A couple of weeks ago, news broke that AGEIA was set to be acquired, but it wasn’t clear as to who the parties involved were; the initial story claimed only that it wasn’t AMD.  As of a few moments ago, however, that rumor has become fact.  NVIDIA just sent word that they will be acquiring AGEIA Technologies for an as yet undisclosed sum…

Direct Link:
http://www.hothardware.com/News/NVIDIA_to_Acquire_AGEIA_TECHNOLOGIES/

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Vizo Ninja 2 Laptop Cooler Review:

Link:  http://www.rbmods.com/Articles/Vizo/Ninja2/1.php

Quote: About a year ago, we took a look at the Vizo Ninja Notebook Cooler, where we concluded that it was a decent cooler but was a little undersized for many of today’s notebook designs. Perhaps Vizo was listening, as they have since developed a larger version of this cooler design. Will the Vizo Ninja 2 Notebook Cooler perform as well as its smaller brother? We will attempt to answer that question in this review.

ASUS P5K-E/WIFI-AP is one out of the many motherboards based on the popular P35 chipset from Intel, ASUS alone has a very broad lineup of P35 motherboards. This segment have a tendency to be forgotten, but since more and more customers are looking for affordable boards with good performance, we thought it would be a good idea to see what a motherboard in this segment can do. Looking back, we can only conclude that ASUS did practically everything right when designing P5K-E/WIFI-AP.

Link:
http://www.nordichardware.com/Reviews/?skrivelse=526

Quote:
“Here we will take a look at one of the boards based on the P35 chipset, ASUS P5K-E. This is card positioned in the middle of the P5K lineup. It doesn’t have as many fancy features as the Extreme/Deluxe flavors, but isn’t as stripped down as the cheapest models. To be honest, do you really need two network cards and heatpipe cooling for the southbridge??”

Digit-Life Review: 8 Graphics Card Coolers Tested With the NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT

Excerpt:
“Today we shall examine 8 graphics card coolers from Arctic Cooling, Thermalright, Thermaltake, Zalman, and Zerotherm (including a liquid cooling unit). These will be tested with the reference NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT. After that we’ll analyze test results from a computer enthusiast’s point of view.”

Article: http://www.digit-life.com/articles3/cpu/vpu-coolers-shootout-dec2k7-part1.html

TechwareLabs has published a guide for Computer User Beginners. Here’s a clip from the guide:

Quote: “Recently Jason Dumbaugh and Michael Lynch sat down and created a common computer users guide to the basic programs and utilities that beginners use. We will be adding more content to this guide as we go along and are happy to anounce the Computer Users Guide Ver. 1.0.”

LINK:
http://www.techwarelabs.com/guides/misc_mod/computer_users_beginners_guide/

Title:
Computer User Beginners Guide @ TechwareLabs

Title:  Age of Conan Border Ranges Trailer @ BiTT News

Text:  The folks over at Funcom just released a new Age of Conan Border Ranges Trailer. Check it out below, Or watch it here in HD

Link: http://biitt.com/2108/

we have just posted the first installment in Gameconnect’s new
series, dedicated to the finest free games on the internet today. With
seven pages of reviews and screenshots, plus download links to the
games on our servers, it’s free gaming nirvana, without tricks or
traps: they’re free, full games, free for download, and legal.

Quote: No emulation, no oldies, just pure indie gaming goodness
that’ll leave you wondering why you paid cash for some of the titles
in your collection… and because we’re feeling all festive and
generous still, we’ve put them all up for downlonad on our servers,
fast and lovely without waiting or subscriptions.

Link:
http://www.tcmagazine.com/articles.php?action=show&id=236&perpage=1&pagenum=1&catid=4

Kingston MobileLite Card Reader

” The reader itself is not much bigger than a normal sized USB flash drive. Granted, the MobileLite can only handle SD and MMC (and its variants including micro and SDHC), there is much versatility in its use. Since it is hardly bigger than a normal flash drive, you can use it as one with no problem. Imagine keeping a mini-SD card in the slot and having the other slots free for other memory cards. This is a very handy device. ”

Link: http://www.aselabs.com/articles.php?id=236

Title: Antec Veris Fusion 430 @ Phoronix
Direct Link: http://www.phoronix.com/vr.php?view=11796
Summary: “Home theater PCs are a growing market. More and more people
are looking for a device that can drive their entire home theater. For
many, the HTPC is the solution; however, most do not want a clunky
computer intruding into their living room. Who wants a Cooler Master
Cosmos towering over everything in their living room? Thus over the
years, many companies have offered PC cases designed specifically for
the task of housing a Home Theater PC. We’ve looked at other HTPC cases
in the past, such as the SilverStone Milo series and the Lascala LC20M,
but today we will look at the Antec Veris Fusion Black 430, which is
also referred to as the Fusion Black v2.”

We have just posted up our review of the mid-range Zalman ZM750-HP 750W Heatpipe cooled Power Supply.  This PSU comes packing four 12v rails and can offer up 720W on those rails.  Overall, this is a very adequate PSU and while it is not perfect it is a good unit for many systems and can power a Quad Core system running a pair of 8800GTX’s with ease.  Check out our review for all the details.

Title: Zalman 750W Heatpipe Cooled PSU - Mid-Range For Everyone
URL: http://www.bcchardware.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=5181&Itemid=40


Quote:

Measuring 16.5cm long, the Zalman ZM750-HP will fit pretty much any mid-tower, full size or even many HTPC cases that are available.  Because of the short length of this unit, I really don’t foresee any clearance issues with top exhaust fans on PC cases.  If you have an especially small case, it would still be a good idea to measure before you go and purchase this PSU. . .

