[H]ardNews 7th Edition

Today is the Day:

You can take your number and shove it! Or as of today you can just tell them to take their "service" and shove it.

Starting today, cell phone users who are fed up with their service get to have it both ways: They can switch providers and keep their phone numbers.

Last week, during my third trip to my local AT&T Wireless branch, I stood in line for over 30 minutes before any of the people in front of me in line was ever helped. It was my third trip because the two previous times I drove up their to get an older cell phone moved over to a newer model, AT&T's newer better and faster computer software was not functioning or the people running it could not make it function.

HTPC Mod:

Here is a great mod that was implemented by a Warren Liick for his HTPC box. Surely many of you will get inspiration from this (AKA Rip off his idea) and apply this mod in many other areas.

I looked everywhere for a button panel to control the basic HTPC functions, like myHTPC, system power, macros, etc. and did not find anything I liked. So here is what I came up with, it is a good mod, but it is time consuming, and requires steady hands and most of all patience. I had an old Gravis Eliminator Pro that was not working very well anymore, and rather than throw it away, I decided to make it into something useful.

New VidCard Tweaker:

aTuner is out with a new version that has support for both sides of the fence.

DIE SPAMMER DIE:

Spam and spyware is now officially driving folks bonkers. Thanks Patrick Reynolds.

SAN FRANCISCO (Reuters) - Call it spam rage: A Silicon Valley computer programmer has been arrested for threatening to torture and kill employees of the company he blames for bombarding his computer with Web ads promising to enlarge his penis.

[H]ardNews 6th Edition

MAC Vs. PC:

Here is one of those stories that we all love to read. NewsFactor hits up the classic debate from a total cost of ownership angle.

The debate over whether Mac or PC is a less expensive platform is, at first glance, pretty easily resolved. A short shopping trip seems to provide the answer.

Then when an author goes on to say this:

Further complicating the issue is the "Cadillac vs. Mercedes Benz" analogy. A Cadillac is less expensive, but a Cadillac cannot go from 0 to 60 in 8.5 seconds.

You have to wonder just what decade he is living in as a direct comparison of the Cadillac XLR and Mercedes SL500 shows the Cadillac coming in a bit faster at 0 to 60...

Fabless Tech:

Others are finding that being technology developers, not manufacturers, is where the money is now days.

Wal-Mart Notebooks:

I think many of you will be surprised with the direction Wal-Mart will be taking in the next few years. Not only are they going to be getting into self-branded electronics, they are going to be expanding their electronics sections of their stores in order to compete with companies like Best Buy. We have been informed that the number of Wal-Marts in North America is going to increase to around the 10,000 mark over the next three years as well. Wow..

The retail giant plans to begin offering notebooks under its own brand name during the first quarter of 2004, according to industry sources quoted in a report the Taiwan Economic News published this week.

ATI Digs In:

ATi has another feather to put in its cap according to Digitimes.

In addition to South Korea, the APPP rebate program is also heavily promoted in China. ATI chairman and CEO Ho Kwok-yuen earlier said he hopes the company’s graphics chips will take half of China’s clone market and a 70% share in the OEM sector in the fourth quarter of this year.

[H]ardNews 5th Edition

Chaintech Athlon64:

We have posted our review this morning of the Chaintech ZNF3-150. We had some real issues with the board that you will certainly want to read about if you are considering the nForce3 board for an AMD64 system.

On the other hand, ExtremeOC and NinjaLane have reviews posted as well, and did not see any of the issues that we did.

KT600 Review:

PCGuide Down Under does up the VIA KT600 from Gigabyte. We have found that the nForce2 simply owns the enthusiast SocketA for quite a while now even though the KT600 looked promising. The few boards that we tested were all riddled with stability issues. Maybe now things have gotten better for the chipset.

All in all the 7VT600 1394 provides a complete value for money solution. It lacks the higher gaming performance that nForce2 Ultra 400 chipset based boards can provide, but still manages to outperform even these "performance kings" in a few benchmarks! The 7VT600 1394 is a stable and reliable board that will allow users to generally do anything they need to with a value-end board.

