Microsoft Store's Indian site was compromised, by a hacker group that calls itself "Evil Shadow Team". The site's landing page was briefly taken over by the group, which gained access to the user database. The group then replaced the front-page with its signature, that warned that an "unsafe system will be baptized." The outrageous part of this episode is that the group claimed Microsoft was storing the user database in plain text, which contains usernames, email addresses, and passwords. The site is now offline, the company is probably back in control. Microsoft Store was started in India to discourage piracy and offer genuine copies of Windows, Office, Visual Studio, at the lowest possible prices; Xbox consoles and accessories; and Microsoft hardware (peripherals).


Sources: Engadget, WPSauce

An article in the latest issue of print magazine Xbox World claims that the controller of next-generation Xbox console will be similar to that of Nintendo's WiiU, in that it will feature a high-resolution touchscreen as an added layer of interaction. The article states that the new console "will be a matt-black media hub with a mission to bring games to life in your living room with augmented reality, directional sound, and a four-player, finger-tracking Kinect."

The article goes on to describe the controller as having "an HD screen surrounded by the traditional 360 buttons and sticks." It continues, "That touchcreen will be second only to Kinect in how you operate your console, it could be a remote control when you're watching TV, a browser when you're on the internet, extra buttons and information when you're playing a game or a portable display when you want to take your game with you."

A goof-up by Samsung's US website team saw the product page of an upcoming Intel Ivy Bridge-powered notebook getting published, and later redacted, leaving enough time for a Google cached copy to take shape. Carrying the model number NP700G7C, the notebook is a large-format 17.3-incher, which looks slim enough not to be labelled "desktop-replacement". The notebook is driven by Intel Core i7-3610QM quad-core processor, which is clocked at 2.30 GHz, and packs 6 MB of L3 cache. The processor is wired to four 4 GB DDR3 modules, totaling 16 GB.

The storage subsystem on this notebook consists of two 1 TB HDDs that are striped (RAID 0), backed a small 8 GB SSD that acts as a cache, temporarily holding hot-data of the volume. The optical-drive is a slot-in Blu-ray ROM. The 17.3-inch screen provides 1920 x 1080 pixels resolution, which is driven by NVIDIA GeForce GTX 675M graphics with 2 GB GDDR5 memory. Other features include wireless b/g/n with Intel WiDi support, gigabit Ethernet, HDMI, two USB 3.0 ports, and a USB 2.0 port. The top-mounted webcam features 2 MP resolution. The product page also went on to reveal a price, US $1,699.99.


Source: VR-Zone

Acer subsidiary Gateway has also adopted Intel's Cedar Trail platform and released a netbook built around it, the LT4004U. This new netbook runs Windows 7 Starter and features a 10.1-inch (1024 x 600) LED-backlit display, a 1.6 GHz Atom N2600 dual-core processor, GMA 3600 integrated graphics, 1 GB of RAM, a 250 GB (5400 RPM) hard drive, a multi-in-1 card reader, 10/100 LAN, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, a HDMI output, and a 6-cell battery providing 8 hours of operation.

The LT4004U costs $279.99 and can be found here.

Since it needs to make way for 22 nm processors (codename Ivy Bridge) Intel has decided on discontinuing two more 32 nm chips, the 3.2 GHz Core i3-550 and the 3.33 GHz i3-560.

Released back in 2010, these 'old timers' will be available for new orders until June 29 and will continue shipping till December 7th (for the tray SKUs) or until supplies are depleted (boxed SKUs).

A little earlier this month, Apple discontinued supplies of its 13-inch white MacBook (base) to educational institutions, which it stopped selling to consumers much earlier, last year. Apple has replaced this education variant of white MacBook with a new education variant of MacBook Air. The new variant will be offered to educational institutions at US $999 a piece, when purchased in packs of 5 (costing US $4,995), making it a viable replacement to the white MacBook.

The new MacBook Air variant is also a 13-incher, driven by Intel Core i5 ULV processor clocked at 1.60 GHz, with 2 GB of DDR3 memory, 64 GB solid-state storage (carried on from the 11-inch consumer base model of MacBook Air), but features the larger 13-inch display. Unfortunately, this model is only available to educational institutions that purchase in bulk (those packs of 5), and so the cheapest MacBook individual students can buy is the 11-inch MacBook Air.


