|
|
|
|
|
March 2012 |
Early today, busy busy busy..
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
NBNCo have published their 3-year rollout plan. Getting started - you can type your address, suburb or postcode into the search field above to see where the NBN is rolling out to. More info here.
Asher spotted this cool video about a practical use today for Google's self-driving car. We announced our self-driving car project in 2010 to make driving safer, more enjoyable, and more efficient. Having safely completed over 200,000 miles of computer-led driving, we wanted to share one of our favorite moments. Here's Steve, who joined us for a special drive on a carefully programmed route to experience being behind the wheel in a whole new way.
If you're hanging out for a Raspberry Pi, there's a delay over CE certification. The issue centers around two companies -- RS Components and element14/Premier Farnell -- that have confirmed they won't distribute the device until it's been anointed with the CE label. Raspberry Pi had previously argued that its PC is not a "finished end product," and that it, like Beagleboard, could therefore be distributed without the CE mark. Its distributors, however, disagreed. As a result, the team is working to get their computers CE-compliant "as soon as humanly possible," and are already pretty confident that they'll meet category A, and perhaps even category B requirements.
If I had this magic pizza button I'd probably double my weight in a month. It was bad enough a few years ago when I discovered a local kebab shop would deliver a kebab to my house for $5 total. They went out of business pretty quickly and I like to think it wasn't entirely my fault. Ordering pizza just got a whole lot easier thanks to a refrigerator magnet that lets you order your favorite pie for you at the press of a button.
Ben pointed out that Photoshop CS6 beta is available for download. Explore Adobe® Photoshop® CS6 beta for a sneak preview of some of the incredible performance enhancements, imaging magic, and creativity tools we are working on. Discover for yourself why Photoshop CS6 software will be a whole new experience in digital image editing.
TechSpot spoke to Intel about Xeons. We had the opportunity to chat with Ajay Chandramouly, Cloud Computing and Data Center Industry Engagement Manager at Intel IT, who gave us some insight on how they have leveraged the Xeon processor family across their global data centers to drive better performance and capabilities along with cost savings.
Martin spotted this video of an elephant playing with a tablet PC. Peter the elephant plays with a Samsung Galaxy Note. This is all real, no film trickery, post-production or hidden cuts -- he's just a very clever elephant.
Thursday Night Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 29-March-2012 23:30:45 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte Z77X-UD5H Z77 Motherboard on eTeknix.
Biostar TZ77XE4 Motherboard on HWSecrets.
MSI X79A-GD65 8D Motherboard on Funkykit.
Asrock X79 Extreme4 & X79 Extreme4-M on LegionHW.
ASUS F1A75-V EVO Llano board on Bjorn3D.
Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 on XbitLabs.
MSI Big Bang-XPower II on XbitLabs.
ASRock Fatal1ty X79 Professional on XbitLabs.
MSI A75MA-G55 Motherboard on RBMods.
Audio Visual:
2.1 Speakers Grouptest Review - Antec Rockus 3D, Corsair SP2500, Microlab FC360 on Vortez.
Canon PowerShot SX2560 HS on TechReviewSource.
Logitech Squeezebox Touch Wi-Fi Music Player on NikKTech.
Tritton AX 720 Gaming Headset on Tech-Reviews.
NoiseHush NX70 Multimedia Headset on TechReviewSource.
Noontec MediaHome V8 media player on HWLook.
Tritton AX 720 Gaming Headset on Tech-Reviews.
Portable & Prebuilt:
HP TouchSmart Elite 7320 prebuilt touchscreen PC on TechReviewSource.
Samsung Galaxy Note on HWLook.
AT&T Pantech Element 8-Inch 4G LTE Tablet on LegitReviews.
Lenovo C325 desktop on TechReviewSource.
Cooling:
Titan Fenrir Siberia Edition on OCClub.
NZXT Sentry Mix fan controller on PureOC.
Cooler Master X6 Elite Heatsink on NinjaLane.
Prolimatech Genesis CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
NZXT. HAVIK 140 CPU Cooler on Futurelooks.
Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 CPU Cooler on HardCoreWare.
Power Supply:
Rosewill Hive 750W on Guru3D.
Kingwin Absolute Platinum 550W on TechPowerUp.
3R System AK6-600M on HWSecrets.
FSP Aurum Pro 850W on HWSecrets.
Input Etc:
Corsair Vengeance M90 Performance MMO and RTS Gaming Mouse on Tweaktown.
Corsair Vengeance K90 Performance MMO Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
Epic Gear Meduza Mouse and Hybrid Pad on OC3D.
Razer Naga Hex Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
Cases:
In Win BUC 101 Mid Tower on ThinkComputers.
BitFenix Raider on OCClub.
Xilence Interceptor Pro on XSReviews.
Thermaltake Overseer RX-I on TechReaction.
Thermaltake Level 10 GTS Snow Edition on NeoSeeker.
Storage:
Synology DiskStation DS1512+ NAS on TechSpot.
Plextor M3 256GB SATA III on PureOC.
Plextor M3 Pro 256GB (PX-256M3P) Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB SATA III 2.5” SSD on TestFreaks.
Samsung 830 Capacity Range Roundup on PCPerspective.
Video Cards:
Palit GeForce GTX 680 JetStream Edition on HWHeaven.
MSI R7970 Lightning on PCPerspective.
XFX's Radeon HD 7850 and 7870 Black Edition on TechReport.
Palit JetStream GeForce GTX 680 2GB on Tweaktown.
Sapphire HD 7850 OC Radeon on TechwareLabs.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 OC 2GB on eTeknix.
AMD FirePro V3900 on HotHardware.
Nvidia GTX 680 SLI vs AMD HD 7970 CFX on TBreak.
XFX R7850 Black Edition Double Dissipation and AMD AA on HWHeaven.
Misc:
ASUS EA-N66U Wireless-N450 Ethernet Adapter on BenchmarkReviews.
Wing Commander: Darkest Dawn game on HotHardware.
G.Skill RipjawsZ DDR3-2133 16GB Quad Channel Memory Kit on ThinkComputers.
Forum Projects
(2 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 28-March-2012 22:01:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Here's some reviews and projects from people in the forums:
Wednesday Night
(8 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 28-March-2012 21:16:01 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Filmmaker James Cameron has reached the ocean's deepest point, the "Challenger Deep" in the Marianas Trench. His depth on arrival: 35,756 feet (10,898 meters)—a figure unattainable anywhere else in the ocean. Reaching bottom after a 2-hour-and-36-minute descent, the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker typed out welcome words for the cheering support crew waiting at the surface: "All systems OK." Folded into a sub cockpit as cramped as any Apollo capsule, the National Geographic explorer and filmmaker is now investigating a seascape more alien to humans than the moon. Cameron is only the third person to reach this Pacific Ocean valley southwest of Guam (map)—and the only one to do so solo. Discussion here.
If you like those TED online videos, you'll be happy to hear TEDx will be on in Sydney soon. TEDxSydney is returning to Carriageworks on Saturday 26 May 2012. We look forward to bringing you another inspiring and entertaining day full of Australian Ideas Worth Spreading. See the just-announced lineup of 2012 Speakers & Performers HERE.
Guru3D looked at 3-way GTX 680 SLI. Over the next few pages we'll tell you a bit about multi-GPU gaming, the challenges, the requirements and of course a nice tasty benchmark session. We'll have a peek at temperatures and power consumption of the GeForce GTX 680 cards in 3x SLI mode to monitor its generated performance and look at its handicaps.
JD sent word that the ACCC is taking Apple to court over iPad3 4G claims. The ACCC will allege that Apple's recent promotion of the new "iPad with WiFi + 4G" was misleading "because it represents to Australian consumers that the product 'iPad with WiFi + 4G' can, with a SIM card, connect to a 4G mobile data network in Australia, when this is not the case."
HotHardware have some pics of a retired World of Warcraft server. I wish I would have held onto my Atari 2600 console, or my Commodore 64, or my first graphics card, a 3dfx Voodoo 3 2000 PCI (if memory serves me correct), or my collection of Sierra InterAction and PC Entertainment magazines. I don't have any of those things any more, but I am now the proud and geeky owner of the server that hosted WoW's Minahonda realm in Europe, which from my research was a Spanish-speaking player versus environment (PvE) realm.
Supplanter spotted Browser Quest, an in-browser MMORPG. BrowserQuest is a tribute to classic video-games with a multiplayer twist. You play as a young warrior driven by the thrill of adventure. No princess to save here, just a dangerous world filled with treasures to discover. And it’s all done in glorious HTML5 and JavaScript.
From MoonShadow: From now on I will send you a reminder when the new Iron Photographer competition is underway, and voting for the last month has begun! Voting and entries seem to be a bit lacking, so some public announcements might help. Current competition to enter for March, themed Straight Out Of Camera. Also, the voting thread for February, whose theme was Busy.
Tuesday Night Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Tuesday, 27-March-2012 23:45:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5 LGA 2011 EATX on PCPerspective.
Gigabyte B75M-D3H B75 Motherboard on eTeknix.
Input Etc:
Corsair Vengeance M60 / M90 Gaming Mice on EverythingUSB.
ROCCAT Isku Illuminated Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech.
Storage:
QNAP TS-879U-RP 10GbE NAS Server on BenchmarkReviews.
OCZ's RevoDrive 3 X2 240GB solid-state drive on TechReport.
Micron RealSSD P400e 200GB Enterprise SATA III SSD on LegitReviews.
OCZ RevoDrive 3 X2 - 240GB PCIe SSD on FunkyKit.
Plextor M3 Pro 128GB (PX-128M3P) Solid State Drive on Tweaktown.
Plextor M3 256GB SATA 6Gb/s on TheSSDReview.
Cases:
Thermaltake V3 BlacX Edition on HWHeaven.
Corsair Carbide 300R on MadShrimps.
Antec ONE on TechPowerUp.
Silverstone Temjin TJ-04E PC Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Video Cards:
Gigabyte HD 7770 OC on TBreak.
HIS Radeon HD 7870 IceQ Turbo Overclocked on Tweaktown.
Software:
REVIEW: Guild Wars 2 - World vs World [PC] on PlayerAttack.
Wing Commander: Darkest Dawn on HotHardware.
Interesting Forum Threads
(0 Comments)
(link)
Monday, 26-March-2012 21:38:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Here's a snapshot of what's going on in some of the forums. You can also find new interesting things you might have missed via the Who's Online page, the New Posts page and the Live forum view. Also try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the handy Who Quoted Me? feature.
Turning 30, Microsoft mouse meets maker's new interface in Overclocking & Hardware.
The dust thread in Overclocking & Hardware.
All your RDP are belong to us? in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Microsoft Humour in Windows Operating Systems.
Year 12 Systems Engineering Bi-ped project in Electronics.
Reverse engineering exasperation in Electronics.
Vibration resistant Racks in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Disable the deletion of internet history in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Who do you give access to your server room in Business & Enterprise Computing.
Qualcomm Snapdragon S4 (Krait) Performance Preview (Anandtech) in Other CPUs and Chipsets.
[MOVIE] Prometheus [2012] in Entertainment.
[NSW] Speeding drivers may face number plate seizure. in Motoring.
Is LPG worth it anymore? in Motoring.
2012 Formula 1 Malaysian Grand Prix in Motorsport.
MotoGP 2012 in Motorsport.
High-frequency tradings under investigation in Career, Education & Finance.
Why I Am Leaving Goldman Sachs in Career, Education & Finance.
Kony 2012 - Joseph Kony in Current Events.
Independent Media Inquiry suggests government control in Politics & Policies.
A Dunning-Kruger detection kit in Science.
A Thread of Haiku in The Pub.
Monday Night Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Monday, 26-March-2012 21:11:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Cases:
NZXT Switch 810 Chassis on OCOnline.
Lian Li Hammer PC-100 PC Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Thermaltake Commander MS-I Snow Edition Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte Z68XP-UD5 on PureOC.
GIGABYTE’s GA-X79-UD3 and GA-X79-UD7 (OC) LGA2011 on Futurelooks.
ASUS P9X79WS Motherboard on Bjorn3D.
ASRock Z77 Extreme6 on HWSecrets.
MSI Z77A-GD55 Motherboard on TBreak.
GIGABYTE X79-UD5 Motherboard on Bjorn3D.
Intel Ivy Bridge Overclocking with the Core i7 3770K and Core i5 3570K on Tweaktown.
AMD A8-3870 FM1 CPU on RBMods.
Storage:
Crucial Adrenaline SSD Review: Solid State Cache for Your Hard Drive on TechSpot.
SanDisk Extreme 240GB on PureOC.
Crucial M4 Adrenaline 50GB Cache SSD on TheSSDReview.
Thecus N4200 Pro 4-Bay NAS on eTeknix.
Cooling:
Noctua NH-L12 Low Profile Heatsink on NinjaLane.
Noctua NH-D14 SE2011 CPU Cooler on NikKTech.
NZXT Sentry Mix Fan Controller on ThinkComputers.
equiet Shadow Rock TopFlow CPU cooler on OC3D.
Corsair Hydro Series H100 Extreme Performance Liquid CPU Cooler on TechReaction.
Noctua and Kingwin Ultra Quiet 120mm Fans on BigBruin.
Audio Visual:
Noontec A9 media player on Vortez.
Monster iSport Immersion In-Ear Headphones on TBreak.
Apple TV (2012)[ on TechReviewSource.
Arctic MC001-BD HTPC Media Center on BenchmarkReviews.
Memory:
G.Skill Ares F3-1600C8Q-16GAB 4x4GB DDR3 on APHNetworks.
G.Skill RipjawsX F3-2133C9-32GXH 32 GB PC3-17000 1.6 V DDR3 on TechPowerUp.
Topower Gold Vapour Injection-HD DDR3 1866MHz 8GB Memory Kit on eTeknix.
Ivy Bridge High-Speed RAM Run with G.Skill PC3-20800 2666MHz RipjawsZ on Tweaktown.
Input Etc:
Cyborg M.M.O.7 Gaming Mouse on eTeknix.
Mad Catz Cyborg M.M.O. 7 Gaming Mouse on MadShrimps.
Steelseries WoW Legendary Edition MMO Mouse on XtremeComputing.
Cideko Air Conqueror Keyboard / Gamepad on ThinkComputers.
Power Supply:
Antec EarthWatts Platinum 650W on ThinkComputers.
OCZ Fatal1ty 1000W Modular on HWHeaven.
Video Cards:
HIS Radeon HD 7770 iCooler GHz Edition 1GB on Tweaktown.
GeForce GTX 680 2 GB on XbitLabs.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB Video Card tested with Catalyst 12.2 on Tweaktown.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 1GB Ultimate on Tweaktown.
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC on LegionHW.
Sapphire Radeon 7750 Ultimate on PureOC.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7750 Ultimate on NeoSeeker.
Sapphire HD 7870 OC Edition vs XFX R7870 Black Edition DD on HWHeaven.
Portable & Prebuilt:
NVIDIA GeForce GT 640M: Kepler Goes Mobile with Acer on HotHardware.
Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3 Review: Kepler's First Laptop on PCPerspective.
Acer AX1930-UR10P desktop on TechReviewSource.
Apple iPad (3rd-Gen) on TechSpot.
A No Holds Barred Evaluation of the New iPad on HotHardware.
Misc:
Marchon3D EX3D Eyewear on MissingRemote.
NBNco have banned Huawei from supplying the NBN due to security concerns. Long accused of links to the Chinese People's Liberation Army (as the company's chief executive was once a member, serving as an engineer) and also dogged by accusations of employing serving members of the PLA Huawei has always had a difficult time establishing its bona fides in Western countries.
EMupp spotted the Amazon on Google Maps Street View. More info here. Nothing seems out of reach for Google Maps. More than 50,000 images of the world’s largest tropical rainforest — more than a billion acres of lush jungle teeming with abundant animal life — is now available for anyone to view on Google Maps. The photos went live Wednesday and were announced on Google’s Official Blog in honor of World Forest Day.
Sciby meanwhile sent in this guy with a magnet in his finger. I quickly learned that magnetic surfaces provided almost no sensation at all. Rather, it was movement that caused my finger to perk up. Things like power cord transformers, microwaves, and laptop fans became interactive in a whole new way. Each object has its own unique field, with different strength and “texture.” I started holding my finger over almost everything that I could, getting a feeling for each object’s invisible reach.
Commodore have unveiled the new Amiga, and unfortunately it seems as ill-fated as other revival attempts. That GPU can barely sustain 30 FPS in Bulletstorm with every single detail option turned all the way down. Not that you'll be running Bulletstorm, of course, because the Amiga mini doesn't ship with a copy of Windows. It comes pre-installed with Commodore OS Vision, a custom Linux distro that has all the grace and elegance of a freshly awoken coma patient who still thinks Reagan is president.
Queensland Police will be war-driving soon. The State Crime Operations Command's Fraud and Corporate Crime Group first touted the wardriving project in 2009, in which police will detect unsecured wireless networks in homes and businesses that are prime targets for cyber criminals. I thought I remembered mentioning that before.
HWHeaven compared high-end video cards. Take one ASUS GTX 680 2GB, overclock it to its limit... add one MSI R7970 Lightning, the highest spec AMD card around and overclock it to breaking point. Thrown in comparisons at 1920x1080 and 5760x1080 mixing with the latest games such as Mass Effect 3, Battlefield 3 and SW: The Old Republic. Check cards are piping hot before completion and you have todays review.
Bjorn3D meanwhile looked at NVIDIA Surround on a single GTX 680 card. Today we check out the performance of the new Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 in Surround mode at 5760 x 1080 and at 6040x1080 (Custom Resolution) on 8 different games.
If you're an iiNet or Internode customer, you now have unmetered access to content from the other provider, thanks Gary_J. This is a big win for unmetered content users in the Internode and iiNet community, including but not limited to our large gaming contingents.
Sydney's monorail is to be scrapped. The Transport Minister Gladys Berejiklian says the monorail is in the way and it will be removed as soon as possible. She says it is not integrated with Sydney's wider public transport network and has never been embraced by the public. The plan is to replace it with an extension of the light rail network.
Monday Morning Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Monday, 26-March-2012 01:26:19 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS Sabertooth X79 on PureOC.
Gigabyte GA-X79-UD5 Intel X79 LGA2011 on PCStats.
Cooling:
Arctic Accelero S1 PLUS VGA cooler on FunkyKit.
Prolimatech Lynx CPU cooler on XSReviews.
Video Cards:
Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 - The Nitty Gritty on eTeknix.
ASUS GeForce GTX 680 SLI on TechPowerUp.
AMD Radeon HD 7750 on MadShrimps.
Portable & Prebuilt:
The New iPad (2012) on TBreak.
Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 on HWLook.
Scan 3XS Vengeance GTX680 Z68 OC System on OC3D.
Storage:
Micron RealSSD P400e 200Gb SATA III 2.5" Enterprise SSD on TestFreaks.
Patriot Wildfire (SandForce SF-2281) 4x SSD RAID on Tweaktown.
OCZ VERTEX 3 240GB SATA III 2.5" SSD on TestFreaks.
Input Etc:
TteSports MEKA G-UNIT Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on NikKTech.
Steelseries Diablo III gaming mouse on XSReviews.
Corsair Vengeance K60 Gaming Keyboard on ThinkComputers.
Cases:
Corsair Carbide Series 300R Gaming Case on LegitReviews.
