Friday, April 29, 2011

A barebones all-in-one from Gigabyte

The manufacturer Gigabyte has unveiled its GB-AEBN, a barebones all-in-One based on a platform LGA 1155. Fully modular concept allows you to associate a motherboard in Mini-ITX in a slim optical drive and a SATA hard drive conventional 3.5-inch format. The size of the LCD has however not been disclosed.

H61 carrying a chipset, the motherboard comes with the GB-AEBN supports Intel Core i3, i5 and i7 displaying a TDP less or equal to 65W. It has two SO-DIMM slots DDR3-1333, Gigabit Ethernet controllers and audio ports, two USB 2.0 ports and two USB 3.0. Two built-in speakers 3W are also available, along with a memory card reader.

After merger: Job cuts at Panasonic

Already on 1 April 2011, integration was the "Panasonic Electric Works" and "Sanyo Electric, the parent company. The current workforce of 366 937 would reduce the company's management claims to now over the next two years by about 17,000 jobs. The actual number of those affected continues to fall well short of expectations: Preliminary said the Japanese business daily Nikkei in a report even saved 40,000 jobs.

Need for Speed - The Run: New series announced spin-off!

Publisher Electronic Arts (EA) has announced "Need for Speed - The Run for 18 November 2011. The latest offshoot of the traditional racing game series takes the seemingly modeled: the first shows scenes from an illegal street race that leads across the United States. Locations include San Francisco, Denver and New York.

The dangerous driving on public roads like the pixel police did not, of course. This suggests that chases the "style" hope.

Fans homes for FS-200 LED (200mm) from NZXT

The NZXT California has expanded the range of homes to low-noise fans, FS-series, three models with a diameter of 200mm with LED lighting. Available in green, blue or red LED fans, FS-200 using a frameless design with 11 blades shaped. The rotation speed is 700 rpm (+ / - 200 rpm) for a maximum noise level of 20.16dBA with an airflow of 89.5 CFM.

In the pack there is an on-off switch for LED and a splitter compatible with the case NZXT Phantom. The fans FS-200 LED will be available from mid-May with a price (stated in U.S. dollars) amounted to $ 18 and 2-year warranty.

ASRock unveils new motherboards based on Intel Z68

As we know Intel is working on the Z68 chipset which will bring significant improvements to its platform for the new CPU and Sandy Bridge will come on the market towards the end of the second quarter of 2011. In particular, the Z68 chipset supports both the guaranteed overclocking feature from the current P67 chipset, graphics core is integrated into the Core of the second generation of typical chipsety H67.

Android Video Acceleration 3.1

In smartphones and other tablets, hardware acceleration for decoding H.264 video is rarely available. If the software shipped with the OS typically use this function - available in most ARM SoC - the third-party software is often limited to software decoding. And ARM CPU is quite slow in this type of use, especially if the SIMD "NEON" are not available.

Fortunately for NVIDIA Tegra and 2 (which is not compatible NEON), it should change. Indeed, the latest version of Flash 10.2, the 10.2.157.51 indicates that hardware acceleration of video will be available with Android 3.1. In theory, it can decode 1080p video over a dedicated portion of the SoC, which avoids overloading the CPU and reduces consumption, although the difference is usually not huge.

Updated charts Tom's Hardware

As is regularly the case, we have to update some of our "charts" or comparative. The purpose of this section is to recall giving you access a nod to all the performance results of a maximum on different applications (optional). All major components are well represented. Today, it is the USB key categories, high-end graphics cards, SSD and NAS iSCSI host of new products such as the Sandisk Cruzer 4GB, Radeon HD 6990, the Crucial Intel P300 and the 320 or Thecus N4200Pro Synology and DS1010 + ...

Club 3D announces the first Radeon HD 6750 with passive cooling

Club 3D has announced the addition of the Radeon HD 6750 with passive cooling CoolStream Edition, based on Juniper LE chipset second generation. Club 3D has built a good reputation for quiet graphics cards, well chilled with its award-winning CollStream. This table is no exception, with speeds of 700Mhz on the GPU and 4600MHz memory, with an absolutely quiet heatsink based on heatpipe technology.

Combo: Slackware Ubuntu 4.11 + 13.37

That is, the final version of Ubuntu 11.04 (Natty The Narwhal) is finally available for download. This new version brings of course a lot of new, one of the most visible is probably the default choice of Unity as a graphical interface instead of Gnome-Panel. Gnome 2.32 remains the default desktop environment.

The kernel passes on his side in version 2.6.38, while the X server org Mesa 1.10 with 7.10 improves support for Radeon and adds support for GPU integrated into Intel's Sandy Bridge. Ubuntu 4.11 finally marks the end of the Netbook Edition (x86/x64), the features of this edition is now integrated into the Desktop edition.

The bad idea of the day: a touch screen keyboard as

Minebea Leaf Cool Keyboard is a USB keyboard composed only of a great tactile surface that can act as a mirror when turned off. A lack of functionality and design errors make the wrong idea of the day. One could almost imagine that this could replace the keyboard Optimus Maximus keyboard with OLED keys (see "The Optimus Maximus keyboard finally come true!").

Art Lebedev's model is far from comfortable, but offers a level of personalization impressive. The problem is that Minebea Leaf Cool Keyboard is not customizable. The user only has the English keyboards, German French and Italian. Curiously, it will first be marketed in Japan for over 150 €.

Lifespan of SSD: one loses capacity (9)

Continuing with our SSD. Since December, we write loop on an SSD-based controller Indilinx checking it for wear using the information reported by SMART. Last week, just after the cell the more worn - without elaborating - spent 10 000 cycles (about 10 500 at that time), we restarted the computer test and we realized that errors occurred on the DSS.

