Microsoft Corp. today announced revenue of $16.63 billion for the second quarter ended Dec. 31, 2008, a 2% increase over the same period of the prior year. Operating income, net income and diluted earnings per share for the quarter were $5.94 billion, $4.17 billion and $0.47, declines of 8%, 11% and 6%, respectively, compared with the prior year.
Client revenue declined 8% as a result of PC market weakness and a continued shift to lower priced netbooks. However, strong annuity licensing drove Server & Tools revenue growth of 15%. Entertainment and Devices revenue grew 3% driven by strong holiday demand for Xbox 360 consoles with a record 6 million units sold in the quarter.

NVIDIA made its latest GeForce driver suite official, version 181.22 WHQL. The driver comes nearly a week after its introduction as a beta. It reportedly brings in PhysX optimizations specific to Mirror's Edge. Attempting not to be merely a vehicle for PhysX system software version 9.09.0010, the driver promises certain fixes specific to Windows XP that include an SLI profile for STALKER: Clear Sky and Windows Vista-specific fixes that include an SLI profile for STALKER: Clear Sky benchmark, along with some stability issues being addressed for Fallout 3 and the GeForce GTX 295 accelerator, where only one of the two GPUs on the card was being recognized as CUDA/PhysX-supportive in some cases. Head over to NVIDIA's driver page for the downloads.

DOWNLOAD: NVIDIA Forceware 181.22 WHQL

GIGABYTE, a leading manufacturer of motherboards and graphics cards today is pleased to announce the GA-MA790FXT-UD5P, their first AMD "Dragon Platform" qualified motherboard with next generation AMD AM3 Phenom II processors support, enabling the very latest in definitive high performance platforms for work, home and play.

Sportting the new AMD AM3 socket, the GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P allows users to elevate their rig beyond the standard limits with support for support the highest performing ever 45nm AMD Phenom II processors featuring HyperTransport 3.0 and integrated DDR3 memory controller. The first motherboard to provide DDR3 memory support for the AMD platform, the GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P is able to reach memory speeds up to 1666+MHz (OC) for blazing fast memory access for today’s latest applications and games with greater energy efficiency. Build with top-notch high performance engineering, the GIGABYTE GA-MA790FXT-UD5P features the highest quality 8+2 CPU VRM power phase design, able to handle the power demands from 140W CPUs with ease.

A-DATA Technology Co. Ltd., a worldwide leading manufacturer in high performance memory products, announced today that its XPG DDR3 memory modules have broken a new world record on SuperPi 32m. The record was set by utilizing the DFI Lanparty UT X58 motherboard and XPG X Series v2.0 memory, the DDR3-2133X v2.0 2GBx3 triple-channel kit.
The SuperPi 32m record of 6min 40sec 360ms was achieved at a speed of 2237 MHz and latency settings of 8-7-7-21 using DDR3-2133X v2.0 2GBx3 triple-channel kit.

MSI, the world’s leading motherboard manufacturer, today unveils its AMD AM3 motherboard 790FX-GD70 and 790GX-G65. MSI AM3 motherboard fully supports AMD latest 45nm Phenom II processor and DDR3 memory. In addition, it comes with the AM3 processor which is optimized for the “second-generation DrMOS technology” and “APS (Active Phase Switching) technology”, both in high and low loading, MSI AM3 series motherboard offers the highest power conversion efficiency and effectively reduces the heat. Not only that, Gaming series motherboard even comes with OC Dial and MAX FSB advanced overclocking technologies, as well as M-Flash BIOS update mechanism protection. OC Dial and MAX FSB overclocking enable users to overclock easily and become an expert in a short period of time; M-Flash enables user to load the BIOS files from USB drive to boot up. In addition, the full range products feature full support for multimedia applications, Blu-ray high-definition hardware audio, eSATA/USB combo port, and complete display output interface to provide Full HD and high-performance 3D display capabilities. This motherboard is simply one of the best solutions for gamers and multimedia users.

Lian Li Industrial Co. Ltd has launched the PC-A05N Mini-Tower chassis. The all aluminum design features an innovative front mounted power supply (PSU) bay that enables the unique shorter and smaller profile. This is the ideal chassis for those seeking a conveniently sized unit that can comfortably contain leading edge hardware. The beautifully crafted chassis has the traditional Lian Li brushed aluminum finish while the dimensions stand at 210mm x 381mm x 490mm (W,H,D), featuring all the functional and user friendly design aspects users have come to expect in a Lian Li case.

Intel seems to have finally taken its economic future seriously in wake of the company anticipating a red quarter, which is the first in 22 years. This announcement comes following CEO Paul Otellini's statements pointing towards the company seeing red in Q1 2009, this merely a month into the quarter. In the latest statement issued, the company pointed out that around 5,000 of its employees (around 6,000 when combined with associated support functions) will be affected as part of the company's workforce reduction plans. The employees are from across various positions and divisions of the company.

