IT News Head Lines (TechSpot) 02/11/2012

Mass production of 28nm Exynos CPU for Galaxy S4 starting soon Samsung is already working on the successor to the popular Galaxy S3 smartphone. Sources claim the South Korean tech giant recently produced a test version of a 28nm High-K Metal Gate (HKMG) processor codenamed Adonis that will ultimately find a home in their next generation flagship handset. Read More ...

---

Acer delays Windows RT offerings, fears Surface Shelving what it described as an "aggressive" product schedule, Acer is delaying the launch of its Windows RT offerings until Q2 of 2013. This news comes for Acer President Jim Wong who cites Microsoft's Surface tablet as the reason, in this interview conducted by Reuters. "Because of Surface... we are much more... Read More ...

---

EA posts $381 million loss, blames MoH for "soft" holiday outlook EA has posted a loss of $381 million on revenue of $711 million for its fiscal second quarter ending in September, down from a $340 million loss on revenue of $715 million in the year-ago period. Despite those seemingly grim figures, the company's performance exceeded analysts' expectations. Read More ...

---

Mozilla looking to redesign browser bookmarking with Dropzilla Mozilla could be looking to reinvent bookmarking in Firefox as part of an ongoing effort to improve Firefox’s browsing experience. Mozilla’s Brian Groudan recently conducted a nine week research project at the request of the Firefox for Android team that questioned whether traditional bookmarks are really the best method to... Read More ...

---

Microsoft sued over use of Live Tiles in Windows Microsoft is already facing lawsuits related to the recently-launched Windows 8 and Windows Phone 8 operating systems. Surfcast, a Portland-based company OS development company has filed a complaint with a U.S. District Court in Maine, claiming that Microsoft is infringing on its patents with the use of live tiles in... Read More ...

---

Hurricane Sandy damages crucial wireless and Internet infrastructure Hurricane Sandy left a path of destruction in the American northeast as heavy flooding and powerful winds destroyed homes and left millions without power. The superstorm was also responsible for disrupting wireless and Internet service throughout much of the region. Read More ...

---

Wednesday tech deals: 120GB Vertex 3 $60, Phenom II X4 945 $70 OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SATA 6Gbps SSD for $60 after rebate + free shipping Read More ...

---

Intel is developing a 48-core processor for smartphones and tablets Researchers at Intel envision a future where smartphones are powerful enough to perform tasks typically delegated to full-size computers today. And it’s not just a pipe dream either - they’re already working on a 48-core processor for smartphones and tablets designed to replace your desktop or laptop completely. ... Read More ...

---

Crytek and Nvidia team up to give away free Crysis 3 alpha trial keys Crytek has teamed up with Nvidia to give some lucky gamers a chance to help test Crysis 3. The game is still in alpha stage but that likely won’t deter most Nanosuit fans from participating. There’s only one catch, however: you need to act quickly as the keys are reportedly... Read More ...

---

Asus: Nexus 7 tablet sales nearing 1 million per month Although Google and Asus haven’t shared any official sales figures on the Nexus 7, an earnings report released yesterday by the latter offered a few hints that it’s moving rather well. Today, Asus CFO David Chang revealed sales have gone from around 500K units per month at launch to nearly... Read More ...

---

Microsoft showers Build devs with gifts: Surface RT, Lumia 920, etc. Microsoft, like other large companies, has a reputation of handing out some pretty awesome swag to conference-goers. Last year Redmond kicked off its Build conference by handing out tablets running Windows 8 to developers and members of the press. Read More ...

---

Disney buys Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion, new Star Wars movie in 2015 The Walt Disney Company has announced plans to purchase Lucasfilm Ltd. from founder George Lucas. The film company loved by millions of Star Wars fans worldwide will soon change hands as part of a deal valued at $4.05 billion. Read More ...