Cougar Solution High Performance Midi Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Software:
Blacklight Retribution (Beta) PC game on eTeknix.
Total War: Shogun 2 - Fall of the Samurai PC game on HWHeaven.
Power Supply:
3R System AK6-500M on HWSecrets.
OCZ 1000W Fatal1ty Series on Pro-Clockers.
Huntkey Win7 6600 on HWSecrets.
Misc:
Case Logic Compact Systems Camera Bag on Tech-Reviews.
RMBP-11001 Laptop Backpack on TechReaction.
Belkin Play N450 DB Router on TBreak.
Diesel DZ7164 LED Watch on NikKTech.
Thanks to Chris & edzknows this week!
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680
(6 Comments)
(link)
Friday, 23-March-2012 14:02:15 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
NVIDIA have unveiled their GeForce GTX 680 overnight. This is their new high-end single-GPU card based on the also new Kepler GPU. DiGiTaL MoNkEY has done a great job of rounding up lots of reviews from around the net. Discussion continues in the thread.
I still get the occasional "microsoft support" scam phone call - my wife and I take turns baiting them now. A more detailed analysis comes from Troy Hunt's blog, where he sees what exactly they're trying to get us all to do. But I was left wondering; what exactly were they going to do to my PC once they got remote control? Try and squeeze some cash out of me for “fixing” things? Install their own variant of “antivirus”? Or just plain old enslave my PC into being part of a botnet? So I decided to find out by letting them do whatever they wanted whilst recording the audio and the screen so the entire experience could be shared.
XbitLabs built a budget gaming system using AMD's Llano. We asked ourselves if desktop AMD Llano processors may be used in entry-level gaming rigs. Although we haven’t yet been able to achieve acceptable gaming performance with a typical desktop resolution of 1920x1080 in any of our previous test sessions, things have changed a lot since then. AMD has rolled out a much faster desktop Llano processor called A8-3870K, which not only works at higher clock speeds, but can also be overclocked. As a result, we got some hope that overclocking will enable this 135-dollar APU to power a gaming system without an external graphics accelerator.
They also have a Marvell SSD roundup. Could SandForce SF-2281 based SSDs have no real competitors out there? This isn’t true and today we are going to check out contemporary solid state drives based on the second most popular controller – Marvell 88SS9174.
Amazon have forked out $733M for a robotics company. If you're a shelf-stacker or stock-picker at Amazon, I'd be concerned! Kiva develops robots that zip around warehouses, grabbing and moving shelves and crates full of products. The technology helps retailers fulfill online orders quickly and with fewer workers. Amazon has traditionally used more employees in its warehouses, or fulfillment centres as they are known. However, Kiva's robots have been used by other e-commerce companies which have been acquired by Amazon in recent years, such as Quidsi and Zappos.
From JD: The Federal Government has declined to reveal almost any information about a second secret industry meeting held in February this year to address the issue of Internet piracy, using a variety of complex justifications to avoid releasing virtually any detail of the meeting under Freedom of Information laws.
Here's some eyecandy: RUIN is an animated short set in a post-apocalyptic universe.
Meanwhile Tabletop is an upcoming webshow which sounds intriguingly geeky. Think "Celebrity Poker" meets "Dinner for Five" and you're ready to experience a new kind of web show that pairs notable celebs with must-play tabletop games. Hosted by actor, co-creator and fan favorite Wil Wheaton.
Speaking of Wil Wheaton, Tekin sends word of this concert (non-free). The melbourne symphony orchestra is doing a video games unplugged expo which looks to be awesome. It's also hosted by Scott Kurtz (pvponline / penny arcade) with Wil Wheaton...so that's pretty cool.
Apparently some employers are asking for Facebook details from potential staff. When Justin Bassett interviewed for a new job, he expected the usual questions about experience and references. So he was astonished when the interviewer asked for something else: his Facebook username and password. No chance, matey.
From decryption: Just dropping you an email about an iOS conference in Australia I'm organising called One More Thing. It's all about making a living developing software for the iPhone and iPad. This year we have an awesome speaker line-up, including cool dudes like Loren Brichter (Tweetie/ex-Twitter), Neven Mrgan (Panic), Karl von Randow (Camera+), Raphael Schaad (Flipboard), Matt Rix (Trainyard), Shaun Inman (Last Rocket) and many more. The full line-up and other details like the date and location can be found on our website - videos from the 2011 event can be found on Vimeo and we even have a podcast where we interview all the 2012 speakers up on iTunes.
Wednesday Morning Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 21-March-2012 02:26:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Audio Visual:
ROCCAT Kulo 7.1 USB Headset on HardwareLook.
Cerwin-Vega! XD3 Powered Desktop Speaker on PCPerspective.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Samsung Galaxy Note Smartphone/Tablet on HWHeaven.
HP Pavilion Phoenix h9 desktop on TechReviewSource.
Nvidia GeForce GT640M Mobile GPU on TBreak.
Acer Allegro Smartphone on TBreak.
HP Envy 14 Spectre laptop on TechReviewSource.
HP TouchSmart 520 All-In-One on TechSpot.
Life with Samsung's Galaxy Note on TechReport.
Samsung Series 7 Slate on TBreak.
New Apple iPad on TechReviewSource.
Motherboard & CPU:
ASRock X79 Professional on FunkyKit.
Asus Crosshair V Formula on HardCoreWare.
Ivy Bridge preview with GIGABYTE Z77X-UD5H (Intel Z77) and Core i7 3770K on Tweaktown.
Intel CPU Scaling on an AMD Radeon HD 7950 on LegitReviews.
Cooling:
Gelid ICY Vision Rev. 2 GPU Coolers In SLI on Bjorn3D.
Antec KÜHLER H2O 620 on TechReaction.
Storage:
OCZ Octane 512GB SS Octane 512GB SSD on NeoSeeker.
Synology DiskStation DS412+ 4-bay All-in-1 NAS Server for SMB Users on MadShrimps.
Kingston SSDNow V+200 Enterprise 120GB Solid State Drive on FutureLooks.
Patriot Pyro SE 240 GB Solid State Drive on XbitLabs.
OCZ RevoDrive Hybrid Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
Corsair Performance Pro 128GB RAID 0 on PureOC.
Kingston SSDNow V+200 Series 120GB SSD on TBreak.
Video Cards:
HIS 7870 IceQ X Turbo on PureOC.
AMD Radeon 7870 2GB on eTeknix.
SAPPHIRE HD 7750 ULTIMATE on OCClub.
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7870 OC on Guru3D.
PowerColor PCS+ 7870 on PureOC.
Cases:
Antec P280 Performance One on Pro-Clockers.
Corsair Carbide 300R on HWSecrets.
Corsair Carbide 300R on TechPowerUp.
Fractal Design Arc Midi Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
Power Supply:
Cooler Master Silencio 450 on Vortez.
Gold for Everyone: Power Supply Unit Roundup on XbitLabs.
Misc:
Lexmark OfficeEdge Pro5500 printer on OCOnline.
APB Reloaded (Free-to-Play) PC on eTeknix.
Genius DeathTaker USB Laser Gaming Mouse on BenchmarkReviews.
GSkill RipjawsZ PC3 17000 CL9 Quad Channel Memory Kit on NinjaLane.
Photography Gallery
(1 Comments)
(link)
Monday, 19-March-2012 20:57:18 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Here's a quick snapshot of what people are up to in our Photography Gallery forum.
Metamorphosis pointed out this huge list of indie games, many of which are free to some extent. INDIE GAMES 2011 - 2013 : JAW DROPPING GAMES THAT WEREN'T MADE BY THE BIG COMPANIES.
R18+ gaming is getting closer, according to the Attorney-General's office. Australia is a significant step closer to an R18+ adult rating for video games, with legislation today passing through the House of Representatives. .. All State and Territory Attorneys-General support the current bill, after agreeing to the reform at the July 2011 meeting of the Standing Council on Law and Justice.
TheSSDReview have info on a free SSD online seminar series in early April. It may be all marketing fluff or it may be interesting, but registration is required. Over thirty topics will be discussed which cross into all avenues of the SSD arena and include Client and Enterprise SSD Overviews, Solid State Disks: Strengths, Weaknesses and Issues, PCI Express Implementation, How to Pick The Right SSD For The Job as well as lectures that discuss SSD performance and endurance testing.
Anthony sent in this digital post info. Zumbox, a provider of digital postal mail, is powering the innovative digital post system for the region. Deploying now, the system allows consumers to receive their important postal mail, such as bills, statements, insurance documents, warrantees, government mail, stock and brokerage disclosures and annual reports, in one central online location. This information is stored securely forever, for free. Hrm, is that particularly useful?
Apple has nearly $100B burning a hole in its pocket, and will apparently do something with some of it soon. Apple is holding a conference call bright and early Monday morning to announce plans for its large cash balance. The company is sitting on around $98 billion in cash, and investors are getting increasingly antsy and clamoring for a dividend or share buyout.
A few people sent in this impressive TRON dance video.
Australian Formula One Grand Prix
(0 Comments)
(link)
Sunday, 18-March-2012 16:25:34 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
It's only half an hour or so until race start in Melbourne. Join in the discussion as the race unfolds in this thread in our Motorsport forum. This is the first round of a season which should be very exciting, with six world champions competing for the first time in history. Remember, you can check which races are coming up in the various motorsport championships with our 2012 Motorsport Calendar at ocau.com/ms.
Here's some yummy threads from our Geek Recipes forum:
Sunday Afternoon
(6 Comments)
(link)
Sunday, 18-March-2012 15:43:12 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Julian Assange will apparently be entering politics. Wikileaks announced its intentions today, saying the organisation also planned to field a candidate to run against Prime Minister Julia Gillard in her seat of Lalor at the next election. "We have discovered that it is possible for Julian Assange to run for the Australian Senate while detained. Julian has decided to run," the Wikileaks website tweeted.
