IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 06/12/2009

First-gen Larrabee not going retail, project moves ahead
Making both AMD and Nvidia chuckle like the cheeky monkeys that they are, Intel has confirmed that its first Larrabee chips will not be reaching consumers within discrete graphics cards, ever.

Despite Intel pouring money into the project, both the current Larrabee hardware and software are not living up to the company's expectations and so the decision has been made to not launch any commercial product based on them. Instead, the Larrabee chips will be used for development kits which will be available to third parties. This equals to both a delay and a cancellation as Intel did claim it would have Larrabee-based cards in 2009 or 2010, and that's not going to happen, at least not for the consumers. Still, Intel's return to the discrete graphics market isn't canceled, it is just delayed as future iterations of Larrabee are planned to do what the first silicon cannot do right now, be a competitive and feasible product.

Leaving us to guess and comment, Intel continues work on Larrabee and plans to announce something about it next year. Whether it's a HPC (high performance computing) or discrete graphics-related announcement, it remains to be seen. One thing is certain though, AMD and Nvidia can breathe easy as in 2010, they will still be the only major players in the discrete GPU market.

Google announces free site performance tools
Google has upgraded its Webmaster's toolkit this week with a new product called Site Performance that is designed to allow users to find out their web site operational speed. The online suite of Web tools is for people who wish to increase their site's traffic, as well as monitor and interact with visitors.

Google software engineer Sreeram Ramachandran and Faster Web programme director Arvind Jain said in a blog post that Site Performance will generate increased customer retention and activity, and higher revenue.

"On Site Performance, you'll find how fast your pages load, how they've fared over time, how your site's load time compares to other sites, examples of specific pages and their actual page load times, and Page Speed suggestions that can help reduce user-perceived latency," said the blog post.

Time Traveller add-in for Windows Home Server
Time Traveler for Windows Home Server allows a user to create roll-back points for changed files in any shared folder on the home server. Through the Windows Home Server Console, users can roll-back a file or folder to any point in time - meaning if you ever overwrite a file in your shared folders by accident, then you can simply restore it!

Time Traveler for WHS is a commercial add-in, priced at $29.99/أ‚آ£19.25. A trial version is available which allows a maximum of 25 rollback points.

Go check it out.

Seven Update 9.12.3.0 released
Seven Update is an easy to use update platform. The application allows an easy way to keep your software updated. It offers automatic update notification and installation.

It also provides end users with a clean and intuitive interface, and also provides a user-friendly way to easily update their applications.

Features include:
- Provides automatic updates for software
- Full update history
- Application Repository - a list of applications that can be updated with Seven Update
- Add an application to Seven Update by clicking a link on a web site
- Automatic search and download of updates (depending on settings)
- Hide & restore updates
- Intuitive user interface
- Hash verification, no corrupt files!
- Displays download counts and sizes.
- Informative progress, know exactly what Seven Update is doing.

Website: Seven ALive
Download: Seven Update 9.12.3.0

HP proud of IDC reports showing bump in their market share
Hewlett-Packard is putting for recognition of its major climb in ownership of the international enterprise workstation space, citing the recently released IDC report which has HP's share of the market up at 44% for Q3 this year.

The vendor claimed that the growth is due in large part to the troubled economy. As companies have looked at ways to save money, the use of low-cost, centrally hosted and managed workstation setups have grown in popularity.

"In a difficult economy, we have seen customers around the globe investing in HP Z Workstations because of the surprisingly short period of time that the workstations pay for themselves with performance and productivity gains," said HP workstation vice president and general manager Jim Zafarana.

Virtualization firms have touted the potential for their products to manage workstation deployments more efficiently and reliably at the administrator end, so HP and its rival hardware vendors are not the only companies seeking to take a stake in the growth of workstations.

Sunday, December 6, 2009

IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 06/12/2009

No comments: