In an effort to ensure that Windows users have the latest version of Internet Explorer installed and ready for use, Microsoft has decided to add its browser to the automatic update list. This means that Windows XP, Vista and Windows 7 installations which have automatic updating enabled in Windows Update, will also be seamlessly upgrading Internet Explorer, from time to time.
Thursday, December 15, 2011
Microsoft will Automatically Update Internet Explorer, if You Let it
Acer to Downsize Two-Thirds in 2012
Today DigiTimes reported Acers Chairman JT Wang, announced that the company will be downsizing its product line two-thirds by the end of 2012. Mr. Wangs statement leaned this maneuver as more of a streamline process rather then a downsize citing he expected sales to increase by 10% or higher within the next year. Mr. Wang also stated that this downsize will not effect its outsourcing partners. However, Acer's major partners including Quanta Computer, Compal Electronics, Wistron and Pegatron Technology have decline to comment. One cannot help but wonder how many other manufactures will follow suit in these hard economic times.
Source: DigiTimes
Corsair Announces 8GB and 16GB DDR3 Memory Upgrades for Apple Computers
Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced of 8GB and 16GB DDR3 memory upgrade kits for Apple Mac desktop and laptop systems.
Mac systems with two memory slots have traditionally been limited to only 8GB of memory. By increasing the individual module capacity to 8GB, Corsair's latest memory upgrade kits allow Mac owners to upgrade to 10GB, 12GB, or even 16GB of memory.
ROCCAT Releases Taito Mouse Pad in New Sizes and Heights
Offering a fresh take on one of the best-selling gaming mouse pads in history, ROCCAT Studios – the Hamburg, Germany-based manufacturer of professional PC gaming devices and equipment – today announced that the legendary ROCCAT Taito Shiny Black Gaming Mousepad now comes in two thicknesses of 3 mm and 5mm, as well as in the three sizes of Mini-, Mid- and King.
Corsair Announces Retail Availability of New Vengeance Gaming Keyboards and Mice
Corsair, a worldwide designer and supplier of high-performance components to the PC gaming hardware market, today announced immediate retail availability of their new line of Vengeance PC gaming peripherals.
Corsair's new PC gaming peripherals line includes four new HID products: The Vengeance K60 and Vengeance K90 gaming keyboards and the Vengeance M60 and Vengeance M90 laser gaming mice. A key feature of all four of these new Vengeance Series products is the use of an aluminum structure to provide strength and durability, as well as a stunning industrial design.
AMD Starts Shipping 28 nm GPUs for Revenue
AMD CEO Rory Read, speaking at the IT Supply Chain conference organized by Raymond James this Tuesday, said that his company had begun shipping 28 nm GPUs for revenue (meaning, in volumes big enough to fetch revenue). With it, AMD fulfilled its promise to be the first to the market with GPUs built on the 28 nm silicon fab process. AMD's foundry partner for these chips is TSMC. "We are ramping 28nm [products] with TSMC in Taiwan and shipping the products here and now. We are very excited about the products," said Read.
At the upcoming CES event, AMD will formally unveil a range of products that will use its 28 nm GPUs. CES will give AMD a good opportunity to bag design wins with large volume manufacturers of notebooks and PCs. What this means for the enthusiast community is that whenever AMD does launch its Radeon HD 7900 series, it won't be a "paper-launch".
Source: X-bit Labs
Wednesday, December 14, 2011
Apple Unable To Beat Competitors By Applying Lawsuits, Forced To
There's nothing quite like the irony of trying to shut down your prime competitor and giving their products a big boost in brand awareness instead. It seems that there are two basic ways to compete in this world: make a better product at a better price, or try to shut down your competitors with lawsuits and sell your inferior product at a nice fat mark-up. Well, unfortunately for Apple, they chose the latter. A week ago, we brought you news on how Apple's lawsuit against a Chinese competitor had suffered a setback over the name "iPad" which Apple tried to take off them – the court didn't buy Apple's arguments and the competitor kept the name.
Apple Founders: The Third Man
It's common knowledge that Apple was founded by Steve Jobs and Steve Wozniak in 1976, as is often parroted in news stories, history articles and documentaries about Apple. However, what isn't such common knowledge, is that there was actually a third man who founded Apple, one Ronald Wayne. This fact has now become very apparent, because the original contract to found the company and signed by the three men, has just been sold at upmarket auction house, Sotheby's, for a cool $1.35 million. Yes, seriously, $1.35 million. There's much better things to spend that kind of money on, we think. On top of that, the winning bidder, Eduardo Cisneros, chief executive officer of Miami-based Cisneros Corporation, had to pay Sotheby's a 12% commission, making the total amount spent $1.6 million, which caused his credit card to catch fire and explode (we made that last bit up). Anyway, the document was expected to sell for a maximum of around $150K, but somehow did much better. Perhaps this is because of Jobs's fame and the fact that he has sadly passed away recently.
