Stephen Fry memoirs get Apple app makeover
Apple aficionado Stephen Fry has become part of a publishing first, with the author simultaneously releasing his latest book, The Fry Chronicles, as a book, iOS4 app and ebook.
The iPhone/iPad version of The Fry Chronicles allows you to read the book any which way you want. It has been designed not in chapters but colour coded sections – 112 in all.
"Instead of reading my book in a boring old beginning-to-end fashion, we thought you might like to read it backwards, or upside down, or from the inside out and back again," explained Fry about the app.
Tech chronicler
His publisher, Louise Moore, said about the memoir launch: "I can't think of a better author to launch this kind of new publishing - Stephen himself represents everything that we hold dear and value in Britain, yet at the same time has an extraordinary knowledge and love of cutting-edge technology."
The Fry Chronicles is available as a hardback (£20), ebook (£12.99 and comes complete with eight videos and photographs) and the myFry app for £7.99.
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Full version of Angry Birds for Android 'in 2-3 weeks'
Rovio, the creator of Angry Birds, has announced that the full version of the game for the Android platform will be out within the month.The game has been a huge hit on the iPhone – the paid-for version has been downloaded some 7 million times – and there is even talk of a movie in the works.
The popularity of the app has meant that Android users have been eagerly awaiting for Angry Birds to land.
Prayers were answered this month when a Lite version of the game landed on Android Market, available for those handsets with 2.1 and above and for those phones with VGA+ screen resolution.
Now Rovio has announced a full version of the game is a mere two to three weeks away.
Best game experience
"We are currently working hard to ensure that Angry Birds on Android will offer best game experience for as many people as possible," explained a Rovio spokesperson to TalkAndroid.
"The expected release date is within 2-3 weeks."
Before the game is launched, Rovio is hard at work making Angry Birds compatible with QVGA devices. It is also trying to sort out lag problems it is having with the game on older Android devices - which means the onset of fat chicks being thrown at pigs will be even greater.
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IDF 2010: Cloud-based, ray-traced gaming shown at IDF
Intel's ray-tracing maestro, Daniel Pohl, showed off a live demo of a ray-traced Wolfenstein, running in a cloud-based scenario, and on a decidedly non-gaming laptop.The demo was part of 'day zero' of the Intel Developer Forum in San Francisco and, more specifically, a presentation by Intel's newly established Interaction and Experience Research Lab, headed up by Labs Director Genevieve Bell.
The heavy processing grunt used to run the ray-traced Wolfenstein was performed by a set of servers relaying the information back to the client machine (which Pohl was showing the game on). That's with all the physics light calculations - they were being done on the fly as he panned around the scene.
The back and forth between the client and server was run through a gigabit switch but Pohl maintains that "it could be further optimised to run over the internet" meaning full, graphics intensive games featuring this tech could be run on machines with no gaming pedigree.
Pohl also believes there's still a place for dedicated gaming machines for what he calls "extreme gamers" but the practical demonstration of something so processor intensive being able to take place over the web might suggest otherwise.
Still the demonstration was rather jerky in places, but considering in one scene a chandelier had been replaced with a fully ray-traced version containing around a million triangles that's not altogether surprising. Especially when the whole original scene only contains around 300,000 triangles.
The jury is still out on ray-tracing in games. Are gamers really interested in light beams being done physically correct with a huge cut in frame rates, or is the synthesis of light refraction enough? Until there is no sacrifice asked of us gamers then it's always going to be the latter.
Daniel Pohl obviously thinks there's something in it as he's been creating ray-traced versions of games since Quake 3, the project that brought him to the attention of Intel.
There is also still something a little off-putting about ray-traced images too, something almost hyper-real about them, like an idealised version of a model instead of the inevitably slightly gritty real one.
After all, light refraction is only a single part of creating a realistic environment.
We'll have more from the Intel Developer Forum all this week on TechRadar.
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In Depth: PC slow? Try these tips, tricks and tweaks
When a new computer first arrives, it generally feels snappy, responsive and much faster than your old system.But, within a few months you might notice that boot and shutdown times are lengthening, applications take longer to load, and your whole system seems a little slower than it used to be. So what's going on?
There are all kinds of reasons why a computer's performance might tail off over time. Many applications install extra components that Windows must load when it starts, for instance, which both extend boot time and consume valuable RAM.
Other programs fill your hard drive and registry with junk files and redundant entries. The more of this clutter you have, the longer it takes to defragment drives, carry out file searches, scan for viruses and more.
On top of this, Windows may simply not be set up properly. Software will sometimes change important Windows settings in a way that cuts performance, without warning – all you'll notice is that your computer feels slower, for no apparent reason.
Don't despair, though. This slowdown isn't inevitable. You can fight back by streamlining Windows, identifying unwanted applications, removing junk files and re-optimising your settings. It's surprisingly quick and easy – Windows provides many tools that can make a real difference, and others are available online, for free.
And streamlining is very effective. When you've finished, you won't just have restored your computer to its original performance levels – it could be even faster.
Unwanted applications
Streamlining starts by taking a close look at the programs on your PC. You might have hundreds of installed applications, for instance, but do you really need them all?
Removing any you no longer need frees up valuable system resources. To begin, click Start ➜ Control Panel, then select Uninstall a program (or Add or Remove Programs in Windows XP). If you have Windows Vista or Windows 7, then right-click the Name column header, click More, and choose the details you'd like to see about each program.
We'd recommend checking the Name, Size, Installed On and Last Used On boxes. Now choose to sort by Date Last Used in Windows XP, or click the Last Used On column header in Windows Vista or Windows 7, and you'll see your applications sorted by when they were last run.
Browse the list carefully. If you've not run something in the last year, say, will you ever want to run it again? If the answer for any program is 'no' then select it, and click Uninstall.
Next, choose Size in the Windows XP Sort box, or click the Size column header to sort your programs by the amount of space they consume, and take a look at the largest. Some games, in particular, can consume a huge amount of hard drive real estate, perhaps 10 or 15GB. Are they really worth it?
If you decide you can do without a particular program, again, select it and click Uninstall. You can also click Turn Windows features on or off or Add/Remove Windows Computers to remove Windows applets you're not using, but this generally has less effect.
If you never run an applet then it won't slow you down, and turning a feature off won't free up much, if any, disk space either.
Pull the plug-ins
Many applications support plug-ins, add-ons or extensions, tiny tools that deliver all kinds of new features and functionality. And this is generally a good thing.