This week, after a few more tests, we found that decreased its ability. The reason is quite simple: after writing each day - about 5 TB per day - we conducted an audit of the device with the Windows tool. And every time we got errors on the SSD. This morning, for example, the utility audit has found 31 168 bad clusters.

The stock prices of SSD: RAM SATA 6 Gbit / s

In our new point on the price of SSDs, we changed our entire product range. We decided to restrict the products to a single capacity: 120 GB (or 128 GB depending on the brand). The reason is simple: it is sufficient capacity for many people and the average price is correct. This type of DSS is perfect for a mid-range machine.

Models of 256 GB and more are still too expensive for most buyers and SSD of 64 GB and less limited interest in technology allowing only install the OS and some programs. Moreover, they distort the comparison, with a higher price per GB because of the unavoidable costs (controller, etc..).

TDJ: Patriot Viper II Sector 7, Intel 320

Our fellow Cowcotland recently released a test version of the Intel 320 with 300 GB SSD SATA II 2.5-inch format based on an Intel PC29AS21BA and shipping chips MLC NAND flash memory etched into 25 nm. With a cache of 64 MB, SSD displays on paper performance of about 270 MB / s sequential read and 205 MB / s write.

What happens in practice? For his part, Brother 59 Hardware has just launched an online memory test Viper II Sector 7 Patriot's manufacturer. For the occasion, it's a 6 GB kit (3 x 2 GB) DDR3-1800 (9-9-9-27 at 1.65 V), which fell into the hands of our colleagues ...

The sales of Windows 7 is down

Microsoft has released its financial results for its third fiscal quarter ended March 31, 2011 and speaks of an increase in its turnover by 13% compared to last year. With a profit of 5.23 billion (approx. EUR 3.53 billion) or + 31% and an income of 16.43 billion (approx. EUR 11 billion), the firm is doing well and these results exceeded analysts' expectations.

These figures were mainly driven up by strong sales of Office 2010 and Microsoft Business Division grew 21%. It also highlights the great result of Entertainment Division of the firm which deals, inter alia, consoles, and has earned 60% more than in 2010 thanks to the Xbox 360 and KINECTS.

Tom's Guide: 7 myths about the future of AFN

Our colleagues and neighbors at Tom's Hardware just published a feature on the future of photography, via 7 ideas. The future of the hybrid mode of the arrival of Android in the NPC through the rise of smartphones, learn a few tracks that could take digital photography.

Lenovo: a 14 "Sandy Bridge for pros

The manufacturer Lenovo has announced the launch of the Essential B470, laptop 14 inches (1366 x 768 pixels) based on a platform Huron River (Sandy Bridge Mobile) and for the market of small and medium enterprises. Boasting a weight of 2.2 kg on a balance, therefore B470 embeds a Core i3-2310M 2.1 GHz (or i5-2410M 2.3 GHz), up to 8 GB of RAM, a maximum of 1TB of storage space and a GeForce accompanied 410M 1 GB (optional).

New support Dura Mount H7 and iPad iPad 2 of LUXA2

LUXA2 a good reflection of the continued expansion of the market for smartphones and tablets and therefore is pleased to announce the launch of their new accessory H7 Dura Mount, universal support for the car and iPad iPad 2. Maintaining the same quality as all other aluminum brackets LUXA2 iPad, the H7 incorporates a suction cup and an ultra strong security mechanism to release it easily, so as to ensure secure mounting on the windshield of the car, a table, or any other flat surface to enjoy the capabilities of IPAD without having to hold hands.

Patriot Launches SSD Torqx 2

The Patriot manufacturer has announced the launch of Torqx 2, two years after the release of the first version of Torqx. Still at 2.5-inches, this SSD is available in capacities of 32 GB, 64 GB, 128 GB and 256 GB as its predecessor, Torqx 2 has a 3 Gbps SATA interface. The NAND flash memory chips used are engraved in MLC 3x nm, and 128 MB of cache are present.

The embedded controller is not clearly indicated by Patriot, but we can reasonably assume that it is a model made by JMicron. Supporting the TRIM command, these SSDs show rates of the order of 270 MB / s sequential read and 230 MB / s write. MTBF reaches for his 1.5 million hours. Expected within the next few days, the Torqx 2 should be offered at a price of 419 euros in its 256 GB

AMD Radeon 5700 turns into 6700

After making a timid appearance on the Chinese site AMD few days ago, the Radeon HD 6750 and 6770 have finally been made official by the manufacturer. As we suspected, it is only known Radeon HD 5700, but with two small novelties: support for HDMI 1.4a and can decode the content Blu-ray 3D engine combined with UVD 2.2.

Technical side, no surprise to expect: found on the Radeon HD 6770 GPU features of 800 Juniper Stram Processors and 40 texture units, all of which are clocked at 850 MHz. The GB of GDDR5 memory operating on him at 1200 MHz on a 128-bit bus. For its part, the Radeon HD 6750 features a GPU clocked at 700 MHz with 720 SP and 36 texture units.

The screen lock is customizable Windows 8

The latest build of Windows 8 leaked on the Internet shows that it is possible to use his office as a screen lock. This detail confirms the desire for Microsoft to make its operating system more customizable with a look of Windows Phone approaching. The functionality is available on the build 6.2.7955.0 operating system (see "Windows 8 M2 is available for download).

If you downloaded a copy, just edit the file "C: \\ Windows \\ Resources \\ Themes Ease of Access \\ basic. theme "in a text editor such as Notepad and change the value of" SetLogonBackground "to make it go from 0 to 1. Then just restart the machine. According to information posted on forums, this feature will be available from a check box in Control Panel.