---

Medal of Honor: Warfighter Tested, Benchmarked Medal of Honor: Warfighter calls for no less than a 3GHz quad-core processor paired with a GeForce GTX 560 or Radeon HD 6950. Given those upper-end requirements, we expect the title to be fairly demanding with its visuals maxed out, and we'll be putting a ton of past and present-gen... Read More ...

---

Microsoft at War: Grading RedmondÂ’s Battle Record

Microsoft sits on the edge of a product launch that is plainly among the most important in the companyÂ’s history. However, what might be more useful is looking at MicrosoftÂ’s other make or break moments. A careful evaluation of them may provide a better, ahem, window into the companyÂ’s chances this Winter. Read More ...

---

Windows 8, The TechSpot Review

Windows 8 remains a nice upgrade, possibly a Service Pack-plus caliber upgrade when you look at the desktop improvements. Metro doesn't make Windows 8 more capable, but it does pave a way for Microsoft to sell slates and appeal to a mainstream user base that craves simpler devices. Read More ...

---

AMD FX-8350 and FX-6300 Piledriver Review

AMD is refreshing its desktop processors with Piledriver, an enhanced version of Bulldozer that focuses on improving instructions per clock and frequency -- just like it did with the new Piledriver-powered Trinity APUs. In other words, instead of a major overhaul, Piledriver picks up where Bulldozer left off. Read More ...

---

Testing Thunderbolt-Enabled External Storage: Gigabyte Z77X-UP5TH meets WD Velociraptor Duo

With most Thunderbolt products available today being storage-related, we wanted to see what the new Gigabyte Z77X-UP5 TH motherboard and its dual Thunderbolt ports had to offer in terms of performance. Put to the test: Western Digital's Velociraptor Duo, which boasts of a pair of 10K RPM Velociraptor hard drives. Read More ...

---

Interview with Malwarebytes' founder, Marcin Kleczynski

Malwarebytes started its life as a company in 2004 as a one-man operation, but it wasnÂ’t until four years later that its star product was released, simply called 'Anti-Malware'. Since then the company has rapidly grown to establish itself as a serious player in the computer security industry. Read More ...

---

XCOM: Enemy Unknown Review

XCOM is about as perfect a remake of an old game as I could have hoped for, in that while changes have inevitably been made, they're mostly for the better, and anything genuinely new introduced is only there to improve things. Read More ...

---

Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 Ti Review

Having attacked the mid-range and upper-end markets, Nvidia has its sights set on the sub-$200 range, unleashing its GTX 650 Ti. At $150, the new arrival is roughly 34% cheaper than last month's GTX 660 and about 7% pricier than the Radeon HD 7770, which fetches around $140 depending on features and rebates. Read More ...

---

Guild Wars 2 Review

With a mix of familiar MMORPG tropes and new, modern approaches to delivering them, Guild Wars 2 is an excellent, welcoming take on the genre. Read More ...

---

AMD A10-5800K Trinity APU Review

AMD is finally prepared to offer a desktop version of Trinity, which brings a new socket and a new high-end chipset. Given that Piledriver improved Bulldozer's power consumption, we expect Trinity to be more efficient than Llano, while Cayman's VLIW4 architecture should boost the GPU's speed -- or so we hope. Read More ...

---

Acer Aspire S5 Ultrabook Review

The Aspire S5 comes with a beefy Core i7-3517U clocked at 1.9GHz, 4GB of RAM and 256GB of flash storage. In most instances, an SSD is the best addition period, for any modern system, but Acer took things a step further with two 128GB SSDs in RAID0. It goes without saying that the storage subsystem should be blazing fast. Read More ...

---

Apple iPhone 5 Review

The sixth-generation iPhone has finally landed. Apple has almost completely redesigned the phone's exterior, yet it still looks very much like the iconic handset everyone is familiar with. There's a larger 4-inch screen, LTE, a faster processor, and a new dock connector not everyone is a fan of. Read More ...