There is a price to pay, though. The more extensions you install, the slower their parent application is to load, the more RAM it consumes, and the greater the chance of instability. So it's wise to review them occasionally, and remove any you no longer use.
In Internet Explorer, click Tools > Manage Add-ons to see the extensions you've installed. If you spot something you're sure you don't need, choose it and click Disable. In Firefox, click Tools > Add-ons > Extensions. Look for add-ons that you no longer use, click them and select Uninstall.
Microsoft Office 2007 comes with many extensions that most people don't need at all. In Office Outlook 2007, for instance, click Tools > Trust Center > Add-ins > Go to see the selection available on your system. If you've installed iTunes, you'll see an iTunes Outlook Add-in and Outlook Change Notifier. These are useful if you want to exchange Outlook's calendar with your iPhone, but if you've no Apple mobile devices, then it's safe to clear the checkboxes to remove them from your system.
You can also clear the Microsoft Office Sharepoint Server Colleague Import Add-in if you don't use Sharepoint Server (if you've never heard of it, you don't, it's a business feature), disable the Microsoft Outlook Mobile Service if you don't send SMS messages from Outlook, and clear Microsoft VBA for Outlook Addin if you're not using Visual Basic for Applications macros. Click OK when you're done, restart Outlook and you should find it loads faster, as well as saving RAM.
Repeat the process in other Microsoft Office tools. In Office Word, for instance, click the Office button, then Word Options > Add-Ins > Go and clear the box next to any toolbars or other options you don't need.
Free drive space
With even budget computers including 1TB hard drives, it's tempting to stop worrying about how your drive space is used. After all, does it really matter whether you've 600GB or 800GB free? The answer, surprisingly, is yes.
Hard drive performance can vary considerably, depending on where your data is stored. Windows stores files on the fastest part of the drive at first, but as you install more applications and create new documents, so transfer speeds for those files drop. The less free hard drive space you have, the slower your PC becomes.
The good news is that you've made a start on improving the situation, by uninstalling surplus programs. And Windows has a Disk Cleanup tool that can help even more, by locating files that can safely be deleted.
Click Start, then Run if you have Windows XP, type cleanmgr.exe and press Return. Choose the drive you'd like to clean, click OK, then wait while Windows scans your PC. When the report appears you'll see a list of file types that can be deleted: thumbnails generated by Explorer, temporary files, the contents of the Recycle Bin and more.
Check the box next to every file type you're sure you don't need, click OK and Windows will delete those files for you.
While this helps a little, specialist drive cleaning tools can find and delete even more redundant files. CCleaner is one of the best.
Defrag properly
As you use a computer, files become fragmented, scattered in chunks all over your hard drive. Windows still loads them correctly, but it takes longer as the hard drive has to move to each piece of the file. Run a defrag tool, though, and it fixes this, defragmenting files into single blocks, then relocating them all to the fastest part of your hard drive.
This can take a long time, sometimes hours, but it's worth it. To get started, click Start > Computer, right-click your main system drive, and select Properties > Tools > Defragment Now. In Windows XP, you can then click Analyze for a report on the degree of fragmentation, or Defragment to defrag right away.
Windows Vista and Windows 7 are a little different. They should defragment your drives automatically, and if that's set up you'll see a message saying that "scheduled defragmentation is enabled". If you don't see this, turn it on by clicking Configure Schedule (Windows 7 only), then checking the Run on a schedule box (Windows Vista and Windows 7).
Even if your drive has been recently defragmented, it's worth doing it again, particularly if you've just uninstalled lots of programs and cleared your hard drive. Click Defragment Now, and leave the tool to do its work. And later, think about trying a third-party defrag tool for even better results. See the 'Defrag your hard drive' walkthrough below for an example.
Windows services
When your system starts, Windows loads many services – background programs that can provide useful functions for the operating system and your applications. Some of these may be unnecessary, though, extending your boot time and wasting resources. Pruning them can offer small performance benefits.
Tweaking services can be very risky, however. If you disable the wrong service then you can crash your computer immediately, and it may not boot next time, either. So if you're a PC novice or at all unsure about how to recover from disasters, skip to the next section.
If you're happy to give this a try, click Start (then Run in Windows XP), type services.msc and press Return to launch the Services applet. Scroll down the list, looking for services you don't need.
If you don't use Media Center, for instance, the Windows Media Center Extender, Receiver and Scheduler services are all useless (these are present in Windows Vista and Windows 7 only, not Windows XP). Double-click each in turn, set their Startup type to Disabled and click OK.
The Distributed Link Tracking Client manages file links over a network. We don't use the feature, you probably don't either. Again, double-click and set its Startup type to Disabled to turn the service off next time.
Other services that can usually be turned off include IP Helper (only useful with an IPv6 network), Offline Files (if you don't use this feature), the Tablet PC Input Service (unless you have a Tablet PC), and the Secure Socket Tunneling Protocol Service (unless you use this to connect to a virtual private network, plugging in to a server at work maybe). And many third-party applications install services you may not need.
Apple's iTunes, for instance, adds Apple Mobile Device and iPod Service, both of which can be turned off if you don't have an iPod or iPhone. The Nvidia Stereoscopic 3D Driver Service can be disabled if you don't have the 3D glasses to take advantage of nVidia's 3D Vision. And if you've installed Nero Burning ROM, but don't use Nero BackItUp, it's safe to disable the Nero BackItUp Scheduler, which may free up a few resources.
Start-up programs
Many applications install components that launch when Windows starts, often without asking. The more you have of these, the longer your computer takes to boot, and the less RAM you have for your other programs.
It's a good idea to streamline your start-up programs list occasionally, to make sure you're only loading software that you really need. This process begins by scanning the icons in your system tray.
Do you see any you never use? If you've installed iTunes, for instance, you may have an Apple QuickTime icon (a blue 'Q'); right-click this and you can launch QuickTime, open recent files and so on. If you find this handy, there's no problem.
But if you never use it, tell QuickTime not to launch when Windows loads. (Right-click the icon, select QuickTime Preferences, click Advanced, clear the Install QuickTime icon in system tray box.)
It's the same story with other icons. If they're from an essential program, like an antivirus tool, or something you use all the time, leave them alone. But if they're surplus to requirements, right-click the icon, and look for a Settings, Options or Preferences dialogue where you can tell it not to launch when Windows starts.
