Desktop Atom 1.6GHz Tested

Those of you itching to see Intel’s Atom put to the test should hit this link to get that itch scratched. Fudzilla has put a pre-production sample through a handful of tests and the results aren’t what you might expect.

For Atom, Intel uses the old 945GC Northbridge with the ICH7 Southbridge. From the specs we have seen the chipset draws more power than the CPU itself. The tiny CPU is a stripped Core derived unit with 512kB of L2 Cache, 1.60GHz clock and only 133MHz FSB (533MHz quad pumped bus). It doesn't offer any special features, except that Intel re-worked their Hyperthreading feature, which will boost this single core's performance in some applications.

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[H]ard|OCP [H]otDeals

Welcome to the Friday edition of [H]ard|OCP [H]otDeals! Let's get things started with this AMD Dual Core 2GB Barebones kit for only $199.99 after a $50 savings. Next up, we have a EVGA nForce 650i Ultra motherboard for $49.99 and a Sony 20X DVD Rewritable for $29.99. If you need a video card this DIAMOND Viper Radeon HD 3870 512MB is only $149.99. This CORSAIR CMPSU-650TX 650W is $80 off for a final price of $79.99. Those of you in need of DDR3 can get G.SKILL 2GB DDR3 1333 for $99.99 until June 2nd. All offers are [H] reader exclusives so hit the link and get in on the savings. Speaking of “exclusive” make sure you check out the [H] Exclusive PCs at Velocity Micro and get your entry in to win the What's Your Velocity? contest while you are there!

Pong Between Multiple iPhones

One of the things that is truly impressive about the iPhone is all the NON-phone related things you can do with it. Playing pong between three or more iPhones is one such activity that has to be seen to be appreciated. Thanks Ed for the link:

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ISPs: The Best Speed for Your Money

Are you getting hosed by your internet service provider? A quick look at this list will let you know where you stand and give you a great list of prices, speed and availability of many major ISPs across the country.

The World Wide Web is the place to be, and the options for getting there have never been greater. We’ve investigated the deals, the speeds, and the availability to help consumers choose a high-speed bandwagon to jump on.

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Digital Clock Ceiling

I’m not sure what it is but I can’t help but feel like my life is just slowly ticking away. It’s weird, I just can’t put my finger on it…maybe it is the new lights we had installed in the office:

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Strong Earnings Boost Dell Shares

Good news for Dell, strong notebook sales and growth in Asia helped the company beat Wall Street expectations. Although the U.S. market has been weak, revenue from Asia was up almost twenty percent with European markets not far behind, giving Dell the shot in the arm it needed.

Revenue rose 19 percent in Asia and 15 percent in Europe, the Middle East and Africa, helping Dell overcome a weak U.S. market where businesses were cutting back on technology spending. "Dell did relatively well, but it was against low expectations," said Shaw Wu, an analyst with American Technology Research who rates the shares "neutral."

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Microsoft Announces Enterprise Innovation Management Initiative

Microsoft Corp. announced its Innovation Process Management (IPM) initiative to help enterprises build a flexible IT platform to speed the process of innovation for competitive advantage and a higher return on investment. In many industries, innovation traditionally has been a compartmentalized, top-down process run by a small team of researchers, designers or engineers. The rapid spread and high availability of collaborative technologies has changed that model. It is now widely recognized that the next great breakthrough in products, services and processes can come from people anywhere inside or outside an organization. Advancements in IT also make it possible for companies to design flexible processes to support innovation.

Gigabyte To Apologize To Asustek

For those of you that missed the whole Gigabyte versus Asus thing last week, let me give you the condensed version: Our products are better. No, our products are better. You are lying. No, you are lying. No, you are. I said it first. I’m telling! I’m sorry. Me too. Smooch.

Tensions between the two companies flared up over "defamatory" comments and comparisons Gigabyte made in a internal document which challenged Asustek's claims of using high-quality components in its motherboards, and the merits of Asustek's EPU energy saving technology and its own DES equivalent.

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Valve Announces Online Network to Store Saved Games Indefinitely

According to Shacknews, Valve has announced a free file system called “Steam Cloud” that will retain users' saved games and configuration files indefinitely.

Half-Life and Half-Life 2 will be the first games to support the service. User key mappings will also be saved in Counter-Strike, and Left 4 Dead will ship with the feature. If players are offline, the service will store the data and then add it to the network on the next connection. According to Valve, saved games and configurations will be stored forever.

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NVIDIA Gelato Pro Now Freely Available

NVIDIA Corporation, the world leader in visual computing technologies, today announced NVIDIA® Gelato® Pro 2.2 rendering software, the Company’s advanced GPU-accelerated rendering software for professionals, is available as a no-cost download at www.nvidia.com/gelatozone. Well suited for rendering of 3D digital content and design, Gelato Pro software now replaces the basic version of Gelato software, which was previously available directly from NVIDIA.

IBM Opens 7th Client Center in Russia

IBM today announced the opening of a client center in the city of Perm in the Russian Federation as part of the company's regional expansion. The center, which is IBM's 7th in Russia, is aimed at supporting its customers and business partners in the Perm region of Russia. IBM is actively investing in hiring and training new staff, establishing new centers of competence and supporting the education of local business partners across the country. Last year, IBM opened client centers in St. Petersburg, Kazan, Rostov-on-Don, Samara and Novosibirsk. IBM's Russian operation is headquartered in Moscow where IBM has been present for 35 years.

Rivals Scared Of a 3G iPhone

I know the title says “rivals are scared” of a 3G iPhone but the actual quote from the Popular Mechanics article actually says “scared sh*tless.” When you hear the CEO of GPS company using expletives to describe his current situation, it has to be serious.

The first would be the addition of a GPS antenna. I recently sat down with the president of a GPS navigation system manufacturer to ask him how he felt about the prospect of a GPS-enabled iPhone. "Scared [expletive]-less," he said. Hardly a rarity in the handset world, GPS functionality is already used by many carriers to sell location-based services and for Emergency 911 (or E911). And the iPhone already does rough location positioning by cross-referencing tower triangulation with a database of known Wi-Fi hot spots.

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