[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.