IT-Code-News: IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 06/03/2010

Corsair Force SSDs listed in the UK
Announced yesterday, Corsair's SandForce-powered Force solid state drives has started to pop up in stores and although they are not shipping (yet), it still makes for a decent indication of what we'll pay for them. The listings put the 100GB model @ Ã‚Â£333.19 / $502.2 / 369.1 Euro and the 200GB drive @ Ã‚Â£578.44 / $872 / 641 Euro, which is pretty steep but around OCZ Vertex LE levels (the LE drives have SF-1500 controllers).

Corsair's SSDs are equipped with the SF-1200 chip and feature a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, MLC memory, TRIM support, a MTBF of 1 million hours, and maximum read and write speeds of 285 MB/s and 275 MB/s, respectively.

The Force series drives are backed by a two-year warranty.

Apple iPad to ship in the US on April 3
Apple has just announced that its wannabe 'magical and revolutionary' tablet, the iPad will reach US customers on April 3rd, less than a month after it goes up for pre-order (on March 12). The 1.27cm-thick iPad weights just 680 grams, has a 9.7-inch IPS touchscreen (with multi-touch support), 16, 32 or 64GB of flash storage, a 1GHz Apple A4 chip, built-in accelerometer, compass, 802.11n WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 (and 3G on certain models), plus and a battery enabling up to 10 hours of operation.

"iPad is something completely new," said Steve Jobs, Apple's CEO. "We're excited for customers to get their hands on this magical and revolutionary product and connect with their apps and content in a more intimate, intuitive and fun way than ever before."

The re-confirmed iPad price scheme looks a little something like this:

- $499 - 16GB model with WiFi
- $599 - 32GB model with WiFi
- $699 - 64GB model with WiFi
- $629 - 16GB model with WiFi & 3G
- $729 - 32GB model with WiFi & 3G
- $829 - 64GB model with WiFi & 3G

Those who want the 3G-packing iPads will have to wait a little longer for the devices as they will ship later on in April.

Mach Xtreme Tech debuts with SandForce SSDs
Young Taiwan-based memory and storage company Mach Xtreme Technology has this week introduced its first solid stated drives which are part of the MX DS Series and make use of the SandForce SF-1222 controller. Coming in 50GB, 100GB, 200GB and 400GB capacities, the new 2.5-inch SSDs boast MLC (multi-level cell) NAND Flash memory chips, a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface, a MTBF of over 1.5 million hours, consume just 0.5W when idle and deliver maximum read and write speeds of 250 MB/s and 230 MB/s, respectively.

The MX DS drives will be available soon, backed by a two-year warranty. And now the echo...

Miranda IM version 0.8.16 released
Miranda IM is the smaller, faster, easier instant messenger with support for multiple protocols. Designed from the ground-up to be resource efficient while still providing a rich feature set, Miranda includes support for AIM, Jabber, ICQ, IRC, MSN, Yahoo, Gadu-Gadu and more. Additionally, with the choice of hundreds of plugins, icons, sounds and other content, Miranda IM gives you the ability to modify, customise and extend functionality to make it your own.

Updates include:
- Added options to clear completed file transfers on window close
- Fix for deleting groups with contacts
- Fix for moving contacts through groups
- Fix main menu icon reference
- Fix for main window off screen positioning
- Fixed authorization dialog behaviors
- AIM: Display nickname instead of screenname in chat
- AIM: Fixed encrypted and formatted messages with Metacontacts
- ICQ: Fix for long error messages
- Yahoo: Added Yahoo 10.0 client detection

Website: Miranda IM
Download: Miranda IM 0.8.16

Microsoft preps two security updates for next week
On March 9 (this coming Tuesday) Microsoft is going light on updates but will release a couple of patches to address problems found within Windows OSes and Office suites. Rated as 'important', the fixes will tackle remote code execution bugs in Office XP, 2003, 2007, 2004 for Mac, 2008 for Mac, and in Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7.