You may have other start-up programs that don't leave icons in the system tray, but these can be viewed from the Windows System Configuration tool. Click Start, then Run if you have Windows XP, type msconfig.exe and press Return to launch this, then click the Startup tab to view your Windows start-up programs.
Scroll down the list, and if you see a program you're sure is unnecessary, clear the box to its left and it won't be loaded when you next boot. Click OK when you're done, then restart your system.
All this streamlining means Windows should boot more quickly, but that's just the start; by freeing up RAM and CPU time, as well as rearranging hard drive folders, your entire system should feel noticeably faster and more responsive.
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HTC 7 Trophy outed as another Windows Phone?
If any of you have long enough memories/the ability to search TechRadar, then you might remember the HTC Trophy, which has just made another appearance via Vodafone Germany.Last year we saw a leaked roadmap from HTC, and the main talking point there was the codenamed HTC Legend, which appeared as the... HTC Legend.
But the HTC Trophy was also in there, courtesy of XDA Developers' forum, calling it a 'productivity device', and offering a QWERTY portrait keyboard.
Tweak to fit
The other specs, a 5MP camera, 3-inch VGA screen and 1400mAh battery may have to be tweaked slightly to fit with the Windows Phone 7 - these were meant to be running the mutant Windows Mobile 6.5 OS, after all.
We sadly never got to see any pictures of the device, and the spec sheet links have also been deleted, but thanks to the Vodafone inventory listing we can see that the HTC Trophy has now been re-dubbed the HTC 7 Trophy, according to German site BestBoyz, and presumably being shown off next month.
We've already seen some other Windows Phone 7 designs from HTC, with the slide out speaker version and the more normal tablet-style offering already likely to show up - but don't forget the HTC Desire HD is being shown off later this week too.
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HTC 7 Legend outed as another Windows Phone?
If any of you have long enough memories/the ability to search TechRadar, then you might remember the HTC Trophy, which has just made another appearance via Vodafone Germany.Last year we saw a leaked roadmap from HTC, and the main talking point there was the codenamed HTC Legend, which appeared as the... HTC Legend.
But the HTC Trophy was also in there, courtesy of XDA Developers' forum, calling it a 'productivity device', and offering a QWERTY portrait keyboard.
Tweak to fit
The other specs, a 5MP camera, 3-inch VGA screen and 1400mAh battery may have to be tweaked slightly to fit with the Windows Phone 7 - these were meant to be running the mutant Windows Mobile 6.5 OS, after all.
We sadly never got to see any pictures of the device, and the spec sheet links have also been deleted, but thanks to the Vodafone inventory listing we can see that the HTC Trophy has now been re-dubbed the HTC 7 Trophy, according to German site BestBoyz, and presumably being shown off next month.
We've already seen some other Windows Phone 7 designs from HTC, with the slide out speaker version and the more normal tablet-style offering already likely to show up - but don't forget the HTC Desire HD is being shown off later this week too.
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Apple to shut down free bumpers on 30 Sept
Apple has announced the end of its free bumper scheme, confirming that by the end of this month it will no longer be giving out free cases.From 30 September, anyone that's purchased an iPhone 4 will no longer be able to get a free rubber protective case - possibly hinting that the new batch of iPhone 4's will have been modified to reduce the problem.
Apple is stating that "we now know that the iPhone 4 antenna attenuation issue is even smaller than we originally thought" as the reason for shutting down the scheme, but wants to carry on with the offer to make sure everyone is covered.
Refunds at the ready
The refund policy that was brought in to appease customers, allowing users to return (undamaged) iPhone 4s to Apple stores for a full refund with no restocking fee up to 30 days after purchase, will also be ended.
It's interesting to note Apple is calling it the Bumper scheme, as at the time Jobs said: "we're going to send you a free case. We can't make enough bumpers. No way we can make enough in the quarter. So we're going to source some cases and give you a choice."
So get cracking if you bought an iPhone 4 and want to see it covered in rubbery goodness for free - otherwise you'll have to wait until the Bumpers are back in stock to buy one.
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Nokia loses another chief in a week
Nokia has lost another high-level executive in less than a week, with Mobile Solutions leader Anssi Vanjoki departing his post.Vanjoki was the man who was supposed to bring Nokia back to the sharp end of the smartphone market, to help the Finnish firm compete with Apple and Google.
But despite only being in the post for just over a year, and the massive Nokia World event starting tomorrow, Vanjoki has decided today is the day to announce that he's leaving to the world.
This news follows the decision by Nokia to oust current CEO Olli-Pekka Kallasvuo and replace him with Microsoft's Stephen Elop.
The time has come
In a press release he stated: "I felt the time has come to seek new opportunities in my life."
"At the same time, I am one hundred per cent committed to doing my best for Nokia until my very last working day. I am also really looking forward to this year's Nokia World and sharing news about exciting new devices and solutions."
Vanjoki has a six month notice period, so there's plenty of time to bring someone else in. But unless that person comes complete with a smartphone from 50 years in the future, it's difficult to see how Nokia is going to offer anything that will turn consumers' heads in the next year or two.
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In Depth: 7 of the best Linux BitTorrent clients
BitTorrent is a protocol for P2P file sharing that's often the fastest way to get hold of the latest distros. It's expanded far beyond the original Python implementation and now incorporates all sorts of extra technologies, such as Distributed Hash Tables, Peer Exchange and more. A modern BitTorrent client has to be able to cope with encryption, working behind NAT routers (preferably with UPnP) and a host of other acronymic terms. We also expect them to be easy to use, yet full of features and customisable parts.
There's a war being waged against torrent clients by ISPs that (understandably) want to use traffic shaping technology to de-prioritise the torrent traffic in favour of Facebook, so technologies such as encryption and randomised port access become useful if you don't want to get capped.
In this Roundup, we 've only considered clients that run natively on Linux. The reference BitTorrent client is still going, but the last Linux release was so long ago that we haven't bothered including it.
There are some active and up-to-date clients, such as Miro, that are tuned to particular activities. These are really good at what they do, but not for general use, so they've been excluded too.
Finally, there are plenty of commendable command line torrent clients such as rtorrent and aria2, but they make terrible screenshots and we have to draw the line somewhere, so these aren't represented either.
How we tested...
The clients were tested on a Core 2 Duo 2.5GHz desktop with 4GB memory running Fedora 13. Apart from normal usage, the main test for speed, CPU and memory use was performed with four test torrent files of 256MB each. The clients were restricted to downloading three files simultaneously.
