Microsoft Increases Windows Vista & 7 Consumer Support to Ten Years
Redmond-based software giant Microsoft Corp. has recently updated its support policy for both Windows Vista and Windows 7 and will be offering extended support to the consumer versions of the two operating systems.
Previously, Microsoft provided 5 years worth of 'mainstream support' for consumers while only businesses got an extra 5 years of extended support. Now, all Windows users will be able to get security updates for 10 years after the operating system's release.
As a result of the policy change, Windows Vista's consumer support was extended to April 11th, 2017. Windows 7 support will end on January 14, 2020.
Source: ZDNet
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(PR) Sapphire Launches the EDGE-HD3 AMD-Powered Mini PC
Building on the success of its first Mini PC, hailed as the smallest PC in the world, SAPPHIRE Technology - a world leading manufacturer and supplier of PC graphics cards, mainboards and multimedia solutions has just introduced a new model - the SAPPHIRE EDGE-HD3 based on industry leading APU technology from AMD.
The SAPPHIRE EDGE-HD3 shares the same slim, stylish outline as the earlier models but delivers increased graphical capability and higher core performance as a result of incorporating the latest E450 APU technology from AMD. At less than half a litre in volume, it is slimmer and smaller than most wireless access points – in fact around the size of a paperback book! Its stylish design and simple pedestal mount make it equally at home next to a TV or a business monitor whilst occupying the minimum of desk or shelf space.
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PowerColor's Liquid-Cooled Radeon HD 7970 Goes Up for Pre-Order
Teased by its maker earlier this month, the PowerColor Radeon HD 7970 LCS (Liquid Cooling System) Edition graphics card has found its way onto Overclockers UK's website where it can be found on pre-order priced at £599.99 (~ $951 / ~ 718 Euro).
PowerColor's new, Tahiti-powered card comes equipped with a single-slot EK Nickel Acetal waterblock and features a core clock of 1050 MHz (up from the stock 925 MHz), 2048 Stream Processors, a 384-bit memory interface, 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM set to 5700 MHz (5500 MHz stock), PCI-Express 3.0, DirectX 11.1 and OpenGL 4.2 support, CrossFireX and Eyefinity capabilities, and four display outputs - one dual-link DVI, one HDMI and two mini DisplayPorts.
The Radeon HD 7970 LCS is backed by a two-year warranty and should start shipping before the end of this month.
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(PR) ORIGIN PC Launches the World's First 3D Laptop with Dual Graphics Cards in SLI
Last week ORIGIN PC announced the availability of their new EON17-X desktop replacement laptop, the most powerful laptop for gamers, artists, and professionals. Today ORIGIN PC announces the world's first 3D laptop with dual graphics cards: The EON17-X3D featuring the latest Intel X79 chipset, 2nd generation Intel hexcore processors, and dual overclocked NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M graphics cards in SLI. The EON17-X3D marks the first 3D laptop from ORIGIN PC with a customizable backlit keyboard with three lighting zones and seven color options.
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Core i5-3570K Graphics 67% Faster Than Core i5-2500K, 36% Slower Than GeForce GT 240
An Expreview community member ran benchmarks comparing the performance of the Intel HD 4000 graphics embedded into its upcoming 22 nm "Ivy Bridge" Core i5-3570K, comparing it to the integrated graphics of Core i5-2500K, and discrete graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 240. These tests are endorsed by the site. The suite of benchmarks included games that aren't quite known to be very taxing on graphics hardware by today's standards, yet are extremely popular; games such as StarCraft II, Left4Dead 2, DiRT 3, Street Fighter IV. Some of the slightly more graphics-intensive benchmarks included Far Cry 2 and 3DMark Vantage. All benchmarks were run at 1280 x 720 resolution.
The Intel HD 4000 graphics core beats the HD 3000 hands down, with performance leads as high as 122% in a particular test. The chip produces more than playable frame-rates with Left4Dead 2 and Street Fighter IV, both well above 50 FPS, even DiRT 3 and Far Cry 2 run strictly OK, over 30 FPS. StarCraft II is where it produced under 30 FPS, so the chip might get bogged down in intense battles. A mainstream discrete GeForce or Radeon is a must. On average, the graphics core embedded into the Core i5-3570K was found to be 67.25% faster than the one on the Core i5-2500K.
