Legit Reviews News History
IE7 Beta Available to the Public
The long awaited successor to Internet Explorer 6 now has a beta available for public consumption. Currently, it works only with Windows XP with SP2, but will eventually be made available for users of XP 64-bit, Server 2003, and of course, Vista.
Say goodbye to bulky toolbars. Internet Explorer 7 has a new interface that shows more of each webpage you visit. The streamlined toolbar makes it easier to add websites to your Favorites, search the web, clear your history, and access the other tasks and tools you use most.
Posted by | Tue, Jan 31, 2006 - 08:15 PM
Bill Gates backs computer cell phone
Microsoft founder and Chairman Bill Gates believes cell phones are a better way than laptops to bring computing to the masses in developing nations. This all comes after the $100 laptop couldn't strike a deal with Mircrosoft, so they had to do something. It seems that Microsoft executives are just showing an alternative to a product they have no part in.
"Everyone is going to have a cell phone," Mundie told the paper, noting that in places where televisions are already common, a phone could be turned into a computer with a cheap adaptor and keyboard. Microsoft has not said how much those products would cost. The proposal is an answer to a plan by Nicholas Negroponte, the founder of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Media Laboratory, who in November unveiled his prototype for a $100 laptop computer that could help bring computers to hundreds of millions of mostly-poor students worldwide.
Posted by | Tue, Jan 31, 2006 - 08:52 AM
Dell to employ 50% more in India
The world's biggest computer maker, Dell, will be increasing its workforce in India by 50% in the next two years. It will take the total number of Dell employees in India up to 15,000. They are also starting a fouth call center in India. Did we mention that we are fans of building your own PC?
In April, the company will also be setting up its fourth Indian call centre in the Delhi suburb of Gurgaon. This call centre will have nearly 1,000 workers, Mr Rollins said. "Our teams in India have integrated well with Dell's global operations," he said.
Posted by | Tue, Jan 31, 2006 - 08:49 AM
ATI's M59 is Radeon Mobility X1900
For all those notebook gamers it seems like the ATI Radeon Mobility X1900 is coming out soon and should be the top mobile GPU for a bit. No word on if they are going to support CrossFire notebooks with this chipset series though.
It was not hard to get this one as M58 was the codename for the still unannounced Mobility Radeon X1800. We have seen this chip more than once already but we don?t know about any design wins. You can expect that the M59 gets the Mobility Radeon X1900 name. It will be faster than any Nvidia laptop chip, at least until NVDA introduces its mobile variant of G71. This will sure take a while as G71 desktop is still an unannounced part.
Posted by | Tue, Jan 31, 2006 - 08:46 AM
Memory Maker Elpida Fined $84 Million
Elpida, a Japanese joint venture set up between Hitachi and NEC, has become the fourth memory maker to pay a penalty for fixing memory prices. The $84 million fine is just a small portion of the $645 million that has already been paid by Samsung, Hynix, and Infineon.
The company admitted to taking part in a conspiracy to set the price it charged to customers, including Apple, Hewlett Packard, Dell and Sun, between April 1999 and June 2002. The case stems from a decade-long fight about who controlled the memory industry: Intel and IP company Rambus, or the largely Asian cartel. It's a fight which has also pitted two US regulatory agencies, the Federal Trade Commission and the Department of Justice, against each other. The conspiracy has already seen executives from Infineon serve jail time. Samsung, Hynix and Infineon have each agreed to pay fines totaling $645m in what the DoJ describes as "one of the largest cartels ever discovered".
Posted by | Tue, Jan 31, 2006 - 08:42 AM
Tuesday Reviews from Around the Web
The Tech Report reviewed ATI's All-In-Wonder X1900 graphics card today. Find out what they have to say and browse other reviews from around the web by visiting the Legit Forums!
We've reviewed ATI's All-In-Wonder video cards in the past, and we just recently examined the new Radeon X1900 family of graphics cards. Package together the standard suite of All-In-Wonder extras with a Radeon X1900 graphics processor, and you pretty much have the AIW X1900--a $499 graphics card with a laundry list of multimedia features that will record your favorite TV shows, let you edit family videos, play DVDs while you relax on the couch, slice through the latest 3D games with ease, feed the cat, and wash the dishes while you aren't looking. It is, indeed, a wonder. However, each new All-In-Wonder packs so many features into one box, just understanding what all you're getting with the product can be daunting.
Posted by | Tue, Jan 31, 2006 - 05:41 AM
German patent court rules in RIM's favor
Research in Motion Ltd. just announced that the federal patent court in Germany had ruled in favor of the maker of the BlackBerry e-mail device against patent-holding company InPro.
RIM said the German patent court had decided that all claims in InPro's German-designated patent were invalid. Luxembourg-based InPro has the right to appeal the decision, RIM said in a statement. InPro had claimed that certain BlackBerry products had infringed a patent in Germany. The German ruling comes as RIM girds for a hearing on February 24 in a U.S. district court in a long-running battle with U.S. patent-holding firm NTP. Inc.