---

Samsung 840 Pro SSD Review

While the Samsung 830 SSD and many of its year-old peers may still be attractive, Samsung is ready to move on to bigger and better things. The new flagship offering, the SSD 840 Pro, refines the 830 Series' firmware with faster random and sustained performance as well as improved reliability. Read More ...

---

Borderlands 2 GPU & CPU Performance Test

Borderlands 2 benchmarks and performance analysis -- Borderlands 2 succeeds at building on the foundation laid three years ago, delivering new characters, more weapons, smarter foes, and the same addictive loot-driven co-op first-person shooter action. We take the game for a spin on today's finest hardware. Read More ...

---

Crucial m4 mSATA 256GB SSD Review

We took notice when Crucial announced its m4 mSATA SSD in a 256GB capacity at under $1/GB. The mSATA drive is tiny compared to Crucial's standard 2.5-inch m4, and despite the size difference, both 256GB models feature the same read and write speeds of 500MB/s and 260MB/s. Read More ...

---

Torchlight II vs. Diablo III: The Ultimate ARPG Shootout

Torchlight II is much more of a beast than its predecessor; in terms of scale and ambition, it's right up there with the biggest names in loot-collection and click-based combat. And so of course, Blizzard's Diablo III looms large over the entirety of Torchlight II. How could it not? Read More ...

---

TechSpot PC Buying Guide

The TechSpot PC Buying Guide provides you with an in-depth list of today's best hardware, spanning four unique and yet typical budgets. Whether you are a first time builder seeking guidance or a seasoned enthusiast, we've got you covered. Read More ...

---

Nvidia GeForce GTX 660 Review

Ever eager to keep AMD on its toes, Nvidia continues its push into the mid-range market with a Kepler-based card that is expected to retail for about $230 -- right in-between AMD's Radeon HD 7850 and 7870. The GTX 660 is based on the new 28nm GK106 architecture which inherits all the key innovations introduced by the flagship GTX 680. Read More ...

---

LG Optimus 4X HD Review

The question is, does the phone manage to outshine its Bruce Banner exterior to show off what it's Hulk-scale guts are capable of? In short: yes. It turns out that what the Optimus 4X HD lacks in external appeal is more than made up for by its good nature and brainy innards. Read More ...

---

Traveling with an iPad: Impressions & Accessory Survival Guide

A recent Caribbean cruise vacation provided the perfect opportunity to test whether or not my iPad would make a suitable travel replacement. As such, I decided to put several products spanning multiple categories to the test to evaluate the strengths and weaknesses based on my hands-on experience. Read More ...

---

Interview: 2Dawn Games on its upcoming shooter 'Ravaged' and life as an indie studio

Currently in beta, Ravaged is the brainchild of Boris Ustaev and his crew at 2Dawn Games, who have spent the last few years toiling away on a fast-paced post-apocalyptic multiplayer shooter with a strong focus on skills, teamwork, vehicular combat and most importantly, fun. In other words, it's everything the folks at 2Dawn have wanted in a modern PC shooter, but have been unable to find. Read More ...

---

How to Access Region-Locked Online Content From Anywhere

Online services like Netflix, Hulu, Pandora, Spotify, Steam and many others have brought upon an era of instant, on-demand digital media consumption, but unfortunately this is a revolution not everyone can partake in as such services employ region locks. In this article weÂ’ll offer you three alternatives to get around these restrictions. Read More ...

---

Cooler Master Silencio 650 Case Review

The Silencio 650 not resembles a cleaner version of Cooler Master's more aggressive HAF series, but it touts many attractive features, chief among which is sound absorbing foam mats and specially designed air vents to minimize noise while maintaining low operating temps. Read More ...

---

F-Secure Anti-Virus 2013 Easy to use protection against viruses for your PC. Read More ...

---

Twister Antivirus 8.1.5.6709 The different, amazing, intelligent anti-virus software. Read More ...

---

Sweet Home 3D v3.7 Sweet Home 3D is a free interior design application that helps you draw the plan of your house, arrange furniture on it and visit the results in 3D. Read More ...