Additionally, terming it as corporate restructuring, Intel will cease operations in as many as four facilities at: Santa Clara in California, Hillsboro in Oregon, Penang in Malaysia and Cavite in Philippines. The company attributes this to severe drops in profits. For example, Intel's least week's earnings saw a 90 percent drop in profits from the same point in 2008. Craig Berger of FBR Capital Markets was among several analysts Wednesday who said he wouldn't be surprised if Intel falls in red this quarter. "We have seen pretty significant deterioration in demand" for computer chips, he said, though he added that no one , including probably Intel's top executives, can predict where the company is heading in the coming months, due to a great deal of uncertainty with the world economy. If Intel does suffer a loss this quarter, it's still in a lot better shape than most other chip makers and should have no trouble surviving the recession, said Nathan Brookwood, a research fellow at the Saratoga market consulting firm Insight 64. "If Intel can't do OK in the longer term," he said, "then the United States economy and the world economy are in one heck of a lot of trouble."

Source: The Mercury News

CoolIT is showing off a few very interesting concepts and implementation of their cooling technology. The first is a PC which is completely cooled by such a system. The prototype is hand made but features high-end components in a unique formfactor. To control all aspects of the system there is a special PCB, to which you may connect multiple fans among other things. Then there is the notebook cooling prototype. It actually pushes cooled air into the notebooks air vents, to be exausted by the internal cooling fan.

One device, which I forgot to take a picture off, is their Domino ALC CPU cooler. It is a pre-filled and ready to go liquid cooling solution. But fear not, we will have a review of the system shortly.

Source: CoolIT System

IBM has been accused of monopoly and anti-competition practices with the mainframe market. A complaint of the same has been filed with the European Commission on Tuesday. T3, a small American supplier of mainframes who, in the past, dealt in IBM products, alleges the company the company to have abused its market-position and monopoly power in the industry.

IBM is accused of engaging in several anti-competitive offenses, that include the prevention of the sales of competing mainframe hardware products by making its operating system exclusive to its mainframe hardware. IBM is further accused of withholding patent licenses and certain intellectual property to the detriment of mainframe customers, according to a statement by T3. In the same statement, T3 says that it dealt with IBM mainframes in the past, but it took to selling its own products developed by Amdahl (now part of Fujitsu). An IBM spokesperson responded saying that the company is yet to see a complaint, and that it was inappropriate to comment on specifics relating thereto.

Source: ZDNet

Spire today released its two new retention module kits that provide support for Intel's Core i7 LGA-1366 socket, using existing Spire coolers. The two kits: Core i7 Clip (model: SB-03MK092) and Core i7 Clip II (model: SB-03MK091) consist of metal clip(s) with screws. The Core i7 Clip II, with its two split clips support Spire's SP604,SP605,SP607,SP608 CPU coolers, while the Core i7 clip is built exclusively for the SP602B3 cooler. Both kits are made of nickel-plated metal are are backed by Spire's 2 year warranty. As for its pricing, they are expected to be nominal as with similar retention module kits from several other companies.

QNAP Systems, Inc. today announced the availability of XDove an all-in-one feature rich mail server for its TS-109/ 209/ 409/ 509/ 639 Turbo NAS series, providing the business users the most competitive option for setting up their mail server on their Linux-embedded network attached storage. By the simple web-based QPKG software package expansion, the users can turn their Turbo NAS into a powerful mail server which provides SMTP, POP3 and IMAP services, multiple virtual domains and accounts, AJAX webmail with extended functionalities including personal folders, address book, calendar and real-time chat among users under the same mail server, schedule backup and restore mailboxes from multiple domains.

AMD started its marketing offensive against NVIDIA's new dual-GPU GeForce GTX 295, and single-GPU GeForce GTX 285 accelerators, in an attempt to put the Radeon HD 4800 X2 series accelerators ahead of its competition in terms of performance on a "broad scale", and used the cards' availability in non-reference designs as a USP against NVIDIA's offerings using a uniform company-specified design. All this, in an internal presentation leaked to Donanim Haber. As for those wondering why, ATI and NVIDIA have a history of picking on each others' flagship products by means of such presentations, with which they intend to influence OEMs and channel vendors, though it always happens so, that these presentations reach public domains. Viral marketing or something plausible? Find out for yourself:

You might want to think again before flashing your Seagate hard drive with whatever firmware the company provides as a 'fix' to pending firmware issues with some of its Barracuda 7200.11 series hard drives. The latest firmware by the company, version SD1A turned many hard drives to paperweights. After flashing the drives with the new firmware, users reported receiving disk failure messages, and systems not being able to access - let alone boot from - the drives. Users claimed to have lost data and backups stored on the hard drive, since the drive is rendered inaccessible from any machine.

