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Thursday, December 18, 2008

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 gets (mostly) official

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/nvidia-geforce-gtx-295-gets-mostly-official/

Well, here's a bit of a surprise. While most folks were only expecting NVIDIA to announce its GeForce GTX 295 graphics card at CES, the company has now come out and gotten official with it today, although it's still holding back on a few details until the big show. As rumored earlier this month, the card packs two 55-nanometer GT200 GPUs, a staggering 1,792MB of video memory, a total of 480 stream processors, and a not-too-ridiculous TDP rating of 289 watts. What's more, while they faced some restrictions from NVIDIA, the folks at bit-tech were able to run a few benchmarks on the card and found that it does indeed seem to live up to its promise of besting ATI's top-end Radeon HD 4870 X2. That appears to partly back up those early numbers that leaked out yesterday, although bit-tech is quick to point out that the card doesn't deliver the same performance leap seen when AMD rolled out its card. Still, they do seem to think that NVIDIA has a winner on its hands, assuming that it actually manages to meet (or even beat) the 4870 in terms of price. Hit up the link below for bit-tech's complete numbers, plus a few more.

Read - HotHardware, "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Specifications Unveiled"
Read - bit-tech.net, "First Look: Nvidia's GeForce GTX 295 graphics card"
Read - Guru 3D, "GeForce GTX 295 Preview"
Read - PC Perspective, "NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 Preview - Performance King Returns"

Filed under: Gaming

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295 gets (mostly) official originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 10:58:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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BlackBerry Storm buyer's remorse? You're not alone!

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/blackberry-storm-buyers-remorse-youre-not-alone/

We tried to warn you, but you just didn't want to hear it. "How bad could it be?" you muttered to yourself, as you handed over a summer's worth of lawn mowing money for a shiny new BlackBerry Storm. Pretty bad, as it turns out. Based on a pile of anecdotal evidence and hearsay, numbers as high as a 50% return rate have been bandied about. The software update certainly helped the situation, but there are still a lot of disappointed thumbs out there. So, how'd it go down on your end?

Update: So Verizon has hit up Boy Genius Report to clarify (well, maybe clarify) the situation: "The Storm has the lowest return rate of any of our PDAs and at this point in its life cycle, it has the lowest return rate of any PDA we currently sell." That kinda sounds like doublespeak to us -- if the Storm was really so thoroughly un-returned, couldn't they have said it in simpler terms? -- but that's about all we've got to go on at the moment.

View Poll

Filed under: Cellphones

BlackBerry Storm buyer's remorse? You're not alone! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 11:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Parrot intros Philippe Starck-designed Zimku wireless speakers

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2008/12/18/parrot-intros-philippe-starck-designed-zimku-wireless-speakers/

We're not sure if he's been taking notes from fellow countryman Jean-Michel Jarre or not, but it looks like prolific designer Philippe Starck now has a tower-style speaker system to call his own. Considering that Starck has paired up with the wireless-minded folks at Parrot, however, there's a few more surprises in store with these -- namely, built-in WiFi and Bluetooth to accommodate your laptop or cellphone of choice. You will still get an iPod / iPhone dock, of course, along with a remote control (also designed by Starck), and some newfangled NXT technology that apparently "revolutionizes traditional acoustic design." All that comes at an expectedly premium price, however, with the speakers set to run $1,500 when they're released sometime in the spring.

[Via Phone Arena]

Filed under: Home Entertainment

Parrot intros Philippe Starck-designed Zimku wireless speakers originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 18 Dec 2008 13:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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intel i7 vdimm topics collection

http://www.augustinefou.com/search?q=vdimm

vdimm - voltage of the RAM memory modules, usually tweaked by overclockers to achieve higher speed and performance

i7 - the brand name of the new Intel microprocessors. The microarchitecture of this new generation of processors has the memory controller built into the processor.

the "Core i7 vdimm issue" talks about the fact that the voltage of the RAM modules cannot (and should not) be tweaked independently of the CPU voltage (vcore). Otherwise if the vdimm is raised too high and the RAM is "fried" the CPU will be "fried" too. This was not the case in previous microarchitectures because the memory controller was NOT built into the CPU itself.

AirSet Creates "Cloud Computers" for Your Data [Screenshot Tour]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/_ZES3StaLNU/airset-creates-cloud-computers-for-your-data

Free web desktop AirSet probably fits into your working habits better than most other desktops, because it runs like a multi-tasking computer and hooks into your existing data pretty tightly.

Our ingenious (and Firefox-obsessed) intern AsianAngel loves AirSet, and let us know that it recently rolled out new features and updates to the "cloud computer," so we signed up, took some screenshots, and shared them below.

While you're signing up for AirSet, you'll be encouraged to not only make one for yourself, but create multiple "web computers" for sharing. AirSet lets you fling open the doors to other AirSet users, or the whole web, on almost all of your documents and published items. So if you want to create a landing page for your corporate softball team, complete with music, pictures, a calendar, and links to league rules, it's totally possible with AirSet. You can also collaborate on documents and share notes with friends by adding their email addresses into the group—all your own AirSet correspondence goes to whatever email you signed up with.

Once you get through signing up, you'll arrive at a (mostly) blank desktop. You launch apps by clicking any icons/"favorites" you might have placed there already, or from the Start-Menu-like launcher in the lower left. Here's what your desktop looks like with the "Albums" tool running to view and share photos (click for full-size image):

Take a look at the bottom-left corner, where the AirSet menu (pictured as open at left) and a taskbar-like switcher are located. AirSet moves surprisingly quickly between the windows you keep open, so if you want to swing over to editing your calendar while waiting for some photos to upload, you can do it. The whole thing seems to load in as a Java applet, or at least a heavily designed JavaScript/Java combination, so your mileage will vary with your available memory. Hitting the button in the bottom left-most corner switches you between your "computers," so you can keep your private work data and shared materials separate.

One of the really neat features, familiar to any fan of Firefox 3, is that almost anything around your "web" computer can be bookmarked for your "Favorites" menu (the star icon next to your AirSet button), or placed on your desktop and re-arranged however you'd like. In its interface alone, in face, AirSet is fairly advanced on its competitors—each window gets its own Windows-like minimize/close buttons.

AirSet can also be set up to send alerts, timers, and notifications for calendar events, document changes, or other events to your email or mobile phone. Speaking of calendars, I had no problem importing three of my four Google Calendar subscriptions into AirSet (the failure was a group-shared calendar I don't own, so somewhat understandable). Here's a typical calendar layout:

Finally, the "lists" function adds a little GTD-ish task management into AirSet. The Quick Add box works fine for creating new lists and items, and each can get their own alert, notes, or be bookmarked to your star menu.

As I'm getting ready to spend a holiday week working away from my home office, AirSet seems like a pretty neat solution for getting productive without having to hijack a relative's computer. But tell us what you think of this free "cloud computer" in the comments.

AirSet