---

BabelPad 6.2.0.3 BabelPad is a free Unicode text editor for Windows that supports the proper rendering of most complex scripts, and allows you to assign different fonts to different scripts in order to facilitate multi-script text editing. Read More ...

---

Avast! Free Antivirus 7.0.1474 avast! Free Antivirus is perfect for people who send e-mails and surf popular websites. Read More ...

---

Slim Browser 6.01.080 Tabbed multiple-site browser with built-in popup killer, skinned window frame, form filler, etc. Read More ...

---

Google Earth 7.0.1 Google Earth puts a planet's worth of imagery and other geographic information right on your desktop. Read More ...

---

AIDA64 Extreme Edition 2.70.2203 Beta System information, system diagnostics and benchmarking solution for enthusiasts users. Read More ...

---

SnapCrab 1.0.3 Instantly capture with a click of the mouse. Just click, it's simple. Read More ...

---

Win8 StartButton Start Button for Windows 8. Read More ...

---

Advanced SystemCare Free 6.0.8.170 One-Click and All-In-One solution for PC maintenance and protection. Read More ...

---

Hotspot Shield 2.75 Ensure you are private, secure, and anonymous online... 100% free. Read More ...

---

CintaNotes 1.8.3 A free, lightweight and user-friendly note taking application. Read More ...

---

TightVNC 2.6.0 TightVNC is a free remote control software package derived from the popular VNC software. Read More ...

---

Zoom Player Home Free 8.5 With Zoom Player Home FREE, you can start exploring the most powerful media player for the Windows PC now. Read More ...

---

LCLeaner 1.2.3.48 Easily free up disk space from temporary, unwanted files, and clean system registry from unneeded registry keys. Read More ...

---

Download Accelerator Plus 10.0.4.5 Optimize your download performance, and recover interrupted downloads. Read More ...

---

Advanced Disk Cleaner 5.5 Increase your free disk space and improve your computer's performance. Read More ...

---

EaseUS Todo Backup Free 5.3 It is a reliable data backup & system disaster recovery software for home users. Read More ...

---

Disk Cleaner 1.7.1645 Clean up disk space that is now used by temporary files. Read More ...

---

Mozilla Thunderbird 17.0 Beta 2 for Mac OS X Now with tabs, better search, and email archiving. Read More ...

---

Windows Essentials Codec Pack 4.2 Collection of Video and Audio Codecs and tools that are required to Encode / Decode Audio and Video files. Read More ...

---

System Cleanup 1.7 Find and remove temporary, cache, history and backup files on all your local drives. Read More ...

---

System Cleaner 6.7.3.200 Keep your PC running faster, cleaner, and error-free with System Cleaner full set of 7 powerful tools. Read More ...

---

AMD Mobility Catalyst Display Driver 12.4 for Windows Vista/7 64-bit Driver Date: 4/25/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista / 7 64-bit Read More ...

---

AMD Mobility Catalyst Display Driver 12.4 for Windows Vista/7 32-bit Driver Date: 4/25/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista / 7 Read More ...

---

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 12.4 for Windows Vista/7 64-bit Driver Date: 4/25/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista / 7 64-bit Read More ...

---

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 12.4 for Windows Vista/7 32-bit Driver Date: 4/25/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista / 7 Read More ...

---

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 12.4 for Windows XP 64-bit Driver Date: 4/25/2012 OS Support: Windows XP 64-bit Read More ...

---

AMD Catalyst Display Driver 12.4 for Windows XP Driver Date: 4/25/2012 OS Support: Windows XP Read More ...

---

Realtek 10/100M Fast Ethernet PCI Express Driver 7.053 for Windows 7 Driver Date: 3/22/2012 OS Support: Windows 7 Read More ...

---

Realtek 10/100/100M Gigabit Ethernet PCI Driver 5.719 for Windows XP Driver Date: 3/22/2012 OS Support: Windows 2000/XP Read More ...