Sniper spotted this list of the best 15 free PC games on APCmag. It doesn't matter whether you like sims, first-person shooters, racers or strategy, our list of the best free PC games has you covered.
Here's an article about Facebook's servers, and some more info on the company that builds them. And if you’re allowed to walk inside — past the receptionist and the cubicles, through another door, around the security guard, and into the warehouse — you’ll find some technicians assembling and testing server hardware for some of the biggest names on the internet. This includes Facebook and Rackspace and at least one or two other names that even your grandmother knows about it.
Meanwhile a an ex-Google employee has posted an angry rant about Google+ destroying the company. Whittaker, who joined Google in 2009 and left last month, described a corporate culture clearly divided into two eras: "Before Google+," and "After." "After" is pretty terrible, in his view.
Speaking of Google, Timbot sent in this online game design thing from them, called input/output. You can make little machines like this one. Brush up on your geometry, dust off your protractor, and architect a machine only you could have dreamt of. Join developers tackling our latest Chrome Experiment for a chance to have your machine featured at Google I/O.
Also on the game front, NASA have jumped on the Angry Birds bandwagon. In cooperation with NASA, Finland-based Rovio Entertainment, creator of the Angry Birds franchise, announced its newest game, "Angry Birds Space," on Thursday, March 8. NASA and Rovio are working together to teach people about physics and space exploration through the internationally successful puzzle game. It'll be available in a few days here.
You might remember the light field camera we mentioned a while ago, which lets you focus an image AFTER you've captured it. BlueRaven spotted a new review of it on Engadget. Seeking to save us from unfocused mishaps, the technological tour de force also unlocks some considerable creative potential. So, is the $399 shooter going to revolutionize photography as we know it? Or does the Lytro's first foray into consumer electronics fall prey to the shortcomings of 1.0 product?
Today's timewaster is Torvi Cube from biatch.
Sunday Afternoon Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Sunday, 18-March-2012 14:31:21 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Motherboard & CPU:
Gigabyte X79-UD3 on OCIA.
ASRock Z77 Extreme4 on HWSecrets.
Gigabyte GA-Z77M-D3H Z77 on eTeknix.
GIGABYTE Z77 Motherboards: A Preview on Bjorn3D.
Intel Second Generation Core i7 3820 on OC3D.
ASUS Rampage IV Formula X79 on BenchmarkReviews.
Power Supply:
Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1000W on TechPowerUp.
Scosche reVOLT c2 Dual USB Car Charger on LegitReviews.
Portable & Prebuilt:
The new iPad (iPad 3) on HWHeaven.
New Apple iPad 3 on Tech-Reviews.
Kindle Touch on Tech Report.
Audio Visual:
Icy Box IB-MP3011Plus media player on HWLook.
First Look: New AppleTV on MissingRemote.
Storage:
Plextor M3 128GB SSD on HWLook.
Warpia Easy Dock Pro SWP220 on TechWareLabs.
SanDisk Extreme 120GB on OC3D.
ADATA S107 Superior USB flash drive on Guru3D.
SanDisk Extreme 240GB SATA 3 SSD on TheSSDReview.
OCZ Vertex 3 Max IOPS 240GB Solid State Drive on CircuitRemix.
Video Cards:
MSI R7970 Lightning on HWHeaven.
AMD Radeon HD 7770 & 7750 Crossfire Performance Tested on TechSpot.
Misc:
G.Skill ARES PC3-17000 16GB (DC) Memory Kit on Tweaktown.
Antec Advance TrueQuiet Pro 120mm Fan on eTeknix.
BitFenix Raider case on Pro-Clockers.
Thanks to Manaz and MK this week!
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Friday Midday Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Friday, 16-March-2012 11:34:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Storage:
Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB SSD on LegitReviews.
Intel SSD 710 Series Solid State Drive on HWHeaven.
Synology DiskStation DS112j NAS on HWHeaven.
QNAP TurboNAS TS-419P II 4-Bay NAS on eTeknix.
Motherboard & CPU:
AMD FX-8120 Bulldozer on RBMods.
ZOTAC A75-ITX WiFi on Vortez.
Intel Xeon E5-2600 Sandy Bridge-EP Server Processors on LegitReviews.
Gigabyte X79-UD3 Intel X79 on ThinkComputers.
Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon 7850 OC on PureOC.
Sapphire HD 7970 OverClock Edition Dual-X on HWHeaven.
PowerColor PCS+ Radeon HD 7870 GHz OC Edition 2GB on Tweaktown.
AMD Radeon HD 7750 1GB Reference Video Cards in CrossFire on Tweaktown.
Memory:
Kingston HyperX DDR3 1600MHz Dual Channel RAM on TechReaction.
Patriot Viper Extreme PC3-16000 CL9 1.65 V DDR3 on TechPowerUp.
Audio Visual:
Canon PowerShot A4000 IS digicam on TechReviewSource.
Dell M110 Projector on Tech-Reviews.
Input Etc:
Tt eSPORTS Black Element Gaming Mouse on ThinkComputers.
Logitech Wireless Touchpad on EverythingUSB.
Corsair Vengeance M60 and K60 mouse and keyboard on OCClub.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Lenovo IdeaPad U300s Ultrabook on HotHardware.
Concrete Cases Hook Case – Laptop Bag on Tech-Reviews.
Powerbag Instant Messenger Bag on TechWareLabs.
RIM BlackBerry PlayBook (2012) on TechReviewSource.
Nvidia GeForce GT 640M Review: Kepler Arrives For Mobile on PCPerspective.
HP dm4t Beats Edition Notebook Review: Branding Gone Wild on PCPerspective.
Sony VAIO VPCSE13FX laptop on TechReviewSource.
Cases:
Corsair Obsidian 550D on HWSecrets.
BitFenix Shinobi XL on OC3D.
Raidmax Agusta - Hands on Preview on TechReaction.
Raidmax Seiran Full Tower on FunkyKit.
Lian Li PC-100 "The Hammer" Mid-Tower on Tweaktown.
Streacom FC8 Fanless Case on HWSecrets.
NZXT Phantom 410 Crafted Mid tower on Pro-Clockers.
Misc:
Epson Stylus NX430 Small-in-One All-in-One Printer on TestFreaks.
Antec Cleaning Solutions on MadShrimps.
NZXT. Premium Cables Starter Kit on Futurelooks.
Antec HCG-620M 620W PSU on Tweaktown.
The 2012 motorsport season is slowly getting up to speed, with the first F1 round this weekend in Melbourne. Keep track of which races are coming up with our 2012 Motorsport Calendar. ONE HD have a huge amount of coverage this weekend, with about 7 hours each day of the weekend. Discussion of this weekend's race here.
Encyclopaedia Britannica have announced there'll be no more printed versions. In truth, Cauz says, the death knell sounded long ago. Though the name "Britannica" calls the print sets to mind, Cauz says they represent less than 1% of the company's total sales. "The print set is an icon. But it's an icon that doesn't do justice to how much we've changed over the years," Cauz says. The online version of the encyclopedia, which was first published in 1994, represents only 15% of Britannica's revenue. The other 85% is sales of education products: online learning tools, curriculum products and more.
TechReport have info on brain overclocking, which I could certainly use this morning. Although tDCS machines do exist, GoFlow says they're too expensive and often require a prescription. Its solution: a $99 DIY kit you can build yourself. Still in prototype form, the kit will come with everything required to pump a little extra current through your gray matter, including the 9V battery that supplies the juice. Maybe I'll stick to coffee for now.
I'd drink wine more often if I had a steampunk wine opener, though! Mechanical sculptor Rob Higgs designed this amazing steampunk corkscrew contraption which takes opening and serving wine bottles to a whole new level. The Rube Goldberg styled machine is thought to be the world's largest corkscrew and took about three years to build.
Internode customers worrying that iiNet's acquisition of 'Node would affect their plans will be interested to learn that iiNet are adopting Internode's quota scheme, to some extent. iiNet’s previous plan allocations always worked off peak and off-peak times, whereas most Internode plans allowed data usage at any time. iiNet has just announced that its own plans (as well as selected plans for Westnet and Netspace customers) will now have no time restrictions, similar to the way Internode’s plans have operated for some time. The catch here (from the iiNet side of things) is that you’ve got to be on one of iiNet’s DSLAMs; if you’re an iiNet customer on an external DSLAM, you’ve still got peak and off-peak quotas to juggle.
Here's an open source game combining two classics. Two genre defining games from completely different eras: Nintendo's Super Mario Bros. and Valve's Portal. These two games managed to give Platformers and First-Person Puzzle Games a solid place in the video game world. But what if Nintendo teamed up with Valve and recreated the famous Mario game with Portal gun mechanics?
An English student is being extradited to the USA to face copyright infringement charges. O'Dwyer's site did not appear to violate UK law, and O'Dwyer's servers weren't located in the US. This alone poses no problem to an extradition claim; courts have recognized for centuries that a person can't simply sit in another jurisdiction and direct a harm into another jurisdiction without penalty. But the general question raised in such cases is whether the alleged miscreant had a "nexus" with the target jurisdiction; had he put himself under its rule by choosing to transact business there? Or was the contact merely incidental and accidental?
VR-Zone built a powerful mATX box. "What if I have about US$5000 to spend - Could I have a true 8-core/16-thread CPU in a small form factor setup without compromising on storage, thermals or online gaming prowess?" Well, we show that we can! With that budget I'm not surprised!
TechReport meanwhile moved to six monitors. In his latest blog post, TR's Geoff Gasior chronicles his work space's journey from humble Ikea desk to six-screen monstrosity, complete with three keyboards and mice, stereo speakers, and 137 inches of liquid-crystal goodness.
