OCZ No Longer Making Memory, Focus on SSDs
Around August of last year, OCZ announced its intentions to leave the budget RAM market and focus more on the high-end memory line since it was the most profitable. Well, now it seems OCZ is pulling out of the RAM market altogether and won't make any products after February 28th. One of the leading memory manufacturers is going to call it quits amid falling RAM prices. The timing seems right for OCZ to make the move, but this does mean that consumers are going to be without OCZ's Blade, XTE, and other high performing series. What will OCZ do in the meantime? Well, it has a rather large SSD business which is what the company will now focus on.
We (OCZ) have focused on building the OEM and enterprise segments of our business, and last month we announced a mass production order from a Tier-1 OEM for our enterprise-class SSDs, reflecting the reliability, speed and total cost of ownership solid state drives provide over traditional mechanical hard drives. We believe the market opportunity for SSDs is significant, and to that end, we will continue to invest in research and development to extend our leadership position, and we also plan to increase our sales and marketing efforts in order to facilitate continued revenue growth and increased market share as SSDs gain adoption in all segments.As you can see, the solid state storage area will be the new focus of OCZ. The SSDs it makes are some of the best around and OCZ makes more than enough of them to fit any market or demand out there. If the switch to SSDs means more variety and potentially lower prices, then I am all in favor of this move. However, with the popularity of OCZ memory, time will tell if the decision to leave that market is the right one.
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Roccat Releases Kova[+] Gaming Mouse
Roccat Studios has released its latest gaming mouse, the Kova[+]. The Kova[+] features a symmetrical, ergonomic “V-Shape”, allowing it to be used by right or left hand gamers. The mouse is equipped with seven mouse buttons, in addition to the left and right click buttons and includes a rubberised mouse wheel. It is worth noting that using Roccat’s EASYSHIFT[+] software, two functions can be assigned to each mouse button giving eight extra commands. Other features include a 3200DPI optical gaming sensor which allows a maximum speed of 130 inches per second, 30Gs of acceleration, a 1000Hz polling rate and a 2m USB cable. The mouse also offers customisable lighting and audio feedback to alert users to profile changes and DPI changes. The Roccat Kova[+] gaming mouse is priced at US$65 (50 Euros).
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Details Emerge for New Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim
New details for the upcoming game from Bethesda, The Elder Scrolls V: Skyrim, have been revealed in Game Informer. The story of the new game will take place 200 years after those in The Elder Scrolls IV: Oblivion. Gamers will assume the role of the last Dragonborn, and will have to fight a dragon while the world is falling apart around them. The game will feature a new graphics engine and improved textures, draw distances, and shadows. There will also be improvements to both the first and third person views. The combat and weapon systems are also being updated, giving players the opportunity to dual wield any weapons and easily swap load-outs. The leveling system has also been reworked, and skills will be improved based on how often they are used. Gamers will be able to get their hands on the game November 11 of this year on PC, Xbox 360, and PS3.
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Hacker to Reveal Crack of SHA-1 Algorithm at Black Hat
Thomas Roth of Germany plans to unveil the method he used to crack the SHA-1 hashing algorithm. The National Institute of Standards and Technology has known the algorithm has flaws and has been working to replace it. The SHA-3 replacement is due to be announced in 2012. Roth accomplished the task using a GPU cluster in the Amazon EC2 cloud. Using the cluster Roth was able to crack all hashes from a file for passwords in 49 minutes using a brute force attack. However, some security experts believe that the lengths he went to were unnecessary and unimpressive. Paul Ducklin of Sophos pointed out that his Macbook Pro had a similar amount of success as the cluster system used by Roth. Ducklin was also quick to point out that the hashes cracked by Roth were for weak passwords using a weak hashing scheme. We will have to wait until the Black Hat conference to find out all the details.
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Google to Drop H.264 Support from Chrome, Switch to WebM
Google has been pushing its WebM video standard for a while now, but this bit of news is certainly surprising. Google intends to drop H.264 codec support from its Chrome browser in favor of switching to WebM. Google will remove the support in the HTML5 tag and is justifying it in the name of open standards. This means that any video that is in the H.264 format will not play in Chrome unless you get the proper plug-in, which just adds one more step for users to view one of the most widely used video formats. What's more is that MPEG-LA announced a few months ago that H.264 is royalty-free so long as it is freely distributed, something that Google doesn't seem to care about as it is switching over to WebM. So yes, Chrome users will need to grab the H.264 plug-in just to play that video format in the browser. What the move to WebM ultimately means for Google and Chrome users remains to be seen.