Following these reports, the company removed the firmware update pending validation. It is not known at this point as to how the company plans to address its disgruntled customers, whether it creates a window for hard drives failed as a result of upgrading to this firmware to be replaced under the company warranty or free of charge. The SD1A firmware update was released by the company to address stability issues certain models of the Barracuda 7200.11 series were diagnosed with.


Sources: Slashdot, Gizmodo

Microprocessor mogul Intel, has been fairly invincible to the ups and downs of world economy, in its 40+ years of existence, owing to the market position it has been holding since the success of its microprocessor technologies. For the first time in 87 quarter fiscal years, the company is bracing itself for a red-quarter, meaning losses.

Intel's CEO Paul Otellini thinks that with the company seeing profits go down by as much as 19% in Q4 2008, one can expect only the worse of Q1, with an ailing world economy coupled with the expected fall in sales post the winter shopping season. The company is exercising all means to cut operational costs while attempting to meet sales targets, though it is not looking at workforce reductions as an option just as yet.

Source: Nashville Business Journal

Expreview, has got hold of information which details NVIDIA's new 9600GT Green Edition GPU. It appears to be nothing more than a BIOS tweak, but as such has resulted in a 37W (39%) drop in power consumption, allowing the card to function without the need of an external power connector. This has resulted in a new board revision number P562. The memory clocks remain the same at 900 MHz, but the core drops to 600 MHz, with 1500 MHz on the shaders. By doing this, NVIDIA have been able to drop the core voltage from 1.1V to 1.0V, most likely providing the biggest saving in power.


Source: Expreview

Following the story which we covered just a few days ago, Expreview has got more information on the new Intel Atom platform, codenamed Pine Trail-D. From the new information, we see that the CPU, IGP and MCH will in fact all be integrated into one chip, as opposed to just being moved onto the same die. The CPU has also been listed as at least 1.6Ghz, double that of the current entry level Atom processor. Despite the platform having no need for a northbridge, with it all moved into the CPU, Intel have managed to keep the die size at 484 sq. mm. On that note however, it seems that the IGP is still DirectX 9 based, though further details on the graphical capabilities are still not yet known. We also see, that the new Tigerpoint southbridge, will support 8 USB devices, 4 PCI-E x1 lanes, 2 PCI ports, 2 SATA ports and HD audio.


Source: Expreview

With no official word from Corsair and no leaked information before now, a 128GB Solid State Drive (SSD) has appeared on the UK Online Retailer Scan.co.uk. Named simply, the Corsair S128, with a product code of CMFSSD-128GBG1D, Corsair's product description reads, "Corsair solid state disk drives set a new standard for reliability in desktop and notebook storage solutions. Corsair solid state disk drives utilize specially selected Samsung components to enable a life expectancy of over 100 years and OEM level compatibility and performance consistency." With the mention of Samsung components, could these simply be rebranded units? Or has Corsair branched off into yet another section of the industry?

Microsoft has sold its stake in Comcast Corp., the largest cable television company, the second largest Internet service provider and the fourth largest telephone service provider in the United States. In a filing Friday with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Microsoft announced it no longer held any shares in Philadelphia-based Comcast. The exact date of the share sale was not given, neither who's now behind the wheel of Microsoft's 7.26% stake. Back in 2002, Microsoft bought 115 million shares of Comcast, and until the moment of its retirement from the company's board it owned 150.9 million Class A shares. Representatives of Microsoft and Comcast declined to comment on the share sale, but according to third party financial advisors Microsoft's Comcast shares could have been valued at as little as $1.97 billion or as much as $3.4 billion. The amount of money whatever it is now goes back to Microsoft. I guess in time of recession it's better to have your money under the pillow, rather than investing them in something.

Source: The Wall Street Journal

News of the latest update to Sony's Playstation 3 console emerged yesterday on the official Playstation Blog and according to Engadget, the update is around 140MB. The update also adds guest store access, to allow users who do not have a Playstation Network account, to browse through the online store. A video walkthrough of the new features in the update can be found here. An extract from the blog follows:

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The PS3 firmware update (v2.60) is designed primarily to enhance the system’s media capabilities. The key feature is a new Photo Gallery application, which delivers a suite of tools for sorting through and displaying your digital photo collection. Digital pictures can be organized in groups according to various criteria, including the camera used to take the photos, the event date and time, colors in the photos, as well as the number, ages, or facial expressions of the people pictured. You can also create slideshows set to music and build photo playlists with an easy-to-use interface. The Photo Gallery application will need to be installed separately from the XMB after you update your PS3’s firmware. To install the Photo Gallery application, go to the Photo section on the XMB, select Photo Gallery and press the X button.

