[H] Enthusiast Archives: May 2007Archive Listing


Wednesday May 30, 2007

Free Apps That Increase Your Productivity

Here is a handy list of the top twenty free applications that increase your productivity. The list promises that these programs will not only make you more productive but they will make your PC faster and stronger too.

The Internet is loaded with free software, making it hard to know which one’s you really need. This article will act as your guide to the top 20 free applications (Web and Windows) for increased productivity.

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Apple Releases iTunes 7.2

Apple has released the latest version of iTunes, grab it if you need it. The iTunes Store now offers songs without DRM protection as well.

Despite the software update, the Apple iTunes Store itself does not show any DRM-Free music currently available for purchase. The DRM-Free launch will likely occur later this morning (Wed, May 30th). From the iTunes Help, it appears you will be able to upgrade your existing songs to the iTunes Plus (DRM Free) version.

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More Info On Microsoft’s Milan

News.com has more information on Microsoft’s new Milan tabletop PC platform including a slideshow of the new surface computer in action.

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Microsoft on Wednesday is taking the wraps off "Milan," five years in the making and the first in what the company hopes will be a long line of "surface computers." The Microsoft Surface tabletop PC, for which the company has created both the hardware and software, offers shades of the technology seen in the sci-fi thriller Minority Report. The whole unit is controlled entirely through touch; there's no mouse or keyboard.

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Microsoft Launches New Product Category

Picture a surface that can recognize physical objects from a paintbrush to a cell phone and allows hands-on, direct control of content such as photos, music and maps. Today at the Wall Street Journal’s D: All Things Digital conference, Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer will unveil Microsoft Surface™, the first in a new category of surface computing products from Microsoft that breaks down traditional barriers between people and technology. Surface turns an ordinary tabletop into a vibrant, dynamic surface that provides effortless interaction with all forms of digital content through natural gestures, touch and physical objects.

Intel Delivers First Dual Channel Enhanced Demodulators

Intel Corporation today unveiled its first Digital TV dual channel demodulators for the consumer electronics (CE) market segment that is housed on a single piece of silicon. The demodulator extracts the digital channel from the target broadcast signal to deliver high-quality broadcast TV reception.

The new Intel® CE 6250 Dual Channel COFDM Demodulator and Intel® CE 6251 Dual Channel Diversity-Enabled COFDM Demodulator expands Intel's CE offerings by allowing manufacturers, such as UK CE manufacturer TVonics, to deliver highly integrated advanced digital home entertainment capabilities for a variety of future consumer entertainment devices, such as personal video recorder set top boxes (PVR STBs), integrated digital televisions (iDTV) and TV-enabled personal computers (PC-TV).

Driving the Emergence of Mobility 2.0 at VTF 07

VIA Technologies, Inc., a leading innovator and developer of silicon chip technologies and PC platform solutions, today disclosed more details about the "Ultra Mobility" central theme of VTF2007 being held on 6th June, with its focus on the hardware, software, design and services trends of ultra mobility, and the strategies that these industries should take to expedite the transition to Mobility 2.0.

Tuesday May 29, 2007

IBM Buying Back $12.5 Billion In Stock

IBM announced today that it has contracted with three banks to buy $12.5 billion of its own stock back making this the largest accelerated stock repurchase ever.

IBM had already announced that it would be ramping up its already massive stock buyback, and the technology company also had said it expected to borrow money to get it done. But a Tuesday filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission revealed the big scope of the project.

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Apple Fixes Serious QuickTime Bug

Apple has released a patch for a serious flaw in QuickTime that could allow hackers to take control of an unpatched system.

The security update to QuickTime 7.1.6, published Tuesday, fixes two issues in the way QuickTime works on the Java platform. The most serious of these problems could give criminals a way of taking control of an unpatched computer, Apple said in a security alert.

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[H]ardware Round-Up

Motherboards

ECS AMD690GM-M2 AMD 690G @ PC Stats

Cases & Modding

Spire SwordFin Case @ Hard-h2o

Video

MSI GeForce 8500 GT @ Hardware Secrets

Cooling

ZEROtherm BTF90 CPU Cooler @ Overclockers Club

NVIDIA To Host Annual Meeting Of Shareholders

NVIDIA, the worldwide leader in programmable graphics processor technologies, will hold its Annual Meeting of Shareholders at its headquarters in Santa Clara, California on Thursday, June 21, 2007, at 10:00 AM Pacific Time. The meeting will take place in Building E, located at 2800 Scott Boulevard, Santa Clara, California.

USB Key Hardware Firewall

Now this looks pretty snazzy, a hardware firewall on a USB drive.

Yoggie Security Systems has squeezed a complete hardware firewall for Windows systems into a USB key sized form-factor. The "Yoggie Pico" runs Linux 2.6 along with 13 security applications on a 520MHz PXA270, a powerful Intel processor popular in smartphones and other high-end consumer devices.

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AMD Going Private?

According to a recent report from SG Cowen Securities, AMD could be getting ready to go the private-equity route.

Rumors are running rampant that AMD, Micron and Lexmark are separately mulling over plans to go the private-equity route, according to various reports. There were other rumors last week. Oracle was rumored to make a bid for SAP, Nokia would make a bid to buy Research in Motion, and Tokyo Electron Ltd. (TEL) would buy Lam Research Corp., according to SG Cowen Securities Inc. (New York).

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