Legit Reviews News History
Microsoft Takes A Royal Beating and Drops 11 Percent
Shares of Microsoft tumbled more than 11% Friday, the stock's biggest single-day loss in about five years, as investors gave a thumbs-down to the company's heavy spending plans. In recent trading, shares were off $3 to $24.25 with more than 450 million shares trading hands, seven times average volume. Shares are currently down -$3.17 (-11.63%)trading at $24.08 nearing the closing bell. Looks like Microsoft followers fear $2 billion of spending will be eaten by a 'black hole.'
Goldman Sachs analyst Rick Sherlund, for example, wrote a number of notes supporting the stock in the last year, consistently making the point that the new product cycle, seen as the company strongest in years, would lead to a breakout of Microsoft's stagnant stock. But on Thursday, Microsoft told investors that it is going to accelerate spending by some $2 billion in fiscal 2007 -- and live with the resulting decrease in margins and earnings per share.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 12:42 PM
Nintendo's Revolution is Now Wii (Pronounced we)
The Revolution is over. Make way for the Wii. And pronounce it "we." That's the official name Nintendo announced Thursday (April 27) for its next home console, formerly code-named Revolution. The company released a promotional video and statement to explain the somewhat unexpected name. I'm not sure what they were thinking, but I don't like it. Just imagine -- "Hey Jimmie, your friend Johnson is on the phone and he wants you to come play with his Wii tonight." Oh boy...
"Wii can easily be remembered by people around the world, no matter what language they speak. No confusion. No need to abbreviate. Just Wii," reads the announcement on the company's website. Nintendo also says the name was chosen to symbolise the way people play on the machine and the distinctive look of its controllers.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 10:07 AM
Microsoft ramps up Xbox 360 shipments To Compete With The PS3
Microsoft Corp. has ramped up shipments of its Xbox 360 console to widen its head start on video game rival Sony Corp.'s PlayStation 3, the software giant's chief financial officer said on Thursday.
The world's largest software maker raised the bottom line of its Xbox 360 sales target range for the year ending June 30 to 5.0 million to 5.5 million units from an earlier range of 4.5 million to 5.5 million. Increased Xbox 360 production eased some of its supply constraints, but it also lifted manufacturing costs and hurt Microsoft's profit margins, Chief Financial Officer Chris Liddell said in an interview.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 09:17 AM
Skype surpasses 100 million users
Internet telephony provider Skype announced Friday it now has more than 100 million registered users worldwide. Skype, which was bought last year for $2.6 billion by online auctioneer eBay Inc., said it has nearly doubled in size from September 2005 when 54 million people were using the service.
Founded by the creators of Kazaa, the free music-sharing program that riled the music business, Skype gives away software that lets people talk for free from computer to computer, or pay a small fee to place and receive calls from regular phones. Internet phone providers like Skype are creating upheaval in the telecommunications industry and putting pressure on traditional operators.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 09:15 AM
Apple to recycle old Macs for free
pple Computer Inc. will soon adopt an environmentally friendly twist for buyers of new Macintosh computers by offering to recycle their old computers for free. The Cupertino-based company said its expanded take-back offer will begin in June. Great news for the ecosystem and I'd like to thank Apple for stepping up to the plate!
U.S. customers who buy a new Mac through the Apple store online or any Apple retail store will receive free shipping and recycling of their old machines. Currently, Apple retail stores accept old iPod music players for free recycling. In addition, Cupertino residents may drop off old Macs at company headquarters, while others pay a $30 recycling fee to drop off or ship their computers.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 09:14 AM
Seagate 750GB Pushbutton Back-up Hard Drive Coming For $559
Seagate Technology today introduced the world's first three-quarter Terabyte external hard drive - the Seagate 750GB Pushbutton Back-up Hard Drive. As the newest addition to Seagate's award winning line of consumer products, the stylish 750GB Pushbutton Back-up Hard Drive is designed to offer the most convenient way for consumers to store all of their treasured digital content right on their desktop.