Gigabyte and OCAU HWBot Team Contest
(0 Comments)
(link)
Friday, 16-March-2012 10:18:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Stage 1 of the OCAU HWBOT TEAM Z77 Competition sponsored by Gigabyte is now underway. Being that the prizes are Motherboards we are concentrating on 2D benchmarks and limiting some of the parameters so as everyone gets a go if you have any of the kit in any of the groups. The stages are designed so you will have to work on efficiency, operating system tweaks, Ram timings and a few other tricks seeing as everyone will be benching at similar CPU speeds in their desired groups.
Thursday Night Reviews
(2 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 15-March-2012 22:17:54 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Motherboard & CPU:
GIGABYTE GA-990FXA-UD3 AM3+ on Futurelooks.
ASUS Maximus IV Extreme-Z on HWSecrets.
ECS A55F-A2 on Vortez.
MSI Big Bang XPower II (Intel X79) on Tweaktown.
Video Cards:
ASUS Radeon HD 7970 DirectCU II on Guru3D.
Gigabyte HD 7770 OC 1 GB on TechPowerUp.
HIS Radeon 7770 GHz Edition on PureOC.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Samsung Galaxy Note on Tech-Reviews.
Maingear SHIFT Super Stock X79 System on HotHardware.
Asus' Transformer tablets share an Ice Cream Sandwich on TechReport.
Cooling:
Noctua NH-L12 Low Profile CPU Cooler on HWHeaven.
Noctua NF-F12 PWM CPU cooler on OCClub.
Corsair Hydro Series H100 Liquid Cooler on Pro-Clockers.
Cases:
Antec Three Hundred Two Midtower on LegitReviews.
Enermax Fulmo Mid-Tower on Bjorn3D.
Gelid Darkforce Mid-tower on OC3D.
Silverstone Kublai KL04 Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
Rosewill Thor V2 White Edition Full Tower on ThinkComputers.
Storage:
24nm Flash SSD Faceoff - SanDisk Extreme Retake and Plextor M3 Pro on Tweaktown.
OCZ Synapse Cache SSD on HardCoreWare.
OCZ Octane 512GB on LegionHW.
Samsung 830 256GB SSD on PureOC.
Toshiba MK4001GRZB 400GB SAS 6Gb/s Enterprise SLC SSD on TheSSDReview.
Patriot Pyro SE 120GB SSD on Vortez.
MyDigitalSSD 32GB Super Cache mSATA SSD on TheSSDReview.
Windows RDP Security Issue
(8 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 14-March-2012 23:12:43 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Microsoft have announced, and released a patch for, a critical security bug in every version of Windows since and including XP. It centres around the Remote Desktop Protocol. The majority of customers have automatic updating enabled and will not need to take any action because this security update will be downloaded and installed automatically. Customers who have not enabled automatic updating need to check for updates and install this update manually. More info here on Wired. While RPD is not enabled by default, he said the number of machines that have it turned on is a "big concern" because it is so widely used in large organizations and business settings.
Discussion here.
Forum Projects
(1 Comments)
(link)
Tuesday, 13-March-2012 16:35:49 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Here's some reviews and projects from people in the forums:
Well, I'm going to sound like a n00b here, but a few days ago I upgraded Firefox from 3.6.x to the latest version and disabled all plugins.. and it's like having a new PC again. So if you're still on the (not very old chronologically, but old in terms of their crazy version numbering) old version, consider making the jump to the new one. Everything seems to still work fine.
CSimpson warns of a Lenovo PC recall due to a fire risk. 160,000 computers worldwide are potentially at risk according to Lenovo, with both ThinkCentre M70z and M90z all-in-one PCs affected by the recall. Only the ThinkCentre M90z was sold in Australia between May 2010 and January 2012, and was available through retail stores, distributors and directly from Lenovo. The PC is aimed primarily at enterprise and small business users.
Parts of Melbourne's Herald Sun are behind a paywall as of yesterday. Yes, it is part of an overall News Corp strategy, absolutely, but we've been tasked with the job of making it work here. We are the biggest daily newspaper in the country. We have a proud tradition in Victoria with our readers. Our website has made enormous gains in UB growth over the last three, four years - so it is logical that we begin in a place like Melbourne. Discussion continues here.
Microsoft have a video demonstrating the usability improvements associated with lower-latency touch displays. High-Performance Touch: A touch-display system with two orders of magnitude less latency than current systems.
They're also working on a universal translator, with video here. In a demo of the prototype software (starts around the 12 minute mark), Rick Rashid, Microsoft’s chief research officer, says a long sentence in English, and then has it translated into Spanish, Italian, and Mandarin. You can definitely hear an edge of digitized “Microsoft Sam,” but overall it’s remarkable how the three translations still sound just like Rashid.
A few people sent in this amusing idea of sending money to the MPAA & RIAA. But of course, given their concern is about digital copies of content, the idea is to send them digital copies of money as compensation. Take a picture or scan an image of your money. Send copies to the MPAA & RIAA in whatever quantity you feel you can afford. Don't go overboard. If you can only afford 20 copies then that's good enough. If enough people contribute we should be able to fully satisify even their most outrageous demands.
Here's a tour of a facility where 4M phones a year are resurrected. Chuck and his brother Allan founded Recellular in 1991, the same year that cell phones switched from analog 1G signals to the digital 2G network. The Newman brothers recognized a trend—people were beginning to upgrade to new cell phones not because their old phones were broken, but because advances in technology had made them obsolete. In this high tech trash, Chuck and Allan saw an opportunity to start a business and to protect the environment—by refurbishing, reusing, and recycling the millions of phones that would have otherwise sat in drawers for years.
I've seen a few articles about this, but Wired seem to explain it best - there's a new kind of LED that puts out more power than it takes in.. kinda. MIT physicists have managed to build a light-emitting diode that has an electrical efficiency of more than 100 percent. You may ask, "Wouldn't that mean it breaks the first law of thermodynamics?" The answer, happily, is no.
Mortal Kombat has been banned in Australia, again. Mortal Kombat 9 Game of the Year is the brand new, revamped version of the game from NetherRealm, designed for PlayStation Vita and published locally by Warner Bros. Despite the obvious modifications since the game's earlier release, this new handheld version is still Refused Classification, meaning it cannot be advertised, displayed or sold within Australia.
The Attorney-General's department is accepting comments about preserving Australia's digital heritage. Currently the Copyright Act requires publishers to deposit printed works at the National Library in order to preserve Australia’s documented heritage. The Government is seeking views on proposed changes that would modernise the current system to extend to electronic documents by empowering the Director-General of the National Library to request certain electronic material to be deposited.
Tuesday Afternoon Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Tuesday, 13-March-2012 13:23:10 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Motherboard & CPU:
ASUS Rampage IV Gene on Bjorn3D.
ASUS Sabertooth Z77 on Guru3D.
ASUS Rampage IV Extreme on PureOC.
Cooling:
SilenX Effizio EFX-12-15 Cooling Fan on APHNetworks.
Deepcool Assassin CPU cooler on Xbitlabs.
Prolimatech Panther CPU Cooler on eTeknix.
Video Cards:
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7770 OC on LegitReviews.
AMD Radeon HD 7950 On Linux: Southern Islands Isn't Yet A Penguin Holiday on Phoronix.
GIGABYTE HD7950 Windforce x3 on Vortez.
Asus GTX 560 Ti 448 Cores DirectCU II on Xbitlabs.
Sapphire HD7870 OverClock Edition on HWHeaven.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7850 OC vs GTX 560 Ti OC on HWHeaven.
Diamond Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Card tested with Catalyst 12.2 on Tweaktown.
PowerColor LCS HD7970 3GB on OCClub.
Audio Visual:
Incipio f38 Headset on TechReaction.
Logitech Wireless Headset F540 on ThinkComputers.
Input Etc:
Roccat Isku Gaming Keyboard on HWSecrets.
SteelSeries Kana and Kinzu v2 Pro on OC3D.
Steelseries Kinzu V2 Pro Edition on TBreak.
Storage:
Synology DiskStation DS411 and New DSM 4.0 Operating System on Xbitlabs.
OWC Mercury On-The-Go FireWire 800 / USB 2.0 Portable Hard Drive Kit on TestFreaks.
OCZ Vertex 3 240GB SATA III 2.5" SSD on MadShrimps.
Portable & Prebuilt:
HP Omni 27 Quad smartphone on TechReviewSource.
Samsung Series 7 Chronos Laptop on Tech-Reviews.
Lenovo IdeaPad U300s Ultrabook on TBreak.
Misc:
ASUS RT-N66U Wireless-N900 Gigabit Router on BenchmarkReviews.
Antec EarthWatts 650-watt Platinum PSU on Tweaktown.
Magicka PC game on eTeknix.
BitFenix Shinobi XL case on TechPowerUp.
CeBIT 2012 was on recently - here's some headlines:
CeBIT 2012 Coverage on HWHeaven.
ROCCAT live demo Power-Grid on Vortez.
GIGABYTE live demo Lucid Virtu MVP on Vortez.
GIGABYTE Z77 Motherboard Preview on Vortez.
OCZ Demonstrates Vertex 4 SSD on TheSSDReview.
Booth Babes and Part 2 on TheSSDReview.
Gigabyte Unveils U2442 Ultrabook With Great Features on TheSSDReview.
OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro Dual Mini RAID Data Storage/Backup on TheSSDReview.
ASRock showcase Z77 and Extreme11 motherboards on Vortez.
Powercolor HD 7970 Vortex II on Vortez.
ASUS Z77 Motherboards in the Spotlight on Vortez.
Alpenföhn CPU Coolers on Vortez.
ZOTAC Showcases New ZBOX on Vortez.