---

Source: Playstation.Blog

Phoenix Technologies Ltd., the leader in PC 3.0 products, services and embedded technologies, today announced a partnership with ASUS to accelerate the adoption of its award-winning HyperSpace product by consumers worldwide. HyperSpace is a revolutionary new instant-on and always-connected application environment that makes operating a mobile PC as easy and efficient as operating a cell phone.

Based on the partnership agreement, ASUS will incorporate HyperSpace into its next generation notebooks. With HyperSpace-installed notebooks, users can instantly launch important web-based applications (before Windows ever boots), automatically connect to the best available network, dramatically extend battery life and achieve new levels of uptime and security protection. HyperSpace is available for download at hyperspace.com

The ability to drive big displays now comes in a small package with the release of the NVIDIA Quadro NVS 420, the industry's only low profile professional graphics solution designed for maximum display real estate with a small form factor (SFF) computer. Featuring NVIDIA nView display software and support for four 30-inch displays at 2560x1600 high resolutions, business professionals can maximize productivity through increased desktop real estate and easy to use display management tools.
Built to meet the needs of today's most demanding business professional, the Quadro NVS 420 professional graphics solution offers stability, ease-of-use and wide compatibility. In addition it has been thoroughly tested to ensure compatibility with the leading business applications.

Futuremark today launched Mirada, a new benchmark to measure the performance of 3D graphical display systems used in the automotive industry. With Mirada, car manufacturers, tier-1 suppliers, application developers and integrated chip companies have a common standard for impartial performance measurement and comparison of different OpenGL ES 2.0 solutions using realistic automotive scenarios and workloads.

"Automotive manufacturers and their suppliers recognize that rich, context sensitive, graphical displays offer many advantages over the analogue dials that have been used for the last 100 years," said Tero Sarkkinen, CEO of Futuremark. "Futuremark is providing the tools to design, measure and deliver this new technology within the fast paced timeframes required to meet the needs of today's consumers."

Auzentech, provider of high-quality consumer sound products, is pleased to announce the retail availability of its Auzen X-Fi Forte 7.1 soundcard. The Auzen X-Fi Forte 7.1 is the first low profile native PCI Express audio card that Auzentech has designed especially for gamers and audiophiles. Compared to the X-Fi chipset reference design, the Auzen X-Fi Forte 7.1 has improved circuitry and components. It also marks the first time a Creative 20K2 PCI Express audio processor has been available in a low-profile board, as well as the first time it has been available in a third-party soundcard. The X-Fi Forte is equipped with 64MB X-RAM, supports EAX 5.0, and most of the latest standards in processing sound from audio and video files. Please click here for more information. The card's retail price is $149.99.


Source: Auzentech

In celebration of THQ and Relic Entertainment's highly anticipated Warhammer 40,000T: Dawn of War II multiplayer beta, Steam is now offering Warhammer 40,000T: Dawn of War - SoulstormT for 75% off the suggested price. Anyone with an electronic or retail copy of Dawn of War - Soulstorm and a valid CD key may register their game with Steam and join the early access to the Dawn of War II beta today.

Also beginning today, the full version of Dawn of War II may be pre-purchased via Steam. And on January 28, the beta is scheduled to open to gamers around the world (free of charge via Steam).

BFG Technologies announced two new graphics cards, the company's non-reference versions of the GeForce 9800 GT accelerators, using the company's own PCB design and the ThermoIntelligence cooling system. The cooling system consists of a central Zerotherm-made GPU cooler and heatsinks over the cards' memory and VRM areas. The GPU cooler as claimed by the company, drops the operational temperatures of the GPU by as much as 30 °C in comparison to the reference NVIDIA cooler. The black PCB holds a 4+1 phase power circuit for the GPU and memory.

These cards come in the OC2 and OCX variants. OC2 represents a level-2 overclock of 650 MHz (core), 1,620 MHz (shader) and 1,926 MHz (memory), and OCX represents a level-3 (top) overclock of 680 MHz (core), 1,674 MHz (shader) and 2,000 MHz (memory). Both graphics cards provide features standard to the GeForce 9800 GT graphics processors, with 112 shader cores and CUDA support for GPU PhysX API acceleration.

Following the launch of AMD's newest value northbridge, the AMD 760G, and the SB710 southbridge, Biostar prepared its first offerings based on the 760G + SB710 chipset: the TA760G M2+ and A760G M2+. Both motherboards are built in the Micro-ATX form factor, measuring 24.4cm X 20cm. Both models are essentially the same, except for the TA760G M2+ featuring four DDR2 DIMM slots, instead of two on the A760G M2+.