Built on the Barracuda 7200.10 - Industry's leading combination of performance, capacity and reliability. The 750GB Pushbutton Back-up Hard Drive is the first 3.5-inch external drive to use Seagate's revolutionary perpendicular recording technology. It is based on the newly announced Barracuda 7200.10 family, with industry-leading data density of up to 188 Gigabytes per disc. Seagate's unmatched data density delivers the best reliability and performance of any PC hard drive in its class.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 08:16 AM
NVIDIA Quad GeForce 7950GX2 Readies For Launch
NVIDIA has been hard at work and has updated their just released QuadSLI platform with a more efficient and smaller solution. The updated QuadSLI cards will be known as the GeForce 7950GX2 and the length is 11cm shorter and the PCB layers has been decreased meaning they cost less to make. Now if we could just buy these for $199 -- I'll keep dreaming and drooling.
The redesigned product is a serious demonstration of Nvidia's engineering dept. Under a code name P501, the new board is almost 11cm shorter than the original 7900GX ? 22.5cm compared to the 33.5cm (7950GX2 is actually a bit shorter than 7800/7900GTX). This isn't the only change. The number of layers is now set at eight, and the redesigned power circuitry is now more efficient than the previous one.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 08:09 AM
AMD Sends Out 3,000 Flawed Opteron Processors On Accident
AMD today admitted it has inadvertently allowed a number of 2.6GHz and 2.8GHz single-core Opteron x52 and x54 processors that could corrupt data under extreme conditions to escape into the wild. Perhaps no more than 3,000 individual CPUs - which managed to slip through AMD's screening net. If you just recently bought an Opteron x52 and x54 then you might want to keep this news in the back of your mind.
It is believed that the glitch is triggered when the affected chip's FPU is made to loop through a series of memory-fetch, multiplication and addition operations without any condition checks on the result of the calculations. The loop has to run over and over again for long enough to cause localised heating which together with high ambient temperatures could combine to cause the result of the operation to be recorded incorrectly, leading to data corruption.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 08:01 AM
Intel Talks About Nehalem and Gesher (45nm and 32nm) CPU Cores
If you like to impress your friends with your tech knowledge then bring up the upcoming Gesher core that will be coming out in 2010 from Intel. The Gesher will be manufactured under the 32nm process and is on the roadmap on 2010. Hopefully Conroe will come out and hold us over!
New codenames Nehalem and Gesher, announced by Intel CEO Paul Otellini as microarchitecture evolutions escorting 45nm (for 2008) and 32nm (for 2010) technology processes, respectively, were not known to the sources. Intel did not reveal any details about the projects, and the sources also remained indifferent about them at the moment.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 07:55 AM
KODE5 Launches KODE5 Taiwan
KODE5 Taiwan, in cooperation with Aztec Internet Café, invites gamers to participate in a series of online qualifiers for Counter-Strike 1.6, Quake 4, and Warcraft III: The Frozen Throne. If you happen to be in Taipei then swing by and try your luck?
?We are excited to be hosting the first KODE5 event in Taiwan,? says Jing Kang Tsai, Owner and Operator of Aztec Taipei. ?KODE5 brings a level of professionalism to the e-sports scene here in Taiwan, and we are thrilled to be a part of it.? With 1280+ exhibitors occupying over 2800 booths, Computex Taipei is far and away the largest show of its kind in Asia. The Computex event attracts IT media and industry insiders from around the world.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 07:51 AM
256MB 7900GTX for the price of a 7900GT? Ok, maybe not exactly.
Since launching of the 7900 series GPUs, there's been no small amount of griping about the lack of heatsinks on the "mid-range" (and I use the term very loosely) 7900GT model products. eVGA now has an answer: the 7900GT KO. The new heatsink is full copper and covers both the GPU and heatsink. eVGA claims the new design provides around 6 degrees celcius cooler operation [under load]. If the card does well, which it undoubtedly will, other manufacturers are likely to follow suit with their own designs. As a bonus to those of you who find humor in misprints, read the following snippet from eVGA's website. Here's a hint: it was mentioned in the article title.