IE to get Blocker:

About 90% of you reading this page right now use Internet Explorer, as do I. It is my browser of choice, but only when accompanied by a popup blocker, and a built-in one will be coming next year. As for now, we highly suggest the Google Toolbar. Once you surf with it, you will be wondering how you ever did without it.

The Redmond, Wash.-based software giant recently indicated that it will add pop-up blocking features to Internet Explorer (IE) next year, as part of an update for Windows XP. Others have offered similar tools before, but because IE so thoroughly dominates the browser market, ad executives and Internet watchers believe the changes could finally burst the bubble for pop-ups.

Old Cables:

Here is an interesting article that tackles an issue that I know many of you are familiar with. Old cabling...

It is estimated that 60 billion feet of cable have been abandoned in the plenum spaces that allow air circulation through a building, creating a fire hazard. Older cable could be particularly toxic in a fire.

Shuttle Fate:

Joe Alpert sends us a link from FloridaToday that explores some of the fates that might befall the NASA Space Shuttles.

Four U.S. aerospace companies are studying concepts for an unmanned spacecraft that would take over the shuttle's cargo-carrying role. Like the planned space plane, the new craft would launch on Delta 4 or Atlas 5 rockets from Cape Canaveral.

[H]ardNews 4th Edition

Play Dress Up:

IBM's OS2 got its butt kicked by Windows, so now you can make Windows look like something it is not. And many think that is a good thing. TweakNews shows us some of the possibilities.

Recently, I had the pleasure of reviewing WindowBlinds from Stardock. WindowBlinds is a skinning engine which can change the way Windows looks. Object Desktop includes WindowBlinds, however it goes a lot further in its desire to tinker with Windows. It is essentially a bundle of applications and applets called components. A full list of these components is listed in the Product Specifications and elaborated in Product Features and Walkthrough.

Dear Danny:

Dan once again helps his readers out with the 75th Edition of Letters. This week he covers prostate enlargement, adult diapers, and raving with teenagers.

One of my friends was telling me about diamonds that can be manufactured for about $US10 each which are being used in CPUs. They said there could be CPU speeds of about 50GHz at the same cost as today's CPUs. As I had no idea that diamonds could be manufactured, much less that cheaply, I was wondering - are these diamonds as in "a girl's best friend", or are these industrial diamonds, as are used on the tips of drills?

Soltek SFF:

You guessed it, SFF.com covers a new SFF system. This one is from Soltek and it supports the Intel P4 CPU. One thing of great importance that I did see left out of the article is the fact that Soltek no longer has support here in North America. That is right, if you have any issues beyond returning it to where you purchased it, you would have to deal with offices in Asia to get your box right...

Interestingly, hard-drive installation was surprisingly more difficult than expected. Perhaps in a slight engineering miscalculation, Soltek didn’t leave enough room between the hard-drive and the side of the case for connecting your hard-drive to the Serial-ATA cable.

[H]ardTourney:

Arstechnica Vs. HardOCP continues. Sixteen teams enter, one leaves victorious. The Steam servers apparently took a dump last night and caused a delay of the final match. Live feeds are available if you would like to watch The Tourney.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition

Kingston HyperX:

EnvyNews digs into some rather fast sticks of memory from Kingston, their HyperX PC3500 in a 512MB size. We use these same parts for testing around here all the time and have found it be just simply a great product. We can easily suggest that you consider Kingston's HyperX for your DDR400+.

The added fact that I've yet to see a HyperX PC3500 stick which can't operate at 2-3-3-6 or even 2-3-3-5 at 200MHz FSB for that matter is a nice way to pick yourself up low latency memory for your non-overclocked system.

iChipset Roundup:

Russia's leading hardware website, DigitalDaily, comes in with an all-Intel roundup today that covers a ton of mainboards. Do keep in mind that more than benchmarks make up mainboards now days though.

Traditionally, let's start with the "Overclocker's choice". It's easy to choose contenders for this prize: only three motherboards were able overclocking the test processor 2.4C to 3.6 GHz (i.e. show a stable operation at FSB=300MHz). These are Asus P4P800, Abit IC7-G and MSI 865PE Neo2.

K8T800 Review:

ViperLair reviews the MSI mainboard built for the 754-pin Athlon64, the K8T NEO.

