Speakal Kicks Around miSoccer iPod Dock/Speaker Station
Speakal is no Apple, but it has certainly generated a name for itself due to its iPig speakers. Those USB wonders have sold like hotcakes, and folks needing a gag gift for the technology lover in their life have probably fallen in love with this here company. Just in time for this holiday season, Speakal is returning with an all new gift that's sure to make some of you giggle: the miSoccer iPod Docking Station Speaker. The company is understandably taking advantage of the fact that the World Cup is now on the
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Facebook Updates Privacy Options: Don't Click "Accept" Too Quickly!
Peek-a-boo! There's a decent chance that many, many more people will be "seeing you" if you aren't careful with your Facebook privacy settings, which were just recently overhauled by the powers that be. But many folks aren't exactly happy with the changes. When you think "privacy overhaul," you generally assume that the company you're dealing with is making changes to enforce stronger privacy rules and keep snoopers further away from your data. In the case of Facebook, it's actually encouraging less privacy.Granted,
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Fusion-io SSD Technology Breaks Into IBM Servers: Are Consumers Next?
If it's dealing with flash storage, NAND or any combination of the two, there's a chance Fusion-io is involved somewhere. The company responsible for serving up one of the fastest consumer SSDs we've ever seen is also making waves in the enterprise, as today is has announced the company’s core ioMemory technology will serve as the basis for a solid-state storage solution offered exclusively in IBM's family of System x servers. The news is pretty large for just a start-up company; it takes a lot of dough and
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Study: Americans Consumed 34GB Per Day In 2008
According to a recent report from the University of California, San Diego, American households consumed 3.6 zettabytes of information in 2008. A zettabyte is 10 to the 21st power bytes, or a million million gigabytes. Put another way, Americans consumed approximately 34GB per individual per day in 2008. The report also suggests that the average American consumes 100,500 words in a single day. The information we consume comes from everywhere around us—through television, radio, billboards, the Web, text messages,
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VIA Announces VN1000 Power Efficient DX10.1 Chipset
VIA Brings Enhanced Windows 7 Desktop to Life with World's Most Power Efficient DX10.1 Chipset VIA VN1000 boasts Blu-ray playback, DX10.1 graphics and DDR3 memory support and coupled with VIA Nano 3000 Series processors offers the ultimate multimedia experience on next generation all-in-one PCs Taipei, Taiwan, December 10, 2009 - VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the VIA VN1000 digital media chipset for next generation desktop and all-in-one
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Intel Turbo-Charging Transistors
Intel Turbo-Charging Transistors December 10, 2009 - Intel has reached a milestone in its quest to make transistors switch ever faster while using less energy, by integrating a high-k gate with a compound semiconductor transistor. Details were presented this week at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM). Intel has been researching the possibility of replacing the silicon channel of the transistor by a compound semiconductor material such as indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs). Up until
Read More ...