• The memory is now covered by the innovative EVGA copper heatsink and fan, which allows for better cooling (6 degrees Celsius, on average). • A hand-selected single NVIDIA GeForce 7900 GTX 3D processor and 256MB of qualified high-performance DDR3 display memory. • The board is EVTweaked™ to run at a 500MHz core clock and 1500MHz effective memory clock.
Posted by | Fri, Apr 28, 2006 - 12:42 AM
The U.S. Is Becoming Better Connected to the Internet
73 percent of adults in America now use the internet at one point or another. This is good news for everyone that lives on the web. Now we need to work on getting the other 27 percent online.
The U.S. online population has hit an all-time high: 73 percent of adults, or 147 million, now use the Internet. The figures represent an increase from 66 percent, or 133 million adults, in January 2005, according to the Pew Internet and American Life Project. But only 42 percent of all adults have the home high-speed connections important for viewing video and treating the Internet as an always-on reference.
Posted by | Thu, Apr 27, 2006 - 08:03 AM
Senators to push for $100 gas rebate
Every American taxpayer would get a $100 rebate check to offset the pain of higher pump prices for gasoline, under an amendment Senate Republicans hope to bring to a vote today. This is an interesting idea and I'll take $100!
As outlined by the senior GOP leadership aide, the energy package would give taxpayers a $100 rebate, repeal tax incentives for oil companies and allow the Federal Trade Commission to prosecute retailers unlawfully inflating the price of gasoline. The measure would also give the Transportation Department authority to issue fuel efficiency standards for passenger vehicles, expand tax incentives for the use of hybrid vehicles and push for more research into alternative fuels and expansion of existing oil refineries.
Posted by | Thu, Apr 27, 2006 - 07:58 AM
ATI's Radeon X1900 GT Video Card to Cost $350
While the ATI X1900 GTO is missing in action the rumor mill is flowing with X1900 GT information today. It seems that the ATI Radeon X1900 GT is going to be running at 575MHz/1200MHz, which can be yours for roughly $350.
We might have assumed that the X1900 GTO would be clocked at 500/1000MHz, but this won't be the case. Instead, the X1900 GT is clocked at 575MHz for the core and 1200MHz for the memory. We also learned that the card will cost be around ?/$350. It is meant to compete with Nvidia's Geforce 7900 GT that is selling for around ?/$300 already. ATI's solution will be more expensive so we are sure it will eventually have to drop the price.
Posted by | Thu, Apr 27, 2006 - 04:59 AM
Intel's 'Broadwater' GPU to support Shader Model 4.0
The Intel G965 chipset's integrated GPU will support DirectX 10 via the Windows Graphics Foundation (WGF) 2.0 API. It will also work with OpenGL 2.0. The hardware-accelerated vertex shader capabilities missing from the current GMA950 graphics core and its predecessors will at long last be built into the G965's GPU. Looks like integrated graphics will get a little better in the near future.
The GPU will be able to grab up to 256MB of main memory as its frame buffer - double the limit of the current GMA 950 core. It will support 16x anisotropic filtering, up from 4x with the GMA950, and raise the current floating-point precision level from 24 bits to 32. The G965 will be able to do more video post-processing work than its predecessor can, and while it will enable decoding of H.264 and WMV9/VC-1 HD video, it will still require help from the host processor.