The motherboards feature AM2+ sockets, supporting Athlon, and Phenom series processors with TDP ratings of up to 95W. For the Phenom and Athlon X2 7000 series chips, the DDR2-1066 memory standard is supported. Featuring the new SB710 southbridge, up to six SATA II drives are supported. The rest of the feature set takes care of the essentials, with the onboard ATI Radeon HD 3200-class IGP running at 350 MHz, supporting Hybrid CrossFire, with dual-head outputs that include a DVI connector. A gigabit LAN and six-channel audio makes for the rest of it. Prelimnary reviews of the AMD 760G show it to outclass the Intel G41 chipset (priced in the same range) both in IGP performance and video acceleration. These motherboards will be priced well under US $100 to cater to its segment.

BenQ, a world-leading display provider and pioneer in the 16:9 aspect ratio, launched today their new G Series of Full HD 1080p LCD monitors, with 10 models ranging from 15.6” wide to 24” wide. Blending solid reliability with must-have features, the G Series specifically aims to make 16:9 Full HD/HD viewing more affordable than ever for consumers. This new series joins BenQ’s already extensive offerings under the M and E Series, and reaffirms BenQ as the ultimate 16:9 Full HD/HD solution provider for high-end multimedia to value performance needs.

The guys over at Hexus.net, have got hold of information that shows details of three new quad core processors with a thermal design power (TDP) of only 65W. The interesting thing is that it seems Intel have still not yet given up the LGA775 socket despite it being superceded. These are the lowest TDP quad cores from Intel to date, based on a 45nm manufacturing process, and in theory using up to 30W less power than current quad core processors, it shows a step in the right direction. Unfortunately it cannot be all good news, as it seems that the expected prices for these are approximatly $100 more than the similarly clocked 95W counterparts.


Source: Hexus.net

Kaspersky Lab, a leading producer of secure content management solutions, announces the release of a technical prototype of Kaspersky Anti-Virus for Windows 7. The prototype is based on the new antivirus engine which provides complex antivirus protection from all types of Internet threats.

The new technical prototype of Kaspersky Anti-Virus is designed to secure computers running under Windows 7. The beta test version of Microsoft Windows 7 operating system was released at the beginning of January 2009. Kaspersky Lab simultaneously released its technical prototype providing greater efficiency and complex antivirus protection for the new operating system.

Clunk.org.uk have got hold of some photos of what appears to be a DFI LanParty branded CPU Cooler. The design is something new, featuring 6 heatpipes, effectively acting as 12 and with two independant heatsinks. No details such as pricing or availability accompany the images, but it is believed DFI are in collaboration with Thermalright and as such this could be a joint venture between them. The cooler seems to be held on with a prototype bolt on kit, which one would expect to change before the product reaches retail.


Source: Clunk.org.uk

Qualcomm Incorporated and AMD today announced that Qualcomm has acquired certain graphics and multimedia technology assets, intellectual property and resources that were formerly the basis of AMD's handheld business. The acquisition enhances Qualcomm's multimedia capabilities, allowing Qualcomm to strengthen its leadership position in delivering more advanced products that redefine next-generation mobile user experiences.
“This acquisition of assets from AMD's handheld business brings us strong multimedia technologies, including graphics cores that we have been licensing for several years,” said Steve Mollenkopf, executive vice president of Qualcomm and president of Qualcomm CDMA Technologies. “Bringing this technology in-house creates even greater synergy as we seamlessly integrate the best-in-class multimedia performance AMD offers into our system-on-chip (SoC) products.”

Thermaltake has just launched two new HTPC (Home theater PC) cases that may be of a great value for your multimedia PC station. I'm not really in a good mood to tell you how wonderful and perfect these cases are, because they are not. I think full specs and some pictures will be enough to give you the general idea and to let you know everything you need to. Read this information after the "Read full story" marker.

Bloomberg reports that Intel is planning on releasing a new, higher-capacity solid state drive, which will provide users with up to 320GB of storage capacity. In Q4 this year, the company will begin selling a total of eight new drives with capacity of 320GB, that will be part of Intel's Extreme and Mainstream SSD series. The chips used for these drives will be build using 32-nanometer production technology, Intel’s most advanced manufacturing method for the time being. The source also clamins that Intel has already contacted its partners and informed them for the new drives.
The world's largest chipmaker also plans to introduce a new product called "Braidwood" that's slated for Q4 2009 too. It will include as much as 16GB of flash memory that will create “better responsiveness and boot-up time.” Though it's unclear whether this solution will be integrated into Intel based motherboards or it will stand for an optional separate storage drive, made only for installing operating systems.

