[H]ard|OCP

[H]ardNews 15th Edition

Shuttle XPC SN95G5

Hexus got their hands on a Socket 939 small form factor computer, the Shuttle XPC SN95G5. All that power in a small space really impressed. They weren't too impressed with the price, though.

On the surface, it's all sweetness and light in the world of the SN95G5. It supports the best CPUs AMD have ever made, it has good features, the performance is great, and the G5 chassis restyle is Shuttle's best yet. But there's always a catch, and in this case it's price.

Fatal1ty Shootout

The World Cyber Games (WCG) is coming up in the not to distant future. Some of the best gamers in the world are going to descend on San Francisco. Well, here's your chance to have some fun there as well. Abit is presenting another shootout with Fatal1ty, and if you beat him, you could win up to $1200 in prizes.

Fatal1ty Shootouts™ are competitions open to event attendees who want the chance to play against the world’s best-known professional gamer.

Case Round Up

If you're in the market for a new case, then you might want to check out Spode's Abode, where they've just published a round up of ten different cases. They cover a number of different cases, including Aluminium and Plexiglass ones.

We have taken it upon ourselves to look at a selection of ten cases currently on the market. These are all of the high quality mid tower variety, roughly in the £75 to £150 price range. A case with an asterisk next to its name denotes one that has won an award.

[H]ardNews 14th Edition

Half-Life 2 Preload

I can't believe I missed this one all day. The fifth phase of the Half-Life 2 Preload started last night around 6PM. If you have a Steam account, head on over and get in on the fun. This update includes Counter Strike: Source maps. Now if only we could get the final version into our hands.

[H]ardNews 13th Edition

Punkbuster + ATI + Nvidia = Problems?

This editorial at Neoseeker brings an issue up that I thought should be addressed by as many in the community as possible, so I'm giving it its own newspost. It seems that the guys have found an issue with Punkbuster servers, ATI graphics cards, and nForce3 chipsets. Apparently, this combination causes systems to freeze while playing on Punkbuster servers.

The goal of this article is not to crucify any of the companies involved. Even at this point it is unclear if the blame lies with all or just some of the involved parties but the lack of communications between the three parties is somewhat disturbing.

So why do I bring it up? Because Neoseeker is asking for feedback about the issue so that they can maybe find out where the problem lies, and so the issue can be resolved for us all.

[H]ardNews 12th Edition

Rage 550 Pro Theater Chip

Hexus got their hands on a couple of ATI Rage 550 Pro PCI and PCI-E tuner cards. As the cards were non working samples used to hand out to media so they could get a closer look at them, Hexus did what any one of us would do. They took pictures of the board on a plate of beans. Just remember this caveat:

We should have samples for review pretty soon, and I should point out that Theater 550 PRO tuner boards, as you see in the above photographs, are not the basis of a good nutritional diet. No matter how tasty they look with some Heinz on toast.

Microsoft FAT Patent Overturned

Well it looks like the Public Patent Foundation's request to overturn Microsoft's patent on the FAT file system have come to some fruition. This in no way implies that the patent has been ruled invalid, as Microsoft still has a chance to respond to the ruling.

In the reexamination proceeding initiated earlier this year by the Public Patent Foundation ("PUBPAT"), the United States Patent and Trademark Office has rejected all of the claims of Microsoft's patent on the FAT file system, which Microsoft describes as "the ubiquitous format used for interchange of media between computers, and, since the advent of inexpensive, removable flash memory, also between digital devices."

Also, you can read C|Net's take on the issue here.

[H]ardNews 11th Edition

Looser PCI-E Spec?

The guys at TheInq have an editorial up about ATI's PCI-E compliance, or lack therof as the editorial would suggest. As with anything at TheInq, it should be taken with a grain of salt. Still an interesting read, nonetheless. Thanks, Shawn.

After weeks of research and phone calls, I think I have found the truth, and it lies in the middle, with a ton of caveats.

iMac G5 Questions

A little comedy to brighten your day. It looks like Apple users are asking questions about the upcoming iMac G5's. Blame Ted for the linkage.