The tracker was run on the same machine to eliminate any variance in network latency, and the torrents were seeded by three machines on a local 10/100 network using a variety of clients (Transmission, uTorrent, Vuze).
Using lots of memory or CPU cores is often intentional to speed up downloads. The timed downloads were averaged over three runs, but are guidelines only.
Deluge
This client can be run in a variety of modes. Written in Python, it makes use of GTK for the desktop interface, but isn't really a Gnome app as such – it looks just as at home on KDE or whatever your desktop of choice is.
The layout of the main screen is pretty straightforward – a tree on the left enables you to select an item of interest (say, your current downloads), which are then displayed in the main panel. The status bar along the bottom gives readouts on various things, such as current speeds and connected or discovered peers.
Deluge also supports the System Tray, and displays the transfer speeds as well as options to control uploads and downloads and add a torrent without troubling yourself with the main interface – a nice touch not found in many clients.
The core functionality of a basic client is handled by the main app, but for what many people would consider essential features you may have to delve into the various plugins available – for blocklists or scheduling, for example. There are quite a few of these and they can be installed directly through Deluge without much fuss.
There's no option to launch a file directly from the download list, nor is there a torrent searching facility, which is frustrating. One annoying thing about this client is that the moving average for download speed continues moving after downloading has finished.
At the time of writing, version 1.3 of the software is imminent, so perhaps that will be fixed by the time you read this. It isn't a bad effort by any means, though it lacks some of the system integration of others, and is only a middleweight when it comes to useful options. It does work, and is pretty light on resource use.
Verdict
Deluge
Version: 1.2.3
Website: http://deluge-torrent.org
Middle-of-the-road performer, but it does get lots of development love.
Rating: 6/10
KTorrent
Apps based on KDE are expected to be full of settings, options and menus, and this is no exception. KTorrent wouldn't easily be mistaken for a Mac OS X application – every pixel of its interface seems to want to communicate urgent information, or request some option to be set.
For those who aren't frightened by overt functionality or upset that their application interface may wish to impart some useful details, this is probably no bad thing.
In terms of the underlying technology, KTorrent easily matches or exceeds every other client here, except for Vuze, as it lacks the tracker, media player and UPnP media server. To be honest, the searching is a bit lacklustre, too.
Although a number of search engines are included, KTorrent just palms you off on the respective website, which is lazy, and not as useful as qBittorrent's effort. Aside from that, KTorrent has all the bases covered.
Extra functionality is provided by plugins, and again these show the micro-management touch. The bandwidth scheduling can be set on a giant calendar, so if you want to allow unlimited uploads on Thursdays only, this is the only client that will do it. It's a KDE app of old, exposing pretty much every feature and option to user control and leaving it up to you to work out whether you need them or not.
KTorrent was the only client that managed connections to all the available peers in the time it took to download the test torrents, and it also clocked up the fastest time. Like some of the other clients, KTorrent can also be run in a headerless mode, and includes a built-in web interface.
Verdict
KTorrent
Version: 4.0
Website: http://ktorrent.org
Chock-full of features, if you can spare the effort to configure them.
Rating: 9/10
Monsoon
This rather simplistic application started life as an offshoot or natural extension to the MonoTorrent project – a torrent library written using the Mono implementation of .NET. As most of the other clients here use the libtorrent library, we might have expected some performance differences from Monsoon – and there were.
It did hijack most of the available CPU cycles, but also managed a blistering throughput, clocking up the fastest average time for the local download test (just pipping KTorrent). With a watch folder for incoming torrents and the possibility of storing active and completed ones in different locations, this client at least serves up the basics of features in the filehandling department.
However, there's no scheduling, no scripting, no plugins and no mention of DHT or Peer Exchange (although these are supported by MonoTorrent).
Visually, the Monsoon software follows a very familiar theme, with categories down the left, a main sortable list view in the middle and a tabbed selection of information screens for the selected torrent below. As with most of the other clients in this roundup, this does extend to the ability to set various options, including changing the bandwidth settings for an individual torrent file.
Like Vuze and KTorrent, Monsoon includes a feed subscription. Many video podcasts are distributed in this way, and it's pretty simple to set up. There are some advanced filtering options to make sure you get exactly what you want.
Monsoon is a promising project that hasn't had a release in some time, although the underlying MonoTorrent library has been updated recently.
Verdict
Monsoon
Version: 0.21
Website: www.monsoon-project.org
Lacking in finesse and features, but an aggressive downloader.
Rating: 5/10
qBittorrent
This cross-platform client conforms more or less to the standard "right tree, main table panel and detail tabs underneath" school of interface design. Only the large and friendly buttons along the top show that you're not using Monsoon or many of the other clients listed here.
Although it has the impression of being quite minimal, there's much goodness hidden under the hood. It supports a sophisticated feed reader/filter subscription section for aiding with downloading series or video podcasts. There are all sorts of options buried away here, but the layout is good and easy to follow.
On the other hand, some tooltips for the many options and settings wouldn't go amiss. There's a console that shows the equivalent of an event log, as well as the list of banned IPs (should you have supplied it with a blocklist), though with these usually numbering in the thousands, it's somewhat pointless.
Far from pointless, though, is the search engine. Using a plugin mechanism to enable various torrent sites, qBittorent implements an amalgamated search strategy that's often more useful than the one-at-atime approach offered by KTorrent, for example. Just type in your search term (and choose a category for more specific results) and watch the screen fill up with matches from the supported sites, arranged in order of seed health. A great timesaver!
It's pretty middle-of-the-road in terms of performance in the tests and also the consumption of resources, but those few extra touches make it slightly more useful for general torrenting than the likes of Monsoon.
Verdict
qBittorrent
Version: 2.2.8
Website: http://qbittorrent.sourceforge.net
There are a lot of very good things hidden in this simple-looking client.
Rating: 7/10
Torium
For lightweight use, it doesn't come much lighter than this. Consuming less memory than the average MP3 file, this tiny client can actually manage to do a good download job at reasonable speeds, but if you were looking for bells and whistles, you came to the wrong tree.
The interface is pretty stark, but that's because there aren't actually that many features. The single panel shows a table with six columns – just enough to serve up the torrent name and the current speed and progress. If you were expecting fancy graphs or graphical swarm diagrams, you'll need to grab a crayon and draw them yourself.
You can get some additional info on the loaded torrents by right-clicking them and choosing Properties, which does at least enable you to manipulate priorities and download locations, as well as view the current peer list. There's a menu option for loading a banned IP list, but it doesn't actually seem to do anything.