Source: Bloomberg

Elpida Memory (Elpida), Japan's leading global supplier of Dynamic Random Access Memory (DRAM), today introduced the industry's first 1-Gigabit XDR DRAM based on a x32-bit configuration. The new XDR product features the industry's fastest ultra-high speed of 7.2GHz, which is faster than any GDDR5 memory chip, and provides a data transfer rate of 28.8 Gigabytes per second with a single device, making it an ideal choice for such high-bandwidth, high-performance full HD-capable applications as game consoles, digital televisions and Blu-ray disc recorders.

Antec, the global leader in high-performance computer components and accessories for the gaming, PC upgrade and Do-It-Yourself markets, has announced that it is launching the Nine Hundred Two, the latest update to Antec's line of high-performance gaming cases. The Nine Hundred Two includes new enhancements designed specifically for hardcore gamers, such as increased cooling and maximized airflow. The Nine Hundred Two is designed to provide maximum cooling for gaming systems, which are known for exuding greater amounts of heat. Cooling features of the Nine Hundred Two include a perforated front bezel for superior air intake, and a massive top-mounted 200mm Big Boy 200(tm) exhaust fan with blue LED illumination. The Nine Hundred Two is also designed with power supply mounts located at the bottom of the case to improve thermal performance, along with HDD cages that act as air ducts for additional air intake.

According to VRZone, Intel is planning to launch the next generation of Atom CPU's in Q4 2009 with a 45nm single core version, codenamed Pineview, a dual core CPU will shortly follow in Q1 2010. It seems Intel are gearing up to a single chip solution and with this particular generation of Atom, the CPU will be joined by the IGP and memory controller and is based on Lincroft Architecture. There also appears to be a new southbridge in the works to accompany this new chip. No longer do we have ICH-XX variants, but instead this new piece of silicon has been called Tiger Point. Between the two the platform will be known as the Pine Trail-D and will support memory speeds of upto 800Mhz DDR2. Intel claims there will be a 70% reduction in total kit package size and a 50% reduction in total kit TDP.

Source: VRZone

It is not the first time that Microsoft has had run-ins with the European Commission. The problem that keeps coming up is what the commission believes to be anti-competitive practices, being that Microsoft is bundling its own software with Windows instead of offering them separately. As has been seen with Windows 7, Microsoft has tried to keep them happy this time, by only including Windows Media Player and Internet Explorer. The rest can be downloaded free of charge, by what Microsoft has named the Windows Live Suite. It seems that this is not enough however, despite Internet Explorer being included in Microsoft's operating systems for over ten years, they have decided that this is an anti-competitive move by Microsoft, and as such have issued a Statement of Objections. The commission has given Microsoft approximately two months to respond, the official statement from Microsoft follows:

AMD today launched the first official version of its Fusion Gaming Utility. Working on AMD systems only, the Fusion Gaming Utility turns off various Windows processes and thus gains some additional performance when needed. AMD Fusion works with both Microsoft Windows XP 32/64-bit and Windows Vista 32/64-bit.

DOWNLOAD: AMD Fusion Gaming Utility Version 1.0

Hungarian Englide Technologies has released new 80mm and 120mm cooling fans. Englide's main strength lies in designing fans and the company, although completely new for many of us, has been on the market for 10 years. Now back to the new fans, they are designed primary for low RPM and low noise operation. Englide separates its fans into two series - n.zero and n.zero classic. The n.zero classic fans come with blades constructed of normal non-transperant plastic, while n.zero fans use semi-transparent material for the blades and the frame. N.Zero fans also ship with silicone anti-vibration mounts. Except the different plastic used, both series perform equally. The smaller 80x80x25mm models weight in 77 grams, spin at 1500 rpm @ 17 dBA and are rated at 19.2 CFM airflow. The bigger 120x120x25mm fans with overall weight of 122 grams spin at 980 rpm with the same noise output of 17 dBA and 36 CFM airflow. Englide gives 3 year warranty for its case fans.


Source: Englide

Barely a month into its launch, AMD's newest processors, the Phenom II X4 920 and Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition, are already in for global price-cuts, of as much as 20%, in the days to come. Sources close to the company indicate that the price-cuts are in view of the recent announcement by Intel to significantly lower the prices of certain models of its Core 2 Quad lineup, which pose direct competition to AMD's new chips.

Once implemented, the Phenom II X4 920 would sell for US $195, down from its launch-price of $235, and a whole $50 would be waived off the $275 price-tag of the Phenom II X4 940 Black Edition, sending it down to $225. These price-cuts are not yet officially confirmed or announced by AMD, and so it isn't known as to when exactly they get officially implemented. All prices in 1000 unit tray quantities.

