W.I.L. Tech-News Highlights for H2 August 2004

Hardware

Office Depot teams with HP to recycle your old electronics gear for free -- link.

Standards committees should be strung up -- link.

HP unveils cavalcade of new consumer products -- link.

Systems

AnandTech’s most recent High End system buyer’s guide is out -- link.

CompUSA agrees to sell Gateway brand PCs -- link.

Aopen’s XC Cube EX915 SFF system delivers scorching results -- review.

IBM preps sub-notebook desktop PC -- link.

HP’s new DV1000 notebook lets you play movies and music without Windows -- link.

Gateway debuts desktop featuring BTX motherboard for improved airflow -- link.

SFF barebone system FIC Condor delivers low noise level, compact size and elegant looks -- review.

AOpen’s XC Cube AV edition barebone SFF machine is designed to replace a stereo system or DVD player, additionally providing PC capabilities -- review.

Shuttle’s Intel 915G chipset-based XPC SB81P has very little to complain about besides the high price -- link.

Two office notebooks: ASUS M6B00N and Acer TravelMate 803 LCi -- reviews. Acer Aspire 2020 Centrino desktop replacement notebook -- review.

HP iPaq rx3715 “Mobile Media Companion” handheld computer is cool but expensive -- review.

Orion delivers 96-processor “personal cluster” workstation -- link.

CPUs/motherboards/chipsets

The dual core wars are heating up, but you will not see it until next summer -- link.

Opteron trounces Xeon in revised AnandTech test -- link.

A CPU cheatsheet from AnandTech, charting products from the past 7 years vs. clock frequencies, bus speeds, cache sizes, sockets, transistor counts, manufacturing processes, etc. -- link.

Four years later, Transmeta still struggles to compete with AMD and Intel -- link.

Choosing the best CPU for Doom III -- link.

Via’s EPIA II M12000 mini motherboard, with Via’s new 1.2GHz CPU in the middle, leaves mini impression -- review. Building a super tiny home server -- link.

-- AMD

AMD confirms 90nm, silicon-on-insulator, CPUs ship -- links here, here, here, here.

AMD delivers world’s fastest chip for desktop replacement notebooks -- link.

Sempron compared with Athlon on Linux -- test.

5 nVidia nForce3-based mainboards -- roundup.

AMD reportedly prepares affordable Socket 939 processors -- link.

nForce 4 chips, due in December, details leak out -- link 1, link 2.

AMD K7 mainboard with K8 upgradability arrives courtesy of Asrock -- link.

-- Intel

Soltek’s 865Pro-775 allows one to move to a Socket T chip without having to upgrade everything else -- first look.

The Intel Tejas Affair explained -- link.

Intel pledges to bring Itanium down to Xeon price-point -- link 1, link 2.

Pentium M 2GHz/533 in mini-ITX board reviewed -- link.

Intel Pentium M dual core chips? No kidding -- link.

Intel eyes tri-mode Wi-Fi. Upcoming chip set will support 802.11a, b, and g networks -- link.

Intel achieves yet another breakthrough in 65nm fabrication process -- links here, here, here.

Graphics

AnandTech’s end of August video and memory price guides -- link.

ATI All-In-Wonder 9600 XT is a good combination of superb multimedia functions and mid-range gaming performance -- review.

ATI to introduce a competitor for nVidia’s GeForce 6600 -- link.

ATI Mobility Radeon 9800 brings next generation graphics to notebooks. Finally, a notebook option that is a viable solution for the LAN party crowd -- review.

eVGA 6800 GT (nVidia-based) vs. Sapphire X800 Pro (ATI-based): The battle at $399 -- review.

Graphics cards tested on Counter Strike -- roundup.

Gigabyte offers nVidia GeForce 6800 graphics card without cooling fan -- link.

ATI’s Radeon X700 approaches introduction; will rival nVidia’s GeForce 6600 -- link.

Things are going back nVidia’s way -- comment. Is Nvidia’s SLI just a history re-work? -- link.

Matrox rouses itself from its slumber long enought to announce that it was putting PCI Express support off until 2004 or 2005 -- link.

XGI still hanging in there -- link.

Power Consumption of Contemporary Graphics Accelerators, Part II: nVidia vs. ATI -- link.

ATI and nVidia: A quick look at HDTV overscan compensation -- link.

Memory

AnandTech’s August optical and magnetic storage price guide is out -- link.

Does RAM latency matter? (For extreme enthusiasts and the overclocking set, yes.) -- link.

Geil PC3200 Ultra X DDR400 RAM: high speed and record bandwidth -- link. Previous DDR400 2-2-2 roundup here.

RAM prices likely to plummet, says analyst -- link.

