LCD Makers Settle Price-Fixing Case
Five major LCD panel makers, including Samsung, Sharp, Hitachi, HannStar, and Chimei Innolux; agreed to pay over US $553 million in settlement to regulators for a price-fixing case. The case by regulators alleged that these companies colluded to fix prices of LCD panels 1999 and 2006, affecting billions of dollars of commerce. The scam unearthed in 2006, by regulators of Japan, Korea, United States, and the European Union. Many companies and executives have since pleaded guilty to criminal antitrust violations and paid more than US $890 million in fines so far.
The latest payout of $553 million is aimed to resolve claims by "indirect" purchasers that bought televisions and computers with thin film transistor LCDs, as well as claims by eight USA states: Arkansas, California, Florida, Michigan, Missouri, New York, West Virginia and Wisconsin. It also includes payments of $14.7 million by the companies to settle civil fine and penalty law claims by the states, the office of New York Attorney General Eric Schneiderman said. He stated "This price-fixing scheme manipulated the playing field for businesses that abide by the rules, and left consumers to pay artificially higher costs for televisions, computers and other electronics."
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(PR) Empire Brands' Wicked Audio Unveils Mind-Blowing Sound With New Solus Headphones
Empire Brands, manufacturers of aesthetically appealing headphones, will be releasing its new Solus (Latin for "Be Yourself") headphones, at CES 2012. The Solus headphones are the next big thing from Wicked Audio, with the highest quality design and most impeccable sound yet.
The soon-to-be-released Solus headphones is the first Wicked Audio product of 2012 to sport the companies brand new packaging. These headphones are available in a black/red dual-colored design and feature a thick braided cord for the ultimate in on-the-go convenience. The headphones also come equipped with a built-in volume control as well as a DJ switch, allowing users to switch from DJ to stereo sound, to experience impressive music sounds in both or either ears.
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Intel Launches the 'Cedar Trail' Atom Platform
Following a good few months of delays, Intel has today finally introduced its third-generation Atom processors, the 32nm chips codenamed Cedar Trail.
While still paired up with the NM10 Express chipset found in Pine Trail-based systems, the 'Cedar Trail' CPUs bring quite a few updates, including the already mentioned 32nm process (enabling higher clocks and a drop in power draw of up to 20% for the whole platform), plus a media engine that allows for Full HD (1080p) video playback and Blu-ray support, an integrated memory controller supporting DDR3-800/1066 memory, and updated, but still DirectX 9-enabled graphics (Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 3600/3650 based on the PowerVR SGX 545 from Imagination Technologies).
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Intel Granted New Network-Power-On Technology Patent
Intel has just been granted a patent by the USPTO, which it has had in filing since 2007. The patent is related to a technology that is an evolution of today's WoL (wake on LAN). In a network of at least three devices, where a device is requesting data from a second device that is turned off, there is a third device that will be capable of determining that state and switch on a computing device on demand. The technology can possibly wake computers up from "deep sleep" (powered down S5 state), which consumes much less power than a computer that's sleeping in S3 or S2 states.
Intel states that this feature the "powering on devices via intermediate computing device" feature, as described in the patent, not only applies to enterprise scenarios with large local networks, but also home and small-business scenarios where "devices coupled to a network may act as distributed media storage and playback with reduced power consumption when such devices are not in use." Details of how the proposed technology will be implemented still remain sketchy.
Source: Tom's Hardware
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Zalman AMP1000 Aluminum-Rubber Mousepad Starts Selling
Zalman started selling its AMP1000 aluminum-rubber mousepad. This mousepad uses a combination of anodized aluminum and rubber as its primary material. Its surface is optimized for all kinds of mice with resolutions well over 1000 dpi. Its surface has a smooth matte-black finish, and should present a balance between speed and control. A shiny chrome line frames it. The AMP1000 makes zero use of fabrics, and hence is spill-resistant. The AMP1000 measures 210(W) x 297(H) x 3(D) mm, weighing 668 g. Although its base is rubberized, the AMP1000 has rubber feet for additional grip with the surface below. The AMP1000 has reached Japanese stores, priced at 3,800 JPY, or about US $49.