Source: MacRumors

Yesterday the creative mind behind SKYRIM and Fallout 3, Adam Adamowicz fell in his battle with cancer. Mr. Adamowicz was the lead artist behind the entire artistic concept of the two modern day gaming masterpieces Fallout 3 and SKYRIM, giving those worlds life and personality. Everything from coin operated fallout shelters to dragons atop snowy peaks was first visualized and created in the mind of Adam Adamowicz.

To finish off the week in style Thermalright announced the Silver Arrow SB-E, a new, high-end CPU cooler based on the Silver Arrow model introduced back in 2010.

The Silver Arrow SB-E features a dual tower/dual fan design and has eight (nickel-plated) 6 mm copper heatpipes (the old Arrow comes with four 8 mm pipes), a tweaked heatsink, two TY PWM fans - one 140 mm and one 150 mm (the SA packs two 140 mm spinners), and a mounting kit offering support for Intel LGA 2011 / 1366 / 1156 / 1155 / 775 and AMD AM2(+) / AM3(+) / FM1 processors.

The Silver Arrow SB-E also makes use of some more 'discrete' fan clips that won't interfere with taller memory modules. The cooler is expected to become available at the end of this month. No price tag was announced but we found it on pre-order at about $103 / 78 Euro.

TUL Corporation, a leading manufacturer of AMD graphic cards, today added a new HD7970 graphics solution with dual cooling fan design: the PowerColor HD7970. Equipped with PowerColor exclusive cooling solution, the latest HD7970 lowers down 10% temperature through 92 mm ultra big fan and unique SSU-shape heat pipe design; while dissipates the excessive heat efficiently, it delivers low noisy level up to 15% quieter than reference version, providing no-compromise cooling effect with silent gaming environment.

The PowerColor HD7970 has core clock at 925 MHz and memory clock at 1375 MHz; with compatible with PCI Express 3.0, enabling unprecedented gaming performance by doubling the bandwidth per lane of previous generation. With 3GB GDDR5 onboard memory, the latest HD7970 allows the highest bandwidth for demanding DirectX 11.1 gaming title, delivering the astonishing image quality up to six displays by utilizing AMD Eyefinity technology.

In November 2011, Valve admitted that its Steam forums were hacked, and some user data including encrypted credit card information and hashed passwords were stolen, and that pending investigation, it asked users to change their Steam passwords. Valve noted that at that time, it had not seen any evidence of encrypted data being hacked. Today, Valve issued an update to all its Steam members via e-mail, where it notified them that investigation is still in progress, that Valve is taking help of external agencies to investigate, and that it still sees no evidence of encrypted credit card data being tampered with. As a note of caution, though, it asked users to keep an eye on their credit card activity and statements.

The transcript of Valve's email to Steam users follows.

Apple closed the chapter on the white MacBook (base), after it ended its distribution to educational institutions (schools, universities, students). The company had discontinued its sale to consumers back in July, 2011, but it continued shipping it to educational customers to honor its supply commitments, which has just been met. The relatively affordable white MacBook ran out of shelf space on Apple, as it got replaced by the MacBook Air, the products in the new series cater to both affordable price-points and more premium ones.


Source: MacRumors

Macronix International Co., Ltd., a world leading supplier in NOR Flash memory, today formally launches the first generation Single-Level Cell (SLC) NAND Flash family, the MX30LF family. An extension of Macronix's existing Serial and Parallel NOR Flash product portfolio, the new MX30LF SLC NAND family will facilitate Macronix serving embedded code and data storage markets as a total Flash memory provider.

As a leader in embedded non-volatile memories, Macronix fulfills the memory requirements of these applications ranging from consumer electronic applications like set-top box (STB), TV, digital cameras, Customer-premises equipment(CPE) and high end networking, through to industrial PC and automotive applications. Macronix has begun sampling SLC NAND products and will start trial production in 2012 Q1.

Once Company of The Year by Forbes, NVIDIA is now having a hard time convincing 111-year old investment firm Sterne Agee that it is as much of a company to look out for. The firm downgraded NVIDIA from its coveted "Catalyst Driven Idea List," claiming that NVIDIA lacks the kind of innovation looking into the foreseeable future, to remain in that list. Says Sterne Agee:

"We had put NVDA on our Catalyst Driven Idea list on January 3 ahead of anticipated catalysts at CES and Mobile World Congress (MWC). While there were some catalysts at CES with the quad-core Tegra 3 integrating Touch on its Ninja 5th core, CES also saw a Win8 Tablet prototype running an NVDA Tegra. While we believe there could be more catalysts with MWC February 27, we believe NVDA shares are fairly valued here. MWC catalysts could include Tegra 3 handsets with Icera baseband and some 7-10 tablets running Android Ice Cream Sandwich.