I recently upgraded my Core 2 Duo 6420 to a Core 2 Quad 6600 and of course I was very curious to check out the differences between them. So after doing all my testing in Vista and Xp I decided why not share my results to let other people know what’s up with these Quad Core CPUs and if they really are worth it.

My C2D 6420 is one of the newer models (relatively speaking of course) with the 4mb cache as opposed to the 2mb of the original C2Ds, and it runs at a stock speed of 2.13Ghz, but I easily hit 3Ghz while overclocking. The C2Q 6600 I just got runs at 2.4Ghz, which really isn’t much more that the C2D 6420 overall, a couple hundred Mhz isn’t going to drastically effect any testing results so I think they’ll make a good comparison basically.

So I ran both through my standard series of tests, SiSoft Sandra, 3dMark06, SuperPi, Video Encoding and a couple video games as well on both Vista and Xp to see if it was worth it for me to upgrade and maybe help you decide if it’s worth it as well, especially since the prices of these quad cores have come down… So read on to see what I learned from all of this…

Read Full Review HERE 

Innovative Super Bowl ‘Ad for an Ad’ Strategy Draws Record Visits to GoDaddy.com

SCOTTSDALE, Ariz.–(BUSINESS WIRE)–You could use the phrase “busy as a beaver” to describe the Go Daddy Web site during this year’s Super Bowl. More than one million video views were tracked to GoDaddy.com Sunday and that was before the dramatic game even ended. It’s believed to be one of the largest spikes in Super Bowl advertising history.

Super Bowl viewers went online to see Go Daddy Girl Danica Patrick’s “Exposure” ad almost on cue. They were directed to do so by Go Daddy’s televised ad, which aired at the beginning of the second-quarter. The long-awaited “Exposure” commercial featured animatronics beavers in a spoof of the paparazzi and certain female celebrities.

Read the rest of this entry »

Your search result based on your social status

Posted: 03 Feb 2008 01:10 AM CST

People are flocking to online social networks. Facebook, for example, claims an average of 250,000 new registrations per day. But companies are still hunting for ways to make these networks more useful–and profitable. In the past year, Facebook has introduced new services aimed at taking advantage of users’ online contacts (see “Building onto Facebook’s Platform”), and Yahoo announced plans for an e-mail service that shares data with social-networking sites. (See “Yahoo’s Plan for a Smarter In-Box.”) Now a company called Delver, which presented at Demo earlier this week, is working on a search engine that uses social-network data to return personalized results from the larger Web.

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Open source in businesses hit another height

Posted: 03 Feb 2008 01:10 AM CST

More good news for the open source community just in: an analysis of its enterprise customers by OpenLogic found that for 2007 as a whole, the use of open source among enterprise customers is up 26% year-on-year. Enterprises on average used a whopping 94 different open source packages last year, compared to 75 in 2006…

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Undersea cable cut again

Posted: 03 Feb 2008 01:10 AM CST

A third undersea fibre optic cable running through the Suez to Sri Lanka was cut Friday, said a Flag official.

Two other fiber optic cables owned by Flag Telecom and consortium SEA-ME-WE 4 located near Alexandria, Egypt, were damaged leading to a slowdown in Internet and telephone services in the Middle East and South Asia.

Overclock3D have just published a new article titled: Aqua-Pcs Flow Performance CPU Block.

Quote: “The Flow Performance CPU Block boasts not only great performance but great looks too. Today we gave it a workout in the OC3D Labs”

Link: http://www.overclock3d.net/reviews.php?/cases_cooling/aqua-pcs_flow_performance_cpu_block/1

Title: Consumer Electronics Show (CES) 2008 - Part 2 @ Virtual-Hideout

Review link: http://virtual-hideout.net/articles/CES_2008_Part2/index.shtml

Quote: “Now we’re on to the computer side of the Consumer Electronics Show. As I mentioned, there wasn’t quite as many booths this year sporting that many new products that could classify as headliners. The obvious new products include Nvidia’s new HD motherboards and 3D technologies, Intel’s 45nm next generation processors, newly released Wireless N networking, and solid state drives.”

OCIA.net has posted their review of the LapWorks Futura Laptop Desk.  Below is a direct quote from the review:

Site Link:  http://www.ocia.net

Title: Intel Skulltrail Enthusiast Platform Preview @ Techgage

Quote: Consisting of two Extreme Quad-Core processors, Intel is looking to redefine what we know as “high-end”. Skulltrail is touted as being the “ultimate” enthusiast platform, offering SLI and Crossfire support, huge overclocking abilities and enough sheer power to make the competition weep.

During a meeting with Intel representatives at CES, we were informed that Intel’s ultra high-end Skulltrail enthusiast platform would finally be available for testing and evaluation in just a few weeks.  And it turned out they were true to their word.  We’ve been banging on a Skulltrail setup complete with a matched pair of 3.2GHz Core 2 Extreme QX9775 processors and DDR2-800 FB-DIMMs for a couple of weeks and have the result available on-line right now for all to see.  Head on over to the site and take a look…

Article URL: http://www.hothardware.com/Articles/Intel_Skulltrail_Unleashed_Core_2_Extreme_QX9775_x_2

Site: http://www.hothardware.com/

NEW CONTENT (Storage) - HighPoint RocketRAID 2300 PCI-E SATA

QUOTE: “While we do have onboard RAID, what if you’re the type that wants more? The only option is to chuck in a RAID controller card, and thankfully HighPoint are still in the game as they continue to expand their line-up of controller cards.

Today we have been given the chance to look at the RocketRAID 2300 PCI Express based controller card designed for the desktop user. How does it compare to the chipset integrated RAID? Let’s have a look.”

For more information, please visit - http://www.tweaktown.com/reviews/1288/highpoint_rocketraid_2300_pci_e_sata/index.html

Best Regards,

The TweakTown Team
http://www.tweaktown.com