Before we get to high on our high horse, let's remember the Compaq any key question that was on their list.

[H]ardNews 10th Edition

Browser Wars II

Internet Week has an article up talking about the rest of the community gearing up for a new browser war versus Microsoft's Internet Explorer. This war was fought before, with IE coming out on top, but with recent security flaws and lack of updates from Microsoft, it looks like things may heat up again.

But now, in a flashback, the remnants of Netscape—now the open source Mozilla Foundation—have come back with Firefox, and the buzz is building for alternative browsers now that IE has been beset with security problems.

More with Microsoft and IE

No, I'm not obsessed with this. It's just what everyone is talking about today. C|Net has an article up discussing Microsoft's Internet Explorer plans, or lack thereof. Not to say that Microsoft isn't planning something, but more or less the fact that the next major update isn't due until the release of Longhorn.

Once praised for its standards compliance, IE is now denounced by Web developers as outdated.

That pretty much describes everyone's issues with Internet Explorer, well that and security holes.

Die, Spammer, Die!!!!

More litigation coming from Redmond. This time Amazon is in the mix as well. Microsoft and Amazon have filed suit against three Ontario men for sending massive amounts of spam to their customers.

Microsoft, the world's largest software firm, and Amazon.com, the largest retailer on the Web, allege that Gold Disk Canada Inc., a company run by Barry Head and his sons Eric and Matthew, sent e-mails that looked like they came from the Seattle-area companies, a practice known as "spoofing."e

The worst part about this is that these guys are selling home spammer kits to people. We should move them to Texas, where the Death Penalty is legal.

[H]ardNews 9th Edition

MS Wants to Delay Remedies

The boys in Redmond are in a legal battle with the European Union concerning a Commission's penalty of forcing it to reveal secrets of their server software to their competitors. Apparently they feel that it will put them at a disadvantage in the long run.

"This is the first time in competitive history that a company has been ordered to draw up a description of secret technology and deliver it to its competitors," Ian Forrester, the lawyer for Microsoft, said in an argument before the Court of First Instance.

Falcon Northwest Selects BFG

Well, it looks like Nvidia got an OEM win today, with news that Falcon-Northwest has selected BFG for their 6800 series of PCI-Express graphics solutions.

"Our customers expect us to choose the best graphics technology in our PCI Express based systems," said Kelt Reeves, president of Falcon Northwest Computers. "As one of our Falcon Select vendors, BFG Technologies has an amazing track record of speed and reliability.

FutureMark 3DMark05 Glance

So FutureMark released their latest version of 3Dmark yesterday, and we we're all clamoring to get impressions of it. Well, ipKonfig takes a look at this latest release and weighs in with their thoughts.

The end results will have to wait in our opinions as 3DMark04 gave us a feeling of deception that will take some time to heal. But as we've also mentioned, any pre-fabbed benchmarking tool should be taking with a grain-of-salt and only used as a quick-n-dirty comparison.

Introduction to Linux

So you've thought about making the switch away from Windows for some time, but haven't taken the plunge yet. Well, you can take a look at Nordic Hardware's Introduction to Linux and maybe get a better grasp on it.

This article is intended as a straight-forward, easy to use guide to get you up and running with your first Linux Distribution, educate you about the History of GNU/Linux, and to help increase what I call “Linux awareness”.

Magnetocaloric Effect

Nathan W sends word on a number of different articles detailing the Magnetocaloric Effect. What does this have to do with our little corner of the personal computer and technology world you ask?

In general, the term "magnetocaloric effect" (thermomagnetic effect) refers to a reversible change of temperature resulting from a change in the magnetization of a ferromagnetic or paramagnetic substance.

Using this, we could achieve better cooling on our systems, of course.

