![[H]ardOCP](/images/blank.gif){kind=small}
Sytrin KuFormula VF1 Plus @ Phoronix - Artic Cooling Freezer 7 Pro @ DriverHeaven
Ideazon Z Board @ XSreviews - Thermaltake Muse eSATA @ VelocityReviews - Thermaltake CircleFire Panel @ Mikhailtech - Apple iPod Nano @ Bytesector - Icemat Siberia USB Combo Headset @ VelocityReviews - Mad Catz iPod Nano Case @ Bytesector
We may be pushing February, but the hits of 2005 just keep coming. Check out the best gaming mods of 2005. If you enjoy PC games, and are looking for a fresh update, this one is for you.
The problem with Something of the Year Awards is that everyone’s taste is different and there are over 3,000 mods competing to be in the top 30. One person may like blinding paced gameplay, with gibs and glory decided every second while others like slow and strategic team play. You can't please everyone and we don't intend to - hence we let *you* the community vote for your top mods and we throw in a few of our favorites along the way.
As I said yesterday, if you need some new ram, why not buy the best? Check out this review of another alternative from the fine folks at Corsair.
Corsair is one of the premier memory producers in the world. Their products are easily accepted as some of the highest quality memory on the market and the Pro Series modules brought LED activity indicators to Random Access Memory. With the overclockability of the AMD64 line of processors this product would be the perfect fit for the gamer looking to squeeze a little bit more performance from their machine by pushing the front side bus from 200 to around 218 Mhz. This moderate overclock, while not exactly in line with the hardcore overclockers pushing 800 - 1000 Mhz on the AMD64 platform, would fit the needs of the tweaker / gamer perfectly.
Wired has a nice piece up predicting the rise of another great technology boom. This boom is not to be confused with a bubble. Boom good, bubble bad, got it?
A boom perhaps, but not (phew!) a bubble. There's a difference. Bubbles are inflated with hot air and speculation. They end with a wet pop, leaving behind messy splatters. Booms, on the other hand, tend to have strong foundations and gentle conclusions. Bubbles can be good: They spark a huge amount of investment that can make things easier for the next generation, even as they bankrupt the current one. But booms - with their more rational allocation of capital - are better. The problem is that exuberance can make it hard to tell one from the other.
I thought it would be a good time for us to take a look at another batch of really cool, over priced stuff that we like to read about, but would probably never buy.
This flashlight with a built-in video camera lets you record things that go bump in the night. The 17-inch aluminum torch cranks out a blinding 85,000-candlepower beam; 1 gig of memory holds up to 75 minutes of 640 x 480-pixel video. Switch to infrared mode and the 1.5-inch LCD shows you what's out there in the dark, without revealing your position to the bogeyman.
Is it just me or are they sticking cameras in everything nowadays!? Next thing you know your oven is going to have intrusion detection.
Remember all those signs in the hospital that remind you turn off your cell phone because it interferes with the equipment? Well that little myth has been proven false. Now it looks as though that not only does it have no effect, it actually cuts down on the error rate. Well then turn on the damn cell phone!
Using mobile telephones in hospitals reduces the error rate in medical care because of more timely communication and rarely causes electronic magnetic interference, Yale School of Medicine researchers report this month.
For us there is nothing more satisfying than buying a brand new, expensive piece of hardware and OCing the hell out of it. The boys over at DriverHeaven have their impressions of overclocking this video solution from ATi.
January has certainly been a busy month for ATI – the Canadian company launched the new X1900 series of cards, which pushed graphics performance to even greater heights. The part it was replacing, the X1800 is perhaps one of the most short-lived series that ATI had ever produced – not because it was a failure, quite the opposite - but because it was horribly delayed and it’s just the price ATI has to pay for the frantic pace the graphics card industry has gotten into the past few years.
The gang at Google feels that perhaps they should have approached the launch of their new video service a little bit differently.
"We made a big mistake," Marissa Mayer, vice president of search products and user experience, told Bloomberg News in an interview in Munich, Germany published on Thursday. "You can't come out and launch a product like Google Video and say 'CSI' and 'Survivor' are there if they're not on the home page."
Yesterday we talked about companies that use deceptive practices to get unsuspecting users to pay for spyware programs they don’t even need. Well it looks as though there is something we all can do to help. Blame my evil twin, Chuck Trout.
Viruses and worms are no longer the biggest threat to computer users – now it's badware. Badware is a term we use to encompass the broad range of malicious software that is sneaking onto people's computers, including spyware and deceptive adware. It can subvert your computer for the benefit for a third party, frustrate you with unwanted advertising, and even steal your most personal information.