Posted by | Mon, Jan 30, 2006 - 09:21 AM
Is Flash Memory Being Produced Too Fast?
With Flash memory prices recently getting cut could this be the end of the Flash Memory bubble? Hynix, the No. 2 player in flash, is expected to transition part of their DRAM fab to flash production this year. Not to mention that IM Flash (jointly owned by Intel and Micron) is going to ramp up later this year also. Looks like a "Flash Flood" of excess flash memory is about to happen.
Consumers can't seem to get enough, as they increasingly turn to digital gadgets such as MP3 players, cameras and cell phones. But as strong as this demand is, it may not be enough to soak up all the flash memory chips coming to market. After the recent announcement by a few companies that they would aggressively cut prices, some investors are wondering whether the flash market's stellar growth is set to slow down.
Posted by | Mon, Jan 30, 2006 - 08:36 AM
Realtime HD 3D for your TV
nVidia today announced the availability of its Quadro FX 4500 SDI line of graphics cards for professional workstations. It would seem CNBC has known about these cards in advance as they've signed up to purchase an unknown quantity for future use in live broadcasts.
NVIDIA Quadro SDI products allow broadcasters to enrich their programming with a broad range of high definition content, from real-time 3D effects, to full blown virtual sets for news, sports, weather, and almost any other genre desired. These solutions leverage an extremely powerful and programmable graphics processing unit, which can generate and output both standard and high definition television content in real time, allowing these solutions to be used in a live broadcast environment. The new NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500 SDI is an exceptional solution for these purposes, as well as others including non-linear editing, content creation, and color grading, that delivers up to a 50% performance improvement versus the previous generation SDI solution1. Support for 2K formats enables next generation film and video post production and digital cinema as a 512MB frame buffer facilitates the delivery of images of the highest quality.
Posted by | Mon, Jan 30, 2006 - 08:27 AM
Los Angeles Sues Take Two Interactive Over GTA
The Los Angeles attorney's office has sued the makers of "Grand Theft Auto: San Andreas" for allegedly hiding pornographic material inside the video game, officials said. For a game released in 2004 it seems silly that states are still suing over a year later.
The game, released in October 2004, features characters that commit crimes such as murder, drug dealing and pimping. The game also had an embedded "mini game" in which characters could engage in explicit sexual acts. The lawsuit, filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, was part of an ongoing investigation into the marketing of video games, authorities said. The game also spurred several states to crack down on sales of mature-rated games to minors. Delgadillo is seeking civil penalties from Rockstar Games Take-Two Interactive.
Posted by | Mon, Jan 30, 2006 - 06:38 AM
AMD socket M (quad) to sample late February
Sources close to AMD's plans with Socket M have started talking about release dates. Rumors place mark the first deliveries to its (original equipment manufacturing) customers as early as late February.
AMD isn't rushing to shove Socket 1207 chipolatas out the door. The chips for Opterons which will support DDR3 and pinouts for quad core, are expected to be rolled out with fanfares during April, and be ready to run in May. This all means that AMD is likely to show off the 1207 bling to customers at the CeBIT show in Hannover, and make a song and dance about the whole affair at the Computex show in early June, in Old Taipei.
Posted by | Mon, Jan 30, 2006 - 06:33 AM
Dell Claims It Has No Exclusive Contract With Intel
It's official: Dell doesn't have an exclusive deal with Intel, and has an open mind on using AMD processors in its products. Michael Dell is saying they can and will use any processor they choose, but there is nothing to add today.
So said company chairman Michael Dell last week when cornered by a Reuters reporter at the World Economic Forum event in Davos, Switzerland. "Sure," he said when asked if the company might offer Opteron and/or Athlon-based machines. "We do not have an exclusive relationship with Intel." However, "I do not have any new product to announce today", Dell added.
Posted by | Mon, Jan 30, 2006 - 06:32 AM
Monday Reviews from Around the Web
Over the weekend, The Tech Report reviewed Asus's A8R-MVP motherboard. Find out what they discovered and find other reviews from around the 'net by visiting the Legit Forums!
ALTHOUGH ATI'S CROSSFIRE multi-GPU rendering technology has become a reasonable alternative to SLI, the Radeon Xpress 200 CrossFire Edition chipset is still saddled with a comparatively poor south bridge chip. ATI's SB450 is missing a number of handy features, such as support for Native Command Queuing and RAID 0+1 and 5 arrays. More importantly, though, it's plagued by I/O issues that hinder USB and PCI performance. That latter is particularly damning, as it can affect the performance of onboard Firewire, Gigabit Ethernet, and Serial ATA peripherals. . .
Posted by | Mon, Jan 30, 2006 - 06:28 AM
Intel Itanium Server Processors Might Live On!
Despite rumors of its impending demise, Intel's Itanium received a US$10 billion new lease on life on January 26 in the US, according to several US-based media reports. This means the Itanium server processors might last till 2010.
