OCC TECH NEWS
November 7, 2009
Gamers have a lot to complain about when it comes to Modern Warfare 2, but that doesn't justify breaking the law. Two friends who stole several Xbox 360 bundles containing the game thought it would be a good idea to sell them on Craigslist before the game was released. Activision got wind of the ad, and contracted a private investigator. The two sellers were turned over to the loss prevention staff at the retailer where one of them worked. However, one of the systems was sold to an 18 year old from Miami who intended to release the game online and sell illegal copies in his hometown. Police set up a sting operation and arrested the pirate, who is currently incarcerated. The game has still found its way to file sharing sites, and sales of the game may suffer as a result.
As you might or might not already know, ATI plan to release a 2GB variant of their already popular Radeon HD 5870. What separates this card though from its siblings is that it comes with six Mini Display Port outputs, which shows that this card is specialised for multi-monitor setups. The new card also requires an 8-Pin and 6-Pin power connector instead of two 6-Pin connectors like the Radeon HD 5870 1GB variant. Apart from the ATI Eyefinity Technology and having no back plate, the cards specifications remain the same with 1600 Stream processors, a core clock of 850MHz and a 4800MHz effective memory clock. Price and release date has not been announced, neither has whether ATI's AIB Partners will be branding and selling the 2GB variant, or if it will only be only available from ATI themselves.
November 6, 2009
Initial sales of Windows 7 were 234% higher than Vista's first few days of sales in the US, according to market research firm NPD Group. Although Windows 7 sales were up by over 200%, revenue growth was 82% up over Vista. The smaller growth of revenue has been attributed to early discounts for pre-orders and not enough advertising for the high-end "Ultimate" version of Windows 7. Stephen Baker, vice president of industry analysis at NPD said that “Microsoft’s program of early low-cost pre-sales, high visibility marketing, and aggressive deals helped make the Windows 7 software launch successful. In a slow environment for packaged software Windows 7 brought a large number of customers into the software aisles.” The top-selling SKUs of Windows 7 were Home Premium Upgrade, Pro Upgrade and Home Premium Family Pack (3 User) Upgrade at an average selling price of US$76, US$147 and US$149 respectively. It seems that Windows 7 has brought in all the customers wanting a fresh start with Windows and what's more, the attractive prices make it even harder to resist Microsoft's sleeker, faster and more minimalist OS.
Toshiba has unveiled the world's largest 1.8" HDD. The new drive, MK3233 GSG runs at 5400RPM, features a 16MB buffer and most importantly has a 320GB capacity. The new drive has faster data transfer rates, less noise while seeking data (19dB) and is 19% more efficient energy-wise than Toshiba's previous series of 1.8" drives. The drive uses a SATA 3.0 Gbps interface and is intended for use in UMPCs and netbooks. Toshiba will begin mass production of the MK3233 GSG in December, although the price of the lilliputian HDD has not yet been announced.
November 5, 2009
With Western Digital providing many portable hard drives as well as performance and green drives for desktops, as a company it has not yet had a SAS drive for the enterprise market. That is all changing though, with the unveiling of the first SAS hard drive from Western Digital, offering plenty of features with it. Along with the sequential data rate of 128MB/s, the platter can spin up to 10,000 RPM and offers the adoption of the 3Gb/s as well as the 6Gb/s interface, and also touts a 300GB storage capacity in a 2.5-inch form factor. Mainly, the new WD S25 drive is promoted to very large businesses looking for large storage arrays in an enterprise type market. The drive is already available to a few select OEMs, but more are being added shortly for more availability.
PC gamers already had enough to be mad about with Modern Warfare 2 and the lack of dedicated servers, but it appears to be worse. An online chat with Infinity Ward representatives revealed that gamers may have more to gripe about. The maximum number of players per game will be set at 18, and the ability to lean has also been removed. Both of these were done to prevent game balance from being ruined. Also removed from this game is the ability to use console commands to modify game settings, or even record your gameplay. In the new matchmaking system, users also won't be able to kick problem users or those that are hacking. In addition, there is a five second delay any time the host needs to change. The most interesting aspect in my opinion is that Infinity Ward admitted that it is basically a direct port from the console. The lone exception is that “PC has custom stuff like mouse control, text chat in game, and graphics settings.” Its not all bad PC gamers, at least you can still use a mouse.