Crucially, encryption is on the missing feature list. As this is one of the ways many clients get around ISP imposed bandwidth limits, it's likely that you might find it hard to find peers (although DHT is actually implemented) as more and more clients default to at least preferring an encrypted connection.
Of course, there are many other features you may miss, but Torium does manage to fetch and seed torrents with a degree of competence, so the basics are there. If you absolutely must have a torrent client on some really, very, extremely resource-restricted device, this might just work out for you, but the lack of modern features means that it's unlikely to function well for anything but the most popularly seeded files.
Verdict
Torium
Version: 0.4.2
Website: http://bithack.se/projects/torium
Lightweight in the extreme, at the expense of missing crucial feature.
Rating: 3/10
Transmission
You have to put in some sort of special effort to become the default (and thus, automatically most popular) torrent client for Ubuntu.
For Transmission, this came in the guise of streamlining everything and making it so simple that it's hard to go wrong. In some instances, this does also make it difficult to do the very specific thing you wanted to do, which is always the case when applications are simplified to the point of fool-proofery.
There doesn't seem to be any form of control over how many torrents are active at a time, which is a shame because this is a good way of fine-tweaking performance. In other repsects, Transmission is up to date with support for proxying, all the latest DHT/PEX and magnet technology as well as LAN peer detection, encryption and blocklists.
The client has a friendly and easy-to-use interface. The scrolling main window shows either all torrents, active torrents, seeds, downloads and paused transfers. A simple updating progress bar and transfer speed readout has all you need to know, though it has to be said that the lists do become unmanageable if you're dealing with lots of torrents.
Another plus point for Transmission is the focus on reducing the resource overhead. Like some of the others here, it can also be run as a headless client with an optional web interface. Transmission's pared-down resources mean it will easily fit on an embedded set-top box or NAS.
Transmission is still in full-on development mode, with lots of changes and fixes being added regularly. If simple is what you want, look no further than this.
Verdict
Transmission
Version: 2.0
Website: www.transmissionbt.com
Very easy to use, and ongoing development will make it better
Rating: 7/10
Vuze
Vuze, which used to go simply by the names Azureus Vuze and plain old Azureus, has consistently been one of the top torrent clients on any platform pretty much since release. It isn't difficult to explain that popularity when you consider it was the first client to offer a high degree of user configurability and feature innovation.
It has also been available on Linux since launch, because it's built on Java, but that's possibly why it didn't fare as well as it did on Windows machines – historically, Java has been slow on Linux and consequently Azureus seemed bloated, unresponsive and took up way too many system resources.
Subsequent versions, now running on a muchimproved Java, fare a lot better. Looks-wise, Vuze is in a league of its own, although some of the UI sensibilities seem to be borrowed from the Mac OS X desktop.
Although it handles other files, Vuze is ever-so-slightly geared towards media. For a start, finished downloads are moved to the Unwatched section. where you'll find your downloaded files complete with a thumbnail preview (if they do happen to be video files).
In a nice touch, it's possible to subscribe to video podcasts easily this way too – if you've downloaded an episode from Vuze's suggestion list or a recognised feed, the option to download future episodes automatically will appear via a familiar feed icon.
Vuze has a built-in player, though this didn't actually work on our test box, but it's still no effort to launch the files – they'll fire up in your default media player. If you want to watch from a different computer, Vuze includes a media server app that complies with the UPnP methods of detection, so you can download on your desktop and view on a laptop or wherever.
To be honest, these features account for much of the apparent bloat of the system. For many, the killer feature is the automatic, editorialised feed of legitimate downloadable content that is served up from Vuze itself.
This is categorised and, while it isn't perfect, there's plenty of interesting torrenting to be done – discovering new video blogs or getting the latest movie trailers. There's no channel for Linux distros, though, so they've missed out there…
Every feature you can imagine is configurable through the preferences. Cunningly, this has been split up into different modes of expertise, so unless you enable Expert mode, you won't see all the settings that, 90% of the time, you have no need to know about.
Apart from the built-in features, which include smart remote pairing so you can control your Vuze client over the web (even from a smartphone), there are bucketfuls of plugins available to tend to your every whim. If you want to waste some extra CPU cycles, you can view the swarm cloud in 3D, or do useful things like shape your traffic yourself to avoid the wrath of your ISP.
The tests were somewhat surprising when it came to Vuze, because it was a consistently poor performer. Although it picked up the available peers quickly enough, and managed a regular bandwidth over its connections, it was still somewhat short of what was at least theoretically possible.
This may be down to problems with Java rather than the Vuze code itself. In real-world tests, where the connection bandwidths rarely get into the megabit range, it performed just as well as the other clients (although using more memory).
Vuze may be bloaty, but on a modern desktop it's just as responsive and usable as a native Linux application. It may lack some features (it uses its own notification system rather than the OS default, for example), but it's nevertheless an accomplished and friendly torrent client.
Verdict
Vuze
Version: 4.4.0.6
Website: www.vuze.com
Yes, it's admittedly big and bloaty, but it's comprehensive and really quite wonderful with it.
Rating: 9/10
The best Linux BitTorrent client is...
Vuze: 9/10
Although we had to do some sort sort of benchmarking, it's important not to read too much into it. In order to be impartial, we had to remove some real-world factors, such as the internet, latency issues and such like.
That said, Vuze did remarkably poorly in the test, in spite of using more memory and similar amounts of CPU power, it failed to top more than about 2MBps in downloading speed, even with the full bandwidth of a 100Mbps connection. This is likely an issue with the underlying Java implementation.
Transmission fared well in the tests, and has most of the features that users would like to see. It's pretty straightforward to use, and this is probably the major reason it has been included as the default in so many recent distro releases. This comes at the cost of user-set parameters.
While the software does a great job of setting up automatic defaults, there may be times when it would be nice to, for example, fine-tune the number of torrents and connections.
KTorrent shines in some areas, but is very much below par in others. The search facility is nice to have, but it effectively just palms you off with a browser view of the selected search site, although it does capture any download links and offer to add them to the download queue. On the other hand it has so many features, and is very fast, if a little confusing to configure.
Overall, this was a tougher contest than it might have seemed. Vuze does boast the best in terms of features, ease of use and system integration. With the media server built in, it provides an all-round solution that's hard to beat for most purposes.
If you want speed, you should probably take a look at KTorrent, and for ordinary ease of use without having to worry about swarms and reverse DNS lookups and the like, Transmission is worth a pop.