Storage

Maxtor ships consumer SATA HDD with 16MB Cache, Native Command Queuing (NCQ) -- link.

Hitachi’s 7K400 hard drive capacity reaches 400GB, Maxtor’s MaXLine III sdvances Serial ATA -- reviews.

Computer hard drives perform better, last longer with novel polyester lubricant -- link.

ASUS, Pioneer begin production of 16x DVD recorders -- link.

Pioneer DVR-108D 16X, dual layer (theoretically) drive is the best DVD Recorder yet in AnandTech’s universe -- review.

Sony pushes Memory Stick Pro to 2GB -- link.

Movie stored on a holographic disc -- link.

Miscellaneous components and periferals

Philips Ultimate Edge PSC724 PCI soundcard is great, but only works on Windows 2000 and XP -- review.

Turtle Beach unveils Catalina sound card, and does not impress -- review.

Mini-Box’s PW-120-M 200w ATX micro DC-DC PSU is fanless, and can be used on regular ATX motherboards as well -- link.

Thermaltake Polo 735 heatsink is very effective and fairly quiet -- review.

Antec’s quasi-small form factor case Aria -- review.

25 kilograms (and $1000) of silence: Zalman’ TNN500A case -- review.

SilverStone Technology’s Temjin 5 case impresses for the price -- link.

Protecting your power supply: Uninterruptible power supply and surge suppressor primer -- link.

Gigabyte 802.11g VPN Wireless Router -- review.

ASUSTeK launches LCD monitor lineup -- link.

Samsung SyncMaster 213T 21.3’ LCD monitor is superb and, of course, expensive -- review.

Sony’s new Cyber-shot P150 raises the bar for high-resolution cameras at affordable prices -- link.

Operating Systems

Linux, Unix

Linux distribution chooser proposed -- link.

Linus Torvalds’s benevolent dictatorship -- link.

Linux.com’s “CLI Magic” series continues -- Sending and reading secret mail. Series index here.

The value of middlemen (Linux distributors) -- link.

Sneak preview of KDE 3.3: Q&A with developer George Staikos -- link. KDE 3.3 makes Linux more collaborative -- link.

Report from the KDE World Summit -- link.

A tour of the KDE Linux desktop -- link.

Two Weeks of Linux (Part 2): LinuxWorld -- link.

XOrg X11 server release 6.8 is imminent -- link.

Ars Technica interviews freedesktop.org Release Manager Daniel Stone -- link.

Reiser4 is released, is said to be the fastest filesystem -- link.

Is Linux too good to be true? -- link 1, link 2.

XPde project’s latest release makes Linux desktop look even more like Windows -- link.

LinuxCertified LC2430 Linux laptop -- review.

PCWorld’s “Free Agent” attends LinuxWorld and comes away optimistic about the penguin’s future -- link.

Migrating Windows to Linux ... and back ... and forth -- link.

California considers Open-Source shift -- link.

Microsoft’s Longhorn failure is Linux’s chance -- link.

HP unveils Unix roadmaps -- link.

Reiser4 file system developments -- link. Looking at reiser4 -- link.

FreeDesktop.org’s release manager gave a well-received presentation on the project to KDE developers -- presentation summary.

Using Linux to manage a busy greenhouse business -- link.

Windows and DOS

200 applications clash with XP SP2 -- link 1, link 2. Discussion here.

Automatic delivery of XP SP2 will resume -- link. Microsoft patches the patch -- link.

Microsoft overhauls Longhorn plans -- link.

Windows to become a niche operating system, replaced by Linux as the new standard? -- link.

Other OS’s

Download, burn, and boot: Syllable LiveCD4 -- link.

Three Years of Haiku (OpenBeOS): The Long Road to Evolution -- link.

Applications

“Parallel fork” are forks which continues to follow the changes in the original project -- link.

Interview with Janet Casey from the FSF/UNESCO Free Software Directory site -- link.

Get off your RSS! -- link.

Wget is a Linux and Mac OS X command line application for file retrieval over ftp, http and https connections -- link.

Manage your wireless networking settings as you move from place to place, and keep an eye out for the spot with the best signal -- link.

Open Source backups using Amanda -- link.

PostgreSQL 8.0 will run on Windows -- link. Discussion here.

MediaWiki is the collaborative editing software that runs Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia, and other projects -- link.

Hosting wireless apps without compromising stability & security -- link.

How to build a free enterprise-quality Linux desktop -- link.

Top ten tricks and tips for new IRC users -- link.

IBM’s little database gets big help -- link.

Das U-Boot is a GPL’ed cross-platform boot loader providing out-of-the-box support for hundreds of embedded boards and a wide variety of CPUs -- link.