November 4, 2009
With SATA 6 Gb/s standard becoming a reality with the standard slowly making its way onto the latest P55 motherboards and the first SATA 6Gb/s drive Seagate's Barracuda XT 2TB hard drive now on the market it may be time to take a look at what the latest technology can offer. For those not wanting to move to a new motherboard there's always the HBA, or host bus adapter, like those offered by High Point Technologies which just announced the Rocket 600 series of add-in cards based on PCI-Express 2.0 technology. The cards offer 500MB/s of throughput that will allow you to get the most out of your solid state drives and traditional hard drives up to 2TB. High Point is telling us the MSRP for the Rocket 620 is $69.99 and the Rocket 622 is $79.99 and will begin shipping to channel partners this week with retail availability expected soon afterward.
PayPal has announced the PayPal X program, which will provide software developers access to APIs. This will allow PayPal functionality to be built directly into third party applications. Without this ability, users had to be redirected to PayPal to use the service. Built in PayPal functionality could prove extremely useful in apps for mobile phones, and could open up the possibilities of what could be purchased from them. This can be seen as a necessary move in the online payment processing market which PayPal doesn't dominate as it once did. With offerings coming from Google and Amazon, PayPal needs to adapt and get creative to stay ahead.
John Carmack of id Software has revealed that the company is working on Quake Classic for the iPhone. This comes shortly after the company released Doom for the iPhone, which can be purchased for $6.99. In the Doom port, players have access to 36 levels from the original games, and can also play over the internet. Carmack stated that there will be 2 people at id dedicated to creating software for the iPhone, and that he hopes to get his hands dirty as well. No official release date has been set for the game.
November 3, 2009
Retailer GameStop has announced that Call of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 has broken the record for number of game pre-orders. The game will be released on Xbox 360, Playstation 3, and PC a week from today. Gamers who pre-order the game will be entered into a drawing for several great prizes, including a snowmobile and a Hummer H2. The game had been in the news recently with some publicity that wasn't quite as good after Infinity Ward announced that no dedicated servers would be available on PC. Many gamers planned to boycott the game and some even started a petition, but it clearly wasn't enough to get this game off track.
November 2, 2009
In the large market for handheld eBook readers, it seems as if Amazon’s Kindle has always taken the most sales in the selective product lineup. The Nook, by Barnes & Noble, has been a new reader that has stolen the attention of many, with its two LCD display setup. Spring Designs however is filing a lawsuit dealing with the eBook product, stating that B&N were in the talks of a product like the Nook while under NDA agreements and that the company copied Spring Design’s product by offering two LCDs; though each screen has a different function in both of the products. It is not sure which way the lawsuit will go, but with the screens performing different functions in both cases, there does not seem to be too much of a debate, just similar design.
Nvidia is offering users the chance to win one of 12 HP Mini 311 netbook prize packages valued at $1500 that includes:
- Custom silkscreened HP Mini 311 with NVIDIA ION graphics
- Windows 7 Home Premium
- 320GB hard drive
- 3GB memory
- Wireless-G Card with Bluetooth
- The Sims 3
- Portal
- Left 4 Dead
- Total Media Theater 3
- MediaShow 5
- Badaboom
- vReveal
But wait, just like on late night TV there's more and we're not talking Ginzu knives here. In addition, Nvidia is including:
- HP external Blu-ray drive
- HDMI cable to connect your netbook to your HDTV
- A case to hold all the goods
- 3 new Blu-ray movies
- BONUS: $50 credit from Roxio CinemaNow so you can watch Hollywood’s latest hits on the go
To enter, go to the Ultimate ION contest page on NVIDIA.com. You must be 18 years or older and a legal resident of the US to win. The contest starts today, November 2, and ends November 22, 2009.
Noctua today announced its new NH-D14 premium CPU cooler that builds on the success of its NH-U12P series cooler. The new NH-D14 features a 6-heatpipe, dual radiator design that is designed to provide a high level of cooling performance at low noise levels. Its asymmetrical design provides greater surface area and more clearance towards the RAM slots. The cooler comes equipped with NF-P14 (140mm) and NF-P12 (120mm) fans that in Ultra-Low-Noise mode actually outperforms the NH-U12P at full fan speed. With the SecuFirm2 mounting system, the NH-D14 supports a full range of sockets including LGA1366, LGA1156, LGA775, AM2, AM2+ and AM3. Noctua has announced full availability by mid-November at a suggested retail price of EUR 74.90 / USD 84.90.
