[H]ardNews 11th Edition

Carve Your Own Pumpkin:

Steve “Stuntjumper” Arndt sent me a link to a carve your own pumpkin site that is pretty damn spiffy. I whipped this baby up in about 30 seconds. Have fun!

[H]ardNews 10th Edition - Tech Edition

Google Flight Search:

Google is testing a new flight search feature that allows you to type in two separate cities or airport codes and get flight times and information between the two cities. Thank Mr. Alpert for the heads up.

Users can type in two different cities, or airport codes, in the Google search box to bring up two boxes for entering departing and returning flight dates. Below those are links to the travel Web sites Expedia, Hotwire and Orbitz. Clicking on one of those links leads directly to flight options for your selected itinerary on that site.

Is there anything Google can’t find? They need to come out with Google Home Search, you just type in common household items like “car keys” and it finds them for you. That’d be handy.

Anti-Spyware Group Publishes Guidelines:

A coalition of anti-spyware vendors and consumer groups published guidelines and definitions to help people understand what spyware and adware are and assign risk levels to common internet practices associated with spyware and adware.

Nearly half of adult online Americans have stopped visiting specific Web sites that they fear might infect them with such unwanted programs, and a quarter have ceased to use file-sharing software, which often comes bundled with adware.

Robots In Space…Doing Surgery:

Do we really need tiny robot space surgeons? Insert your own “robots in space” joke here.

Small robots designed by University of Nebraska researchers may allow doctors on Earth to help perform surgery on patients in space.

[H]ardNews 9th Edition

OpenOffice = Bloatware?

ZDNet’s George Ou has posted results from a performance analysis of OpenOffice versus Microsoft Office 2003 and the numbers are downright ugly. To be fair, Mr. Ou has written a number of open source software articles in the past that were rather negative but it is hard to dismiss the cold, hard numbers put forth in this article.

From this table, we can see that OpenOffice.org is indeed a memory and CPU hog. It is literally taking up about 10 times the processing time and memory to just load the application itself along with a blank file. It doesn't matter how fast the CPU is, 10 times is 10 times and OpenOffice is simply bloated.

[H]ardNews 8th Edition

NVIDIA SLI - Ready for Mainstream?

The latest [H]ard|OCP editorial asks the question, is NVIDIA’s SLI ready for mainstream? Follow Kyle through the SLI system building process, what the drivers have brought to the table, mismatching video cards, profiles and finally, where we think the whole SLI thing is heading.

Looking at NVIDIA’s SLI hardware and software as a whole, it has come a long way since its introduction so long ago. SLI has matured into a product that certainly has more mainstream market appeal. The fact is that SLI is now easier to implement and it provides greater benefits than ever before.

DFI NF4 Ultra Infinity:

InsaneTek is saying that the DFI NF4 Ultra Infinity is an affordable board with superb performance and great overclockability. Heck, you can’t ask for much more than that can you?

I thought DFI was kidding when they said the NF4 Ultra Infinity would be able to hang with the more popular LANParty UT nF4 Ultra-D. The NF4 Ultra Infinity is a rocking motherboard. The performance is superb and really does run neck and neck with the slightly more expensive cousin.

Getting Girls In The Game:

News.com.com.com.com has an interesting article that talks about the lack of women in the game industry (both player and developer) and what is being done to change it.

Attendees see the women's game conference playing a key role in overcoming some of the historical hurdles to gender diversity in the industry. The conference "can get game designers and game houses thinking about the psychology of women in gaming, and to (think about the) subtle differences (necessary) to make games more palatable to everyone," said Rebecca Whitehead, the dean of academic affairs at the University of Advancing Technology.

Speaking of the Women’s Game Conference? Anyone catch that one lady talk about last week’s word of the day “teledildonics”?

[H]ardNews 7th Edition - [H]ardForum [H]appenings

[H]ardForum [H]appenings:

Welcome to the Thursday edition of [H]ardForum [H]appenings! Hot topic of the day is this thread that asks the question Is NVIDIA’s SLI mainstream? See what others are saying and let your thoughts be known. What do you think of the term professional video game players? The guys in the Gaming & Game Equipment forum want to know which you prefer, a Nintendo DS or a PSP. If you only had $500 to spend on a PC, what would you buy? This guy needs some ideas where to look. Plus, if you are shopping for a cheap PC as well, there are lots of good suggestions in this thread. Moving on to the Deal of the Day, we have 512MB DDR400 for $9.99 with mail-in-rebates. Runner up in the DotD department is this retail Radeon X1800XL for $399.99. As always, have fun in the forums. We’ll see you in there!

[H]ardNews 6th Edition

US Workers Waste Time On Web:

Apparently US workers like to waste time reading the internet while they are supposed to be working. Obviously, if you are reading this news item from work, you are one of the people this article is talking about…and we love you for it!