Scamming A Good Days' Work: Data Storage Cartel Busted, Slaps On The Wrist All Round
Optical disc drives have been pretty cheap for years now, yet there is enough money in the business, that three executives managed to collude in price fixing of these devices, scamming HP, Dell and Microsoft in the process – and in the end the consumer, who foots the higher prices. The three are from Hitachi-LG Data Storage Inc. (HLDS) and have reached a plea agreement with the U.S. Department of Justice on price fixing charges for optical disc drives during the 2005-2009 timeframe. According to Security Week, the three executives, Sang Hun Kim, Young Keun Park, and Sik Hur, will each pay $25,000 USD in fines and serve little sentences of seven to eight months in prison at a "correctional facility" aka prison, that is yet to be decided.
AMD Gives Bulldozer 6-core a Speed-Bump with FX-6200
AMD launched its AMD FX processor family with two eight-core parts (FX-8150, FX-8120), a six-core part (FX-6100), and a quad-core one (FX-4100), apparently a newer, slightly faster six-core FX processor is just around the corner, the FX-6200. Since all AMD FX processors are unlocked out of the box, the FX-6200 is essentially a speed-bump. Out of the box, it is clocked at 3.80 GHz, with 4.10 GHz maximum TurboCore speed. It features six cores, 6 MB total L2 cache, and 8 MB total L3 cache. Its TDP is rated at 125W. In a presentation to retailers sourced by DonanimHaber, AMD pitched the FX-6200 to have about 10% higher performance at Mainconcept HD to Flash conversion, than the FX-6100 (3.30 GHz nominal, 3.90 GHz max. turbo).
Pogoplug Launches the Series 4 'Cloud Expansion Device'
Online storage adopters may be interested to know that Pogoplug has just released a new 'cloud expansion device' which allows local storage to be added to an existing Pogoplug cloud.
Cougar Revises GX-Series PSUs with Newer Fan Design and Flat Cables
COUGAR revised the award-winning 80PLUS Gold certified GX-series Power Supply. The fan used previously was replaced by a proprietary development of COUGAR. From now on, one 140 mm fan COUGAR VORTEX HDB is used. The fans of the VORTEX HDB series have a much longer lifetime (300,000 hours MTBF) and are still much quieter. Bearing noise is through the hydro-dynamic bearings almost impossible.
Apple Working on Retina Display for Macbook Pro
Apple sure knows how to surprise us when it comes to display advancements, be it its retina display on iPhone products, 2560 x 1440 pixels in 27-inch monitors (Apple was first to market with that density), or talk of 2048 x 1536 pixels native resolution with the next generation iPad. This latest news is bound to shock and awe. Apparently, Apple is working with upstream suppliers to develop a retina display for its Macbook Pro products. As early as in Q2 2012, Apple will launch a new Macbook Pro with 2880 x 1800 pixels (that's more pixels than even the costliest of today's 30-inch displays can manage). More importantly, it's a return to the 16:10 aspect ratio. It will achieve this without upscaling display dimensions. Meanwhile, Apple's PC competitors ASUS and Acer plan 1920 x 1080 display notebooks around that time.
Source: DigiTimes
Rightware Announces Gaming Performance Benchmark for OpenGL ES 3.0/Halti
Rightware, the provider of world’s most widely adopted benchmarking software for mobile phones, tablets and other embedded devices, today announced that it is developing Basemark Halti, an OpenGL ES 3.0 / Halti benchmark product slated for launch in 2012. The benchmark continues the popular Basemark product line’s graphic products, formerly known as 3DMarkMobile, and will set the new global standard for OpenGL ES 3.0/Halti gaming and graphics performance measurement. Basemark Halti will provide a solid performance benchmarking tool to semiconductor companies, device manufacturers, operators, and various other players in the embedded ecosystem across different vertical markets.
PQI Reveals the i817L Capless Flash Drives
Taiwanese company PQI (Power Quotient International) has this week announced a new flash drive, the compact and sleek i817L which features a capless design with a little twist. The twist is the spring-like mechanism which pulls the USB connector inside the drive's casing as soon as the device is disconnected from a PC or Mac.
Futuremark 3DMark 11 Updated to v1.0.3
Futuremark today released an update for its 3DMark 11 benchmark suite that's built to put today's and tomorrow's DirectX 11 GPUs through their paces. Although this is a relatively minor update, Futuremark recommended that all existing users update to this version for reliability. It packs the following changes:
- Bullet physics library updated to version 2.79 to improve compatibility with future CPUs and GPUs.
- For most systems containing multiple GPUs, for example integrated graphics and an additional discrete graphics card, the user can now select the GPU to be tested using a new option on the Help tab.