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Ask.com kills off Bloglines
Ask.com has revealed it will be shutting down its RSS reader Bloglines this October, some five years after it acquired the service.Bloglines was the first online news aggregators around when it arrived in 2003.
Created by Mark Fletcher it helped users manage the 200 million blog articles on the web and was so successful it was bought up by Ask.com in 2005.
Just months after the buyout, Google announced its own new aggregator, Google Reader, and since then it has been a struggle for Ask to maintain a readership for the site.
Writing's on the wall
On its blog, Ask.com said about the announcement: "The internet has undergone a major evolution. The real-time information RSS was so astute at delivering (primarily, blog feeds) is now gained through conversations, and consuming this information has become a social experience.
"RSS is a means to an end, not a consumer experience in and of itself. As a result, RSS aggregator usage has slowed significantly, and Bloglines isn't the only service to feel the impact. The writing is on the wall."
On the bloglines site, it says that it will be officially shutdown as of 1 October 2010.
There's also a handy guide on how to port your feeds into an existing RSS reader before this date.
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Super Mario smashes quarter century barrier
In an announcement that will make many of us feel like time is slipping away a little too fast, the Super Mario series is 25 years old today.It's been quarter of century since the plucky little plumber bounded onto our pixelated screens, slightly camp and less useful brother in tow, in Super Mario Bros.
Since then, we've had sequels, the Mario Kart series, Mario Party, Super Smash Bros, Super Mario World, Super Mario Galaxy... although the less said about Super Mario Paper the better.
He's also (rather polygamously) saved many princesses, evaded a dragon on so many occasions it might as well give up, played football at a high level... the whole time sustaining himself with perception-altering flowers and fungi.
Of course, Mario himself is actually 29 (at least), having first made his console appearance in 1981 on the barrel-rolling fun-fest Donkey Kong - although going under the pseudonym Jumpman.
Super Marina
And he obviously impressed enough (or bedded the right people) to get his own spin-off, with game designer Shigeru Miyamoto making him into the eponymous hero we know today.
"Stimulated by advancements in technologies, we have always enjoyed creating the Super Mario Bros. games," said Miyamoto, general manager of Nintendo's Entertainment Analysis and Development division.
"The series has always taken advantage of the latest technological advancements and is the fruit of creativity of many of my hard-working friends working closely as a team."
We still think he could lose some weight though - he's been running and jumping around for years with great athleticism, so perhaps his diet is all wrong.
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Review: Sigma SD15
Sigma's best known for its lenses, but it also produces two very interesting cameras. One is the DP1s/DP2s compact (same camera, different lenses) and the other is the SD series of D-SLRs. First came the 3Mp SD9 in 2002, which was followed by an improved SD10 in 2003, and then by the 4.7Mp SD14 in 2007. The SD15 is a development of the SD14, but at its heart is the same Foveon X3 sensor.
But while other makers bring out new sensors every couple of years, Sigma's Foveon X3 technology moves more slowly. As a result, the SD15 is more of a redesign than a new camera, despite the fact that it's been three years since the SD14 hit the market.
The Foveon X3's low pixel count sounds unimpressive these days, but the figures are misleading. Because of the way the images are created, and the high levels of sharpness they display, the SD15 is a pretty good match for any other APS-C D-SLR. But even if it is as good as any other SLR, why buy the SD15?
First, the extreme sharpness of the images gives them a visual quality you don't get with other cameras, even if the resolution is lower. Second, 4.7Mp files take up a lot less space than 12-14Mp images. Third, the SD15 uses a traditional design that offers refreshing simplicity, and if you already know your way around a camera, it's nice not to have to negotiate layers of gadgets and automation to get to key controls.
The SD15 is only a modest upgrade from the SD14, but it now uses SD/SDHC memory cards and has a 100,000-cycle shutter mechanism and a good-quality 460,000-dot LCD display. And like other Sigma cameras, it comes with Sigma's Photo Pro RAW conversion software.
You can open and convert its files with Adobe Camera Raw, but the Sigma software is better-tuned to the camera's own colour modes, and gives rather better performance at high ISOs.
You immediately notice the SD15's heavy, slab-like body. It feels tough and durable, but the plastic finish feels like it belongs on a cheaper body. There are some neat design touches, though.
There's a mirror lock-up mode for cutting shake with macro shots and extreme telephoto lenses, and inside the lens throat there's a glass Dust Protector designed to prevent dust getting into the mirror box and on to the sensor.
The controls are a little patchy. Some are very good, such as the main mode dial, which has just four positions for the camera's Program, Aperture Priority, Shutter Priority and Manual exposure modes. There's no idiot-proof auto mode, no scene modes and no movie mode.
On the left-hand side of the pentaprism is another dial, this time for setting the drive mode. Again, it's plain, straightforward and simple.
On the top of the grip on the right-hand side is a single control dial. It's a mild disappointment that there's only one, and it means that in Manual mode you have to hold down the exposure compensation button to toggle between shutter speed and aperture adjustment. Most SLRs in this price bracket have two dials.
This control dial has quite a heavy action, too, and it would have been better if it had overhung the front of the camera because it would be easier to get a proper grip on it.
There are a couple of issues on the back of the camera, too. There's a cluster of buttons at the top right for altering the ISO, metering and focus point, but these are a little too easy to press by accident if you rest your thumb in the wrong place. In addition, the functions of some of the buttons aren't clear.
There's a red 'asterisk' button alongside the LCD, which is used in playback mode for marking, rotating or locking images – building this into the main menus would be simpler. Plus, there's a Cancel button below the navipad on the right with no immediately obvious purpose, since you can cancel your way out of menus using the Menu button.
There's more than one way to change camera settings, too. The Quick Set button is in charge of the photo style (Standard, Vivid, Neutral, Portrait, Landscape), file format (RAW or JPEG), white balance and image quality (if you're shooting JPEGs). But there's also a Func button, which lets you select the flash and AF mode.
This button also displays a focus grid showing you the currently selected AF point, plus sundry other camera settings including the exposure mode, ISO, shutter speed and aperture. And yet this isn't the information display itself. This is another screen, showing some of the same information, which is activated by the 'i' button alongside the LCD. Frankly, it's a bit of a mess.
There's not much to say about the SD15's features that hasn't been said already. There's no movie mode, Live View or special scene modes to talk about. The 3fps continuous shooting speed is only adequate for a camera in this price range, although it can keep it up for 21 RAW frames in succession.