---

Realtek Wireless LAN ICs IEEE 802.11b/g/n RTL8188SU Driver 1086.48 Driver Date: 4/19/2012 OS Support: Windows XP/Vista/7 Read More ...

---

Realtek Wireless LAN ICs IEEE 802.11b/g/n RTL8192SU Driver 1086.48 Driver Date: 4/19/2012 OS Support: Windows XP/Vista/7 Read More ...

---

Realtek Wireless LAN ICs IEEE 802.11b/g/n RTL8191SU Driver 1086.48 Driver Date: 4/19/2012 OS Support: Windows XP/Vista/7 Read More ...

---

Cisco Linksys E1500 Firmware 1.0.04 Driver Date: 3/28/2012 OS Support: Windows XP/Vista/7 Read More ...

---

Nvidia GeForce Graphics Driver 301.24 Beta for Windows 7 32-bit Driver Date: 4/10/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista / 7 Read More ...

---

Nvidia GeForce Graphics Driver 301.24 Beta for Windows XP 64-bit Driver Date: 4/10/2012 OS Support: Windows XP 64-bit Read More ...

---

Nvidia GeForce Notebook Graphics Driver 301.24 Beta for Windows Vista/7 32-bit Driver Date: 4/10/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista / 7 Read More ...

---

Nvidia GeForce Graphics Driver 301.24 Beta for Windows 7 64-bit Driver Date: 4/10/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista / 7 64-bit Read More ...

---

Nvidia GeForce Graphics Driver 301.24 Beta for Windows XP 32-bit Driver Date: 4/10/2012 OS Support: Windows XP Read More ...

---

Nvidia GeForce Notebook Graphics Driver 301.24 Beta for Windows Vista/7 64-bit Driver Date: 4/10/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista / 7 64-bit Read More ...

---

Cisco Linksys E2500 Firmware 1.0.04 Driver Date: 4/9/2012 OS Support: Windows (all) Read More ...

---

Realtek PCIe FE GBE Family Controller Series Driver 6.250 for Windows Vista Driver Date: 4/3/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista Read More ...

---

Realtek PCIe FE GBE Family Controller Series Driver 7.053 for Windows 7 Driver Date: 4/3/2012 OS Support: Windows 7 Read More ...

---

Realtek PCIe FE GBE Family Controller Series Driver 5.794 for Windows 2000/XP Driver Date: 4/3/2012 OS Support: Windows 2000/XP Read More ...

---

Realtek HD ALC 880 Audio CODECs R2.68 for Windows Vista/7 64-bit Driver Date: 4/2/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista / 7 64-bit Read More ...

---

Realtek HD ALC 880 Audio CODECs R2.68 for Windows Vista/7 32-bit Driver Date: 4/2/2012 OS Support: Windows Vista / 7 Read More ...

---

Realtek HD ALC 880 Audio CODECs R2.68 for Windows 2000/XP (32/64 bits) Driver Date: 4/2/2012 OS Support: Windows 2000/XP Read More ...

---

Available Tags:CPU , Galaxy , Acer , Windows , EA , Mozilla , Microsoft , wireless , Phenom II , Intel , Nvidia , tablet , Windows 8 , TechSpot , AMD , Gigabyte , GeForce , GTX , APU , iPhone 5 , Apple , iPhone , Samsung , SSD , GPU , SSD , LG , Cooler Master , F-Secure , 3D , Google , Download , Mac , Catalyst , Driver , Catalyst , Driver , Catalyst , Driver , Catalyst , Driver , Catalyst , Driver , Catalyst , Driver , Windows 7 , Driver , Driver , IEEE , Driver , IEEE , Driver , IEEE , Driver , Cisco , Windows 7 , Driver , Driver , Notebook , Driver , Windows 7 , Driver , Driver , Notebook , Driver , Cisco , Driver , Windows 7 , Driver , Driver ,