Sapphire Radeon X1900 XTX 512 @ HardwareZone
AC Ryan Backy @ ThinkComputers.org - Antec P180 @ bit-tech
Zalman ZM-460APS Noiseless Power Supply @ MVKTech - Creative Zen Vision:M @ t-break - Zalman ZM-460APS Noiseless Power Supply @ Overclockers Online - Corsair Secure Digital 133x @ Phoronix
If you are thinking about moving up to a dual core processor, and love AMD products like we do, then the boys over at HardwareLogic have this review that is right up your alley.
I honestly feel the AMD 3800+ X2 is the best processor on the market when you take into consideration the price versus the performance. While you can go out and buy a 4800+ X2 for $650, the 3800+ X2 is easily overclocked to 4800+ levels for more than $300 less, meaning even those on a budget can enjoy outstanding performance. That's not to say the 4800+ X2 is not a great processor, it very much is, but if you can save $300 and have almost the same performance, why wouldn't you save that money and put it toward an upgraded video card, memory, or motherboard?
Are your games sluggish? Does it take you forever to load a map in Battlefield? If you answered yes then you need MOAR RAM!! The good people over at Virtual-Hideout have a great read on this 2 gig solution from Corsair. Once again, Corsair is a name that has been essential to all of our boxes for quite some time.
Compared to the Value ram, Corsairs XMS 4000PT is definitely a lot faster. The ability to reliably go to 250mhz speeds (when paired with a motherboard capable of it) means that you don’t need to sacrifice speed for capacity.
We have a brand spankin’ new chip and ram, now we need a good motherboard to run it! Our friends at Anand have their motherboard price guide updated for your viewing pleasure.
Welcome to our latest motherboard price guide. We are seeing the newly released i975X chipset based motherboards have begun to slowly roll into the market, while we expect the i955X based boards to be gradually phased out. While some deals on certain pieces of hardware are made even sweeter by including mail-in rebates, there aren't too many available this week. We are also expecting the new 945GM based boards to be released some time during Q1 '06. These boards will support both the Yonah and Conroe processors.
BIG props go out to the good men and women in Spanish law enforcement for shutting down a major child pornography ring. I particularly love this quote:
The police will continue to have a policy of ‘zero tolerance’ towards any use of new technology that could put our children in danger or that involves abuse of children,” Interior Minister Jose Antonio Alonso said in the statement.
Lets all hope these people get exactly what is coming to them.
Cnet feels now is a good time to make some additional points about the article we covered yesterday. Obviously the author must have read Steve’s post.
It doesn't take much to touch off a wildfire of debate about what's better--Apple or Microsoft? Windows XP or OSX? Bill Gates or Steve Jobs? And truth be told, the ongoing feud between fans of each side can be tiresome, with neither side emerging unscathed. But a recent column running on Wired has taken a different tack in evaluating the two companies' leaders. Columnist Leander Kahney looks at records of charitable giving to determine which tech magnate most deserves his rock star status.
I have an easy way to settle this once and for all. Let’s make this a triple threat match and send Kyle over with his ban hammer. We know who would win then.
The latest serving of ARP’s ongoing survey contest is up and ready for you to fill out. It will take you less than 5 minutes and you could win a shiny new Scythe CPU Cooler. Mmmmm shiny metal.
We are very happy to announce that Scythe will be sponsoring ten Scythe Katana CPU coolers for this survey contest! We will be giving away FIVE Katana CPU coolers every week of the contest! All you need to do is participate in the survey, and you will stand a chance to win one of these beauties! The earlier you participate, the better your chances of winning one. So, participate right NOW!
Apparently, attaching any usb 2.0 device to your core duo laptop will cause you to lose about 76 minutes of battery time. Intel is blaming a faulty driver issue from Microsoft. It also appears that the boys in Redmond have known about this issue for some time.
Munich (Germany) and Westlake Village (CA) - Connect any USB 2.0 device to your notebook and lose more than one hour of battery time: Tom's Hardware Guide's tests of a Windows-based Intel Core Duo mobile processor platform revealed a serious power consumption issue that, according to Intel, is caused by a Microsoft driver bug - a bug that has been known by Microsoft for some time, but kept from the public eye until today.
The latest chip in the Itanium line, code named Montecito, will be the first to be manufactured on a 90nm process. This is also a good thing for power consumption, which will now be down to 100W.
Chip maker Intel has announced the latest processor in its Itanium line, code-named Montecito. The new CPU is the first in the line to be manufactured on a 90nm process instead of the older 130nm fabrication. As a result, it uses less electrical power than its predecessor (100W instead of 130W). In addition, the CPU manufacturer has announced that Montecito will be the first Itanium chip to drop the hardware-based x86 emulation circuitry, instead making use of the extra CPU real estate to add features like Hyperthreading and on-chip virtualization technology to the Itanium line.