The 500-shot battery life is, again, adequate without being exceptional, as is the 77-segment auto-exposure sensor, which links the exposure to the currently selected focus point. You do get four metering modes, though, including Centre Area mode, which acts like a large 'spot' mode and is similar to the Partial mode you get on some Canon cameras.
So do the SD15's sophisticated metering options help its overall performance? Not exactly.
The standard multi-pattern metering mode proved distinctly unpredictable, especially with high-contrast subjects. A slight difference in viewpoint could produce big differences in exposure, possibly because of the shift in focus point and hence the way the meter reacted to the 'new' subject.
Otherwise, though, the SD15 is very impressive. If you haven't seen what the Foveon sensor can do, you'll be amazed at the clarity of the fine detail it produces. Each pixel is razor sharp. The 17-70mm Sigma lens supplied for this review proved rather good, too, with low levels of distortion, little chromatic aberration and terrific edge-to-edge sharpness.
This camera can't shoot RAW and JPEG files simultaneously, so it's likely most users will choose to shoot RAW. The conversions created by the Sigma Photo Pro software are rich, contrasty and highly saturated – perhaps a little too saturated now and again if you use the Sigma Photo Pro software's automatic setting.
You can also adjust the exposure, colour, white balance and other settings manually, or use the original camera settings. This gives more consistent results, even if it involves a little more work. At low ISOs there's no significant noise at all, but it does increase rapidly as the ISOs go up. This is one area where the SD15 does lag behind conventional D-SLRs.
Having said that, the conversions produced by the Sigma Photo Pro software from ISO1600 originals aren't at all bad, and you can trade off noise against smoothing to get a balance you're comfortable with.
Some might see the Foveon X3 sensor as the SD15's weak point, but it isn't. It produces small files, true, but they have such astonishing clarity and sharpness that they're a fair match for any regular APS-C format D-SLR.
The lack of features isn't really a problem, either. Using a D-SLR that's been stripped down to its basics will be a refreshing experience for experienced photographers who favour a thinking, methodical approach rather than complicated high-tech automation.
Where the SD15 does fall down is in the most mundane, straightforward areas of design and usability. It's big and tough, but also feels rather crude. And the controls are too muddled and confused: it's a simple camera that's been made unnecessarily frustrating.
And that's a shame. It's great to see such an innovative approach to digital imaging, and the quality of the Foveon X3 sensor's images is remarkable. We can only imagine what could be achieved if it could be developed into larger, higher-resolution versions.
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YouTube begins new live-streaming trials
YouTube has announced it has started trialling a new live-streaming platform, which integrates live content into its channels.Over the next couple of days the site will allow anyone to stream content over the site – with the only tools you need being a webcam, a camera and a keyboard cat (probably).
Rolling out the platform
Joshua Siegel from YouTube explained the trials of the site's blog, saying: "Included in the test is a Live Comments module which lets you engage with the broadcaster and the broader YouTube community.
"For the purpose of the trial, this offering will only be available today and tomorrow. Based on the results of this initial test, we'll evaluate rolling out the platform more broadly to our partners worldwide."
YouTube has used live streaming a number of times on the site, but it has been restricted to professional content, like a U2 concert and the Indian Premier League.
If the live streaming is a success, then it could open up the possibilities of live news coverage and more straight from vloggers' bedrooms worldwide.
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Review: Ortofon Vivo Red
The Ortofon Vivo Red is a new model from Europe's biggest name in cartridges, this is described by the company as a 'standard' low-output moving-coil design. In as much as its basic technical characteristics are absolutely textbook for the breed, that seems about right! It features an elliptical stylus and an aluminium cantilever, mounted into a plastic body about which we have just one small complaint: it has the dreaded open lugs at the side for mounting, rather than full-enclosed holes.
Two features mark this model out. First, it uses very high-purity ('7 nines') copper in the winding wires, an Ortofon speciality for many years now. Second, its body is made of a newly developed polycarbonate resin which is claimed to give very low resonance.
Sound is typical Ortofon, in all the best ways: very evenly balanced tonally but without sacrificing life and energy. If there's a weakness, it would seem to be in handling the hottest cuts, which just occasionally leave the Vivo Red struggling a bit.
But then it's not marketed as a disco cartridge and, unless you have a lot of show-off audiophile discs in your collection, this is unlikely to be a limitation.
Its detail is first-rate, with good imaging, too and it's worth noting that both of those aspects are very consistent with level, which is by no means always the case.
The treble is very sweet and handles both high levels and subtle ambient traces very well, while bass is extended and punchy, but never over done.
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Review: Asus GeForce GTS 450 TOP
The GTS 450 is the latest in Nvidia's burgeoning DX11 graphics stable. Coming hot on the heels of the superlative GTX 460 this new card has got a lot to live up to. And a lot of competition in AMD's HD 5770 too...
Nvidia has a history of making the biggest, fastest most monolithic of PC graphics cards.
The bleeding edge has always been the technology that's made the big splashes in the tech press, but equally it's Nvidia's mid-range cards that have arguably been more important.
With the release of this latest GF106-based card, the GTS 450, it's tackling the mid-range with its lowest-priced Fermi card yet.
Nvidia has a habit of making big splashes in the mid-range pool; the likes of the 6600GT and especially the phenomenal 8800GT have cemented their place in the hearts of PC gamers for years.
And last month saw the release of a Fermi card that can quite happily sit at that top table, the GTX 460.
In 1GB trim, and with some judicious waving of the overclocking stick, the GTX 460 has managed to single-handedly render all cards in the £150-£300 price range effectively obsolete.
That's including Nvidia's own GTX 470.
When you drop a couple of these into an SLI setup too you're then talking about a system which will happily give a GTX 480 /and/ AMD's top card, the dual-GPU HD 5970, a damn good thrashing.
For a lot less cash too.
So yay for us end-users and a resounding 'eek!' for the resellers hoping to make a bit of cash out of the margins on the top end cards. Sorry guys, but you're going to have to hope the volume sales of the GTX 460 make up for it…
But that still leaves a gap in the market under that £150 mark. And that is a place that AMD has had sewn up for a good long while.
The HD 5770-shaped shadow that looms like Arthur C. Clarke's monolith over that price point has been doing so for almost a year now and finally Nvidia has got a product to give it a run for its shader count.
This is where we're getting into volume territory.