Source: Hardware-Infos

Acer, the third largest vendor in the PC market, today announced the slick new Acer 23-inch widescreen display and Acer Aspire desktop PC line-up for customers in the United States. The Aspire desktops range from several compact models to an aggressively designed, power-packed gaming system.
Featuring a new form factor, the Acer H233H bmid 23-inch display offers cinematic quality with sleek styling. This new display provides excellent picture quality, boasting a 16:9 aspect ratio for maximum HD support, a high contrast ratio and fast response time. The glossy black bezel adds an extra design element that looks attractive in any home or office.
The desktop PC line features the compact, yet powerful Acer Aspire X3200, X1700 and X1200 small form factor (SFF) PCs outfitted with 3 to 4GB of memory. The newest member is the Aspire X1700, which boasts an Intel Pentium Dual-Core processor and 4GB DDR2 memory, for extremely fast system response.

Kingston Digital, Inc., the Flash memory affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc., announced today it is shipping the first two products in its SSDNow line of solid-state drives (SSD) with the SSDNow E Series and SSDNow M Series. Kingston is targeting its SSDs to Fortune 1000 companies and select vertical markets. The SSDNow E Series is specifically designed for the enterprise server environment while the SSDNow M Series is built for the road warrior who demands ultimate performance from a notebook PC. The Kingston SSDNow E and M Series use Intel’s solid-state drives, which are the best-performing drives on the market.

“We are thrilled to enter the solid-state drive market with our SSDNow E and M Series SSDs. The combination of the fastest SSDs in the world along with Kingston’s tremendous distribution capabilities and legendary customer service will position us to succeed in this arena,” said Mark Leathem, director of Flash business development, Kingston Digital. “The performance capabilities of these first two offerings are off the charts and our enterprise customers will be very pleased to use them in servers and corporate laptop computers.”

Thermaltake releases a new low profile cooler, MeOrb. It is only 47mm in height and can fit in your HTPC chassis. Users now don’t need to worry about the overheat problem will happen to their lovely chassis and CPU.

MeOrb is designed to solve the thermal problem of HTPC. HTPC is very popular in the PC world because it is smaller and it is more stylish to display in a living room. However, the thermal problem can be a headache because the limited space. MeOrb’s low height and good performance can help you to solve this problem.

The the coming months, AMD is planning to launch a series of quad-core and triple-core processors to strengthen the company's hold on the sub-$200, even sub-$150 market segment. Intel is reportedly planning a rival lineup of quad-core processors to counter AMD in the segmet. While the Core 2 Quad Q8000 series from Intel makes for its current low-end quad-core CPU lineup, the new lineup will be categorized under the Q7000 series.

Characteristics of the Q7000 series include a total L2 cache size of 2 MB (1 + 1 MB), which is half of that of the Q8000 and a sixth of that of the Q9000 series. The processors will use a narrower 800 MHz FSB and will be built on the 45nm manufacturing process. They will come with rated TDPs of 65W. The first model in this series will be the Core 2 Quad Q7500, which comes with a clock speed of 2.60 GHz. The chip will be priced under US $150, straying into AMD's budget quad-core chip territory.

Source: TechConnect Magazine

Intel has officially announced the January price reductions for its Core 2 processors. Below are all processors that have their prices changed after January 18th. For the full list of Intel processors and their MSRPs, please click here.

Intel Core 2 Quad processor Dec'08 (12/28) Jan'0 9 (01/18) %Decrease
• Q9650 (12M L2 cache 3.00GHz 1333MHz FSB 45nm) $530 to $316 -> 40%
• Q9550 (12M L2 cache 2.83GHz 1333MHz FSB 45nm) $316 to $266 -> 16%
• Q9400 (6M L2 cache 2.66GHz 1333MHz FSB 45nm) $266 to $213 -> 20%
• Q8300 (4M L2 cache 2.50GHz 1333MHz FSB 45nm) $224 to $183 -> 18%
• Q8200 (4M L2 cache 2.33GHz 1333MHz FSB 45nm) $193 to $163 -> 16%
 » Read full story

Samsung Electronics Co. on Friday said it will undergo a massive reorginization and split into two big operating divisions, one focused on consumer products like television sets and cellphones and the other on components such as memory chips and displays. For the past two years, Samsung operated four main divisions - chips, liquid crystal displays, consumer electronics and cellphones. Now it will join its subdivisions into two organizations. Samsung Electronics' current CEO Lee Yoon-woo will retain his position and become the CEO of the Device Solution devision, that will handle the company's component, semiconductor and LCD businesses. At the age of 57, Mr. Choi Gee-sung, current president of Samsung's cellphone unit, will lead the Digital Media and Communications division.
Samsung Electronics is the world's biggest manufacturer of memory chips, liquid crystal displays and flat screen televisions. It ranks second behind Finland's Nokia Corp. in mobile phones. However, like most giant company names in time of recession, it has been struggling of late amid the global downturn and falling prices. Samsung is scheduled to announce its Q4 2008 earning on January 23rd.