Shutterfly Wink Lets You Combine & Print Social Network Photos
Shutterfly announced a new service called Wink that combines real-time sharing with photo printing. Designed for the social networking generation, Wink lets you create and share printed photostrips (2x6-inch prints) using photos from your iPhone and social network sites such as Flickr and Facebook. As part of the service, your photostrips can be delivered anywhere in the world for $2.50 including tax and shipping. According to Shutterfly, it takes only seconds to create and send a photostrip in Wink. All you
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AT&T Targets Hoggish Smartphone Users
Some ISPs are trying tiered broadband pricing, but AT&T is looking into tiered wireless pricing. While not being up front about issues caused by the data-hogging app phone, AT&T seems to be realizing that it really, really wants iPhone users to use less bandwidth, at least in the short term.After all, it recently released an iPhone app designed to make it easy for users to report outages and dropped calls. It's also "normal" for an iPhone to drop 30 percent of its calls in New York City. It is quite
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Bang For Your Buck: Low-End, Mid and High-End Gaming Desktops Explored
You're stuffed full of turkey, you somehow managed to erect a Christmas tree, and you're still recovering from Black Friday. Without a doubt, you've had one whirlwind of a holiday. But before you get too comfortable in that chair of yours, we should probably remind you that the gift giving day you've all been waiting for is only a few weeks away. If you've been thinking of replacing that aging gaming rig of yours with something a bit more powerful as a gift to yourself (so to speak), we've rounded up a few solid
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NVIDIA Demos 3D Blu-Ray On 3D Vision
NVIDIA DEMONSTRATES 3D BLU-RAY PLAYBACK ACCELERATED ON GEFORCE AND 3D VISION TECHNOLOGIES NVIDIA 3D Vision Ecosystem Expands Once Again to Include Support for 3D Blu-ray HD Playback and New 120Hz, 1080p 3D LCD Displays SANTA CLARA, Calif. - Dec. 9, 2009 - 2010 is poised to be the year where consumers can enjoy stunning 3D experiences across all entertainment mediums, including gaming, photographs, Web browsing, and of course, movies. And, with the forthcoming 3D Blu-ray specification expected to be formally
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AT&T's "Mark The Spot" App Tells Your Carrier Where It's Lacking
AT&T hasn't earned the greatest reputation since the launch of the iPhone. Most users in huge cities complain of reception issues, dropped calls and lackluster 3G response. Some folks aren't griping, but you don't have to look hard to find someone who isn't fond of the carrier. In fact, many are only sticking with AT&T due to its death grip on Apple's iPhone. And for as many iPhone apps that have been rejected for one reason or another, it's somewhat interested that this one was let through. In fact,
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AMD Sets Up Blu-ray Stereoscopic 3D Demo For CES: How Will Intel Respond?
See there, we told you the 3D revolution was underway, didn't we? With LG looking to produce a 1080p 3D LCD and the 2010 World Cup broadcasting at least 25 events in 3D, we knew it was only a matter of time before the chip makers that we know and love around here dove in and joined the bandwagon. AMD has just announced that it will be demonstrating the forthcoming Blu-ray stereoscopic 3D standard at the 2010 Consumer Electronics Show, which is a standard that's expected to land in the second half of next year.Of
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CrunchPad Tablet Becomes 12" Joojoo: $499, Ships Soon
Apple Tablet, schmablet. Who needs a tablet PC from Cupertino when The Joojoo is on the loose? In what is easily the wildest, strangest tech story of 2009, the Joojoo is the result of a long-standing project gone awry, bruised egos and lots of hard work in the engineering lab. Honestly, this is the stuff that WWE matches and daytime dramas are made of, and while it's not quite as crazy as this whole Tiger Woods debacle, the story behind the tablet (partially) pictured below is quite interesting. The entire story
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VeriFone Introduces Secure Payment Solution For iPhone
Thanks to a new iPhone app from VeriFone, small businesses will be able to securely process credit card transactions using the popular smartphone. The new PAYware Mobile solution targets small businesses that need a mobile way to accept credit cards such as home repair businesses, small cafes, or door-to-door sales. PAYware Mobile is a combination hardware and software solution that includes a PA-DSS approved payment app and a card reader that slips over the iPhone to accommodate card swipes and help merchants
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Topsy-Turvy: AMD Talks Up MIDs, Intel Cautions Against Gadget Feature Creep
For the past 18 months, Intel has been the company talking about mobile internet devices (MIDs), Atom, ultra-mobile PC's (UMPCs), and how it sees these burgeoning form factories as a new frontier for the company. AMD, in contrast, has talked down the importance of the netbook and sub-netbook market, choosing instead to focus on a thin-and-light product segment that better matches the company's current products. We've discussed AMD's reasons for avoiding the netbook space (for now) and why they ultimately made
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Bang For Your Buck: Six Gaming PCs Explored
You're stuffed full of turkey, you somehow managed to erect a Christmas tree (or not), and you're still recovering from Black Friday. Without a doubt, you've had one whirlwind of a holiday. But before you get too comfortable in that chair of yours, we should probably remind you that the gift giving day(s) you've all been waiting for is only a few weeks away. If you've been thinking of replacing that aging gaming rig of yours with something a bit more powerful as a gift to yourself (so to speak), we've rounded
Read More ...
