its rivals, enable people to purchase single tracks and while that's working nice enough, declining CD sales are forcing Universal, Warner, Sony BMG and EMI to look at solutions to increase digital album sales.

Codenamed 'Cocktail', the project on which Apple and the music labels are said to be working on would see albums being bundled with lyrics, notes, photos and video clips, all of which would be accessible via an interactive book (possible an app).

Cocktail is scheduled to arrive in September, month in which new iPod and Zune models are expected to be launched.

Western Digital claims first dibs on 1TB 2.5-inch hard drive
Continuing to slap its competitors with new storage capacity records, Western Digital has now announced two new Scorpio Blue 2.5-inch hard drives, one boasting 750GB of space and one topping 1TB. Coming in a rather non-standard 12.5mm thick form factor, the new drives make use of 333GB platters, have a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, and feature technologies like WhisperDrive, ShockGuard, and SecurePark, which enable a quiet and safe operation.

According to Western Digital, the 750GB model (WD7500KEVT) is now available for $190, while the 1TB drive (WD10TEVT) goes for $250, but, at least for now, it will only be found within the new My Passport Essential USB-connected portable HDDs. The high-capacity Scorpio Blue drives are backed by a three-year warranty.

Tuniq Tower 120 Extreme to hit stores next month
Previously seen at Computex, Tuniq's uber-high-end CPU cooler, the Tower 120 Extreme is finally closing in as it is expected to go on sale in August. Seen below, the upcoming cooler measures 131 (L) x 112.31 (W) x 150.7 (H) mm, has three 8mm and two 6mm copper heatpipes, nickle-plated wave-shaped fins for increased air-contact area, and a 120mm magnetic fluid dynamic bearing fan that works at 1000 to 2000 RPM and has a maximum sound output of 20 dBA.

The Tower 120 Extreme is compatible with AMD Socket AM2/AM3+ and Intel LGA 775/1366 processors, and comes bundled with a tube of TX-3 thermal compound, and a fan controller.

Samsung and Intrinsity claim to have fastest Cortex-A8-based core
Taking's ARM design to another level, Samsung and Intrinsity have together announced the "fastest mobile processor core implementation of the Cortex-A8 processor architecture in 45 nanometer (nm) Low Power (LP), low leakage process technology." This new core, codenamed Hummingbird, has 32KB each of data and instruction caches, a customizable L2 cache, an ARM NEON multi-media extension, and is able to deliver 2000 DMIPS (Dhrystone Million Instructions Per Second) at a frequency of 1GHz.

"The biggest challenge in mobile processor core design and implementation is to achieve high clock speed performance while keeping the power consumption low," said Dr. Jae Cheol Son, Vice President, SOC Platform Development, System LSI Division, Samsung Electronics. "Collaboration between Samsung and Intrinsity combines the best design and implementation technologies in the industry in successfully meeting the aggressive performance and power consumption targets of the Hummingbird."

Not wasting any time, Samsung has already revealed that it is working on mobile SoC products using the Hummingbird core.

Nokia to acquire software company cellity
Finnish phone heavyweight Nokia has recently announced that it will bring the 14-man team of Hamburg-based privately owned mobile software company cellity under its wing. While cellity's current service, which helps connect people on the mobile and the web, is set to be discontinued, the team that made it will join Nokia and help strengthen the company's competencies in the area of social networking.

"cellity has a very talented and innovative team, which we are very happy to have on board at Nokia. With this acquisition, we can accelerate our service development in some of our core areas," said Christof Hellmis, Vice President, Services, Nokia.

The acquisition agreement making cellity's staff part of Nokia's Services unit will be completed by the end of this quarter.

Monday, July 27, 2009

IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 27/07/2009

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