[H]ardNews 7th Edition

It looks as though the newsday is winding down early. Thank goodness a big crab just got into the lobster trap. I was getting a bit bored. Damn, addicted to LobsterCrackCam again. It took me a trip to the Betty Ford clinic in '99 to kick the dependency last time... Blame Ethan Smith.

I mean how often do you get to scream at everyone within earshot, "OOOOO OOOOO OOOOO, LOOK AT THE BIG CRAB RIGHT ON THE CAMERA!"

Also if you happen to be bored, Joseph Alpert let us know that TechTV has their Geek Guide to Getting it On(line) posted. This may not be cube appropriate.

Nothing like shellfish and sex for lunch eh? I am sure a hot towel is appropriate.

[H]ardNews - Blair's Web News

Hollywood Wins:

SAN FRANCISCO -- The California Supreme Court ruled Monday that courts may block Internet users from posting codes to illegally copy DVD movies, in a case that pitted trade secret rights against free speech.

Solidarity:

Several hundred Web sites are to remove their front pages in protest against a European software patents directive, due for a final vote next week.

Oh Yeah? Yeah!

Roxanne Jekot, a 51-year-old computer program developer from Cumming, said she and a few expert friends could crack Georgia's $54 million touch-screen voting system in a matter of minutes.

To Tow or Not?

New wireless ticket-writing technology will allow parking enforcers in cities and schools to get up-to-the-minute updates on the status of tickets.

Very Cool:

With an eye towards graphics professionals, Maxtor will release on Tuesday a new line of external hard drives with one-touch backup capability.

And here is the PR from Maxtor.

[H]ardNews - Blair's Tech News

Smart Dust:

UCSD Chemists Develop Self-Assembling Silicon Particles A First Step Toward Robots the Size of a Grain of Sand.

Fast Silicon:

PALO ALTO, California -- Intel Corp. has detailed an experimental 90-nanometer custom processor that handles TCP/IP ingress processing at measured data rates up to 9.64 Gbits/second.

Don't Scratch It:

Rockets roared and their white flames cut through the early morning darkness at Cape Canaveral's Air Force Station in Florida yesterday as University of Arizona astronomers watched a revolutionary instrument blast into space toward an orbit around the sun.

Down wit OCP?

Portland, Ore.-based OCP-IP is a non-profit industry association that wants to make a common standard for intellectual property core interfaces, or sockets, that facilitate "plug and play" system-on-chip (SoC) design.

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

Linux PVR:

Brad at SFFTech gives us the low down on building a PVR using a Linux OS in a Shuttle XPC. Nifty stuff that may be at home in your living room.

Right now, I'm able to schedule regular recordings of TV programs, record the programs, and encode them using an MPEG4-compliant codec.

nForce2 Review:

ClubOC digs into the DFI LAN Party mainboard.

As I stated above, all the necessary Overclocker's tweaks are in the shipping bios, without any surprises. If you are experienced or new at the art of overclocking, this board will suit your needs well.

Cool Runnings:

HotHardware sets out to debunk their namesake today by telling us all about the Asetek WaterChill. It is a watercooling kit that is now being sold here in the States. You can pick your own up over at FrozenCPU. We have been working on our review for a bit over a month now and it will show you the ins and outs of the new WaterChill as well as directly compare it to the competition.

And even when you factor in strictly performance metrics, the WaterChill is miles ahead of the heatsink and fan combination included with Intel's Pentium 4 retail kit. Each component in the system seems to compliment the others, as there doesn't seem to be a weak link in the entire assembly. Further, asetek's forward looking design approach ensures that the kit works with the flagship processors of today and AMD's Athlon 64, which will see the light of day late in September.