Source: News Yahoo!, Wall Street Journal

EVGA is also showing off a few very interesting items. The first being a remote thin client. This unit gives you the ability to access a PC from an outside location, while the machine itself remains in a secure location. All the data is transmitted through a network connection. This includes the display information over DVI. The thin client can drive two DVI based displays, USB and audio. Read on for information on the X58 Classified board.

QNAP is showing off their newest NAS enclosures. The first is a single hard drive enclosure, which also acts as a media center. It is one of the few out there, whiche manages 1080p output. It has all the usual connections as well as HDMI. There is a remote control included and the user interface is very clean and easy to use. But this is not the only new product - read on...

In all past roadmaps, AMD told us that its DDR3-supportive CPU lineup would begin with the Phenom II X4 945. Evidently that is not the case. From a recent DigiTimes report, there was hint given that all's not well with AMD's DDR3 plans, with the company toiling hard to get DDR3 memory run smooth and stable on AM3 socket CPUs, with integrated DDR3 memory controllers. The same report also highlighted the larger issue of both AMD and Intel being reluctant in orchestrating an industry-wide transition to the newer DDR3 memory standard across all market-segments. Amidst all this, AMD seems to have a small change of plans with its entire Phenom II lineup, with several processors earlier thought to be based on AM2+, emerging now as DDR3-supportive AM3. Also, it is known that AMD's first DDR3-supportive flagship quad-core chip will be the Phenom II X4 925, which arrives before the 945 and the newer SKU that has come to light.

Seagate has issued an official statement today, acknowledging all recent problems with some Barracuda 7200.11 drives. Based on the information posted in the company's forums here, select Seagate Barracuda 7200.11 1TB 3.5-inch hard drives made in Thailand, suffer from a firmware issue that bricks the HDDs after a short period of time. After three to five months of normal operation these defective hard drives will suddenly lock-up as a protective measure and prevent the system from recognizing the drive from then onwards. In most cases the information won't be lost, but the drive will be completely useless, changing the drive's electronics won't help much either. This problem occurs not only to the 1TB Barracuda models, but to Seagate 1.5TB, 640GB, 500GB, 320GB and 160GB Barracuda 7200.11 drives, along with some Maxtor and ES.2 models. That's pretty disturbing, but now Seagate will provide its customers with an updated firmware if their drive is problematic.

XFX released a special FarCry 2 themed graphics card based on the GeForce 9600 GSO graphics processor. The bundle includes a copy of the popular first-person-shooter title, FarCry 2. Its specifications are spiced-up by its memory: 1.5 GB. The memory however is DDR2 and is clocked at 800 MHz, with a bus width of 192-bits. This G92-based graphics card features 96 shader units clocked at 1,450 MHz, with the core running at 580 MHz. It sports a distinct XFX design with black-coloured PCB and single-slot cooling.


Source: Donanim Haber

Every once in a while, comes a GPU by NVIDIA that marks the evolution of GPU architecture for NVIDIA. A good example of this would be the G80, which was a distinct evolution of the GPU architecture for the company. Sources tell Hardware-Infos that the GT300 is on course of being one such GPU that comes with distinct architectural changes. To begin with, GT300 will start the company’s DirectX 11 conquest the way its ancestor, the G80 did for DirectX 10, which turned out to be largely a successful one.

The GT300’s architecture will be based on a new form of number-crunching machinery. While today’s NVIDIA GPUs feature a SIMD (single instruction multiple data) computation mechanism, the GT300 will introduce the GPU to MIMD (multiple instructions multiple data) mechanism. This is expected to boost the computational efficiency of the GPU many-fold. The ALU cluster organization will be dynamic, pooled, and driven by a crossbar switch. Once again, NVIDIA gets to drop clock-speeds and power consumptions, while achieving greater levels of performance than current-generation GPUs. With GT300, NVIDIA will introduce the next major update to CUDA. With the new GPUs being built on the 40nm silicon fabrication process, transistor counts are expected to spiral-up. NVIDIA’s GT300 is expected to go to office in Q4 2009, with its launch schedule more or less dependent on that of Microsoft’s Windows 7 operating system that brings in DirectX 11 support.

Source: Hardware-Infos

Now faced with delays, Intel's upcoming Ibex-Peak platform, a next-generation mainstream implementation of the Nehalem architecture, is an interesting mix of technologies, where Intel seeks to minimise the platform and energy footprints while delivering value and performance through a clever bit of rearrangement of system components. HKEPC has learned that Intel's 5-Series mainstream chipsets consists of five models: P57, Q57, H57, P55, and H55. The P57 and P55 are built for the consumer PC with discrete graphics. The H57 and H55 chipsets are built for processors with integrated graphics, with support for the Intel FDI. The Q57 is built for the business / enterprise-client PC, it supports a host of exclusive Intel technologies that make the machine easier to manage.