AT&T Targets Hoggish Smartphone Users
Some ISPs are trying tiered broadband pricing, but AT&T is looking into tiered wireless pricing. While not being up front about issues caused by the data-hogging app phone, AT&T seems to be realizing that it really, really wants iPhone users to use less bandwidth, at least in the short term.After all, it recently released an iPhone app designed to make it easy for users to report outages and dropped calls. It's also "normal" for an iPhone to drop 30 percent of its calls in New York City. It is quite obvious that the network simply cannot handle all the traffic (and we don't need Verizon ads to tell us that).
It's true that voice plans are tiered for all carriers. It's also fact that as a relative data hog, the iPhone is unique. Its users grab far more data than traditional smartphone users, yet still have a $30 all-you-can-eat data plan. When AT&T sells a plan for its wireless-data cards, those are limited to 5GB of usage monthly. After that, customers are charged more based on their usage.
De la Vega said 3 percent of smartphone users consume 40 percent of AT&T's network capacity. Unsurprisingly, this sounds like the same sort of argument that Comcast and other ISPs have made in terms of throttling or "network optimization" when bottlenecks occur on their services. According to AT&T, most of the bandwidth is being consumed by streaming-video and audio applications, such as Internet radio.
This isn't the first time that AT&T has pointed to smartphones as the reason for its network issues. To be honest, despite clamoring for the iPhone to move to the Verizon network, it is unclear if that CDMA network could handle the workload any easier than AT&T's. Perhaps after Android phones have been around on Verizon's network for a while we might have a better feel for that.
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Intel Turbo-Charging Transistors
Intel Turbo-Charging Transistors
December 10, 2009 - Intel has reached a milestone in its quest to make transistors switch ever faster while using less energy, by integrating a high-k gate with aآ 
compoundآ semiconductorآ transistor. Details were presented this week at the International Electron Devices Meeting (IEDM). Intel has been researching the possibility of replacing the silicon channel of the transistor by a compound semiconductor material such as indium gallium arsenide (InGaAs). Up until recently, such transistors used a Schottky gate with no gate dielectric, and were subjected to large gate leakage. Intel has now identified and integrated a high-k gate dielectric to reduce leakage with these so-called QWFETs (quantum well field effect transistors). The prototype device was fabricated on a silicon wafer substrate, pointing towards eventual process synergy with the existing silicon infrastructure. By using a high-k dielectric, gate leakage for short channel devices was reduced by 1000x compared with a Schottky gate, while the electrical oxide thickness was reduced by 33%, leading to higher switching speeds, which in turn leads to improved chip performance. More details are available in a blog by Mike Mayberry.
"In this blog, I’ll update the progress and give a look ahead to some of the upcoming research projects.
First as a reminder, unlike silicon, a compound semiconductor is made up of two or more elements, indium, gallium and arsenic for example (InGaAs). Using two or more elements means more opportunity to tune the materials for performance or optical properties but also makes the challenge of fabricating wafers and processing much more complicated. Today, compound semiconductors are used in smaller scale applications where their special properties outweigh the added costs. Our goal is to take advantage of the vastly larger spending on silicon infrastructure and put it to use fabricating compound semiconductor devices."
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Fusion-io SSD Technology Breaks Into IBM Servers: Are Consumers Next?
If it's dealing with flash storage, NAND or any combination of the two, there's a chance Fusion-io is involved somewhere. The company responsible for serving up one of the fastest consumer SSDs we've ever seen is also making waves in the enterprise, as today is has announced the company’s core ioMemory technology will serve as the basis for a solid-state storage solution offered exclusively in IBM's family of System x servers. The news is pretty large for just a start-up company; it takes a lot of dough and a lot of support to really break through into a market dominated by huge players like Seagate and Western Digital, but tossing a partnership with IBM on your resume can definitely go a long way.
In keeping with the hot trends of the year, we're told that this new solution is "designed to address the storage needs of data-heavy applications such as those used in social media, ecommerce and financial services." The device at hand is the new IBM High IOPS Adapter, which will "help database, application and system administrators architect their data centers to meet performance goals that could not be realized with traditional, disk-based storage solutions."What does this mean for the average user? Not a lot, but it shows that Fusion-io could be a real force in the coming years. If it can manage to slip into IBM server systems, what's stopping it from slipping its SSD technology into mainstream notebooks? Not much, we'd bet. And trust us when we say that we want more SSDs available in more laptops as soon as possible; once you've used one, it's tough to compute on the go with a sluggish HDD.
The IBM High IOPS Adapter supports enterprise customers’ reliability needs by offering Fusion’s Flashback protection, which features chip-level redundancy. The Adapter also gives customers advanced error correction and many other features that make the solid-state solution one of the most dependable in the industry.
“We are excited to collaborate with IBM and bring easily managed, server-deployed solid-state technology to more of the world’s system and database administrators,†said David Flynn, CTO and president of Fusion-io. “In addition to the data performance improvements and industry-leading reliability, IBM customers have the ability to significantly reduce capital equipment, floor space and power consumed by their data center operations, enabling innovation at all levels of the data center architecture."
The new IBM High IOPS Adapter can be purchased through IBM. To learn more, visit: http://www-03.ibm.com/systems/storage/disk/ssd/ssd_adapters.html.
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Facebook Updates Privacy Options: Don't Click "Accept" Too Quickly!
Peek-a-boo! There's a decent chance that many, many more people will be "seeing you" if you aren't careful with your Facebook privacy settings, which were just recently overhauled by the powers that be. But many folks aren't exactly happy with the changes. When you think "privacy overhaul," you generally assume that the company you're dealing with is making changes to enforce stronger privacy rules and keep snoopers further away from your data. In the case of Facebook, it's actually encouraging less privacy.Granted, that makes sense when you think about what exactly Facebook is. It's a social networking site. It thrives from people being able to see other things about other people. In fact, that's kind of its point and purpose. So hiding everything from everyone isn't in the best interest of Facebook as a whole. What Facebook has done is to bug (at random times, it seems) each one of its over 350 million members and ask them to update their privacy settings. As for what was wrong with the old ones? According to feedback, it was too complicated. There were too many options, and you never quite knew who could see what unless you spent hours checking every little gallery and every little information pane.
Now, Facebook is trying to simplify things by giving you more wide-reaching options that encompass more areas. The only problem? It wants you to open up more of your life. If you're happy with your old settings, you can feel free to keep those, but the new "suggested" settings aren't ones that err to the side of safety. Instead, they open up a lot of information to a lot of people. If you aren't being careful, you might assume that Facebook's recommended settings would hide most of your information from strangers and just accept them. That's a bad move.
When you see that fateful message pop up, be sure to carefully inspect your options. Your best bet is to stick with what you had if you were comfortable with them, but whatever you do, stay sharp!
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Frame Rate Drops In Games
I am experiencing the frame rate drops in COD5.
Unfortunately I am at a loss to what could be the cause. The game should run flawlessly and never drop below 60fps, maxed out at any resolution up to 1920x1080
But it does not!
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CPU: Q6600 G0 step OC @ 3.4 GHZ 1.55 volts (cooled by Thermaltake Big Typhoon)
MOBO: XFX 750i
GFX: 2x eVGA GTX 275 @ 710/1596/1270
RAM: Corsair Dominator DHX 1066 - 5-5-5-15 2t 2.1v
PSU: Thermaltake Toughpower 850 watt
CASE: Antec 1200
APU: X-fi Xtremegamer SPEAKERS: Logitech X-530 5.1
HDD: 3x Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 80gb 8mb cache in RAID 0
DISPLAY: Asus V2203 22inch 1680x1050 resolution
KEYBOARD: Logitech G15 MOUSE: Logitech G5 WHEEL: Logitech G25
OPERATING SYSTEM: Windows 7 Ultimate x64 RTM
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Bang For Your Buck: Low-End, Mid and High-End Gaming Desktops Explored
You're stuffed full of turkey, you somehow managed to erect a Christmas tree, and you're still recovering from Black Friday. Without a doubt, you've had one whirlwind of a holiday. But before you get too comfortable in that chair of yours, we should probably remind you that the gift giving day you've all been waiting for is only a few weeks away. If you've been thinking of replacing that aging gaming rig of yours with something a bit more powerful as a gift to yourself (so to speak), we've rounded up a few solid options in varying price ranges that just might fit the bill. Oh, and you don't even have to get off of that sofa you're planted on to assemble these!