ASUS also recently gave people a sneak peak of their Z77 motherboards, with coverage on Tech Report and HotHardware.
Tech Report checked out some Sandy Bridge Xeons. With eight cores and 20MB of L3 cache per chip--and a breathtaking amount of total bandwidth--these new Xeons promise vast improvements in throughput over the prior generation. Read on for look at the Xeon E5-2600 lineup, along with some preliminary benchmarks from Damage Labs.
Western Digital are now the largest producer of hard drives, after acquiring Hitachi GST. This move means that WD Technologies and HGST will now operate as subsidiaries of Western Digital. It also means that Western Digital now has about $15 billion in yearly revenue. That surpasses its biggest rival Seagate to make Western Digital the world's biggest hard drive maker. This new merger also means that there are now only three major manufacturers of traditional PC hard drives in the world: Western Digital, Seagate and Toshiba. Seagate previously acquired Samsung's hard drive division in December for $1.4 billion.
Asher spotted this somewhat unnerving video of Kara. A new tech demo featuring sophisticated performance-capture technology made by the game developer Quantic Dream (Heavy Rain, Indigo Prophecy) was inspired by Ray Kurzweil’s book The Singularity is Near.
PRiME sent word that an alpha tech demo of Outerra engine is now available. Outerra Engine is a unique 3D engine, a world rendering engine capable to seamlessly render whole planets from space down to the ground level. It can use real world data to render the planets realistically, while it also dynamically refines the data using procedural algorithms to provide high ground-level detail. Discussion here.
Sunday Night Reviews
(3 Comments)
(link)
Sunday, 11-March-2012 20:12:27 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Audio Visual:
CM Storm Sirus 5.1 Headset on HWLook.
Satechi Audio Move SD Portable MP3 Player Stereo Speaker System on TestFreaks.
Actiontec MyWirelessTV Multi-Room HD Video Kit on OCIA.
Samsung WB700 digicam on HWLook.
Power Supply:
Seasonic SS-350M1U Modular 80Plus Gold on PCPerspective.
Kingwin Lazer Platinum LZP-1000 1000W on Tweaktown.
Motherboard & CPU:
MSI Big Bang XPower II Motherboard on LegitReviews.
Intel Core i7 2700K on HardCoreWare.
Core i7 3820 processor on Guru3D.
Intel Core i7-3820 Quad-Core Core Processor on ThinkComputers.
Futurelooks Previews the NEW ASUS Z77 LGA1155 Motherboard Series on HWHeaven.
Storage:
Verbatim 2.5" Sata-III SSD 120GB on RBMods.
Romex FancyCache Review – SSD Performance At 13GB/s and 765,000 IOPS In 60 Seconds Flat on TheSSDReview.
Lacie 5big Office+ NAS on TechWareLabs.
ICY DOCK EZ DOCK USB 3.0 HDD adaptor on Bjorn3D.
Cases:
Corsair Carbide Series 500R Mid Tower on Pro-Clockers.
SilverStone TJ04-Evolution Mid-Tower on Tweaktown.
Antec One on HWHeaven.
Cougar Evolution Enthusiast Mid Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Zalman Z11 Plus on HWSecrets.
Misc:
HP TopShot LaserJet Pro M275 printer on TBreak.
Samsung 30 nm Green PC3-12800 Low Profile 1.35 V DDR3 memory on TechPowerUp.
All Zombies Must Die! (PC) Game on HWHeaven.
AMD Radeon HD 7770 1GB Reference Design video card on Tweaktown.
Corsair Vengeance K60 Keyboard on OC3D.
A solar flare is hitting Earth today, with possibly disruptive effects on electrical equipment. Solar storms have three ways they can disrupt technology on Earth: with magnetic, radio and radiation emissions. This is an unusual situation, when all three types of solar storm disruptions are likely to be strong, Kunches said. That makes it the strongest overall since December 2006. That means "a whole host of things" could follow, he said. More info here. Anyway, here's this week's Misc Pics:
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Thursday Evening Reviews
(2 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 8-March-2012 20:04:30 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Input Etc:
Corsair Vengeance M60 gaming mouse on XSReviews.
Tesoro Durandal Ultimate G1NL Mech. Keyboard on OCClub.
Mad Catz Mad Catz Official Wireless Force Feedback Racing Wheel on GamingNexus.
Logitech G105: Made For Call of Duty Gaming Keyboard on Tweaktown.
Gigabyte Aire M1 ultra Portable Mouse on FunkyKit.
Cases:
Rosewill Blackhawk-Ultra Super Tower on LegitReviews.
Cougar Evolution Mid Tower on XtremeComputing.
Xilence Black Hornet Case on MadShrimps.
Video Cards:
Sapphire Radeon HD 7970 Dual-X 3GB OC on Tweaktown.
HIS 7750 iCooler 1GB GDDR5 PCI-E on TestFreaks.
Storage:
Corsair Force Series GT 180GB Solid State Drive on CircuitREMIX.
OCZ Vertex 3 120GB SSD on TechReaction.
Kingston SSDNow V+200 120GB Solid State Drive on APHNetworks.
Patriot Memory Pyro 120GB 2.5'' SATA III SSD on MadShrimps.
Patriot Pyro SE 120GB Solid State Drive on ThinkComputers.
RunCore Pro V Max 240GB SSD on CircuitRemix.
Audio Visual:
Edifier MP250 Sound To Go USB Soundbar Speaker on MegaTechNews.
Corsair Vengeance 1300 Headset on HWSecrets.
Sony HMZ-T1 Personal 3D Viewer on TBreak.
Samsung ST96 Camera on Tech-Reviews.
Portable & Prebuilt:
ASUS Transformer Prime (TF201) Android Tablet and Keyboard Dock on HWHeaven.
Dell XPS 13 ultrabook on TechReviewSource.
Cooling:
Zalman CNPS12X CPU Cooler on ThinkComputers.
Gelid GX-7 CPU cooler on Techreaction.
Arctic Cooling Alpine 64 Plus Heatsink on Frostytech.
Motherboard & CPU:
Futurelooks Previews the NEW MSI Z77A-GD65 Military Class III on Futurelooks.
MSI Z77A GD65 motherboard on Guru3D.
MSI Z77A-GD55 Motherboard on HWHeaven.
MSI Z77A-GD65 'Ivy Bridge' Motherboard on LegitReviews.
Asus P9X79 Motherboard on NinjaLane.
Misc:
HP Envy 110e All-in-One Printer on TBreak.
Unstoppable Gorg PC game on eTeknix.
Crucial Ballistix Elite 8GB 1866MHz Kit on OC3D.
SilverStone Strider Gold Evolution 850W on Tweaktown.
ASUS USB-N53 Wireless-N300 USB Adapter on BenchmarkReviews.
Thursday Afternoon
(4 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 8-March-2012 13:37:13 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Apple revealed their new iPad last night, and as far as I can tell, it's not called the iPad 3, iPad 2S or iPad HD - but simply "the new iPad". More here, discussion here.
Shaun spotted people queuing up for the WOW closing down sale, and then mostly just leaving again. Many complained of most items being discounted for only 10% or even 5%. 'It doesn't feel like a closing down sale at all. You can go to Big W and get it for the same price," one woman said.
Anonymous/LulzSec arrests continue, and now the story is that their leader has apparently betrayed them to the FBI. I thought the whole point of Anonymous was that it didn't have a leader. Law enforcement agents on two continents swooped in on top members of the infamous computer hacking group LulzSec early this morning, and acting largely on evidence gathered by the organization’s brazen leader -- who sources say has been secretly working for the government for months -- arrested three and charged two more with conspiracy.
If you're missing the days of more regular articles on DansData, Sciby points out that Dan's ramblings appear much more often on How To Spot A Psychopath now, although they're less PC-specific. The World Health Organisation say it's "possible" that mobile phones cause cancer. People who relay this information are generally less eager to make clear that the WHO has categorised this possible risk, from "long-term, heavy use" of mobile phones, as being in the same "Group 2B" class as traditional Asian pickled vegetables, and coffee.
HotHardware have a 3-way X79 Mobo Roundup posted. Intel’s X58 chipset made for great platform performance, and even though the chip maker has unleashed many more chipsets since the X58 came out, there hasn’t been a true successor in the high-end of their product line-up (not even the Z68 chipset) until now. The X79 chipset looks to pick up the X58’s poll position, so we decided to bench test a few motherboards from ASRock, ASUS, and Gigabyte to see how Intel's new flagship performs.
The Government has made an iOS game to help people prepare for natural disasters. ‘Before the Storm’, a free, iPhone game that helps students and families better prepare for natural disasters, is now available at Apple-iTunes. Attorney-General and Minister for Emergency Management Nicola Roxon joined local Federal Member for Latrobe Laura Smyth in launching the game with students from Harkaway Primary School today. “Big storms can be frightening for kids but learning what to do when a natural disaster strikes will be as easy as pulling out your iPhone and playing ‘Before the Storm’,” Ms Roxon said. More info here.
Thursday Morning
(2 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 8-March-2012 01:48:05 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Australia's Law Reform Commission has recommended a new national classification scheme. The ALRC recommends the following statutory classification categories for uniform application across all media content: G, PG, M, MA 15+, R 18+, X 18+ and Prohibited. This recommendation involves several changes, including: the abolition of the publications-specific classifications, ‘Unrestricted’, ‘Category 1 Restricted’ and ‘Category 2 Restricted’; the abolition of the MAV 15+ and AV classifications used by some television broadcasters; and renaming of the RC category as ‘Prohibited’. Discussion here.
TheConversation have an article about the benefits of video games. But this next one is my favourite. University students that played 11-50 hours of games per week were found to have higher grades than non-gamers and those that played a greater variety of games were more imaginative. Where was this study when I was growing up?