That co-worker staring, eyes scrunched up, at his computer monitor may look like he's sweating through another hard day's work. But he just might be one of the growing number of office jockeys who, according to new research, have their minds not on their jobs -- but on a blog.

Sony’s Profits Tumble:

It looks like Sony isn’t doing so well right now, profits are falling and loads of cash is being spent on restructuring. Sony needs to seriously get on the ball and turn things around.

Sony Corp said its net profit for the first half to September tumbled nearly 72 pct to 21.20 bln yen because of falling prices of electronic products and high restructuring charges.

MS Outlines IE7 Security Plans:

The program manager for Internet Explorer explained some of the changes and security measures that are being taken to make IE7 more secure.

Microsoft is tightening up the way its Internet Explorer browser (IE) handles HTTPS for version 7, which is used to secure online transactions, in an attempt to give users more protection online.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition

Beta 81.87 ForceWare WinXP Drivers:

Today seems to be the day for NVIDIA drivers, doesn’t it? There are brand new Beta 81.87 ForceWare WinXP drivers posted at nZone today that have a handful of performance enhancements as well as improved compatibility. If you are the adventurous type that doesn’t mind beta drivers, head on over and grab the 21MB package.

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

[H]ard Pumpkin:

Here is another cool [H]ard pumpkin carving to help get you into the Halloween spirit! This pumpkin was done by Leon, who says the LED fan in the jack-o-lantern has its very own dedicated PSU. I like the Pentium4 520 box for a stand too.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition - Mods & Ends

Cooling:

Gigabyte 3D Aurora & 3D Galaxy @ Legion Hardware - Vantec StingRay Water Cooling Kit @ A1-Electronics

Etc.:

Wolfclan FPS Gaming Keyboard V2 @ Driver Heaven - Sunbeamtech Theta TP-101 Fan Controller @ BigBruin - Logitech G7 Laser Cordless Mouse @ EverythingUSB - Sansun Arctic 550w PSU @ A1-Electronics - StarTech 2 Port USB Mini KVM Switch @ Futurelooks

Cases & Modding:

Thermaltake VB6000 Swing Mid-Tower ATX Case @ 3DXtreme - Aplus CS-1022-5 XBlade PC Case @TecCentral

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

NVIDIA nForce4 AMD/Intel X16 Drivers:

NVIDIA has released new drivers today for those of you who own nForce4 AMD/Intel X16 motherboards. Head on over here for the 32bit version and over here for the 64bit version. These drivers are only for folks who own nForce4 AMD/Intel X16 motherboards so there is no need to download them otherwise. Driver versions are as follows:

[H]ardNews 1st Edition - Press Releases

VIA Hosts First Major QUAKE 4 Tournament:

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, together with S3 Graphics today announced sponsorship of the DreamHack 2005 event, taking place 24-27 November in Sweden, and the hosting of the first ever large-scale QUAKE 4 LAN tournament.

AMD64 Sets The Standard At Lucasfilm:

AMD announced that the digital backbone of the new Lucasfilm Animation Singapore digital animation center is powered by AMD64 processor technology – the gold standard for 64-bit computing. Lucasfilm Animation Singapore is Lucasfilm Ltd.’s first animation studio in Asia and complements their new Letterman Digital Arts Center combining Industrial Light & Magic and LucasArts at the Presidio in San Francisco. All facilities rely on AMD64 processors for their artist’s workstations and mission-critical render farms

OCZ Announces New XTC Heatspreaders:

OCZ Technology Group, a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory, is extremely excited to announce the PC-3200 and PC-3500 Gold GX series modules which will be the first two products to utilize the latest OCZ heatspreader design. The new, patent-pending XTC (Xtreme Thermal Convection) Heatspreaders allow increased ventilation and heat dissipation due to an innovative honeycomb design providing more direct access to the actual memory ICs.

[H]ardNews 10th Edition

ABIT NI8 SLI:

There is a review of the ABIT NI8 SLI LGA775 motherboard posted today at InsaneTek worth checking out. While a solid performer, the guys did say the board was lacking in the overclocking department.

Intel fans who are extreme gamers, be happy. Abit did something right this time around. Although the FSB overclock was a bit weak, that is not the motherboard's main selling point.

Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9:

If you are an AMD kinda guy looking for a MicroATX board, there is a review at Hardware Zone of the Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9 socket 939 motherboard. According to this review, the budget board isn’t a stellar performer and failed to get a solid recommendation.

At the end of the day, the Gigabyte GA-K8N51GMF-9 was a very attractive motherboard, fully-featured, solid stability and excellent pricing. However, its performance numbers were a little worrying.