Sterne Agee's commentary continues.

Micron Technology, Inc. (Nasdaq:MU), today announced details involving the public memorial service and memorial funds for Steven R. Appleton, longtime Micron Chairman and CEO, who passed away Feb. 3. The public memorial service will be held Feb. 23 beginning at 10 a.m. MT at Taco Bell Arena on the campus of Boise State University.

Memorial funds have also been established in Mr. Appleton's name with the Make-A-Wish Foundation and the Boise State University Foundation. The Micron Foundation has donated $25,000 to each of the funds in honor of Mr. Appleton.

This is arguably every copyright enforcement group's worst nightmare, The Pirate Bay, which calls itself "the most resilient bit-torrent site in the galaxy", unveiled what is known as its "portable version", meaning, when taken down by an enforcement agency, any person, in any part of the world can restore the site, because it now weighs just 90 megabytes. That's right, the 90 MB copy of the site itself contains all its HTML, script and static images, and Magnet Links to over 1,643,194 torrents spread across all its categories.

A little earlier this year, The Pirate Bay transitioned from being a host for .torrent files to a host for magnet:// links. This transition means that each torrent consisted of a typically 50 KB .torrent file, is now reduced to a <1 KB Magnet link in the resource. The copy of the site itself is there for anyone to copy. Enforcement agencies' worst nightmare indeed weighs just 90 MB.


Sources: The Verge, TorrentFreak

AMD is pushing on with a desktop product lineup that's leveraging its Piledriver CPU and Graphics CoreNext GPU architectures in 2012. Apparently, the company will have a faster product development cycle to catch up with Intel's "Tick-Tock", as revealed in a roadmap slide scored by DonanimHaber. The current product lineup will remain unchanged in the first quarter of 2012. Then in the second quarter, AMD will launch a few more socket AM3+ FX-8000, FX-6000, and FX-4000 series eight, six, and four-core processors; along with the much talked about "Trinity" accelerated processing unit.

The fastest "Trinity" APUs will get a new brand identifier, the A10-5000 series. These APUs will pack next-generation "Piledriver" modular cores and Radeon HD 7600D series graphics. Around this time, AMD will also launch the Brazos 2.0 low-power APU for netbooks, nettops, and embedded computing devices. Brazos 2.0 will get the E2-1000 series branding. The big change is reserved for the third quarter of 2012, when AMD launches the successor of its less-than-lucky AMD FX "Bulldozer" processor family.

Reviewers who have probably received their AMD Radeon HD 7700 series samples by now, were taken aback when they found a prescription medication bottle in their packages. No NVIDIA-styled Press Deck booklet, or even former-ATI styled Ruby doll, but a medicine bottle, which reads "Verdetrol". The label directed them to insert the blue capsules inside it to the heat vents of the graphics card, when benchmarking, so it "acts as a performance enhancement".

The point in all this? Apparently AMD's Radeon HD 7770 features 1 GHz core clock speed out of the box, making it the first GPU ever to do so, and AMD wants to make a song and dance about it. What's more, AMD will use a special branding called "GHz Edition" to mark all its future SKUs that come with 1 GHz (or more) GPU core clock speed, indicating that AMD has more SKUs in the pipeline with ≥1 GHz core clock speed. It doesn't stop with this hysterical medicine bottle thingie, no sir, AMD even set up a teaser site dedicated to "Verdetrol".


Source: LegitReviews

Japanese PC maker FaithPC unveiled the GXT P170HBD-G580 TWIN-Drive SSR2, a 17.3-inch performance notebook that features three star attractions: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 580M 2 GB graphics, two Intel SSD 520 Series 180 GB SSDs in RAID 0, and an Intel Core i7-2960XM Extreme Edition quad-core processor. The notebook packs 16 GB (2x 8 GB) DDR3-1333 MHz memory. The 17.3-inch display sports 1920x1080 pixels resolution.