Posted by | Thu, Apr 27, 2006 - 04:55 AM
ABIT KN9 SLI Motherboard For AMD Socket AM2 Processors Seen
A number of ABIT KN9 SLI Motherboard pictures are floating around the web today and I though I'd join in the fun. The ABIT KN9 SLI motherboard is a standard ATX board and has support for socket AM2, DDR2 memory, six SATA II ports, ten USB 2.0 ports, dual SLI, and ABIT's Silent OTES cooling system. Looks like a great board for upcoming AMD Socket AM2 Processors
Posted by | Wed, Apr 26, 2006 - 09:07 AM
Seagate Launches 750GB Barracuda 7200.10 Series SATA Hard Drives
Seagate Technology today surged to new levels of areal density and storage capacity leadership with the introduction of the world's first desktop hard drive to hit the 750GB capacity mark. The monster drive is part of the new Barracuda 7200.10 family built on perpendicular recording technology to meet the growing storage capacity, performance and reliability requirements of desktop computers and low-end servers.
To meet the growing storage capacity requirements of both PCs and servers, the Barracuda 7200.10 family provides 200GB to 750GB of capacity on the strength of industry-leading data density of 130 Gigabits per square inch (up to 188 Gigabytes per disc). Seagate's unmatched data density delivers the best reliability and performance of any PC hard drive in its class. Barracuda 7200.10 also features cache sizes from 8MB to 16MB and 1.5Gb/s and 3.0Gb/s Serial ATA (SATA) data transfer rates with Native Command Queuing. NCQ enhances reliability in heavy workloads by reducing head movement and streamlining the delivery of queued commands to the drive.
Posted by | Wed, Apr 26, 2006 - 08:46 AM
PC Gaming: PeaceMaker Brings The Israeli-Palestinian Struggle To Gaming
PeaceMaker -- under development by Asi Burak, a 34-year-old former Israeli intelligence officer, and Eric Brown, a 29-year-old game developer with a degree in painting -- will have players managing hot-spot situations such as car bombings and assassinations as either the Israeli prime minister or Palestinian authority president.
While most serious game developers seem to accept the fact that their games have too narrow of an audience to bring in sizable amounts of dough, Brown, Burak and their newly formed company ImpactGames intend on changing that. They not only want to educate and inform with their game, but also reach mass-market penetration. The game's $300,000 to $500,000 development cost is provided by people "interested not only in the investment, but the social cause," according to Burak. The game is expected to release for PC and Mac in downloadable form.
Posted by | Wed, Apr 26, 2006 - 08:02 AM
Electronic Arts Settles Overtime Suit For $14.9 Million
Software engineers at Electronic Arts on Tuesday won $14.9 million from the world's largest video-game publisher in a settlement of a California class-action lawsuit over unpaid overtime. It's good to see people getting paid finally!
Under the settlement, some of the engineers -- the entry-level programmers -- will be reclassified as hourly workers, making them eligible for overtime pay. They will also get a one-time grant of restricted company stock, but will no longer receive stock options or bonuses. The settlement money will go to programmers at various levels who worked at EA between Feb. 14, 2001, and Feb. 14, 2006. The agreement, which must be approved by the San Mateo County Superior Court, follows a similar $15.6 million settlement EA reached in October with computer-graphic artists.
Posted by | Wed, Apr 26, 2006 - 07:55 AM
Microsoft to Buy $700 Million of Chinese Hardware
Microsoft Corp. signed a deal with China on Wednesday to purchase $700 million of Chinese electronic hardware over the next five years, the latest move by the software giant in the fast-growing mainland market. When Bill Gates and Chinese President Hu Jintao got together we found China banning (news story) the sale of personal computers without software and a week later we have Microsoft buying $700 million in Chinese hardware. So, Bill Gates gets Windows on all Lenovo PC's made in China and Hu Jintao gets mad sales of his countries hardware. All about the fair trade!
The signing of the memorandum of understanding comes just days after Microsoft and China's Lenovo Group Ltd. <0992.HK> formally signed an agreement to pre-install the Windows operating system on Lenovo's computers made in China. The agreement was a big step in China's efforts to combat piracy and is expected to result in $1.2 billion in sales of Microsoft's Windows operating system software over the next 12 months, said Lenovo, the mainland's largest PC firm.
Posted by | Wed, Apr 26, 2006 - 06:49 AM