Source: Hermitage Akihabara
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(PR) Tomorrow's Internet More Like Yesterday's Internet: McAfee 2012 Threat Predictions
McAfee today unveiled its 2012 Threat Predictions report, outlining the top threats that McAfee foresees for the coming year. The list indicates that emerging threats from 2011 are on track to become the major players for cyberactivity in 2012, including mobile banking, “legal” spam and virtual currency. McAfee Labs also predicts that attacks involving political motivation or notoriety will also make headlines, including high-profile industrial attacks, cyberwarfare demonstrations and hacktivist attacks targeting public figures.
“Many of the threats that will become prominent in 2012 have already been looming under the radar in 2011,” said Vincent Weafer, senior vice president of McAfee Labs. “Over the past year, the general public has become more aware of some of these risks, such as threats to critical infrastructure or the impact of hacktivism as they gain international media attention. In the meantime, we continue to see cybercriminals improving their toolkits and malware and are ready to make a significant impact in 2012.”
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(PR) Majority of Facebook Attacks Feed Fraudulent Affiliate Marketing Sites: Commtouch
Commtouch (NASDAQ: CTCH) today published an in-depth analysis of 2011 Facebook attacks within its Internet Threats Trend Report, a year-end synopsis of Internet threats. The report and infographic present a comprehensive analysis of scores of malicious Facebook activities during the past year, as identified by Commtouch Labs. Affiliate marketing sites are the final destination in three-fourths of all Facebook deceptions, according to the report. Visitors to these sites are induced to fill out surveys that generate affiliate payments for the scammers, victimizing legitimate businesses that pay affiliate fees.
Users are induced to click on the scams through social engineering tactics such as free merchandise offers, celebrity news, new (fake) Facebook applications, or simply a trusted friend sending a message stating: “You have to see this!” After users first click on the scams, malware or malicious scripts are to blame for the further spread of slightly over half the analyzed scams, with those falling into three main categories: likejacking, rogue applications, and malware or “self-XSS,” each of which is described in the report.
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HDD Vendors Want Long-Term Contracts with PC Makers
Well, it seems that the flooding in Thailand has done a lot more than destroy lives, wreck a few factories and cause HDD prices to shoot up. There appears to be a lot of opportunities for changing the terms of business too - to less favourable ones for customers of hard disc drives. First, we had the severe and unwelcome
warranty reductions and now we have HDD manufacturers trying to lock branded PC makers into expensive long-term contracts, according to
Digitimes. Some PC makers buy hard disk drives on a quarterly basis, at a fixed price, but now that prices have shot up and supplies restricted, HDD manufacturers are trying to coerce them into signing one year contracts at current high prices. However, it looks like it might not be such a good deal for PC makers, because the recovery in supply is continuing, with a full recovery potentially not so far away, which will of course make those prices plummet again. As it is, HDD shipments are projected to be around 140 million units in the first quarter of 2012, while the same quarter last year was 170-180 million units - so the fall isn't really that hugely less than before anyway and should become less severe as 2012 wears on.
One does get the impression that the HDD manufacturers are playing up the difficulty of restoring production volumes in order to give them a better bargaining hand. There's also the fact that recovering from the disaster is hugely expensive for them, so HDD makers will want to charge more to recoup those costs faster, motivating them to use tactics like these.
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Orico HM01 SSD Series Pictured
Orico unveiled its latest HM01 series performance SSD, which was pictured in a recent review by Expreview. Built in the standard 2.5-inch form-factor, these drives take advantage of the SATA 6 Gb/s interface. These drives use a Marvell-made controller, and MLC NAND flash memory. The HM01 series will be available in three capacities: 64 GB, 128 GB, and 256 GB. While the 256 GB variant offers read/write speeds of up to 500 MB/s (read) and 440 MB/s (write), the other variants offer speeds of up to 500 MB/s (read) with 330 MB/s (writes). The company did not give out pricing/availability details.