Grokking the Grokster decision -- link.

Desktop-oriented applications

Freeware suggestions for Windows -- link.

Small team at the Netscape remnants delivers quality with version 7.2 -- link 1, link 2. Discussion here.

New features in the upcoming Firefox 1.0 -- link.

Frame styles in OpenOffice.org Writer -- link.

Technical writing using OpenOffice.org Writer -- link.

Test driving RealPlayer 10 for Linux -- review.

CrossOver Office 3.0.1 -- review.

Getting more out of Vim -- link.

POV-Ray 10th anniversary contest -- link.

AbiWord 2.0.10 released -- link.

Alternatives to cdrecord -- link.

Via improves Xine Open Source media player -- link 1, link 2.

Opera 7.60 Preview 1 for Windows; OmniWeb aims at minority -- link.

Corel promises that WordPerfect for Linux shall return -- link.

Programming

HTML Utopia! Design Websites without tables -- link.

PHP as a general-purpose language -- link.

New releases of PHP 4x, 5x and online manual -- link.

Simplify business logic with PHP DataObjects -- link.

Python IDE DrPython 3.3.0 released -- link.

PythonCard 0.8 announced -- link.

Microsoft lures Jim Hugunin, creator of JPython/Jython, co-designer the AspectJ aspect-oriented-programming language, and moving force behind IronPython -- link.

Security & Privacy

Business strike back at spyware: Pop-ups and adware may be stealing workers’ time, if not information -- link.

Number crunching boffins unearth crypto flaws in hashing algorithms -- link. Discussion here.

The Internet today: more polluted than ever, and getting worse -- link.

Developing an effective data protection strategy -- link.

Building a diskless Linux kernel 2.6-based firewall -- link.

DoJ announces arrests, convictions for online fraud and other Net-related crimes -- link.

Holes, patches, defenses

Gone in 20 minutes. That is how long your average unprotected new PC running Windows XP will last once it is connected to the Internet before it is compromised -- link.

“Nonserious” security flaws found in Windows XP SP2 -- link.

Qwik-Fix Pro utility from PivX disables or modifies features of Windows and (mostly) Internet Explorer that are frequent targets of malicious hackers and virus writers -- link.

Revamped Norton AntiVirus, Personal Firewall, and AntiSpam tools out -- link.

A “Peeping Tom” worm that has the capability to using webcams to spy on users is circulating -- link 1, link 2.

Microsoft XP SP2 problem is a problem, Secunia says -- link.

Is it time to ditch IE? -- link.

Spam, advertising

The spam problem keeps getting worse and worse -- link.

A day in the life of a spammer -- link.

IBM dissects the DNA of spam in order to come up with more sophisticated filters -- link.

US tops junk mail Dirty Dozen ... again -- link.

The Fog of Spam War: Assessing our progress in the battle for control of our in-boxes -- link.

Miscellaneous

The INQUIRER Guide to Spin Doctors -- link.

DARPA awards Northrop Grumman $1.03 billion to develop its X-47B unmanned combat aircraft -- link.

Business

State of Illinois seeks overseas Internet drug network -- link.

HP users use HP World to decry Itanium, SAP issues and bad English -- link.

Software industry maturing, consolidating -- link. Some corporate purchasers are switching to cheapie alternative software -- link.

Until advertisers find the right tool, banners and print publications will continue to dominate -- link.

This headline is not for sale -- link.

Major telcos and device makers go after Induce Act -- link. US DoJ searches homes of P2P evil doers -- link.

Computer games killed the video star -- link.

Indian outsourcing pie being eaten -- link.

ContentGuard, now owned by Microsoft and Time-Warner, holds very significant patents that could have a very broad impact if the use of digital rights management takes off -- link.

IBM brings the GPL to court -- link.

Novell’s 3rd quarter results -- link.

The Internet

The majority of Internet users in the U.S. have ditched dial-up, survey says -- link.

They are just the “internet”, “web”, and “net” (lower case) now -- link.

How conservatives used alternative media to take power -- link.

Science

Small telescope spots big planet -- link. Astronomers probe Cassiopeia supernova remnant -- link.

Scientists suck hydrogen from sunflower oil -- link.

Ancient Persian fleet surrenders its mysteries -- link.

Telecommunications

Industry group proposes faster wireless LAN standard -- link.

Optical network switch could eliminate network bottleneck and help create a web surfers’ paradise -- link.

Broadband over power lines gains steam -- link.

Public Wi-Fi connections are great, but do your homework before you log on -- link.

10 megabits per second broadband is going to be commonplace by 2007 -- link.

China’s 3G “wonderchip” primed and ready -- link.

US website offers Caller ID falsification service -- link.