In an ISA January 26 press release, the organization did not specify the US$10 billion amount, but it mentioned that Bull, Fujitsu, Fujitsu Siemens, Hitachi, HP, Intel, NEC, SGI and Unisys announced their investment in Itanium solutions at the event, coincidentally these are all the founding members of the ISA. It also stressed the momentum that Itanium has gained with the claim that 70 of the Fortune 100 corporations are now utilizing or planning Itanium solution deployments and Itanium solutions are gaining market segment share from IBM Power and Sun Sparc solutions, with leading technology users making strategic investments in open, industry-standard Itanium solutions over proprietary alternatives. A year ago, this number was just 40, according to an Intel director of enterprise platform marketing quoted by InformationWeek.
Posted by | Mon, Jan 30, 2006 - 06:27 AM
Turion Battles Cancer
Sales of the special edition L2000 notebook (through HP & AMD) are strong at over 40,000 units and have generated over $2 million for the Lance Armstrong Foundation (LAF). The publicity could help raise awareness for cancer in the tech community, and raise awareness for AMD's Turion line in the non-tech community.
Available since June of last year, the HP Special Edition L2000 Notebook PC bears the LIVESTRONG? message and a reproduction of Lance Armstrong?s autograph. For each HP Special Edition L2000 Notebook PC shipped to date, the LAF has received $50 from AMD and HP.
AMD has made a two-year commitment to help generate a minimum of $4 million for the LAF. As an ongoing part of this support for the LAF and its mission, AMD was the Official Technology Partner of the 2005 LIVESTRONG Ride in Portland, Oregon and the 2005 Ride for the Roses Weekend in Austin, Texas.
Posted by | Sun, Jan 29, 2006 - 10:29 PM
US pupils to dance themselves fit
Schools in West Virginia are targeting 10 - 14 year old school goers with a new exercise regime. The Konami game Dance Dance Revolution(DDR)will be used. The trial will roll out 157 machines to middle schools and eventually extend it to all 753 public schools. Dance Dance Revolution is an Xbox console game where the user has to move their feet to the sound of music, and looks like a fun easy way to get our kids to do more exercise.
Schools in West Virginia are turning to a computer game to help fight obesity among students. In early 2005 a pilot project in the state put Dance Dance Revolution (DDR) game machines in 20 public schools in. Following the success of that trial West Virginia is planning to roll out machines to 157 middle schools and eventually all 753 public schools.
Posted by | Fri, Jan 27, 2006 - 07:18 AM
Friday Reviews from Around the Web
Hardwarezone has high regards for the Palit 7800GT Blitz (GeForce 7800 GT 256MB) -- they give it 4.5 out of 5 stars and award it the "Most Value for Money" Award! Read all about it and find other reviews by visiting the Legit Forums!
Palit boldly announces its intention to speed with a blazing fast GeForce 7800 GT that features faster memory chips and overclocked frequencies. Appropriately dubbed the Palit 7800GT Blitz, this card has the prerequisites to match a GeForce 7800 GTX 256MB and that's what it did in our labs.
Posted by | Fri, Jan 27, 2006 - 06:23 AM
Thursday Reviews from Around the Web
TweakTown tests the Gigabyte 8N-SLI Quad Royal motherboard! Find this and other reviews by visiting the Legit Forums!
With new agreements with Intel, nVidia has acquired the licence to produce Netburst supporting chipsets, which has now led to the release of the nForce 4 Intel Edition based chipsets. The first chip based for this technology was simply not fully up to specs and plagued with compatibility problems with the Pentium-D and Pentium Extreme Edition CPU?s, nVidia has moved to producing a second generation of chipset supporting Dual PCI Express x16 graphics slots.
Posted by | Thu, Jan 26, 2006 - 12:46 PM
Super Talent Readies Enthusiast Grade 2GB DDR Memory Kits
Super Talent is a memory company that many don't know of, but they make memory for a number of high-end memory companies that we all know and love. It seems that they want a piece of the action also and are started to market their on memory more these days. Late yesterday Super Talent sent us their first ever press release for their upcoming enthusiast memory line.
per Talent Technology today announced two new ultra high performance DDR memory kits. Both kits consist of a pair of 1GB DDR memory modules. The X40PB2GC3 is a kit of two 1GB PC4000 CAS-3 modules. This kit supports ultra fast 500MHz clock speeds at standard latencies. The X32PB2GC2 is a kit of two 1GB PC3200 CAS-2 modules. This kit is ideal for users demanding reduced latencies at standard clock speeds.
Posted by | Thu, Jan 26, 2006 - 12:26 PM
Western Digital Scorpio 120GB Notebook Hard Drives
Today Western Digital announced its new WD Scorpio 120 GB EIDE and SATA hard drives! Offering high performance from 5,400 RPM spin speed, WD Scorpio operates with power requirements comparable to 4,200 RPM drives to yield lower power consumption for longer system battery life and increased long-term drive reliability.
Technological advancements made in the company's WD Scorpio line of mobile hard drives also provide customers optimized acoustics for quiet operation. Featuring 12 ms seek time and up to 8 MB cache for increased performance, WD delivers the industry-leading specifications that provide the greatest benefits to its mobile customers: high reliability and low power.
Posted by | Thu, Jan 26, 2006 - 12:22 PM