Bang For Your Buck: Low-End, Mid-Range and High-End Gaming Desktops 
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VIA Announces VN1000 Power Efficient DX10.1 Chipset
Taipei, Taiwan, December 10, 2009 - VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the VIA VN1000 digital media chipset for next generation desktop and all-in-one PCs, offering a world-class HD multimedia entertainment platform compatible with the advanced desktop features of Microsoft Windows 7. At the core of the VIA VN1000 lies a DirectX 10.1 graphics engine, a necessary requirement for users who want to enjoy the enhanced features of the Windows 7 desktop environment. The DirectX 10.1 engine means that Windows 7 can employ Microsoft's advanced Windows Desktop Driver Model 1.1, bringing significant gains in system memory efficiency, overall desktop responsiveness and an improved visual experience compared to WDDM 1.0. The VIA VN1000 supports DDR3 system memory at speeds of up to 1066MHz, one x8 lane and four x1 lane PCI Express II expansion slots, up to five PCI slots and a VIA Vinyl HD 8 channel audio codec. An IDE controller, support for up to four S-ATA II drives, SD/MMS/MMC card reader support and 12 USB 2.0 ports are supplemented with support for PS/2, SPI, GPIO and LPC technologies. 
VIA Brings Enhanced Windows 7 Desktop to Life with World's Most Power Efficient DX10.1 Chipset
VIA VN1000 boasts Blu-ray playback, DX10.1 graphics and DDR3 memory support and coupled with VIA Nano 3000 Series processors offers the ultimate multimedia experience on next generation all-in-one PCs
The VIA VN1000 is the most power efficient DX10.1 digital media chipset available today, making it the perfect solution for next generation small form factor and all-in-one Windows 7 PCs that focus on entertainment, multimedia and touch screen capabilities. The DirectX 10.1 hardware environment provided by the VIA Chrome 520 IGP means Windows 7 users can enjoy a more fluid and visually enhanced desktop experience as well as the latest gaming titles.
The VIA VN1000 digital media chipset features the ChromotionHD 2.0 video processor to guarantee smooth playback of the latest Blu-ray titles with superb hardware acceleration of the most demanding H.264, WM9 and VC1 codecs over the latest display technologies, including Display Port and HDMI.
"The VIA VN1000 leverages our optimized VIA Nano 3000 Series processors, creating the most balanced, power-efficient, multimedia-focused desktop platform on the market today," said Richard Brown, VP International Marketing, VIA Technologies, Inc. "Supporting the latest system memory, graphics and entertainment standards, the VIA VN1000 takes the VIA processor platform to new heights of power-efficient visual sophistication."
VIA VN1000 Product Highlights
Paired with the new VIA VT8261 south bridge, the VIA VN1000 represents the most power-efficient DX10.1 compliant digital media chipset on the market, consuming up to 12 watts for both north and south bridges, making it a perfect choice for Windows 7 based mini desktop and all-in-one desktop PCs designs.
Offering a feature-rich specification with significant emphasis on graphics and HD video playback, the VIA VN1000 features the VIA Chrome 520 IGP, combining a DirectX 10.1 graphics engine, with support for Shader Model 4, OpenGL 3.0 graphics and OpenCL 1.0 for next-generation GPGPU applications.
