Forgot your password?
Close
typodupeerror
Portables

Asus Budget Ultraportable Notebook Sold Sans OS 263

Posted by timothy from the utterly-completely-impossible dept.
EconolineCrush writes "Tired of paying the Windows tax on notebooks? Asus's Eee PC 1201T budget ultraportable comes without a traditional operating system and sells for only $380. The 12-inch system has promising specifications, sporting an Athlon Neo processor, Radeon HD 3200 graphics, Bluetooth, and 802.11n Wi-Fi. It weighs just 3.2lbs with a 6-cell battery and can even handle light gaming duties. However, battery life in Ubuntu is considerably shorter than it is under Windows. Are there any better options for would-be laptop Linux users?"
AMD

Submission + - AMD undercuts Intel with six-core Phenom IIs (techreport.com) 1

Submitted by EconolineCrush
EconolineCrush writes: As Slashdot readers are no doubt aware, Intel's latest "Gulftown" Core i7-980X is an absolute beast of a CPU. But its six cores don't come cheap; the 980X sells for over a grand, which is more than it would cost to build an entire system based on one of AMD's new six-core CPUs. The Phenom II X6 line starts at just $200 and includes a new Turbo capability that can opportunistically raise the clock speed of up to three cores when the others are idle. Although not as fast as the 980X, the the new X6s are quick enough to offer compelling value versus even like-priced Intel CPUs. And the kicker: the X6s will work in a good number of older Socket AM2+ and AM3 motherboards with only a BIOS update.
Data Storage

WD, Intel, Corsair, Kingston, Plextor SSDs Collide 56

Posted by timothy from the will-it-collide dept.
J. Dzhugashvili writes "New SSDs just keep coming out from all corners of the market, and keeping track of all of them isn't the easiest job in the world. Good thing SSD roundups pop up every once in a while. This time, Western Digital's recently launched SiliconEdge Blue solid-state drive has been compared against new entrants from Corsair, Kingston, and Plextor. The newcomers faced off against not just each other, but also Intel's famous X25-M G2, WD's new VelociRaptor VR200M mechanical hard drive, and a plain-old WD Caviar Black 2TB thrown in for good measure. Who came out on top? Priced at about the same level, the WD and Plextor drives each seem to have deal-breaking performance weaknesses. The Kingston drive is more affordable than the rest, but it yielded poor IOMeter results. In the end, the winner appeared to be Corsair's Nova V128, which had similar all-around performance as Intel's 160GB X25-M G2 but with a slightly lower capacity and a more attractive price." Thanks to that summary, you might not need to wade through all 10 of the pages into which the linked article's been split.
Data Storage

Submission + - WD, Intel, Corsair, Kingston, Plextor SSDs collide (techreport.com)

Submitted by J. Dzhugashvili
J. Dzhugashvili writes: New SSDs just keep coming out from all corners of the market, and keeping track of all of them isn't the easiest job in the world. Good thing SSD roundups pop up every once in a while. This time, Western Digital's recently launched SiliconEdge Blue solid-state drive has been compared against new entrants from Corsair, Kingston, and Plextor. The newcomers faced off against not just each other, but also Intel's famous X25-M G2, WD's new VelociRaptor VR200M mechanical hard drive, and a plain-old WD Caviar Black 2TB thrown in for good measure. Who came out on top? Priced at about the same level, the WD and Plextor drives each seem to have deal-breaking performance weaknesses. The Kingston drive is more affordable than the rest, but it yielded poor IOMeter results. In the end, the winner appeared to be Corsair's Nova V128, which had similar all-around performance as Intel's 160GB X25-M G2 but with a slightly lower capacity and a more attractive price.
Graphics

Submission + - Nvidia's DX11 GF100 graphics processor detailed (techreport.com)

Submitted by J. Dzhugashvili
J. Dzhugashvili writes: While it's played up the general-purpose computing prowess of its next-gen GPU architecture, Nvidia has talked little about Fermi's graphics capabilities—so much so that some accuse Nvidia of turning its back on PC gaming. Not so, says The Tech Report in a detailed architectural overview of GF100, the first Fermi-based consumer graphics processor. Alongside a wealth of technical information, the article includes enlightening estimates and direct comparisons with AMD's Radeon HD 5870. The GF100 will be up to twice as fast as the GeForce GTX 285, the author reckons, but the gap with the Radeon HD 5870 should be "a bit more slender." Still, Nvidia may have the fastest consumer GPU ever on its hands—and far from forsaking games, Fermi has been built as a graphics processor first and foremost.
Intel

Submission + - Desktop CPU round-up spans 26 processors

Submitted by theraindog
theraindog writes: The number of different CPU models available from AMD and Intel is daunting to say the least. The Tech Report's latest CPU review makes some sense of the mess, exploring the performance and power consumption characteristics of more than two dozen desktop processors between the $999 Core i7-975 and more affordable sub-$100 chips. TR also highlights the value proposition offered by each CPU on its own and as a part of the total cost of a system. The resulting scatter plots nicely illustrate which CPUs deliver the best performance per dollar.
Data Storage