AMD have separated from GlobalFoundries completely. So what did AMD get? Manufacturing flexibility. Previously, Sunnyvale had agreed to manufacture 28nm APUs solely with GlobalFoundries. This new agreement voids that arrangement, freeing AMD to work with TSMC other foundries. It’s not an agreement that came cheap — not only is AMD giving up its 8.8% equity share of GF, it’s agreed to pay the manufacturer some $425 million by the end of Q1 2013. AMD will take a $703M charge against the transaction.
RBMods have a 3-way 128GB SSD roundup. Today we are going to compare three SSD drives against each other, all with the same size but with a bit different specifications. This roundup will include a Kingston, Crucial and also a Patriot SSD drive.
If you're looking at mobile developing, you might be interested to hear that basic versions of Unity are free for a limited time. Unity is a game engine that has been chosen to power the games of over 800,000 game developers.
Cameron points out that the cstick Cotton Candy is available now. Cotton Candy is a USB stick sized compute device that allows users a single, secure point of access to all personal cloud services and apps through their favorite operating system, while delivering a consistent experience on any screen. The device will serve as a companion to smartphones, tablets, and notebook PC and Macs, as well add smart capabilities to existing displays, TVs, set top boxes and other media that supports USB mass storage.
AirQ sent in this see-through 3D desktop. Our See Through 3D desktop is a 3D spatial operating environment that allows the user to directly interact with his or her virtual desktop. The user can reach into the projected 3D output space with his/her hands to directly manipulate the windows.
Here's some more coverage of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview: Installation, Overview and Performance on HWHeaven, Metro interface on TechReport, Installing in a VirtualBox on PCPerspective, Tips, Tricks and Shortcuts on TechSpot.
Wednesday Night Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Wednesday, 7-March-2012 23:46:09 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Power Supply:
Cooler Master Silent Pro M2 1000W on Guru3d.
Kingwin Lazer Platinum 1000W on TechPowerUp.
NZXT HALE82 850W on DragonSteelMods.
Video Cards:
VisionTek Radeon HD 7970 3GB Video Cards in 4-Way CrossFireX on Tweaktown.
Gigabyte HD 7770 OC GPU (1GB GDDR5) on FunkyKit.
Motherboard & CPU:
The Ivy Bridge Preview: Core i7 3770K Tested on Anandtech.
MSI X79A-GD65 (8D) LGA 2011 ATX Motherboard on PCPerspective.
Intel Core i7-3820 Extreme Edition CPU on BenchmarkReviews.
ASUS Rampage IV Extreme on OCClub.
Audio Visual:
Griffin Beacon for Android universal remote on TestFreaks.
Hands on with the StreamHD from Warpia on TechWareLabs.
BenQ W1060 Projector on Tech-Reviews.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Samsung Galaxy Nexus on HWLook.
Acer Aspire AS5755-6647 laptop on TechReviewSource.
Nokia Lumia 710 Windows Phone on HWHeaven.
Lenovo IdeaPad A1 on TechReviewSource.
Cases:
nMedia HTPC 7000B SFF Chassis on MissingRemote.
Antec Three Hundred Two Mid-Tower on Tweaktown.
BenQ W1060 Projector on Tech-Reviews.
Silverstone SG08 on OC3D.
InWin Buc 101 Mid Tower on TechWareLabs.
Storage:
Zalman ZM-HE350u3 3.5' HDD enclosure on Bjorn3D.
Intel 240GB Series 520 SSD on TBreak.
ToughTech mini-Q Encrypted Portable Drive on TechWareLabs.
AMD Radeon HD 7800 Series
(0 Comments)
(link)
Tuesday, 6-March-2012 15:47:16 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
AMD have unveiled their new Radeon 7850 and 7870 video cards, based on the 28nm Pitcairn GPU. Coverage on: TechPowerUp, HotHardware, LegionHW, HWHeaven, TechReport, PCPerspective, TechSpot, HWSecrets (and here), Tweaktown (and here and CrossFire here), NeoSeeker, Guru3D (and here), T-Break, LegitReviews and Anandtech, thanks Kosta.
Discussion continues in this thread.
Telstra have a new portable exchange for use in disaster situations. Following the floods in Brisbane in 2011, we deployed a temporary MEOW® to ensure our customers had service while we fixed the damaged infrastructure. However, these floods got us thinking – what improvements could we make to the MEOW to help us deploy them faster and therefore reduce the time our customers are without service?
Speaking of disasters, Microsoft's "Windows Azure" cloud service fell over recently, due to a leap-year glitch, thanks mpot. “Yesterday, 28 February, 2012 at 5:45 PM PST Windows Azure operations became aware of an issue impacting the compute service in a number of regions,” wrote Bill Laing, corporate vice president of Server and Cloud at Azure in a blog post. “While final root cause analysis is in progress, this issue appears to be due to a time calculation that was incorrect for the leap year.”
The BBC have an article on the Raspberry Pi. "We have been working on the Pi for six years, but we have never tested it with children - the target market," he says. "In the event, I couldn't have asked for better... they couldn't wait to try it out themselves." Now his ambition - to provide every child in Britain with their own cheap, programmable, credit-card-sized computer - seems close to realisation. Discussion continues here.
Harvey Norman are scaling back their online presence after only a few months. Chief executive Gerry Harvey said the company's recent online trading figures had been unimpressive. "We're happy with our presence, we're happy with our site, we're not happy with our sales,'' Mr Harvey said. "When we set up the online transactional site a couple of months back, we saw it being about five per cent of our turnover, but at the moment it's not going up at all, it's still sitting at about 0.5 of one per cent.''
Minecraft creator Notch has given away $3M to his fellow employees at Mojang. For those of you curious what a "dividend" means in everyday terms, it is basically a form of payment made by a corporation (paid regularly, typically quarterly) to its shareholders out of its profits (or reserves). For Notch, this means "money paid to him by Mojang as a shareholder". So, Notch has taken the available dividends paid to him for the fiscal year of 2011, and distributed them among his fellow staff members, rather than take it home himself.
Physorg report on game controllers that pull your thumbs as added feedback. University of Utah engineers designed a new kind of video game controller that not only vibrates like existing devices, but pulls and stretches the thumb tips in different directions to simulate the tug of a fishing line, the recoil of a gun or the feeling of ocean waves.
Researchers have made a speech-jamming gun. More info here. The idea is simple. Psychologists have known for some years that it is almost impossible to speak when your words are replayed to you with a delay of a fraction of a second. Kurihara and Tsukada have simply built a handheld device consisting of a microphone and a speaker that does just that: it records a person's voice and replays it to them with a delay of about 0.2 seconds. The microphone and speaker are directional so the device can be aimed at a speaker from a distance, like a gun.
From Jimmy: This is a nice demo of where webGL is right now. It's a port of an open-source rally game playable in any WebGL browser (so NSFIE). You can use WASD to drive, but you may need to turn off 'Search for text when I start typing' in Firefox. I found it worked in Chrome but not my (oldish) Firefox - and it's quite fun.
It seems everyone is talking about the Raspberry Pi, now it's available to pre-order. The Raspberry Pi is a credit-card sized computer that plugs into your TV and a keyboard. It’s a capable little PC which can be used for many of the things that your desktop PC does, like spreadsheets, word-processing and games. It also plays high-definition video. We want to see it being used by kids all over the world to learn programming. And.. it's about $40. Gizmodo offer 5 things you could do with one, but there's a lot of discussion and ideas in this thread.
Clean Up Australia Day
(3 Comments)
(link)
Sunday, 4-March-2012 01:09:00 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Martin points out that today is Clean Up Australia Day. Every year Australia wide, hundreds of thousands of Australians get stuck in and Clean Up their local environment by collecting and removing rubbish. There's still time to volunteer for an official cleanup site, or donate to the cause. Or, just go out and pick up any rubbish you find and put it in a bin, I guess!
Saturday Night Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Saturday, 3-March-2012 22:52:37 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Audio Visual:
Sapphire VID-2X Display Expander on NeoSeeker.
GEAR4 PocketLoops Portable Music Creation Studio on Tech-Reviews.
Panasonic SC-HC37 Stereo System on TBreak.
Software:
Dear Esther for PC (Steam) on MegaTechNews.
Syndicate (PC) Game on HWHeaven.
Cases:
Corsair 300R on Vortez.
Cooler Master Storm Trooper on BigBruin.
Compact System Cases from Lian Li and Chenbro on XbitLabs.
Corsair Carbide 300R on HWHeaven.
NZXT Switch 810 on OC3D.
Corsair Carbide 300R on OC3D.
Motherboard & CPU:
MSI Z77 Motherboard eTeknix.
MSI Z77A-GD65 'Ivy Bridge' Motherboard on LegitReviews.
Asus Rampage IV Formula on XbitLabs.
Intel Sandy Bridge-E i7-3820 CPU on MadShrimps.
EVGA X79 FTW X79 Motherboard on eTeknix.
Gigabyte GA-X79-UD3 Socket 2011 Motherboard on Pro-Clockers.
Video Cards:
MSI Radeon HD 7950 Twin Frozr III 3GB Overclocked on Tweaktown.
Gigabyte HD7970 OC on OC3D.
MSI GT780R on TBreak.
MSI Radeon HD 7770 1GB OC Edition on Tweaktown.
ASUS Radeon HD 7750 1 GB on TechPowerUp.
Asus DirectCU and DirectCU II for AMD: 6850, 6870, 6950, and 6970 on PCPerspective.
Storage:
ICY Dock MB981U3-1SA & MB981U3-1SA-1 Dock Stations on Bjorn3D.
Samsung PM830 SATA 3 256GB mSATA SSD on TheSSDReview.
Kingston SSDNow V+ 200 RAID 0 on PureOC.
Power Supply:
Thermaltake SMART 730W on TechPowerUp.
