Palo Alto (CA) ā€“ Whether you like it or not, cloud computing is shaping up more and more to become one of the key IT trends of the next decade. Today, cloud computing consists of too many unknown variables and most cloud services available could be considered transitional services at best. HP, Intel and Yahoo are now taking a lead role in this trend and are building a huge cloud computing playground for researchers in the hope that convincing applications will be developed and open questions will be answered. Read the rest of this entry »

Still mourning over the loss of the HD format war, Toshiba thought that designing some cool, hip and happy new things would get it back on track and this is most likely the story behind the company’s latest external hard drives. The three new drives all a have sleek and glossy finish, an anti-slip underside and a USB 2.0 interface.

Loaded with Plug & Play capabilities, Toshiba’s portable spinners weight just 155 grams, measure 16,5 (H) x 81,3 (W) x 127 (D) mm and boast 8MB of buffer memory. Coming in 160, 250 and 320GB capacities, the external drives are colored in Gecko Green, Hot Rod Red and Carbon Grey respectively.

Unfortunately, Toshiba’s remained mum when asked about the drives’ price tags and release dates.

Finnaly some nice custom cooling…wonder how much will the price/overclock be

Round Rock (TX) ā€“ Dell today rolled out a new line of desktop PCs that are, at least in our opinion, the visually most appealing compact desktop PCs today. Dell clearly has increased its efforts to come up with unique and more interesting designs that could carry an Apple logo as well (ok, letā€™s not go overboard here.)

We have to give props to Dell for consistently coming up with unusual PC designs that set the company apart from its rivals. Similar to HP, which also shows some signs to invest more time and money into the visual appearance of some of its computers, Dell has unveiled interesting PC designs with unique features in the past. But the new Studio Hybrids have a much broader range of models and pricing, which could make the product much more successful than the unusual designs of the past.

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BFG Technologies, the leading North American and European supplier of advanced NVIDIA-based 3D graphics cards, power supplies and other PC enthusiast products, announced today the BFG NVIDIA GeForce 9800 GT, 9800 GT OC, and the GeForce 9500 GT graphics cards. All three new BFG graphics cards offer best-in-class price versus performance, and are backed by free 24/7/365 world-class tech support and the best lifetime warranty in the industry.


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ECS has just launched GeForce 9800 GTX+ Hydra Pack, a kit comprises two GeForce 9800 GTX+ (N9800GTX+-512MX-W: core clock of 738 MHz, memory clock of 2,200 MHz DDR, 256-bit memory interface and 512 MB GDDR3 memory) graphics cards and Thermaltakeā€™s watercooling solution BigWater 760i. This kit also comes with Tom Clancyā€™s Rainbow Six Vegas 2 game. Information about price and availability werenā€™t disclosed.

With innovative products that span multiple target markets, Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS), the world’s leading motherboard, graphics card, barebone system, and notebook manufacturer, reveals the latest GeForce 9800 GTX+ Hydra Pack to meet the requirement from performance-hungry gamers. With two N9800GTX+-512MX-W graphics cards, ECS Hydra Cooling System, and plenty of accessories bundled in a package, unprecedented gaming performance is now available via the power of multi-GPUs.

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Mushkin has unveiled a new memory modules series called X-Line. Modules from this series use colorful heatspreads and a black PCB, instead of traditional green PCB. The following modules were launched:

• 996580X (DDR2-800 / PC2-6400): Available in 4 GB kits with 4-4-4-12 timings and it uses a black heatspread.
• 996580wX (DDR2-800 / PC2-6400): Available in 4 GB kits with 4-4-4-12 timings and it uses a white heatspread.
• 996593X (DDR2-1000 / PC2-8000): Available in 4 GB kits with 5-5-5-15 timings and it uses a red heatspread.

Theses modules support EPP (Enhanced Performance Profiles) technology that allows memory modules negotiate with memory controller betters timings and the higher clock under which they can work in order to achieve the best performance. This technology works only with nVidia chipsets.

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EVGA has launched a factory-overclocked graphics card based on nVidia GeForce GTX 260 GPU. EVGA GeForce GTX 260 HC, as it is called, is equipped with Hydro Cooper 16, a cooling block made of copper used by liquid cooling systems. Below you can see the main specs for this new EVGA model.

EVGA GeForce GTX 260 HC (896-P3-1269-AR)

• GPU: nVidia GeForce GTX 260
• Core clock: 684 MHz (18.75% above default clock of 576 MHz)
• Memory: 896 MB GDDR3
• Memory clock (real): 1,107 MHz (10.81% above default clock of 999 MHz)
• Memory clock (DDR): 2,214 MHz (10.81% above default clock of 1,998 MHz)
• Memory interface: 448-bit
• Memory transfer rate: 123.98 GB/s (10.81% above default rate of 111.88 GB/s)
• Bus: PCI Express 2.0
• Connectors: Dual DVI-I e HDTV
• MSRP: USD 499.99

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Calgary (CA) ā€“ Voodoo, the boutique end of HP, has been designing crazy computers for a while, and HPā€™s almost unlimited resources have now allowed it to make an even crazier laptop. We first wrote about the ultra-portable Envy 133 back on June 10th and now take a closer look at Voodooā€™s MacBook Air-killer.

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Redmond (WA) ā€“ Here we go again. It appears that there is little good news about Windows Vista these days and Microsoft is not doing much to correct the doubt about Vista impressions that exist today. Market research firm Forrester apparently found that only 8.8% of corporations are using Windows Vista today, while 87% still use Windows XP. He went as far as describing Vista as a product that was rejected by customers and as a flop that may force Microsoft to revert its strategy. No surprise, Microsoft is unhappy.

According to Microsoftā€™s Chris Flores, who not necessarily disagrees with the claim that the adoption rate of Windows Vista is low, claims that Forresterā€™s Thomas Mendel lacks common knowledge about software upgrade cycles in the industry and simply ā€œskimsā€¯ over ā€œcommon knowledgeā€¯.

Combining the answers from 50,000 businesses, Mendel found that fewer than one in 11 of PCs being used in big firms runs Vista. More than 87% were still running Windows XP at the end of last month. Considering the fact that Vista has been on the market for 18 months (21 months if you count in the Express upgrade period) and has been available to large-scale beta-testing even longer, the fact that only 8.8% of businesses run Vista may raise doubts over the benefits the operating system offers to businesses. Read the rest of this entry »