The high-performance ChromotionHD 2.0 video processor offers advanced filtering and cutting edge post-processing to perform ultra smooth decoding of MPEG-4/AVC, H.264, MPEG-2, VC-1, WMV-HD, and AVS video for Blu-ray content. The home theatre experience also encompasses support for the latest connectivity standards, including dual channel support for Display Port, HDMI, DVP, VGA and LVDS/TMDS.
The VIA VN1000 Digital Media IGP Chipset is fully compatible with all VIA Nano, VIA C7, VIA C7-M and VIA Eden processors and supports all Microsoft Windows platforms and popular Linux distributions.
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Acer's 11.6" Ferrari One Gets AMD CPU And Wicked Paint Job
AMD may be holding steady compared to Intel, but what it really needs to pull ahead (or at least gain ground) in the market place is a few good machines that aren't easily overlooked and forgotten. How's this for "not easy to overlook?" Acer has expanded its sexy Ferrari line once again, this week introducing an AMD-based version that's seductive in every legal way. The Ferrari One notebook is a beautiful combination of design and power, and we have all ideas that it'll be catching lots of attention once it starts heading out to retail shelves.This one's boasting an 11.6" display, so it's definitely on the portable side. It's coated in an iconic Ferrari red paint and features "the same exquisite details and performance features celebrated by Scudetto Ferrari, the world’s most prestigious racing team." Within the case, you'll get an AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual-core CPU, an ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics processor, 4GB of DDR2 memory, Windows 7 Home Premium and a 250GB hard drive.
The whole machine weighs just 3.31lbs., measures about 1" thick and has a full-size keyboard which stretches from one side to the other. There's also a metallic LED-lit power button and yellow prancing horse emblem, and we suspect you'll be paying dearly for having that emblem on there. Finally, you'll get Dolby-branded audio, Wi-Fi, a multi-gesture trackpad, Crystal Eye webcam, a 6-cell battery, 3 USB 2.0 ports and a multi-format card reader to wrap things up.
The Acer Ferrari One FO200-1799 notebook is available now through certain Acer channels, but at $599.99, it's easily one of the most expensive (albeit most powerful) netbook-sized rigs out there.
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Shutterfly Wink Lets You Combine & Print Social Network Photos
Shutterfly announced a new service called Wink that combines real-time sharing with photo printing. Designed for the social networking generation, Wink lets you create and share printed photostrips (2x6-inch prints) using photos from your iPhone and social network sites such as Flickr and Facebook. As part of the service, your photostrips can be delivered anywhere in the world for $2.50 including tax and shipping. According to Shutterfly, it takes only seconds to create and send a photostrip in Wink. All you have to do is choose a template, add and adjust a few photos, and send it off. You can also share completed photostrips on Facebook and Twitter.
“Traditional print formats often don’t make sense for the kind of photos you shoot on your iPhone or share on Facebook,†said John Poisson, vice-president of mobile and social media at Shutterfly. “Photostrips allow you to combine a few of these â€کin-the-moment’ photos—pictures of a party, a day at the beach, a perfect meal—and create something new and engaging in just a few seconds. And Wink makes giving as easy as creating, whether you’re sending a thank you on the way home or sharing a big night out.â€
Shutterfly's Wink is available as a free application for iPhone users. It's also available as a full-featured website at wink.shutterfly.com. To celebrate the launch of Wink, Shutterfly is giving away three free photostrips to the first 50,000 people who download the Wink app for iPhone which is available from iTunes.
Wink offers:
- One-click access to your photos on your iPhone or computer, Facebook, and Flickr
- Photostrip templates, from three photos to five
- Simple, intuitive tools to resize, rotate and add effects to your photos
- Secure payment through PayPal or credit card
- One click publishing to Facebook and Twitter
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Speakal Kicks Around miSoccer iPod Dock/Speaker Station
Speakal is no Apple, but it has certainly generated a name for itself due to its iPig speakers. Those USB wonders have sold like hotcakes, and folks needing a gag gift for the technology lover in their life have probably fallen in love with this here company. Just in time for this holiday season, Speakal is returning with an all new gift that's sure to make some of you giggle: the miSoccer iPod Docking Station Speaker. The company is understandably taking advantage of the fact that the World Cup is now on the minds of sports fans everywhere, and of course, the iPod has refused to leave anyone's mind. Essentially, what we're looking at here is what happens when an iPod dock and a soccer ball collide, but thankfully for your dear iPod, there are a few legs keeping this thing for rolling around at will. You may just assume by looking at it that this is just some lousy toy, but the 23+ watts of power, Humanized Touch Control and bundled remote suggest otherwise. And so does the $119.99 price tag.
