Intel has dominated the high-end, mid-range, low-power and pretty much every CPU market for a while now. Although AMD is still around, they don't seem to make headlines quite as much as Intel. While AMD has had 6-Core CPUs around for a while (as well as 8-core server chips), Intel is now releasing details regarding new mobile chips as well as desktop/server chips. HotHardware has more details.
The big mobile-specific tech that Intel has debuted with Arrandale (32nm Westmere 2C) is a Turbo Boost for graphics mode. While Intel's standard Turbo mode is available as well, the chip can also cut CPU frequency and ramp the IGP higher to improve graphics performance. Intel refers to this as "HD Graphics with dynamic frequency."
The Super Bowl attracts all different kinds of people and some of us just can't wait to check out the commercials. That is probably one time a year when we don't skip commercials. If you missed them, I4U has the list of ads that you can enjoy. Call me old-fashioned, but I like the VW commercial.
It seems that the superbowl didn't keep people from writing reviews of cases and coolers. If you're looking for a home for your gear, or something to keep it cool - you can find what you need below.
TechARP has a look at the idea to "mod" any drive into a faster VelociRaptor drive. As many of you know, the VelociRaptor is a 2.5" drive that spins at 10,000rpm and has great seek times and transfer rate speeds. While the guide doesn't show you how to trip off a 3.5" platter into a 2.5" platter, it does show you that modifying LBA and partitioning make a drive faster. It's a simple and yet effective trick for better speed.
By limiting the first partition to 300 GB, you are essentially limiting it to the first 300 GB on the hard disk drive - the same thing modifying the number of LBAs does. But the advantage is you can still access the remaining 1.2 TB of storage space! Now, isn't this a better "mod"?
PC:
BioShock 2, BioShock 2 Special Edition, Sins of a Solar Empire: Diplomacy Micro-Expansion (Digital Download), Sins of a Solar Empire: Trinity (Retail and Download), Stargate Resistance (Digital Download), Windchaser: Guilds of Glory
PS3:
BioShock 2, BioShock 2 Special Edition, Dante's Inferno Divine Edition, Star Ocean: The Last Hope - International
360:
BioShock 2, BioShock 2 Special Edition, Dante's Inferno, Darwinia+ (Xbox Live Arcade), World of Outlaws: Sprint Cars
Wii:
Shiren the Wanderer, Super Monkey Ball: Step & Roll, The Daring Game for Girls
NDS:
Best Friends Tonight, Jigapix Pets, Percy Jackson and the Olympians: The Lightning Thief, Pet Pals: New Leash on Life, Scene It? Twilight, The Daring Game for Girls, World Cup of Pool
In the past year we've talked a bit about the whole Bing vs. Google battle that has been going on (and pretty much dominated by Google). However CNET has a new article that shows just how important Bing has been to the search engine market and how it has been driving the market. Head on over for the full article.
For some, the definition of software freedom begins and ends with
source code. Such people have apparently never heard of market
competition.
It's arguably even more important, and doesn't necessarily derive
from a software license (though it's no doubt better when protected by
an open-source license).
Every 2nd news story for the past couple months has been about Tablet PC's, and here is another one (although this one is more about the tablet market in general). Gizmodo shares their thoughts on tablet PC's and show how 2 different approaches at making a tablet PC just don't work, full article over here.
Tablets today are thought to be made in one of two ways: Upsizing a
smartphone or downsizing a laptop. Many of these new tablets are
decent, but both methods render something less than the perfect tablet.
These tablets—not
the convertible laptops of the past decade, but real single-pane
slate-like ones—are in various stages of development, and have various
operating systems. You have your iPad, JooJoo, a bunch of Android
tablets, HP's slate, the as-yet-unseen Chrome OS
tablets, the equally mysterious Courier, and the Microsoft-partner
tablets that currently run a reasonably full version of Windows 7. You
can easily categorize nearly all of these into two basic design
philosophies: The iPad and Android tablets come from platforms
originally designed with smartphones in mind; the Windows 7 tablets
fully embrace the traditional desktop-metaphor OS; the Chrome OS and
JooJoo strip out most of the desktop, leaving—perhaps awkwardly—just
the browser.
More recently, we've had the chance to play with 24GB of DDR3 in Windows 7 and find out what you can and cannot do with that much memory. Honestly, there's not a lot you can't do. Doing the WeeklyTechUpdate podcast this year has been fun and by far the most enjoyable episodes in my opinion are the ones from CES: #25 - #28.
If you thought things were maybe starting to slow down around here, you've been beguiled. We've announced our annual LAN party - VulcLAN and will be heading off to CeBIT in Germany at the end of the month. There is a lot of good stuff coming so keep coming back for more! (0) Comments
Why Chrome Will Be Your Next Browser
Written by Jason "Fujitsu" Schneider
Thursday, 04 February 2010
Google Chrome hasn't taken the browser world by storm, however it has climbed into the #3 spot for browsers right behind Firefox and Internet Explorer. PCMag is predicting though that in the next 5 years Chrome might be the default browser of choice for a majority of users. Head on over and read why they think this might be the case.
Google Chrome's market share numbers are skyrocketing,
blowing past Safari and Opera to become the number three
most-widely-used Web browser. That's pretty impressive, and I don't
think it's going to stop there. I fully expect it to overtake Firefox and challenge, if not beat, Microsoft Internet Explorer sometime in the next 5 years.
It took Firefox most of this
decade to achieve its solid number two status, but the
one-and-a-half-year-old Chrome is growing faster and, in some ways,
developing more quickly than Firefox ever did. The question, though, is
not whether or not Chrome will beat other browsers, but why it is
rising while Firefox seems to have stalled or is falling.