AMD's upcoming 6-Core processor codenamed Thuban will be released sometime during the first half of 2010. The processor, which could be branded as Phenom II X6, will come equipped for AM3 (but will maintain backwards compatibility with AM2+ and DDR2), will be built on the 45nm fabrication process, and will come with 3MB of L2 Cache (512kB Per Core) and 6MB L3 Cache (Shared). What's nice to know is that, because it will be based of of its server counterparts, it should have similar characteristics, such as the D0 stepping, a TDP near the 115Ws of the server parts which would probably be 125W (or even around 75W for the energy efficient parts) and should be priced around $300-$500. What's new is that it is said to start off clocked at 2.8 GHz, which means that there could be a bit of headroom for some overclocking. Time will tell what AMD holds in store for us, so stay tuned!
The Motorola Droid, which will be released for Verizon Wireless customers this week, will be coming to Europe in the near future. The phone will be known as the Milestone and will be available to users in Germany and Italy first. It will also make its break into South America in Argentina. The phone will be coming to the Vodafone and O2 networks in these areas. The Milestone will be almost identical to the Droid, except for the support for a maximum 8GB memory card and High Speed Packet Access. The Milestone will also feature the Motonav application for navigation, and not the new Google navigation application.
November 1, 2009
The iPhone was officially launched in the most populated country on Friday. The phone is being sold through China Unicom, which is currently the second largest carrier in the country. It is likely hoping the iPhone will increase its market share in the coming years. However, the 8GB model will run consumers $732 without a contract. There are plenty of places in the country that sell gray-market models, which will be much cheaper. Another drawback of the Chinese iPhone is the lack of Wi-Fi due to government regulations.
October 30, 2009
October 29, 2009
AXLE International Holding Limited may not be a name you are familiar with, but the Hong Kong company has been around for more than 20 years. The company's product lineup consists of a full range of Nvidia- and ATI-based graphics cards along with a series of power supplies. AXLE has just announced the addition of two new cards with the release of its GeForce GT220 and GeForce 210 videocards based on the latest 40nm process technology from Nvidia. Designed as a low-cost way to bring more powerful video processing to your desktop when integrated graphics just isn't enough, the cards also offer Nvidia Unified Architecture, CUDA support and Nvidia PhysX technology. AXLE did not diclose pricing or availability on the new cards.
We should be seeing more and more SATA III (or 6Gbps) enabled products start popping up over the coming months, with the standard likely to be most useful for solid state drives as speeds continue to increase. Highpoint is well known for its RocketRAID line of controller cards and has just added the Rocket 600 series of PCI Express 2.0 based cards to its product lineup.
The Rocket 620 and 622 provide two SATA (620) or eSATA ports (622) and are fully ACHI compliant, so you should be able to drop them into most Windows, Linux or Mac OS X based systems without having to worry about drivers. They are also backwards compatible with SATA I and II interface drives. Both should be available at the end of the month for MSRPs of $69.99 and $79.99 respectively.
Numonyx, a joint venture between Intel and STMicroelectronics, has announced a possible breakthrough in phase change memory (PCM). PCM represents the likely next step in computer memory for a variety of reasons. The newest announcement reveals that the companies have successfully stacked several layers of PCM on top of each other. By stacking several layers together, future memory will be cheaper and more powerful than the current NAND flash based memory. PCM will be able to accomplish these improvements as it will require less voltage, meaning the transistors can be scaled down to 5nm. NAND flash limits transistors to 20nm, and smaller transistors means more memory in a smaller area.
Team Fortress 2 players will be able to enjoy their favorite game a little differently for Halloween. From October 29 to November 2, TF2 will feature the Haunted Halloween Special. Featured in the update will be new hats, achievements, and a new map. The hats can be obtained by completing the new achievements. The new map is Harvest and is a King of the Hill map. But it wouldn't be a Halloween update without something scary right? Well, Valve has that covered as the new map is haunted by a ghost.
October 28, 2009
Google is throwing its hat into yet another industry, announcing that it will soon be offering a free GPS service for mobile phones. The free service could boost the popularity of its Android operating system, which will include it with Google Maps for Mobile. The popularity of GPS systems has grown over the years, with the market being dominated by companies like Garmin and Tom-Tom. Google hopes to offer the device on non-Android phones, but with the opposition that was seen to Google Voice apps, this seems unlikely. GPS maker Tom-Tom recently released a similar app for the iPhone, with a price tag of $100.
The Motorola Droid, which runs on the Android operating system, will be available for purchase starting November 6. The phone will be available for $199 with a $100 rebate, and the customary 2 year contract. In addition, users will need a voice and data plan with the phone, amounting to a minimum of $70 per month. The Droid will be the first available smartphone to feature Android 2.0, the latest incarnation of the operating system from Google. Verizon will be promoting the phone through its biggest marketing campaign to date.
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