Early samples of the K8T Neo-FIS2R had its share of problems upon its initial release, and it would appear that the board is much more mature now. One improvement was in the overclocking arena, though there are still limitations, either in the VIA chipset, or in the A64 itself. Performance of the K8T/A64 was excellent, at stock and overclocked.

Corsair XMS4000:

Not only does it haul ass, it looks good doing it. Gruntville has a review of Corsair's new TwinX1024 XMS4000 Pro.

On the other hand, if you’re running a P4 system and trying to squeeze every last MHz of speed you can out of your FSB, then you definitely can’t go wrong with some Corsair TwinX1024-4000PRO memory. Even with the increased latency settings, this memory is still capable of throwing out some pretty amazing results.

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

Comdex Coverages:

AMDMB - "It is unfortunate for Comdex that Computex was so late this year as there was really little that was new to see at the show and there were very few vendors and attendees."

FutureLooks - "Time for some rest...like this guy. I'm sure his nap at the convention center was not too indicative of the show this year!"

LegitReviews - "With empty sidewalks and only one person around, this picture details the overall size of the show -- small."

TTZ - "Comdex, the once powerhouse can't miss show of the computer world, has been reduced to nothing more than an IT sideshow."

Want to Know More?

PCI Express is coming whether you like it or not. But we know you are all geeks, so if you have not pre-geeked-out on PCI Express information, IntelForums gives you the chance to do just that.

PCI Express, previously known as 3rd Generation I/O (3GIO), is all set to replace both PCI and AGP, and take general I/O connectivity to the next decade. Designed to support multiple market segments and emerging applications, it will upgrade and unify I/O for Desktop, Mobile, Server, Communications, Workstations and Embedded Devices.

Nice OC:

Pacino (not sure is this is Al or not) got his SL6Z3 up to a scorching 4GHz at 1.84Vcore with a 328MHz FSB. I have been talking to our buddies over at Azzo the last couple of weeks and they have had very high hopes for these new stepping CPUs and are supposed to have some 3.6GHz pre-tested combos soon! Thanks Doormat!

Cooling:

Thermalright HSF @ SysCooling - PolarFLO Waterblock @ CTZ - Criticool Powerplant II @ AllHWZone - CoolerMaster HSF Review @ Xtrememodz - Zalman HSF @ CTZ

Modding:

Basics of Modding @ MonsterHardware - HTPC Case Review @ FLHW - Pretty lighted Case Feet @ FLHW - HTPC Case Review @ CTZ - Sunbeam Product Roundup @ GideonTech

Etc.:

256MB Thumbdrive @ BJorn3D - MSI CDRW @ 3DVelocity - 256MB Thumbdrive Review @ Designtechnica - DIY Glowpad @ CreativeMods - Laptop Cooler @ SysCooling - 3D Photo Kit @ GeekExtreme - 200GB Maxtor @ PCReview

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

OCing Editorial:

The guys at IPKonfig pose the question, "Has AMD Castrated Overclocking?"

The Athlon 64 and Athlon 64 FX is not our typical flavor of 'overclocking wonder' processors. In fact, if you're able to achieve anything impressive with these new processors, well, that would be surprising.

I personally am going to give AMD a bit a room to get their process tweaked out and maybe then we will get some CPUs that are a bit cheaper in price and that have some nice OC headroom. If you think back, the 1.6A and 2.4C debuted well after the P4 launch. Then again, we hope AMD does not make us wait for a new core process like Intel did either.

Athlon64 Roundup:

HardwareZone, home of the five star review, pulls a winner out of their Athlon64 roundup that you might find surprising.

When considering the various chipsets from NVIDIA, VIA, SiS and ALi for the AMD Athlon 64 processors, these platforms only get differentiated in performance when we delved into the performance of the various subsystems which could be revealed only by specific benchmarks.

Talkin' SMac:

Just in time for Monday, we see ARS deliver their thoughts on Apple's Growth Prospects...and a guide to used Macs.