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iPhone 4 Officially on Verizon
It had been rumored for ages and with the news of Verizon holding an event to announce something, it seemed only logical to reveal the iPhone 4. Reveal it did as the Apple iPhone 4 is now officially on the Verizon Wireless network. At the event held today in New York, Verizon's CEO talked about how the idea first started in 2008 and how his company has been testing the CDMA iPhone 4 for a year, and now Big Red can finally unveil it. Current Verizon customers can pre-order it on February 3rd for $200 for the 16GB model or $300 for the 32GB model, while everyone else will have to wait until the February 10th launch date. So yes, the pre-order period starts just a week before the phone launches but it should be enough time for anyone on Verizon who has been holding out for the iPhone to get it. The iPhone 4 will be a 3G model, so no 4G will be included, and it won't be a world phone either. It is just a Verizon 3G phone. Unlike the AT&T GSM iPhone 4, the Verizon CDMA iPhone 4 won't support simultaneous voice and data and even has new antennas supporting CDMA. These new antennas appear on the edges and pushes the volume buttons down ever so slightly, so current iPhone 4 cases are unlikely to work with the Verizon version. Like some of the Verizon Android phones, the Verizon iPhone will be getting WiFi hotspot functionality with up to five devices so you can use the phone's data services to take another wireless device online.
The Verizon iPhone 4 will be launching nationwide on February 10th. The pre-order prices remain the same for the actual price, so $200 for the 16GB model and $300 for the 32GB will get you a two-year contract for the phone.
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WoW: Cataclysm Sells 4.7 Million Copies
World of Warcraft is the extremely popular MMORPG from Activision that millions play, and many of you are probably in that group. The team at Activision has recently released its most ambitious expansion so far, Cataclysm. The expansion brought countless changes to the world and added thousands of quests. The game had a strong first day, selling 3.3 million copies. It finished out the month with 4.7 million copies, much less than the 8.4 million sold by Call of Duty: Black Ops. No word on how many new subscribers this brought about, but the total number of subscribers is around 12 million these days.
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Intel and NVIDIA Settle Dispute, Intel to Pay $1.5 Billion to NVIDIA
Intel and NVIDIA haven't exactly been the best of friends lately, but now it seems things have been mended. Intel and NVIDIA have just reached a cross-license agreement which settles the dispute and has Intel pay NVIDIA $1.5 billion over the next five years. The agreement will cover the next six years and will give Intel access to some of NVIDIA's technology as well as NVIDIA getting access to some of Intel's patents. Flash memory, x86, and "certain chipsets" are off the table for the patents, but it seems everything else will be open for NVIDIA. However, this does not mean NVIDIA will produce chipsets for Intel again as that is strictly not in NVIDIA's plans. It does mean that NVIDIA's technology will be used in Sandy Bridge so it seems like SLI and Optimus will be playing an even bigger role than before. Money-wise, Intel will pay the $1.5 billion in annual installments and finally ends all legal disputes between the two companies. It certainly seems things are looking up for NVIDIA after its impressive showing at CES 2011.
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AMD CEO Dirk Meyer Resigns, CFO Takes Over on Interim Basis
Well, this is certainly surprising. CEO of AMD, Dirk Meyer, has just resigned from his position in what is being called a "mutual agreement" between the Board of Directors and himself. Taking over on an interim basis will be the CFO, Thomas Seifert, who has asked to not be considered as a candidate for the position when the search commences. Board Chairman Bruce Clafin is leading the search for the next CEO, so one can only wonder who will be considered for that spot. The reason for the departure is a mystery for now as no details have been released, but hopefully it does not include anything relating to AMD's chip business. AMD's Fusion platform is looking to be quite popular and the Bulldozer chips are on the way, so hopefully the resignation of Meyer will not impact either of those. We'll keep you updated once any more information behind the resignation surfaces.
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QNAP Launches New Entry-Level Rack-Mounted NAS Server
QNAP, one of the leading manufacturers of NAS solutions, has just launched the newest product to its lineup, the rack-mounted TS-419U+ NAS server. This NAS server is being specifically targeted at the growing SMB and work group markets by providing a four-bay NAS server in a rack-mounted setup. The TS-419U+ features four hot-swappable SATA hard drives providing up to 8TB of total capacity in a 1U case. It will support 2.5" or 3.5" drives with a maximum of 2TB for each drive. The TS-419U+ also features a Marvell 1.6GHz CPU and 512MB DDR3 RAM which will provide low power consumption while delivering fast performance. It can be configured with RAID 0, 1, 5, 6, 5+ hot spare, or JBOD with online RAID capacity expansion and online RAID level migration for maximum redundancy. There are four USB ports, two e-SATA ports, and two Gigabit Ethernet ports on the NAS, with the front USB port supporting One-Touch-Copy which enables you to transfer contents to or from the USB drive to the NAS instantly. The TS-419U+ also comes preloaded with the V3.3 firmware which includes many features like virtual disk drives support, exclusive RAID recovery, and Bonjour support for network discovery services, among others.
The TS-419U+ rack-mounted NAS server will be available later this month though no price was given.
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