Apart from the lightning fast storage, the notebook packs a Blu-ray writer drive. Connectivity includes wireless b/g/n, gigabit Ethernet, and Bluetooth. The keyboard is specifically designed for gaming, with heightened W,A,S,D keys. Measuring 412 x 276 x 32 ~ 49 mm (WxDxH), it measures about 3.9 kg. Windows 7 Home Premium x64 is the OS of choice. The GXT P170HBD-G580 TWIN-Drive SSR2 from FaithPC is priced at 299,800 JPY (US $3,857).


Source: Hermitage Akihabara

In the coming week, AMD will release its Radeon HD 7700 series, which aims to increase its competitiveness in the sub-$200 market. The latest specifications exposé reveals AMD's new design strategy: Instead of increasing components such as stream processors and ROPs, which would increase transistor counts, and unnecessarily increase power draw, AMD is counting on a lesser number of better-configured Graphics CoreNext stream processors. While the previous-generation HD 5770/6770 "Juniper" GPU featured VLIW5 stream processors, the new "Cape Verde" GPU, which will go into making up Radeon HD 7770 and 7750, will feature GCN stream processors. Apart from architectural performance improvements, AMD is counting on increased clock speeds to do the trick. The specifications are listed below.

Cape Verde Physical

• Built on TSMC 28 nm process, ~1.5 billion transistors
  
• 10 Graphics CoreNext Compute Units (CUs)
  
• 640 stream processors
  
• 40 TMUs, 16 ROPs
  
• 128-bit wide GDDR5 memory interface
  

A leading brand of graphics card maker - VTX3D, today introduces the most well-known X series of VTX3D, HD7970/HD7950 X Edition. The X series is designed to deliver extraordinary performance with factory overclocked setting and unique cooling design.

VTX3D HD7970/HD7950 X Edition incorporates the latest PCI-E Gen 3 to get the maximum performance from your GPU. Both fitted with 3 GB of GDDR5 memory connected via a new high speed 384 bit memory interface. VTX3D HD7970/HD7950 X Edition is clocked at 1050 MHz and 880 MHz respectively, also together with 1425 MHz and 1250 MHz for each memory, fulfilling those who thirst for extreme performance. The HD7970/HD7950 X Edition also features ultra cooling design. With two 92 mm ultra big fan and SSU-shape heat pipe design, this efficient cooling solution maximizes the speed of heat dissipation, but minimizes the noisy level, creating most pleasing environment for gaming.

Under the stimulation of the sales upsurge of smartphone and tablet computer, the audio-visual experience has extended from home to anywhere, anytime and hence promotes mobile digital storage upgrade. Leading memory storage brand, SP/Silicon Power today announces to expand the microSDHC memory card product line and launch the super massive 32 GB microSDHC Class6 memory card. Its high capacity, high transmission speed and mini size make carrying large amounts of audio-visual data storage more portable than ever!

32 GB microSDHC Class 6 memory card adopts the specification of SD 2.0 and is suitable to apply to handheld mobile devices including high level digital camera or digital video camera of SD 2.0 specification. Its massive high speed transmission rate with minimum reading speed of 6 MB per second is in particular suitable for Full-HD video recording. Moreover, while its size is smaller than a finger nail, microSDHC Class6 memory card can store over 9000 digital photos, 500 minutes of full HD videos, more than 6000 songs and thousands of electronic files. This memory card is all you need for a portable streaming life!

Cooler Master has just announced the European arrival of the GeminII SF524 CPU cooler. This model features the same specs as the GeminII S524 released in August except it comes equipped with a different fan, one that operates at 1300 RPM or 900 RPM when using the silent mode adapter (the S524 has a PWM fan going at 800 to 1800 RPM).

The GeminII SF524 measures 144 x 144 x 105 mm, it weights 592 grams, has five 6 mm copper heatpipes, and offers support for Intel LGA 1366 / 1156 / 1155 / 775 and AMD FM1 / AM3+ / AM3 / AM2+ / AM2 processors. The cooler can be found selling for 37 Euro.

According to comScore, the month of January has seen all major players in the US Internet search market keep the positions held at the end of 2012. Still, there have been small changes as Google increased its share to 66.2% (66.1% in the previous month) while Yahoo dropped a little, from 16.2% in December to 16.0%.

Following Google and Yahoo was Microsoft with a 13.8% market share, while on the fourth and fifth places in January's top we have Ask and AOL with 2.6% and 1.4%, respectively. Almost 20 billion core search queries were conducted in the US in January.