Lastly, Apple has big plans for the iPod. Sales of iPods have been fantastic in Apple's eyes, with them asserting that iPod is the number-one mp3 player in terms of units sold on the market today, both flash and hard-drive based.

iPod Review:

And speaking of Apple and iPods, TBreak has their review of a 20GB iPod. They mention nothing about OCing it...

Coming back to what the iPod is mainly used for, the music quality of the unit is excellent and you have a built-in equalizer to adjust the sound per your needs.

AMD PR:

AMD gets a little more buddy-buddy with the Chinese. China will certainly be a huge marketplace for the companies that will be allowed to exploit it. Read the full PR here.

SUNNYVALE, CA - NOVEMBER 24, 2003 - AMD (NYSE: AMD) today announced the addition of a new Asian member to its Global Consumer Advisory Board (GCAB), Professor Guangnan Ni, of Beijing, China. Professor Ni is a well-known computer technologist, member of the Chinese Academy of Engineering (CAE), and currently works as a professor at the Institute of Computing Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (CAS). Professor Ni joins the GCAB's 13 highly regarded consumer and small business experts, academics, journalists and technology futurists, who seek to identify and resolve challenges facing home and small business technology adoption worldwide. Currently, GCAB members are from ten countries, representing Asia, Europe and North and South America.

[H]ardNews 3rd Edition

AMD64 3200+:

The 754-pin, and less expensive 64-bit CPU from AMD, is being reviewed over at NordicHardware.

It is clear that AMD has not only bet their money on the future since Athlon64 stands very good against the competitors already today. A proof on this is that Intel made a debatable new launch of their Pentium 4 CPUs in relation to AMD's launch of Athlon64/64 FX.

SiS655 Review:

Our mates at LegionHardware Down Under have a gander at a new board from Asus that is based on the SiS655 chipset that supports dual channel DDR400.

While it has performance that is comparable to the i875P, it also carries a retail value that should bring the price of the so called i865PE budget chipset down. The only disappointing aspect of this motherboard/chipset was its underachieving overclocking performance.

We got ours doing a solid 250MHz FSB, but not much more. Review coming up soon.

nForce2 Ultra 400:

Many folks are giving Socket A boards a new look after many of us found out we would not be able to afford a sweet Athlon64 setup. Hexus reviews the DFI LanParty NFII Ultra B.

At the time of writing, possibly the best Socket A motherboard on the market, should the features and aesthetics take your fancy.

Portable Workstation:

David Curle sent in a link to a portable Opteron workstation that comes in a briefcase format. I tricked mine out with the option of the three displays shown and a few other things. My final price was $25,957.00. Yeeouch. I wonder how many frames it gets in Q3?

This Dual Opteron configuration up to 8GB of DDR memory and up to 2 removeable hard drives. Removable drives can be either SCSI or SATA. Three full height PCI-X slots support cards up to 9" long. One, two or even three 19" LCD displays can be configured if combined with an AGP controller supporting same. Integrated video splitters provide projector video outputs for each display.

9600XT:

While it seems that the 9600XTs have still not arrived in full force on retail shelves, they are out there to be found. GamersDepot gives us their review of the Asus flavored card. Our review of the ATI branded card is here for comparison.

Overall, the performance of this card is more than decent – clearly showing that decent frame rates and full DX9 features are all available for under 200-dollars.

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

DIY X-Ray:

A weekend [H]'er sends in a link to a battery powered X-Ray gadget. He waxes poetic about being able to now look for gaps between CPU dies and coldplates.

Watercooling:

Speaking of coldplates, how about we let SubZeroTech give us the big tour of the Asetek Waterchill Kit? Our review of the kit is here for comparison.

If your overclocking is important, and noise-level is a factor then you should be interested in this kit. Installation was a breeze and Asetek offers some of the most proactive support in the business.

FREEDOM!:

Los Angeles county is apparently catching up with technology and they are finding some things about it that are just not acceptable. Thanks Mark Fleming.

One such recent example included the manufacturer's labeling of equipment where the words ''Master/Slave'' appeared to identify the primary and secondary sources. Based on the cultural diversity and sensitivity of Los Angeles County, this is not an acceptable identification label.