Cooling:

Spire HSF @ 3DXtreme

Modding:

UV Case Stand @ TwistedMods - PSU Modding - CCFL Fan Grill @ GideonTech

Etc.:

A+GPB 420W PSU @ Mod Synergy (You might be careful about purchasing one of these as I learned that A+GPE does not always RMA equipment they say they will.) - Kingwin 450 watt PSU @ Bjorn3D - USB Card Reader @ I4U - Resources Minolta Camera @ ByteSector - PowerGlow 420 PSU @ ExtensionTech

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition

Smaller SFF:

SFFTech is covering a new SFF computer from Iwill. If anything is worthy of the "small" is Small Form Factor, this is it. (Note to self: Never put close up of geek author's face on article. We love you Rocky, but not that much! )

This isn't going to be a competition between the ZPC and other Small Form Factor machines, because the ZPC sits in a ring basically by itself.

Dear Dan:

Breaking pins, heavy water, slow drives and inadequate aperture are just a few of the things bothering the blokes at Dan's this week.

I was wondering, wouldn't it be great if we could use heavy water for cooling a PC down? Wouldn't that work? Isn't heavy water used in reactors? Why can't we apply the same method with the humble PC?

LAN Tax:

It seems as if Florida is thinking of slapping on a state tax if you set up a network. The whole story is here this morning. The details there were very sketchy, but enough to get Jon Davis riled up over at RageAgainst.net. Be advised there is a bit of strong imagery with that link.

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

GFFX 5900U:

GamersDepot has the review covering the MSI flagship card that I know many of you have been waiting on. It certainly is not a reference card, or at least about a far from one as you will get now days.

This card is, without doubt, meant for the performance enthusiasts who’ll stop at nothing – price no object – to have the fastest graphics card around, period.

9200SE:

If something more mainstream is your bag and you prefer an ATI chipset, OhlsPlace has just exactly what you may need. The PowerColor 9200SE. If you are thinking about making a step up from your MX level card, the following is an interesting thought.

After finishing the tests I kind of felt sorry for the MX400 card. The 9200SE not only ate it's lunch but it took its milk money as well.

Everybody Out!

This is a RAID! HardwareZone shows you what RAID-0 is all about when it comes to 10K RPM SATA drives, better known as Raptors.

The RAID 0 performance of two Western Digital Raptor drives were incredible to say the least. The disk transfer rates were close to being doubled and its application I/O throughput were boosted further with extremely amazing scores.

Foxtrot:

Funny as usual. Thanks Rooster.

Cooling:

VANTEC Nexus Rheobus and Light/Sound Kit @ EnvyNews - VANTEC Nexus Rheobus @ EnvyNews

Modding:

Bay Modding in Spanish @ HardH2O - Bay Mountable LCD Panel @ BitTech - Chenming Midtower Case @ TechDreams - Antec LanBoy @ NexusHardware - Fan Grill Mod @ GideonTech

Etc.:

Edinburgh Game Fest Coverage @ DH - A very sweet HTPC Case @ Ascully - Netgear Wireless Router @ ByteSector

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

That Sucking Sound:

Sadly it is not your significant other, but rather those high paying tech jobs going elsewhere. NewsFactor asked if it can be stopped. Blame Blair.

Recently, many employers have had employees from other countries come to the U.S. under L1 visas to be trained to do work that they will return to their own countries to complete. That, said Courtney, is "a loophole you can drive a Mack truck through," and his organization is working to close it up.

Big Iron:

These guys are new to me, so let's give them a warm [H]ardOCP welcome and say thanks for giving us a Thermalright SLK-900U review.

If I were to recommend any heatsink to anyone it would be this heatsink, because I love the fact that it screws into the motherboard, unlike the annoying clip ons that always give me trouble, and the fact that it allows 92mm fan access.

Hard Drive:

MBReview, reviews a HD. I have not seen any compelling reasons to go away from Maxtor, WD, or IBM...oh wait.

The Samsung SP1614N has impressed me with the performance we have seen today. In the past, we’ve seen only mediocre performance coming out of Samsung’s hard drive products, but if the SP1614N is any indication as to the direction Samsung is headed in, we could be seeing some impressive products coming in the near future and beyond.

MX500:

If you are looking for a great corded mouse, the Logitech MX500 is certainly worth a place on your short list. It happens to be my mouse of choice at the moment. If you have the extra cash for and MX700 and some extra batteries, make sure you do that.