From the info provided by Microsoft it seems that the recently-acknowledged VBScript bug in Internet Explorer will not be addressed this Patching Tuesday but the company is probably working on a fix for that too.

Next week Microsoft's Windows Malicious Software Removal Tool will also be updated.

Gigabyte M1000N netbook packs ION 2 powa
As revealed at CeBIT, Gigabyte's upcoming Pine Trail-based M1000 netbook line will include at least one model that features Nvidia's 'next generation ION' platform. Known as M1000N, the new machine will have a 10.1-inch LCD screen, a 1.83 GHz Atom N470 CPU, 1GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, the Nvidia GT218 40nm GPU (with 8 Processing Cores most likely), a 1.3 megapixel webcam, a card reader, and a 6-cell battery.

The ION netbook will run Windows 7 and be paired up with a docking station featuring a HDMI output and apparently a DVD writer too. The M1000N should make it in stores in April or May and cost around/under 500 Euro.

Lenovo IdeaPad Y460 14-inch laptop goes on sale
Two months after its CES unveiling, the Arrandale-powered IdeaPad Y460 laptop has been added to Lenovo's online shop and is available for purchase with a stating price of $999. The new portable PC features a 14-inch (1366x768) LED-backlit display, a 2.13 GHz Core i3-330M or 2.4 GHz Core i5-520M CPU, 4GB of RAM, Intel integrated graphics or an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 5650 1GB, a 320/500GB hard drive, a DVD writer and a6-cell battery.

The IdeaPad Y460 comes with Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit pre-installed, pack Gigabit Ethernet, WiFi and Bluetooth 2.1 connectivity and is backed by a one-year warranty.

HDMI 1.4a specifications released
HDMI Licensing has today announced the release of the HDMI 1.4a specs which bring mandatory formats (1080p @ 23.98/24Hz for movies, 720p @ 50 or 59.94/60Hz for games) for delivering 3D content over the HDMI connection, as well as the Top-and-Bottom format for broadcast 3D content.

"We published these latest enhancements to support the market need for broadcast 3D content," said Steve Venuti, president of HDMI Licensing. "When we launched 1.4 in June of 2009, we deferred the selection of mandatory 3D format(s) for broadcast content until the market direction was more clearly defined. The market has spoken and the HDMI Consortium has listened and responded to accommodate those market needs."

All we have to do now is wait for manufacturers to pass certification and start bragging with their HDMI 1.4a-supporting products.

GeForce 196.75 removed by Nvidia due to fan controller issue
Nvidia users be on alert as the recently-released GeForce 196.75 WHQL graphics driver has been confirmed to have an issue that, let's just say, messes up the fan speed of GeForce cards, causing them to overheat. This problem kicks in for real while gaming or running benchmarks and is reported to have let to the frying of a few cards already.

While it's investigating the fan controller bug, Nvidia has pulled the GeForce 196.75 driver from its website. Those who have the driver installed are advised to go back to 196.21 and wait for an update from Santa Clara's Green Goblin.

YouTube expands auto-captioning availability
In November (2009) YouTube introduced auto-captions in order to better cater users who have hearing problems. With this feature, videos could be added captions without much intervention from the uploader as the task was done by Google's servers using voice recognition algorithms to turn audio into text.

Playing it safe, the video sharing site has started everything by enabling auto-captions only to a select group of partners, but now, after months of live testing, all YouTube users can utilize this feature. Auto-captioning may be accessible to all those who upload clips but is limited to content that's spoken in English. Still, it's a bit step that will make it easier for people suffering from some kind of hearing impairment to find and watch captioned videos.

YouTube is also planning to add a 'request processing' button for un-captioned clips but it's important to note that this won't work all the time, even if the video features English speakers as background noise will prevent a the audio-to-text conversion. Overall though, YouTube's team deserves a thumbs up for this latest move. O, back to uploading.

Saturday, March 6, 2010

IT News HeadLines (TechConnect Magazine) 06/03/2010

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