- Improved error handling and user messages for the most common compatibility issues.
- SystemInfo component updated to version 4.5 for improved compatibility with current and future hardware.
- New "More" tab with information about other Futuremark products and services.
Sapphire Works on Two Value Motherboards
Sapphire is working on two new entry-level motherboards for AMD FM1 and Intel LGA1155 platforms. The FM1 board, called the Pure White A55, is a budget micro-ATX board based on the AMD A55 FCH; while the LGA1155 board is the Pure Platinum H61P, an ATX board based on the Intel H61 chipset. The Pure White A55 uses a simple 5+1 phase VRM to power the AMD A-Series APU or Athlon II FM1 CPU. The FM1 socket is wired to four DDR3 DIMM slots, supporting dual-channel DDR3 memory. The "Memory Free" feature stabilizes memory clock speeds, voltages, and timings if wrong settings make the system fail POST, at the push of a button.
Zaward Intros New 50 mm Fan
Zaward introduced a new 50 mm fan for PC, server, and electronics applications. Measuring 50 x 50 x 10 mm, the fan spins at speeds of up to 5,000 RPM ± 10%. It uses a 9-blade impeller that pushes 8.9 CFM of air, with a noise level of 29.2 dBA. It uses a common ball-bearing design that gives it an MTBF of 50,000 hours. It is available in 3-wire, 3-pin connection, that draws 1.2W of power using 12V DC / 0.1A. It will be available through OEM and retail channels soon.
AMD CMO Nigel Dessau Leaving in January, Axed?
AMD's chief marketing officer (CMO) Nigel Dessau, will be leaving the company. AMD's new CEO Rory P. Read has been making some aggressive changes to the company in a bid to turn it into a lean, well-oiled, profit-making business that it should be. Recently, he laid off a big chunk of AMD's staff, most reported to be from the marketing department. This only goes on to reinforce the theory that Nigel Dessau was axed, and not that he will quit. Nigel Dessau joined the company in 2008. He has served as CMO at StorageTek, Sun Microsystems and IBM, previously. Dessau said in his Twitter page that he will leave AMD in January, but will see the company through at CES, when new GPU products will be unveiled.
PNY Launches HP v240b/v240g Tiny USB Flash Drives
PNY Technologies, Inc., is considered a leading designer, manufacturer and a worldwide leader in DRAM Memory and Flash Memory products, and authorized partnership with HP since 2008. December 2011 PNY has introduced its popular line-up - the HP v240b/v240g, which is a tiny but elegant designed drive targeting mainly business people. The drive comes in no-nonsense plastic casing in classic blue and green colors. The clean design is meant to symbolize tidiness and a coherent professional feeling at the workplace.
Kingston HyperX Beats Three World Records
Kingston Technology Europe Ltd, an affiliate of Kingston Technology Company Inc., the independent world leader in memory products, today announced that the Romanian overclocking team, Lab501 achieved three new world records with the world’s fastest dual channel memory kit, the Kingston HyperX KHX2544C9D3T1FK2/2GX, during a live overclocking session.
Toshiba Readies WT301/D Wintel tablet for Early 2012
Intel Outs Extreme Board DX79TO, Sandy Bridge-E Platform On The Cheap
Intel's Desktop Board division didn't miss out on the Sandy Bridge-E LGA2011 platform launch, after all, it's ceremonial for Intel to launch a new generation of processors with its own branded motherboards that are fully compatible with them. While Intel had two models of LGA2011 motherboards in the pipeline, the DX79SI and DX79TO, only the former was launched in November, which made it to most platform reviewers. The DX79SI was launched at a price point of US $289 - $299 MSRP, though some retailers easily set that price above $300. The new DX79TO is designed to be a down-scaled version of the DX79SI, targeting a price range of $203 - $208, according to ARK. Naturally then, the price that's 30% lower than that of the DX79SI invites some aggressive feature-cutting.
Chrome 16 Goes Stable, Brings Multiple Profile Support, More Fixes
A new 'stable' build of Google's browser is now available to the masses and it offers one fresh feature - multiple profiles. This addition allows a single instance of Chrome to handle several user profiles and enable easy switching between them. This is great for shared PCs as it enables people to quickly access their bookmarks, apps, extensions, history, and other settings, but it's not really suited for those who like their privacy.
Beside multiple sign-in support, Chrome 16.0.912.63 comes with Sync enhancements and multiple bug fixes. This stable build is available for Windows, Mac OS and Linux.
NVIDIA Opens Up CUDA Platform by Releasing Compiler Source Code
NVIDIA today announced that it will provide the source code for the new NVIDIA CUDA LLVM-based compiler to academic researchers and software-tool vendors, enabling them to more easily add GPU support for more programming languages and support CUDA applications on alternative processor architectures.
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