“As The World Cup Championship nears - the world’s largest sporting event for Soccer players and fans - Speakal is thrilled to present the miSoccer to its Music and sports fans,†announced David Solomon, CEO. “Our goal is to introduce innovative and quality audio products that relate to one’s lifestyle and that express who we are and what we like,†added Mr. Solomon.
The miSoccer boasts 23+ watts of high quality sound through a 15 watt subwoofer and two multi-way speakers. Along with its superior sound quality, the miSoccer offers many innovative features, such as its compatibility with all of the iPodsآ® with dock connector, the Humanized Touch Control, the remote control that manages the sound and its quality as well as the docked iPod آ®.
Priced at $119.99 the miSoccer is available today at www.speakal.com/misoccer.html.
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Microsoft Urging Businesses to Move to Windows 7 As XP SP2 Approaches End-of-Life
Windows XP has lived longer than anyone, including Microsoft, ever expected, but the software giant is preparing to EOL (end-of-life) the nearly decade-old operating system. On July 13, 2010, MS will cease to support XP SP2, although critical security updates will still be provided free of charge through April 8, 2014. XP SP2 isn't the only OS Microsoft plans to phase out in the next seven months—the company will also stop supporting Windows 2000 Server/Client on the same date.Microsoft is recommending that any company still using one of the above plan to transition to Windows 7 and has assembled a "how-to" kit of instructions for migrating user data from either XP to Win 7, or from Windows Server 2000 to Windows Server 2008 R2. Redmond's fresh set of recommendations have been reported alongside a heaping spoonful of data on how businesses are "leery" of Windows 7, but despite the hand-wringing, this is business as usual. Every time a new OS or major service pack drops, Microsoft recommends businesses begin adopting it. Every time Microsoft recommends businesses begin migrating to a new OS, we see survey results detailing how most IT managers have no plans to deploy the new version for at least a year (or until the first service pack).
Miraculously, the gap between Microsoft's recommended timetable and actual IT OS upgrades never actually results in a catastrophe, and this one won't either. Early figures on Windows 7 adoption have been strong, and the trend seems likely to continue. Windows 7, generally speaking, appears to have been seized upon as "Vista, Done Right." That perception may or may not impact the corporate IT upgrade cycle, but businesses that skipped out on upgrading to Vista either due to leeriness or economic difficulties may find themselves in a buying mood over the next 12-18 months. By then, Win 7 will have taken over the market, top-to-bottom—XP may have blocked Vista from total platform dominance, but that's unlikely to happen the second time around.
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R.I.P. Nvidia desktop chipsets
I've been looking around newegg, and I noticed that there are barely any Nvidia based motherboards on there, and then I checked zipzoomfly, and the same thing. Its like they stopped making chipsets. I finally found some info about whats going on.
http://hothardware.com/cs/forums/t/45113.aspx
which led me here
http://www.pcper.com/article.php?aid=791&type=expert
It said that they would continue to produce chipsets for AMD boards, but from the availability in nvidia based motherboards it seems like they stopped producing them. So is nvidia officially out of the desktop motherboard market?
It seem like nvidia has been dancing around the subject, and doesn't want to admit that they have. What a screwed up thing to do. They should have made an announcement or something. This sucks, they are the only ones that have working GPU offloading in linux. That means if I want t build a XBMC machine for a friend, which is what I was looking into, I have to pay $40 to $50 more for a graphics card. When what I want to do is save cash and use imbeded graphics solution.
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