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Today we lead off with a review of a PCI video card from VisionTek. It does not sound too interesting for us AGP and PCIe guys till we think of using it for a physics card sometime down the road. Then we look at a very slick Icy Dock HD Enclosure. You have been looking for something to plug into that eSATA port right? And finally we finish up with the new Xbox 360 game, Ninety Nine Nights.
A new survey says that the amount of phishing attempts have almost doubled in the first six months of the year.
More than 157,000 unique phishing messages were sent out around the world in the first half of 2006, an increase of 81 percent compared with the six-month period to end-December 2005. Each message can go to thousands or hundreds of thousands of consumers, according to the bi-annual Internet Security Threat Report from security software vendor Symantec.
Power Supplies
GTR AP-480GX @ Dan’s Data
Memory
Team Group Xtreem DDR500 PC-4000 2GB Kit @ MVKTech
Cases & Modding
ooler Master ITower 930 Mid-Tower Case @ Hardware-Review
A+ Case Twin Engine / XCLIO A380 @ techPowerUp
HardwareZone has an interview up with AMD VP of Sales and Marketing in South Asia, Bryan Low to further discuss the merger and shed some additional light on the subject.
Just half a year back, the notion of AMD buying over ATI was simply nothing more than part of the IT rumor mill and many never saw the possibility. After all, both corporations have a completely different focus group and never had an overlap in lineup. By Computex 2006, the rumors escalated, but yet there were no hints from either party. Then on 24th July 2006, AMD and ATI globally announced plans to unite in a transaction valued at approximately US$5.4 billion.
We spend a lot of time on the weekends digging up insightful and funny lists. Today’s list is actually a very helpful one. Take a look at the Top Tips list that has a ton of helpful information from cleaning heat sink grease, to destroying sensitive data without the use of a handgun.
Power Supplies
Tt Pure Power 250W @ t-break
Enermax Galaxy 850W EGA850EWL @ Bjorn3D
ETC
Transcend T.Sonic 610 2GB MP3 Player @ Hardware-Review
DTech Bluetooth & USB 2.0 Hub @ ThinkComputers
Following our recent Systemax Hellcat evaluation, the readers called out for a response from the company. Rich Wallet, Executive VP of Systemax, has been kind enough to drop in and field questions from the readers.
Feel free to join in!
Ubisoft accidentally uploaded a 2GB file packed full of game info on upcoming Ubisoft titles including a working FarCry 2 tech demo. Needless to say, the company wasn’t pleased. On a lighter note, Ubisoft is probably hiring in new marketing / web person. Send your resumes today. 
"We are clearly displeased that confidential information from Ubisoft has been distributed on the internet," said a representative for Ubisoft. "The publication of this type of information can only be harmful to the game development process and we will take all steps necessary to prevent this from happening in the future."
Although I admire what Microsoft is doing by putting all the different versions of Vista on one disk, I can see about 2 billion ways for that to be abused.
The idea, said a company representative, is to let customers more easily and directly upgrade to a higher edition of Windows Vista from within their current edition. Vista is scheduled to reach consumers in January. Users would be installing only the version of the operating system that they had purchased, as the product key would be version-specific. Versions range from Starter to Ultimate editions.
According to sources in the motherboard industry, Intel’s Tulsa processors are supposed to account for 85% of its four-way server CPUs in the first quarter of 2007 and up to 95% in the second quarter.
Intel's Tulsa processors are expected to account for 85% of the company's total shipments of four-way server CPUs in the first quarter of 2007, up from 60% projected for the fourth quarter of this year, according to sources at Taiwan motherboard makers. Then, the proportion will be further increased and reached 95% in the second quarter.
If you visited the AMD Virtual IT Experience website we pointed out last week, you would have no doubt seen the pinless Opteron processor during Henri Richard’s keynote address. Here is a picture of the AMD Land Grid Array (LGA) 1207 pin “Socket F” from last year side by side with the pinless Opteron mentioned this week by AMD. As we noted in our AMD Quad Core editorial, you will no doubt see the quad-core Barcelona in socket AM2 form as well as this new AMD LGA “Socket F”.
NGOHQ has taken issue with a marketing firm, contracted by AMD, that is using viral marketing techniques to promote AMD products. Here is a quote from the article:
A few months ago there were a few suspicions towards a graphic chips manufacturer regarding a possible use of viral marketing by using shills to provide positive feedback to its products on many forums. Recently, we received evidence that may link AMD, a processor manufacturer, to a possible use of viral marketing/shills on hardware site’s forums by a third party company.