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(PR) Sony and Tokyo Tech Make Chip Capable of 6.3 Gb/s Millimeter-Wave Wireless Transfer
Sony Corporation today announced that the National University Corporation, Tokyo Institute of Technology and Sony have jointly developed a radio frequency ("RF") LSI and a baseband ("BB") LSI that enables millimeter-wave wireless data transfer at the world's fastest rate of 6.3 Gb/s. This technological achievement was adopted for presentation at the International Solid-State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) to be held in San Francisco from February 19, 2012 as academic paper No. 12.3 wherein details of the technology will be disclosed.
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(PR) Icy Dock Introduces EZ-FIT Pro Dual-2.5" to 3.5" Dock
Icy Dock is proud to introduce the MB082SP EZ-FIT PRO, the newest product in the incredibly popular SSD/HDD bracket & converter line. The EZ-FIT PRO is a full metal dual 2.5" to 3.5" bracket with a matte black finish, featuring a hassle free installation requiring no tools or screws required to install or change your HDD/SSD. The heavy duty solid metal construction and the simplicity of the drive installation make protecting and swapping your hard drives as easier than ever.
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Global Tablet PC Shipments Down 30%
Shipments of tablet PCs is bound to go down by 30% in Q1 2012, according to market research carried out by DigiTimes. The various vendors will ship 14.97 million tablet PCs in the first quarter of 2012, dropping 30.6% on quarter but rising 77.6% on year. This figure can be broken down to 11 million iPad 2 and iPad 3 units, and some 3.97 tablets comprising of various other models than iPads. Shipments of these non-iPad tablets will decrease by 50.8% on quarter and include 1.5 million Kindle Fires and 300,000 Nook Tablets, DigiTimes Research said.
Of all the tablets shipped in Q1 2012, 26.3% will run Android, and 13.3% will be running Texas Intruments' processors, the research said. Taiwan-based ODMs alone will comprise a huge 90.25% of all tablet shipments in Q1, of which Foxconn will account for 83%, followed by Quanta Computer with 9.6%, DigiTimes Research indicated.
Source: DigiTimes
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Scientists Invent First Functional Single-Atom Transistor
A team of scientists at the ARC Centre for Quantum Computation and Communication, at the University of New South Wales (UNSW), unveiled a fully functional single-atom transistor, which they predict will go on to become a critical building block of tomorrow's high-performance computing devices. The new transistor design was described in a paper, published by Nature. The active component of this transistor is a single phosphorous atom patterned between atomic-scale electrodes and control gates.
Single atom transistor designs have been attempted in the past, but those designs have had an error of about 10 nanometres in positioning of the atoms, which is big enough to affect their functionality. Professor Michelle Simmons, group leader of this study, said that this is the first time "anyone has shown control of a single atom in a substrate with this level of precise accuracy," adding that "Several groups have tried this, but if you want to make a practical computer in the long-term you need to be able to put lots of individual atoms in."
A video presentation by the group follows.
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(PR) COUGAR Launches the GX V2 Series of 80Plus Gold Gaming PSUs
COUGAR, leading German brand of power supplies and PC accessories, have launched their new high-end series of power supplies specifically targeting demanding gamers, the COUGAR GX V2 series. The 80Plus Gold certified GX V2 series comes as 600 W/700 W/800 W/900 W/1050 W versions and provides up to 93% peak efficiency. This is the highest efficiency standard possible in the industry at the moment.
One major upgrade in this revision is COUGAR's patented VORTEX fan, which in the GX PSUs series comes in a 140 mm series hydro-dynamic bearing, which not only dramatically improves lifetime but also reduces potential noise to a minimum. Also internal electric filtering has been further improved to lower ripple and increase efficiency.
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(PR) Thermaltake Unveils the Toughpower 90 W and 120 W universal AC power adapters
Thermaltake, being the industry pioneer brand with expertise in PC power and thermal solutions, carrying the corporate vision of "building Thermaltake Technology into a cultural brand for the enjoyment of entertainment, e-Sports, technology, and lifestyle" and continues to drive toward the corporate mission of "delivering the perfect user experience" in all segment of the market, unveil the notebook/laptop power companion - the Toughpower 90 W and 120 W universal AC power adapters addressing at user's concern.