[H]ardNews 8th Edition - [H]ard|Forum Happenings

[H]ard|Forum Happenings

So you've now been at work for two to three hours and are probably bored out of your mind at this point. Well, that means it's time to start surfing our forums (As long as work doesn't get in the way, of course. We don't want anyone fired over it). How about we start of with our [H]ot|Deals section, where you can get a Dell 2001FP for $674 before tax and shipping. If that doesn't get you excited, how about going retro and talking about older PC games that you loved. Maybe you could bug our forum member cornelious0_0 about his Forceware comparison for 3DMark05. While you're in the video card forum, debate to your hearts content about who "won" this round of video card wars. If video cards aren't your thing, check out mashie's Doom 3: Hell Inside case mod. A lot of work has been put into that bad boy, so it deserves all the press it gets. Not interested in any of these things. Well, there's about a 100,000 other threads for you to sink your teeth into if none of these gets you hot and bothered.

[H]ardNews 7th Edition

Misleading Marketing!?

Say it ain't so Joe! And get a load of this, there is not a "NV" in sight. PCPerspective welcome AMD and Atari to the fray. They seem to be spinning so hard the wheel flies apart.

Recently it came to our attention that AMD and Atari were both promoting a new game called Shadow Ops: Red Mercury to the pubic as the first 64-bit game on retail shelves and was that it was supposed to be a very important step for 64-bit gaming in general. What interested us at PC Perspective were quotes such as “get access to the 64-bit only level of detail, with mind-blowing texture quality, enormous map sizes and amazingly enhanced artificial intelligence” from the press releases. It would seem that the 64-bit version of the game is big visual improvement over its 32-bit counterpart. But is this the case at all? We decided to pick up our own copy to find out.

[H]ardNews 6th Edition

Smith Family Followup:

Many of you came to help out the Smith Family earlier this year. And you guys made a difference.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition

Game Prices on the Rise

As much as we hate to admit it, it looks like game prices should be going up in the near future. Publishers have been testing the waters for some time, with releases such as Doom 3 being priced about five dollars more than the $50 bucks we're used too. Still, it looks like this may become the norm more than an isolated occurrence due to inflation and rising development costs.

But by keeping costs steady for as long as they have, game publishers have created a consumer base that's resistant to change.

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

MSI K8N vs. K8T

Gamers-Depot pits two boards from MSI against each other. The K8N squares off against the K8T in a Via versus Nvidia chipset shootout. Both boards work for what their designed for, but the guys had some opinions on what to do.

In the end, given the performance advantage, and its best-of-class features, we have to go with the K8N Neo2 as our top-pick in this round. The VIA-based solution just doesn’t “do it” for us even though it’s priced cheaper.

PowerColor 9800 Platinum Edition

Computek takes a look at the PowerColor 9800 Platinum Edition. It's kind of a misnomer to call it a Platinum Edition, though since you would expect to get more with it, but you in fact only get a 128bit memory interface. Still, it's a great card.

First off, this card being of a 128bit memory architecture, you wouldn't be able to flash it to an XT like you could in the Pro version.

Radeon 9250 Shootout

What do you get when you pit seven different versions of the Radeon 9250 against each other? You get a shootout of cards that still should never make it into a gamer's box. Even so, we all need a cheap video card at one point or another, maybe for that cheap uncle or because you need a card for that home theater PC, where 3D speed isn't quite as important.

As usual, there is a graphics card catered for every kind of user and it doesn't quite end once you've decided which graphics processor to adopt. Each vendor's product has a slightly varied offering that would once again require your attention to details before making the plunge.

No More Hotmail in Outlook

I actually saw this over at Ars a few days ago, but Joel reminded me that we have not given it a mention here. In an effort to combat spammers, Microsoft is disabling hotmail's interoperability with Outlook, its own email client.

"This change will begin 27 September for new users and become effective for all users worldwide in 2005 after extensive communications to our existing users."

So it looks like there's still some time left for those of you with Hotmail accounts or have upgraded to the Premium Hotmail service.

*Edit* Jason from Microsoft reminded me to point out that you can still use Outlook with Hotmail if you upgrade your service.