Augustine: this is what gets the most play on blogs
from Gizmodo by
Charlie White 
HP is cranking out some smoking workstations these days, and the latest Intel Xeon quad core processors, affectionately known as the Harpertown chips with 45-nanometer Penryn technology inside, take Windows performance to the next level. HP shipped us the fastest workstation they could muster, with a total of eight processor cores, along with a 15,000 RPM SAS (Serial-Attached SCSI) drive on two separate disks, one with Windows XP and the other with Windows Vista, plus a 250GB SATA drive for applications. We opened the box, ran a bunch of benchmarks and our jaws promptly dropped. How much workstation can you get for $8,551? Join us for the smokefest.
As soon as Intel released these 5400 series Penryn processors this month, HP sent us this top-of-the-line xw8600 workstation with two of them inside. 
This expensive machine—aimed at oil and gas explorers, video editors and animators—is not really a gamer's box, but instead showcases the capabilities of these new four-way processors. Our test machine's 3.16GHz quad-core "Harpertown" processors (officially called the Intel Xeon E5460 Quad Core), use Intel's latest 45nm Penryn microarchitecture. Yep, those are as fast as these suckers get. The catch? They each cost $1550 more than the lowest-cost Xeon quad-core chip offered, the 2GHz 5405.
Due to their finer geometry (going from 60nm down to 45nm), you get 50% more cache, resulting in 6MB of shared cache between each dual core, totaling 12MB of cache in each processor—that's 24MB total in our test machine. In addition to that, the frontside bus is also running at 1333MHz, giving you a 30% speed boost over its predecessor.
Check out this pic (and another larger one in the gallery showing the task manager along with the graphic it's rendering) that tells the story of all eight cores screaming away at the same time, rendering a complex graphic on the CineBench benchmark. Here it's just finished the render:
Video editors and scientists like to be able to expand everything inside one of these boxes. Although we had a "paltry" 4GB of RAM inside, you'll be able to cram 128GB up in there as soon as 8GB RAM sticks are available—Q1 of next year, we're told. You can also fill the thing up with storage, using your choice of eight Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) ports or six SATA connections, in addition to FireWire ports on the front and back, and dual Gigabit Ethernet. (You can lash them together for faster networking.) If you wanted to, you could set up a disk array on those SAS ports to get 2GB/sec drive performance.
HP included the NVIDIA FX 4600 workstation-class graphics card in the package, but there's room for two PCI Express x16 graphics cards tied together, certain to be a favorite of animators and those oil and gas explorers who need to simulate all kinds of complex graphics. The FX 4600 has 768MB of GDDR3 memory on board, useful for CAD designers working with huge graphics. And yes, it could most definitely play Doom.
We especially like this workstation's case. Normally they're staid and gray-looking, but HP stuck on some special sticky graphics that may look a bit cheesy, but are an improvement over the typical plain-Jane exterior. Never mind the visuals, HP's made this an extraordinarily quiet machine too, where even though it's packed with hardware, you can hardly hear it running next to you. We also like its tool-less chassis: Once you get the hang of it, you can take out drives and fans in a snap with nary a screwdriver in sight. Overall, it's an outlandishly configurable and powerful platform, practically begging you to turn it into whatever kind of monster workstation your heart desires.
Check out the benchmarks below, and you'll see that this $8,551 machine slam-dunks last year's fastest HP xw8400 workstation:
It's fast. Blazingly fast, and on some benchmarks it's a whole lot quicker than last year's model. Its speed is just unreal, and you can feel it with every click. Impressive. [
HP xw8600 Workstation ]
The idea of stuffing a tiny projector into a handheld device isn't a new one -- we've seen a couple different takes on the idea -- but it looks like it might be hitting the mainstream soon, as 3M has announced plans to demo a half-inch wide projection unit at CES that can put up a 40-inch image. The LCoS projector is about the size of a wireless headset, according to 3M, and tops out at VGA resolution -- which seems adequate, given the QVGA resolution of most handhelds. Apparently we'll be seeing devices with the projector built in later this year, and hopefully we'll get a chance to play with a couple at CES -- you'll know as soon as we do.
Gooey substances such as syrup and olive oil spill all over the place with their containers' drippy lips, but not if they're dispensed from the no-drip two-lip pouring system from a Barcelona designer who calls himself Noro. It's about time somebody designed one of these drip-free decanters for viscous and edible liquids, because we've seen a similar technique in containers of liquid laundry detergent for years. Check out the gallery for the beautiful bottle designs associated with Noro's design concept. [
After tooling around with getting internet sharing working on the 
Nothing except a 2nd-gen iPhone with GPS and 3G would make us happier than if Steve pulled out this invention at MacWorld 2008 next month. This patent, which details a cashless payment system via the iPhone, will allow people to order stuff on their phones via Wi-Fi, pay for it, and skip everyone in line that doesn't have an iPhone. It's like calling ahead to place an order, except you have to wait at the store and you don't have to talk to anybody. Great for the type of person who enjoys being in the company of other people but not communicating with them in any way. [
Well played, Mr. Blu-ray fanboy. Well played. 
Microsoft's PR department are attempting new and innovative ways to get Windows products to the masses. Their latest effort involves the launch of a YouTube channel with various promotional content. Unfortunately for Microsoft, their PR team decided to leave the comments open. Bad move.
Want to prevent your own condo tower from bending back and forth like a stick of rubber? Easy, hide a 50,000 gallon water tank at the top and cover it up. That's exactly what developers did for San Francisco's One Rincon Hill, the tallest residential building west of the Mississippi River. The building uses a 416,000-pound water-filled tank to create tuned liquid damper (a first for the Western U.S.), thus preventing the building from moving around if a strong enough wind comes in from the San Francisco Bay.
We previously brought you news of 