As soon as I laid eyes on this contraption, I knew you guys would want to have a look. I give you the beer pouring robot!
This is it, it has finally happened. I think I can confidently say that regardless of anything else posted here, nothing will ever top this gadget. This is Asahi, a beer pouring robot from Japan. It can refrigerate up to six cans of beer, two mugs, and with a simple push of a button it will pour a beer into the mug with perfect head every time. It gets even better too, this thing is free! Kind of. You have to collect 36 seals found on specially marked Asahi beer, but I wouldn’t have a problem with that. Now if I could only teach it to make me a sandwich and cuddle.
If this thing could just get you the chips from the kitchen, it’d be perfect.
It certainly seems that it could be a distinct possibility that Vista could be delayed even further. If the new operating system does not meet the standard of quality they are looking for, dev leader Jim Allchin says they will push it back.
"Where we sit today, things are going according to plan, and we’re feeling very good," Microsoft's (Profile, Products, Articles) Co-President of the Platforms, Products & Services Division said during an interview in San Francisco. "But I always like to preface that as I did with Windows 2000, Windows XP: quality is the thing that will dictate if we’re ready to go. So if we have any problems in quality, I'll slip this product. It's the thing that is at the top of my mind."
The state of Washington seems to be a little miffed at Computer LLC for distributing spam and spyware in the guise of a spyware cleaner.
In an Associated Press article found at Foxnews.com, Washington State is suing Secure Computer LLC and six people over spyware for distributing "Spyware Cleaner". Paul E. Burke and Gary T. Preston are two folks from Secure Computer LLC who are charged. They have made more than $100,000 since the Summer of 2004 pitching their spyware and spam to unsuspecting users.
This is one thing that gets my panties in a bunch. These companies prey on unsuspecting victims who generally don’t know any better to make a profit. Here’s to hoping they get theirs. Waitamin, did I say panties? I meant underwear!! Ya! Underwear…damnit.
The electronic retail giant is planning on ending all mail-in rebates for laptops and PC accessories. I guess the customers don’t like them. Who knew?
"We realized that mail-in rebates were a source of frustration with consumers, and something worth taking on," said Brian Lucas, a spokesman with the Minneapolis, Minn. retailer. The two-year process has necessitated explaining and working with vendors, and implementing a back-end IT process to handle the flow of rebates, he said.
We linked a story yesterday at Xboxic that broke the news of an update for the Xbox 360 dashboard. We received confirmation from Microsoft that the Xboxic information was indeed accurate and that an update was “imminent”. Unfortunately, that update was supposed to head to production today but a few minor issues pushed the target date back to Monday. There will also be a Call Of Duty 2 update hitting the following day, so next week should be a good one for Xbox 360 owners.
This should ruffle a few feathers but I guess the truth really does hurt sometimes. Say what you want about ol’ Bill Gates, that man gives more money to charity than probably anyone on the planet.
Gates is the cutthroat capitalist. A genius maybe, but one more interested in maximizing profits than perfecting technology. He's the ultimate vengeful nerd. Jobs has been portrayed as a man of art and culture. He's an aesthete, an artist; driven to make a dent in the universe. But these perceptions are wrong. In fact, the reality is reversed.
The British Phonographic Institute is bragging about their recent court victories over two evil file swappers. One of the offenders was a postman and father of two who must pay a 1,500£ fine. The other dastardly villain forced to pay about $20,000£ in fines and legal fees. This BPI should be proud of their efforts to stomp out file sharing postmen around the globe.
The man from King's Lynn was ordered to make an immediate payment of 5,000 pounds, and faces legal costs of 13,500 pounds and as well as an undecided sum for damages. The postman, a father of two, was told to pay 1,500 pounds pending a final decision on damages and costs.
Wouldn’t you feel stupid for getting yourself 2 years in prison after only making $40 off of Windows source code? While it is true the guy had a prior record a mile long but you got to admit, going to the slammer for $40 in ill gotten gains is pretty funny, especially when your handle is “illwill”.
William Genovese, Jr., 29, pleaded guilty last year to one count of unlawful distribution of trade secrets for putting Microsoft's source code for its Windows 4.0 and Windows 2000 programs on his Web site and selling it.
I like this news item about the spam laws applying to everyone not so much because it put a spammer out of business but more because of this quote from the judge:
"This allegation has little more validity than one who contends he is not guilty of homicide when he shoots a rifle into a crowd of people without picking a specific target, and someone dies," the judge wrote in Thursday's ruling.