When it comes to any sort of laptop/notebook computers, the power adapters are the most often used accessory beside the main device, especially for people on the move the power adapters wears off easily. With this statement we would think a power adapter could be as important as people may think, oddly enough, people seldom pay any attention to the importance and the safety of the adapters. The Toughpower 90 W and 120 W universal AC power adapters offer the best quality and safety for the users and gamers!
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Future of SSDs Not So Solid: Research
Researchers at the University of California, San Diego, have concluded that solid state drives (SSDs) have a bleak future in the evolution of computing technology. They have discovered that fast flash based storage are facing come pretty glaring technology hurdles during their natural course of evolution, which they don't think it will overcome. To begin with, shrinking (miniaturizing) them, to increase capacity or decrease manufacturing costs, will severely degrade performance beyond a point, 6.5 nm silicon fab process.
The scientists studied 45 different flash chips in various sizes, which showed that scaling of latencies and error-rates are 'tolerable' enough as the technology miniaturizes only till 6.5 nm, or the year 2024, when this fab process will be common, beyond which they question the drives' viability. Beyond this point, the more capacity you squeeze into flash memory chips, the more performance degrade (latency and error-rate scale beyond tolerable scales).
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(PR) GammaTech to Highlight Tough, Rugged Notebook and MCA Tablet PC at HIMSS
GammaTech Computer Corp., a major international manufacturer and supplier of innovative notebook and tablet computers, is scheduled to display its rugged computers at the HIMSS12 Annual Conference and Exhibition. The show, to be held at the Venetian Sands Expo Center, will take place in Las Vegas on February 20 - 24. GammaTech Computer Corporation will be exhibiting in Booth #13023.
GammaTech products are tough, rugged, portable and rigorously tested. They stand up to the most demanding situations, whether in the field, in an office, or positioned in an ambulance vehicle. The models to be shown are built to Military 810G Standard for drop, shock, spill, and dust protection. Models offer security features such as Fingerprint Recognition, Smart Card Reader and TPM 1.2 support - and can be configured to meet the user's unique requirements.
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Buffalo Intros Colorful Compact USB Hubs
Buffalo Japan released a set of colorful new USB 2.0 hubs under the BSH4U17 series, to expand the ever more limited number of USB ports notebooks come with. The hub is bar-shaped, and comes with a short USB 2.0 cable to the host. It features nail mount holes so it could be hung up to walls. Measuring 93 x 38.5 x 14 mm (WxDxH), the hub weighs about 40 g. It is available in four color options: piano-black, pearl-white, hot-pink, and indigo, all priced at 1,720 JPY (US $21.5).
Source: Hermitage Akihabara
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AMD Pitcairn Specifications Surface
The launch of AMD's Radeon 7800 series is on course for March, as AMD wants to complete the launches of the entire Radeon 7000 series before NVIDIA even has its first GPU out. Radeon HD 7800 will be designed to occupy key price points in the sub-$300 market segment, where it strikes price-performance sweetspots for gamers. Central to this series is a new 28 nm GPU, codenamed "Pitcairn", from which will be derived three SKUs: the Radeon HD 7870, Radeon HD 7850 2 GB, and Radeon HD 7850 1 GB. The specifications look like this:
Radeon HD 7850
- 20 Graphics CoreNext Compute Units, 1280 stream processors
- 80 TMUs, 24 ROPs (de-linked from the memory bus, of course)
- 256-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface, 2 GB and 1 GB variants
- Clock speeds of 900 MHz core, 1250 MHz (5.00 GHz effective) memory
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Samsung to Spin-Off its LCD Unit
South Korean titan Samsung Electronics has today confirmed the rumors regarding the spin-off of its LCD (liquid crystal display) business. The LCD unit, which posted an operating loss of $668 million for last year, will be 'set free' as of April 1st, and will be renamed Samsung Display Co.
"The spin-off will allow us to make quicker business decisions and respond to our clients' needs more swiftly," said Donggun Park, executive vice president and head of Samsung's LCD unit.
While it's pushing out LCDs, Samsung is still going to make big investments ($5.8 billion this year) in panel technology, focusing on the high-growth OLED segment.
Source: Businessweek
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Available Tags:Microsoft , Windows , Sapphire , Radeon , 3D , GeForce , Sony , Wireless , Tablet , Gaming , Thermaltake , Notebook , USB , AMD , Samsung ,
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