[H]ardNews - Blair's Tech

NO Bandwidth For You:

Distributed Grid:

Cheaper Intel Chips:

Numbers to Go:

Web Science:

Their hope is to have a broad sample of sundials from each time zone, illustrating the difference in shadows between the northern and southern hemispheres and the equator. The plan is to display the images together on a single Web site during the working life of two Mars landers, Spirit and Opportunity, that are scheduled to land on the red planet in January.

Beakman still rules.

[H]ardNews 2nd Edition

K8T800 Review:

Bjorn3D has posted their review of the MSI K8T NEO-FIS2R. If an Athlon64 board is in your holiday plans, make sure to give this one the once over. Our review of the MSI K8T800 based board is here.

With 6 channel audio, Gigabit LAN, 4 SATA connectors, SATA RAID, Live Update and other great features, I think it's definitely worth your consideration if you are shopping for a Socket 754 motherboard, especially considering it only costs around $125...

Comdex Rehash:

There ain't much to say about Comdex this year, but Nathan of LegitReviews went and brought back a few highlights for those of us too bored to participate.

Zalman was also at the show with two booths and had their fanless watercooler on display. I never honestly realized how large this cooler was until I got a chance to stand next to it.

SiS755 Chipset Preview:

If you are thinking about the Athlon64 as your next processor, SiS does have an alternative to VIA's and NVIDIA's solutions. That would be the SiS755 as shown off by Aceelenation today.

Our experiences with the SIS755 have been very positive. The system was rock solid, never crashed, and produced consistent benchmark numbers. Coupled with the 964 south bridge, the 755 provides onboard SATA RAID which the nForce 3 lacks. Comparing the nForce 3 and SIS755, the SIS755 looks to be a good contender in the small Socket 754 market.

[H]ardNews 1st Edition

OC Your VC:

Is your video card a bit long in the tooth? Or maybe brand new and blessed with all sorts of new cooling? Either way, TheModfathers shows you how to overclock your video card to eek out a few extra frames.

Unlike overclocking a CPU within the bios, video card tweaking requires additional software to run the card at increased clock speeds. Most video cards will come with some sort of application included on the driver CD that comes with the card.

M-Audio:

SoundcardCentral has the VIA-based audio chipset up for review today. Those in the know will tell you that this is a very solid choice in today's marketplace.

The Revolution 7.1 is a solid choice for any gamer, music, or movie lover who wants the best quality with great performance. Users who do a lot of recording and mixing will find this card to be a great choice with its great signal-to-noise ratios and sampling options.

Best Buy Lawsuit:

MINNEAPOLIS--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Nov. 21, 2003--Best Buy Co., Inc. (NYSE:BBY) today said that it had received notice of and was served with a shareholder lawsuit filed yesterday in the U.S. District Court in Minneapolis. The lawsuit is a purported class action on behalf of persons who purchased the securities of Best Buy Company, Inc. between January 9, 2002, and August 7, 2002, inclusive, and alleges violations of Sections 10(b) and 20(a) and Rule 10b-5 of the Securities Exchange Act of 1934. The named defendants are Best Buy Company, Inc., Richard M. Schulze, the company's chairman, and Bradbury H. Anderson, vice chairman and chief executive officer. The company has completed an initial review of the allegations in the lawsuit and believes they are without merit. The company intends to vigorously defend against this action.

XP Vs. Longhorn:

OnyNewz comes to the conclusion that the current release of WindowsXP performs better than a leaked release of an OS not due out for two years.

Cache & Shadows:

RojackPot updates their already huge BIOS Guide with updated and in-depth sections on Video BIOS Caching and Video BIOS Shadowing. We turn off both of these options for all our testing.

Modern operating systems do not even use the video BIOS. They bypass the BIOS completely and use the graphics card's driver instead. Therefore, absolutely no benefit can be realized by shadowing the BIOS.

Thermalright HSF:

Thermalright still makes some of the best cooling solutions you can find for sale today and quite often there are some good deals to be found on them as well. Shops like FrozenCPU and Plycon sometimes have great deals. TechMods reviews the SLK-947U built for either the AMD XP or Intel P4 CPU.

Don’t spend your time or money on any other heatsink out there, buy from a company you can trust, whether it is for an Intel or AMD Thermalright is the way to go.