The MX500 is the best mouse I have ever used, its comfortable easy to move around and its highly sensitive image sensor allows you to perform precision movements with ease.

[H]ardNews 11th Edition

Phat Pipes:

Thermalright sent us over their new Pentium4 cooler that will be coming back on the market soon. It certainly is a nice piece of work to look at.

[H]ardNews 10th Edition

Can You OC It?

A worthy successor to the elegant and powerful Bugattis of the past, the Veyron 16·4 is powered by a 1001-horsepower W16 quad-turbocharged 8.0-liter engine with all-wheel drive. Bugatti claims this new super car will reach a speed of 252 mph. Acceleration is also impressive–the Veyron can reach 180 mph in just 14 seconds!

More Bandwidth:

WAYNE, N.J. — The Federal Communication Commission followed up on a promise made to the communications sector earlier this year by announcing new unbundling rules that could spark increased rollout of broadband services in the U.S. while keeping voice service competition alive at the local level.

Thanks Virus Guy:

Today, after the alarm caused by the fast diffusion of the Sobig virus, we are all talking about the reasons why virus writers are coding more and more viruses.

Better Killers:

American forces should be wearing the new gear by 2025, military officials say, with some advancements in use by 2010.

[H]ardNews 9th Edition

[H]istory:

Four years ago we were covering....

LobsterCam. Below is one of my all-time fave LobsterCam moments.

S3 announced the Savage2000 Chipset.

SANTA CLARA, Calif. --- August 30, 1999 -- Rapidly following on the “award-winning” success of the Savage4 accelerator, S3 Incorporated (Nasdaq: SIII) today announced its next-generation graphics platform, the Savage2000 accelerator. Featuring stunning 3D performance for PC gamers, superior digital video playback and TV-out support for home users and high-resolution 2D image quality and digital flat panel support for professional users, Savage2000 combines unmatched functionality and mind-numbing speed to deliver today’s most complete PC graphics solution.

And a couple days later NVIDIA blessed us with the first "GPU".

And the Celeron Overclocking FAQ was in vogue at ARS.

Thanks to Ethan Smith for making me nostalgic today.

[H]ardNews 8th Edition

You Missed It:

This edition has been removed to comply with a request from AMD. See, if you ask nice instead of putting your lawyers on us, we can be nice guys.

[H]ardNews 7th Edition

Sound Off!

Well done sound card reviews are far and few between on the Net. A very capable LostCircuits again pitches their hat into the ring today with a broad roundup of talent in part 2.

In part 2 of this Audiophile Cornucopia, we round up another few of the current high end sound solutions, that is the Terratec Aureon 7.1 Space, the Hercules GameTheater XP along with the Creative Labs Audigy 2 and compare it to the most advanced on-board audio solution featuring nVidia's MCP-T with its integrated Audio Processing Unit to bring Digital Dolby to the table.

DRAMs:

My, what big chips you have. Thanks Blair.

Elpida Memory Inc. Monday introduced its 512Mbit DDR400 SDRAM chip and a 1Gbyte PC3200 DIMM. Both are sampling and are expected to be in volume production in December.

Robust Storage:

Dan stops answering letters long enough to actually take the time to review something! Not your ordinary hardware, but will certainly interest some of you that like to get it and go.

At a glance, Famous Technology's Twin-TV looks like an unusually slim memory-card-to-HD "digital wallet" gadget, and it is. But it also has A/V output. It can show pictures, play MP3s, and play video files, on your TV. It can even play ripped DVD VOBs. And it's not terribly expensive.

TV/PVR Card:

Want TV on your PC but are not in the market for something super-expensive? OCAU sheds light on the solution from Compro. They don't overclock it though, and I was looking forward to getting through reruns of the Beverly Hillbillies in half the time...

ComproPVR is not only providing the user interface for TV watching but doubles as a digital video recorder. As a video recorder it converts analog video stream, such as from home video tapes, to MPEG-1 or MPEG-2 digital formats for editing and recording to a CD or DVD-ROM.