The sub-£150 pricepoint sees some of the biggest number of sales of all graphics cards, certainly more than the rather niche top-end beasties. A lot of folk want an HD 5770 then, and from the look of the GTS 450 Nvidia is one of them.
Compared with the Radeon HD5770 the stock GTS 450 comes in with an easily comparable specs sheet. Both carry the 1GB GDDR5 running on a similar 128-bit bus.
The clock and memory speeds aren't far apart with the HD 5770 running at 850MHz/1200MHz for the core and memory speeds and Nvidia's latest coming in at 783MHz/1000MHz respectively.
And importantly both are coming in at almost identical prices. The standard GTS 450 hits the same £120 point the HD 5770 has made its home for the best part of a year.
So what do we get with the GTS 450 that we don't with the HD 5770?
Well, an almost brand new GPU architecture for starters. The GF104 began life running the show for the GTX 460 and represents a slimline structure compared to the slightly more bloated chip used in both the GTX 480 and the GTX 470 cards.
The GTS 450 is essentially more of the same, but with another new GPU moniker – the GF106.
This new chip is a bit more than half the chip that hummed away inside the GTX 460; with four streaming multiprocessors (SMs) against the bigger card's seven, there are a full 192 CUDA cores in the GTS 450 versus the 336 cores of the GTX 460.
It's also got a cut down memory interface too, even more cut down than the chopped 192-bit bus the remedial 768MB GTX 460 housed.
At 128-bit it's obvious that the GTS 450 is going to have its work cut out at the higher resolutions.
We can expect to see this new GPU rolled out to cover the lower end of the Fermi spectrum going forward.
Though I do still hope to see a high-end refresh coming out based on the GF104 chip with the full complement of 512 CUDA cores we were originally promised with the launch of the inaugural Fermi, the GTX 480.
You do also get all the extra GPU gubbins Nvidia has been chewing our ears off about for the last few years. Namely the extras that the CUDA software stack and the PhysX software gives you.
As you drill down into the lower echelons of the graphics card hierarchy though the extra stresses the PhysX pretties put on the GPU makes this additional feature less important.
The new 260.52 Nvidia drivers come with a host of improvements, giving a boost to the other 400 series GPUs too, and a new driver installer that looks suspiciously like Catalyst...
Still, the rock-solid overclock in the Asus TOP gives it a significant boost over the vanilla GTS 450 as you can plainly see from the 1,680 x 1,050 figures below.
Predictably the 2,560 x 1,600 scores are far lower, but then that isn't where this card is pointing its arsenal at.
What it is targetting though is the HD 5770 and the overclocked Asus card has it beat in almost all the benchmarks.
Things aren't so rosy for the vanilla GTS 450 though, which does fall short against MSI's overclocked HD 5770.
DX11 gaming performance
DX10 gaming performance
But what does that all mean in performance terms?
Does the nearly half-size chip offer us half the framerates too? Thankfully not, if it did then there's no way this latest card could have a hope in hell against the HD 5770 shaped competition.
In comparison with the GTX 460 then things are understandably slower, though somewhat strangely the biggest difference between the cards can be felt at the traditional 22-inch resolution of 1680x1050.
At this res the difference between the stock-clocked GTS 450 and the 768MB GTX 460 is generally around 10fps and in Far Cry 2 that jumps up to 20fps.
This overclocked TOP edition from Asus though closes the gap, even going as far as to best the 768MB GTX 460 in the tessellation-heavy Heaven benchmark.
At the higher resolutions though the larger memory bus of the 1GB GTX 460 really comes into its own putting a chunk of clear water between it and the GTS 450. For only around £35 more than this TOP Edition that's a hell of a lot of performance you're getting out of the larger card.
But the GTX 460 isn't what this latest card is pitched against; that phenomenal mid-range Fermi stands alone, unchallenged.
What the GTS 450 is really going after is the HD 5770, and that's the card that NVIDIA is really hoping to kill off with its newest baby.
What it really needs to do is beat the HD 5770 comprehensively to really gain a market share against the AMD card. Unfortunately for Nvidia though it's almost too close to call, especially at the GTS 450's stock speed.
The news is better for this overclocked Asus version though, which across the board delivers consistently faster framerates than even the overclocked HD 5770 represented here by MSI's Hawk version.
Where the TOP Edition of Asus' GTX 460 was a bit of a weak-heart in the overclocking stakes, giving only a fairly miserly 30MHz boost. That's miserly considering the huge amount of overclocking headroom that cards boasts.
It's different with the GTS 450 though, boosting its core speed from 783MHz up to a rather chunky 925MHz.
That means that at 1680x1050 it's able to beat the all important 30fps mark in the sequel bench-fest of Far Cry 2, DiRT 2 and Just Cause 2. In Far Cry 2 and DiRT 2 it's able to hit that mark at 2560x1600 too.
In the AvP and Lost Planet DX11 benchmarks though it does struggle to top 20fps, where the GTX 460s can still get another 10fps on top of that.
That said it's all still incredibly close between the HD 5770 and the GTS 450 in whatever guise you care to compare. The difference, in general, is barely perceptible, only really showing in the figures themselves.
One of the key battlegrounds going forward is going to be how the two stack up against each other in multi-GPU trim.
The HD 5770 is quite frankly awesome in CrossFire, besting the more expensive GTX 470 across the board. If the GTS 450 though can carry on the GTX 460's good work in SLI it could well be a very tight battle.
But for now, as a single card, it still stands up.
We'd have hoped for a price tag a little closer to the £100 mark though; if it could undercut the HD 5770 then it would have been an absolute no-brainer as to which of the AMD or Nvidia cards get the nod.
At stock speeds the two cards take it in turns to have the couple frames per second advantage dependant on which title your testing.
The pricier TOP Edition though has clear water between it and even the overclocked HD 5770, but then you're getting dangerously close to the £150 you can pick up the 768MB version of the GTX 460 for. You can even find some flavours coming in for even less than that.
The older AMD card though can be picked up in vanilla flavour for around £100, making the extra £20 you'll have to pay for the newer Nvidia card a bit of sticking point. All you're really getting for that £20 is Nvidia's CUDA and PhysX goodness, which at this low level isn't any great shakes.
This TOP Edition's overclocked loving though does give it the edge, but the cost here too is going to make things tricky when you're making your buying decision.
It's still a good card, but it's really only as good as the AMD offering.
Unfortunately then for Nvidia it's not quite the card-killer that it might have hoped it would be; maybe worth a look in SLI but for now it's still far too close to call definitively.
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