Source: Expreview
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Gigabyte Gives Lifetime Warranty to X79 Board Corrective BIOS Users, Isolates Problem
On Tuesday, a
major problem associated with Gigabyte's X79-UD3, X79-UD5, and G1.Assassin 2 motherboards came to light after a Gigabyte press-release, where enthusiasts subjecting their boards to voltage-assisted overclocking with stress-testing, ended up with burnt CPU VRM. Till that press-release, the scale of the problem was not known. Gigabyte announced remedies to existing owners, which included either updating their motherboards' BIOS to the latest "F7" version posted on the company website, or sending their boards dead or alive for free replacements.
We're getting to know now that to all those who opt to keep their boards and update their BIOS, Gigabyte is offering a lifetime product warranty, an extension of the limited warranties their products come with. Gigabyte's own version of what went wrong with these motherboards is that it shipped several of its motherboards with bad BIOS firmware that did not have "overclocking limits", which motherboards by other manufacturers did. This claim means that "japan0827", the overclocker from XFastest community who ended up with a burned X79-UD3 that he posted on YouTube, would have been running his setup way off spec, electrically.
Source: DigiTimes
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Intel Ivy Bridge Platform Reportedly Set for April 8 Debut
Known to be missing out on both CES 2012 and CeBIT 2012, Intel's next-generation processor platform, codenamed Ivy Bridge, is now claimed to be rolling out on April 8th. Of course, April 8th is a Sunday so it's probable that the actual launch, accompanied by a long press release and a flurry of reviews, will be scheduled for Monday, the 9th of April.
According to Digitimes' Taiwanese sources, the first Ivy Bridge wave will include no less than 25 processors (17 desktop models and 8 notebook/ultrabook chips) and 8 chipsets (Z77, H77, Z75 and B75 for desktops, HM77, UM77, HM76 and HM75 for mobile PCs). More Ivy Bridge products, including the Core i5-3470T CPU and the Q77, Q75, QS77 and QM77 chipsets, are said to become available in May.
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Gigabyte Intros New Revision of GA-EG41MFT-US2H
The market for socket LGA775 is still far from dead as there are large inventories of cheap Core 2, Pentium, and Celeron chips left in the market, as well as buyers upgrading their DDR2 systems to those with DDR3, to benefit from the DDR3 fire sale. Gigabyte introduced a new revision of its GA-EG41MFT-US2H, revision 1.4, with an updated gigabit Ethernet chip. The micro-ATX motherboard uses 3+1 phase VRM to power the processor, a wide range of Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad processors are supported. The processor is wired to Intel's G41 northbridge. Surprisingly, its graphics controller gives out an HDMI connection apart from DVI and D-Sub. It is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting up to 8 GB of memory.
Expansion slots include two PCI, one each of PCI-Express 1.1 x16 and PCIe x1. The ICH7 southbridge drives four SATA 3 Gb/s ports, and an IDE connector. The gigabit ethernet controller has been updated to RTL8111E, from the 8111D found on the older revision. Other features include 8-channel HD audio, Firewire, FDC, COM, and a number of USB 2.0 ports. Expect a sub-$100 pricing for this board.
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Apple Seeks Patent for Fuel-Cell Powered Notebooks
Apple reportedly started ground-work on developing a design with which future Macbooks can be powered by fuel-cells, pushing the battery life envelope further up. Apple has applied for two key patents with USPTO, titled "
Fuel Cell System to Power a Portable Computing Device", and "
Fuel Cell System Coupled to a Portable Computing Device."
The filing states "Our country's continuing reliance on fossil fuels has forced our government to maintain complicated political and military relationships with unstable governments in the Middle East, and has also exposed our coastlines and our citizens to the associated hazards of offshore drilling." It continues "These problems have led to an increasing awareness and desire on the part of consumers to promote and use renewable energy sources."