Submission + - Hardware RAM disk puts new spin on the SSD

Submitted by
theraindog
theraindog writes: "Although the solid-state storage market is currently dominated by flash-based devices, you can also build an SSD out of standard system memory modules. Hardware-based RAM disks tend to be prohibitively expensive, but ACard has built an affordable one that supports up to 64GB of standard DDR2 memory and features dual Serial ATA ports to improve performance with RAID configurations. And it's driver-free and OS-independent, too. The Tech Report's in-depth review of the ANS-9010 RAM disk pits it against the fastest SSDs around and nicely illustrates the drive's staggering performance potential with multitasking and multi-user loads. However, it also highlights the device's shortcomings, including the fact that SSDs are more practical for most applications."
Data Storage

Submission + - Seagate Hard Drive Fiasco Grows (techreport.com)

Submitted by AnInkle
AnInkle writes: Two months after acknowledging that their flagship 1.5TB Barracuda 7200.11s could hang while streaming video or during low-speed file transfers, Seagate again faces a swell of complaints about more drives failing just months after purchase. Again The Tech Report pursued the matter until they received a response acknowledging the bricking issue. Seagate says they've isolated a "potential firmware issue." They say there's "no data loss associated with this issue, and the data still resides on the drive;" however, "the data on the hard drives may become inaccessible to the user when the host system is powered on." If users don't like the idea of an expensive data-laden paperweight, Seagate is offering a firmware upgrade to address the matter, as well as data recovery services if needed. By offering free data recovery, Seagate seems to be trying to head off what could become a PR nightmare that may affect several models under both the Seagate and Maxtor brands.
Data Storage

Submission + - An in-depth look at Seagate's 1.5TB Barracuda

Submitted by
theraindog
theraindog writes: "More than a year and a half after the first terabyte hard drives became widely available, Seagate has reached the next storage capacity milestone. With 1.5 terabytes, the latest Barracuda 7200.11 serves up 50% more capacity than its peers, and at a surprisingly affordable $0.12 per gigabyte. But Seagate's decision to drop new platters into an old Barracuda shell may not have been a wise one. The Tech Report's in-depth review of the world's first 1.5TB hard drive shows that while the latest 'cuda is screaming fast in synthetic throughput drag races, poor real world write speeds ultimately tarnish its appeal."
Graphics

Submission + - How much should you spend on a graphics card? 4

Submitted by
theraindog
theraindog writes: "High-end graphics cards get all the glory, but most folks have a difficult time justifying $300 or more for a single PC component. But what if you could get reasonable performance in all the latest games from a budget card costing as little as $70? With game developers targeting the relatively modest hardware available in current consoles and trickle-down bringing cutting-edge features down to budget price points, today's low-end graphics cards are more capable than ever. To find out which one offers the best value proposition, The Tech Report has rounded up eight graphics cards between $70 and $170, comparing their game performance, Blu-ray playback acceleration, noise levels, and power consumption, with interesting results."
Graphics

Submission + - An early peek at AMD's Radeon HD 4870 X2

Submitted by Dr. Damage
Dr. Damage writes: AMD has quite a hit in the Radeon HD 4000 series. Coming up next is a product code-named R700, a high-end graphics card based on two 4870s paired together. Here's a preliminary look at how the card — to be called the Radeon HD 4870 X2 — performs. Hint: Nvidia's got one heck of a fight on its hands.

Feed Techdirt: Shocker: Politics Exist On Wikipedia (techdirt.com)

From feed by techdirtfeed
The Register has a breathless write-up of a recent dispute among administrators on Wikipedia. Apparently, one Wikipedia administrator tried to ban another editor based on secret evidence, sparking widespread outrage among rank and file Wikipedians. The Register paints this as a grave crisis for the world's most popular encyclopedia. The rogue editor is apparently part of a secretive Wikipedia cabal that is fighting to maintain control of the site from outsiders, and Wikipedia founder Jimmy Wales is apparently "not admitting how deep this controversy goes." Mathew Ingram points out that the apocalyptic rhetoric is rather silly. Wikipedia, like every large organization—and especially like every organization run predominantly by volunteers—has a considerable amount of internal politics. Senior Wikipedians spend a lot of time on the site, and so naturally they have strong opinions about the way it should be run. The "rogue editor" appears to have drastically over-stepped her bounds and has been reprimanded. I don't follow Wikipedia's internal politics closely enough to know if the reprimand fit the crime, or if it would have been appropriate to strip her of her administrative privileges as some Wikipedians were demanding. But I think it's a mistake to think that this incident reflects some kind of crippling flaw in Wikipedia. The site has hundreds of passionate volunteers dedicated to making it better, and it has an open dispute-resolution process that makes it harder for under-handed tactics to stay undetected. The fact that senior Wikipedians have vehement disagreements is not an indictment of the site. Most organizations have these sorts of disagreements behind closed doors, while Wikipedia makes them public for everyone to see. In the long run, that's going to prove one of Wikipedia's strengths, not a weakness.

Tim Lee is an expert at the Techdirt Insight Community. To get insight and analysis from Tim Lee and other experts on challenges your company faces, click here.



Permalink | Comments | Email This Story

Slashdot Top Deals

I wish you humans would leave me alone.

Close