Silverstone ST1200-G Strider Gold Evolution on NinjaLane.
Antec VP350 on HWSecrets.
Input Etc:
Corsair Vengeance K90 keyboard on Guru3D.
Logitech Cube Grab-and-Go Mouse on Tweaktown.
CM Storm Quickfire Rapid Keyboard on BenchmarkReviews.
Roccat Kone[+] Gaming Mouse on LegitReviews.
Cyborg M.M.O.7 Mouse on HWSecrets.
Portable & Prebuilt:
ASUS Zenbook SSD on TheSSDReview.
iPhone 4S on TurnedOn.
Dell XPS 13 Ultrabook on HotHardware.
Samsung Galaxy Note 5.3-Inch Android Superphone on MegaTechNews.
Alienware M14x Review: Giving Portable Gaming Another Go on PCPerspective.
Misc:
Netgear WNDR3800 Premium Edition Router on XbitLabs.
Canon Pixma MG3120 printer on TechReviewSource.
Swiftech H2O-X20 Edge HD Liquid Cooling SystemS on XbitLabs.
Thanks to sabz, outy and Phil this week!
     
     
     
     
And if you're after more, check out this Wiki page which lists ALL "misc pics" news posts from the archive.
Interesting Forum Threads
(1 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 1-March-2012 15:10:47 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Here's a snapshot of what's going on in some of the forums. You can also find new interesting things you might have missed via the Who's Online page, the New Posts page and the Live forum view. Also try the Today's Posts link (find it on the Quick Links menu) and the handy Who Quoted Me? feature.
Case Position Poll - On the Desk or Under? in Overclocking & Hardware.
Mechwarrior: Tactics in PC Games.
GFACE - Social Networking by Crytek in PC Games.
God of Axion: F2P PVP Strategy for the hardcore in PC Games.
Voodoo Extreme (gaming news site) to close? in PC Games.
Nokia + Windows training days - experiences (part 1 of ... many) in Mobile Phones.
Confirmed: iPad 3 Has a 2048x1536 Retina Display in Apple iOS.
Telstra shifts BigPond email to Windows Live in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
Forget your Linksys WRT, here is a REAL Wi-FI access point in Networking, Telephony & Internet.
An observation on cameras and photographer visibility in Photography.
Photo Rights and Privacy Laws To Change? in Photography.
Saving money and eating well in Geek Food.
Dog Floatation Devices / Life Jackets in Pets & Animals.
USA Trip: don't do's in Lifestyle.
Ice age flowers brough back to life in Science.
Everything you know about dieting is wrong in Sport, Fitness & Health.
New laws provide some lemon aid in Motoring.
Guess whose car has an airbag for pedestrians? in Motoring.
Motorbikes - tips and tricks for beginners? in Motoring.
Motorcycling: Legitimize Filtering - A proposal for national recognition in Motoring.
Chinese open first car plant in Europe in Current Events.
Thursday Afternoon
(0 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 1-March-2012 14:50:52 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
If you liked the look of the Windows 8 Consumer Preview from earlier today, you can download your own copy here. Windows 8 Consumer Preview is prerelease software that may be substantially modified before it’s commercially released. Microsoft makes no warranties, express or implied, with respect to the information provided here. Some product features and functionality may require additional hardware or software. TechReviewSource checked it out here. Discussion continues here.
Interpol have arrested 25 alleged members of Anonymous. “Operation Unmask was launched in mid-February following a series of coordinated cyber-attacks originating from Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Spain,” said the world police body based in the French city of Lyon. The statement cited attacks on the websites of the Colombian Ministry of Defense and the presidency, as well as on Chile’s Endesa electricity company and its National Library, among others. More here on ArsTechnica.
LegitReviews checked out how far integrated graphics have come since 2006. Since Legit Reviews first came online nearly a decade ago the one phrase that we have heard consistently over the years is that “integrated graphics suck” and that you should never use them. Is that true? We gathered up 10 AMD and Intel motherboards to check out integrated graphics performance from 2006 to 2011 to see how they perform on four game titles and Futuremark 3Dmark06.
A few people sent word that WOW Audio Visual Superstores have gone into recievership. The company has about 500 employees, with 10 stores in Queensland and two in New South Wales, according to a statement from receivers and managers Ferrier Hodgson. WOW Audio Visual Superstores also has a single-store presence in Victoria, the ACT and the Northern Territory.
Garido noticed that Elpida have gone bankrupt. Never heard of them? They were the last Japanese manufacturer of computer memory, apparently. Elpida’s woes came as the Tokyo-based company failed to mimic South Korea’s Samsung Electronics Co. in diversifying into specialty memory needed in mobile handheld devices such as Apple Inc. (AAPL)’s iPad and iPhone. Tablet-computer sales more than doubled and smartphone demand surged 47 percent in the last quarter, while personal-computer shipments declined. Discussion here.
NPSF3000 spotted this strange story about copyright birdsong. And just hours after he posted it on his channel, eeplox was told by YouTube that he was using copyrighted material. Huh? The birds, eeplox. Those tweets are stolen. "This baffled me," eeplox wrote in a post on the incident to Slashdot. "So I asked some questions, and it appears that the birds singing in the background of my video are Rumblefish's exclusive intellectual property."
SilentPCReview have an article on power distribution in PCs. Determining the power draw along the three main rails will tell us whether the distribution within modern power supplies is appropriate. When we did this test six years ago, 75~90% of the total power consumption was on the +12V line, but most power supply units at the time had outputs just about even in terms of current between the three main rails (+12V, +5V, +3.3V). Today the current available on the +12V line is frequently twice that of the other two, more so on high capacity units.
Quad-rotors continue to plan their inevitable enslavement of mankind, this time by playing music. Flying robot quadrotors perform the James Bond Theme by playing various instruments including the keyboard, drums and maracas, a cymbal, and the debut of an adapted guitar built from a couch frame. The quadrotors play this "couch guitar" by flying over guitar strings stretched across a couch frame; plucking the strings with a stiff wire attached to the base of the quadrotor.
I'm still not finding a lot of use for WolframAlpha, but HowToGeek have 10 cool things you can do with it. You may have heard of Wolfram Alpha, which is a “computational knowledge engine.” That makes it sound a bit scary, but it’s a great tool once you can wrap your head around it. Apple’s Siri uses Wolfram Alpha for 25% of its searches. You can leverage that magic and put Wolfram Alpha to work for you — the empty search box on its homepage holds endless possibilities. Hrm, I didn't know that about Siri.
Mobile World Congress was on earlier this week, and here's some headlines: ASUS unveils Infinity tablets, Samsung to compete with Tegra on quad-core CPU, ASUS PadPhone preview, NVIDIA samples Tegra 3+, 4 to OEMs and Intel debuts new smartphone chips. Discussion of Mobile World Congress continues here.
Windows 8 Consumer Preview
(17 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 1-March-2012 00:51:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Asher spotted that the Windows 8 Consumer Preview is being live-blogged at the moment. It's just starting now but will presumably be viewable at the same URL if you missed it live and are reading this later in the day.
Discussion continues in this thread in the Windows Operating Systems forum.
Thursday Morning Reviews
(0 Comments)
(link)
Thursday, 1-March-2012 00:42:28 (GMT +10) - by Agg
|
Cases:
Cooler Master 690 II Advanced Black and White Mid-Tower on eTeknix.
NZXT Switch 810 Hybrid Full Tower on Pro-Clockers.
Power Supply:
Antec High Current Gamer M 620W on Vortez.
Audio Visual:
Targus USB 3.0 Dual-head Video Adapter on EverythingUSB.
Pentax K-r DSLR on TechReviewSource.
AC Ryan Playon!HD Mini 2 Full HD Network Media Streamer on MadShrimps.
AntLion ModMic microphone on OCClub.
Video Cards:
Gigabyte Radeon HD 7770 OC on LegionHW.
Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 3GB OC Edition on LegitReviews.
HIS Radeon HD 7750 1GB on Tweaktown.
OverKILL-3D ASUS HD7970 Quadfire Madness on OC3D.
Storage:
SilverStone EC03 USB 3.0 adapter on Bjorn3D.
Seagate Momentus XT 750 GB Hybrid HDD on HWSecrets.
SanDisk Extreme 240GB SSD with 24nm Toggle Mode Flash on Tweaktown.
Memory:
G.Skill RipjawsZ DDR3-2133MHz 16GB (4x4GB) Memory on HWHeaven.
G.Skill Ares 16GB 2133MHz Kit on OC3D.
Cooling:
SilenX EFZ-120HA5 Heatsink on NinjaLane.
Cooler Master Hyper TX3 EVO CPU cooler on Vortez.
Thermalright HR-01-775 (air-cooled) -vs- Corsair H60 Hydro cooling kit on FunTimeBliss.
Input Etc:
Thermaltake Meka G1 and G-Unit Keyboards on TechReport.
QPAD MK-50 Mechanical Gaming Keyboard on TechPowerUp.
SteelSeries Kinzu V2 Pro Edition Gaming Mouse on Tweaktown.
Roccat Isku Illuminated Gaming Keyboard on eTeknix.
Genius Ring Mouse on TechWareLabs.
EPIC GEAR Meduza HDST Gaming Mouse and Hybrid Pad on Tweaktown.
Epic Gear Meduza Gaming Mouse and Hybrid Pad on BenchmarkReviews.
Portable & Prebuilt:
Zotac ZBOX ID80 Plus Mini PC on HotHardware.
Acer Iconia Tab A100 on TBreak.
Samsung Series 5 NP530U4B notebook on TechReviewSource.
|
|
Advertisement:
All original content copyright James Rolfe.
All rights reserved. No reproduction allowed without written permission.
Interested in advertising on OCAU? Contact us for info.
|
|