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New Intel Server Board to Hold 1 TB of RAM
Intel is working on a new four-socket LGA2011 Server Board product, S4600LH (codename "Lizard Head Pass"), which is capable of holding a total of 1 terabyte of RAM. It is designed mainly for high-performance computing and math-intensive server applications, such as video streaming sites using it for transcoding, etc. The board is able to achieve such large memory expansion room, by providing three DIMM slots per memory channel. Each socket gives four memory channels.
The board supports 8-core Xeon E5-4600 series Sandy Bridge-EP processors. It is driven by Intel C600 "Patsburg" chipset with up to 8 SCU ports and 2 SATA 6 Gb/s ports. There are no standard expansion slots on the board as such, but there are two PCI-Express 3.0 x48 risers, to which daughterboards with three x16 slots each, can be attached (as shown in the CGI drawing below). Apart from these PCIe x48 risers, there is one PCIe 3.0 x8 I/O module on board. The board features dual Intel LAN with VT support. KVM and BMT logic is in-built. The Server Board S4600LH from Intel will be available in Q2 2012.
Source: VR-Zone
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Google+ Said to Have Passed 62 Million Users
According to Paul Allen, the self-proclaimed 'unofficial statistician' of Google+, Google's social project continued to see solid, double-digit growth in December, and managed to surpass 62 million users just after Christmas.
Given the current (estimated) sign-up rate of 625,000 per day (as a comparison, Andy Rubin confirmed about a week ago that Android as a platform has 700,000 activations/day), Google+ can reach 100 million users by the end of February (2012). But apparently this is just the tip of the sign-up iceberg…
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Epson Rolls Out Endeavor Pro 750 Gaming PC in Japan
In Japan, Epson does more than selling printing and imaging devices. It sells pre-built PCs. Its latest creation is the Endeavor Pro 750, a gaming PC based on Intel Sandy Bridge-E platform. The Endeavor Pro 750 is housed in an airy aluminum-built case. The case has two permanently-fixed handles on top, and its 3.5/2.5-inch drive bay stack can be access from the front-panel, to give it some hot-plugging capabilities. The front-panel also has two USB 3.0 ports next to audio I/O. It's the insides that are more interesting.
The Endeavor Pro 750 is driven by an Intel Core i7-3930K, though an i7-3960X Extreme Edition processor can be opted for, the CPU is cooled by a custom air-cooler. The processor sits on a custom OEM motherboard labelled Epson, but in all likelihood, it may have been built by any of the major motherboard ODMs, such as Foxconn. There are a variety of memory options, starting from 4 GB, all the way up to 32 GB, with DDR3-1600 MHz being the standard memory type. The base model ships with an AMD Radeon HD 6450 graphics card, but it can be configured all the way up to NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580. Storage options, too, are configurable, with various HDD RAID and SSD (Intel 510 series) available.
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Merry Christmas from TechPowerUp!
It is the time of the year once more and we at TechPowerUp! would like to wish all of you a Merry Christmas! Hopefully everyone is able to enjoy this precious time with their friends & loved ones, that the season manages to inspire and bring some peace and tranquility during these turbulent times!
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MSI has announced two new exclusive products: MultiConnect Panel and Voice Genie 
TechPowerUp received a "leaked" presentation that allegedly details Intel's Sandy Bridge-EP platform, along with early performance numbers. 
The Asus Eee PC 1225B netbook is slated for 2012 despite rumors that the form factor is coming to an end. 
Hard drive manufacturers reportedly want PC vendors to sign a one-year contract, locking them at the current inflated price and volume. 
Zalman's newest line of solid state drives, the F1-series, is slated for launch tomorrow in Japan. 
Samsung is now the sole owner of the S-LCD LCD production company., 
Information about Intel's Ivy Bridge launch appears to have leaked out of Taiwan. 
Researchers at Purdue University found that arrays of plasmonic nanoantennas can be used to manipulate the phase, a wave shape, of light as it propagates. 
Intel has been just granted a patent which enables electronic devices to be switched on via an intermediate computing device. 
Over the holiday weekend, details were leaked on the upcoming release of the AMD Radeon HD 7950 and the massive dual-GPU flagship Radeon HD 7990. 
Three Gigabyte motherboards need a critical BIOS update. 