NVIDIA is bound to kickstart its competitive graphics processor lineup to AMD's Southern Islands Radeon HD 7000 series with GeForce Kepler 104 (GK104). We are learning through reliable sources that NVIDIA will implement a radically different design (by NVIDIA's standards anyway) for its CUDA core machinery, while retaining the basic hierarchy of components in its GPU similar to Fermi. The new design would ensure greater parallelism. The latest version of GK104's specifications looks like this:

SIMD Hierarchy

• 4 Graphics Processing Clusters (GPC)
• 4 Streaming Multiprocessors (SM) per GPC = 16 SM
• 96 Stream Processors (SP) per SM = 1536 CUDA cores

The ASUS O!Play TV Pro upgrades living room TV viewing to a completely digital HD and live experience, enabling easy content consumption and distribution. Features open up playback and recording of digital programs, as well as almost any multimedia file currently available with over 50 formats supported, including 3D. Exclusive O!Easy technology adds specific one-click functions that cover file streaming, sharing, and replay, while an always-on design affords direct access to many major online entertainment and content services, all from a single user-friendly device.

Intel Corporation and the New York Attorney General have agreed to terminate the lawsuit alleging violation of U.S. and state antitrust laws that was filed by the New York Attorney General in November 2009.

The agreement, which follows a December 2011 court ruling that greatly reduced the scope of the New York Attorney General's lawsuit, expressly states that Intel does not admit either any violation of law or that the allegations in the complaint are true, and it calls for no changes to the way Intel does business. The agreement includes a payment of $6.5 million from Intel that is intended only to cover some of the costs incurred by the New York Attorney General in the litigation.

AMD released its latest Catalyst Application Profile update for AMD Catalyst, version 12.1 CAP 2, as it's called, adds application-specific CrossfireX optimizations to the driver, which lets the driver effectively use two or more AMD Radeon GPUs working in tandem optimally. It also fixes any bugs that exist with current optimizations. 12.1 CAP 2 includes profiles for the following applications:

• Star Wars: The old republic : Improves CrossFire performance and resolves flickering seen on Map
• Unigine Tropics – Resolves flashing shadow reflections with CrossFire enabled
• Wargame: European Escalation: Improves CrossFire performance

DOWNLOAD: AMD Catalyst Application Profiles 12.1 CAP 2

Turtle Beach, pioneers of the game audio category, announced today that based on year-ending NPD data for 2011, Turtle Beach was the number one gaming headsets/headphones company with 50% of the market for the year and the number one third party console video gaming accessories company, based on 2011 dollar volume.

The strong growth for the category has led NPD to create a dedicated Headsets category, splitting off from the general Audio category. Headsets continue to be the strongest growing segment in the gaming industry and is expanding rapidly. Turtle Beach led the field with 12 of the top 25 Gaming Headset SKUS in 2011. Overall, Turtle Beach dominated the market, taking an average of 50% market share for 2011, with a 58% share in December alone, a high for the year.

February's Patch Tuesday is closing in fast and, according to Microsoft, it's going to see the arrival of no less than nine updates - four rated 'Critical' and nine 'Important', that will crush 21 vulnerabilities.

The incoming patches tackle bugs that could lead to remote code execution and privilege elevation. As (almost) always, Microsoft didn't go into specifics but it did say the vulnerabilities affect Windows, Office, Internet Explorer, and .NET/Silverlight. All the updates will be made available on Valentine's Day (February 14th) at about 10 am PST (6 pm GMT).

The wait for Cedar Trail is pretty much over, at least from Acer's perspective as the company has begun shipping its first netbook based on the platform, the Aspire One D270. The model on sale is equipped with a 1.6 GHz Atom N2600 processor, it runs Linux, and has a 10.1-inch (1024 x 600) LED backlit display, Intel GMA 3600 integrated graphics, 2 GB of RAM, a 320 GB hard drive, LAN, 802.11 b/g/n WiFi, a 5-in-1 card reader, a 0.3-megapixel webcam, a multi-touch trackpad, a HDMI output, and a 6-cell battery enabling up to 8 hours of operation.

The Aspire One D270 comes in several color versions (black, white, blue, red, candy), is backed by a one-year warranty, and can be bought for 259 Euro.

Micron Technology, Inc. is extending its legacy of memory leadership by introducing a new product category of low-power DDR3 solutions targeted at the tablet and ultrathin markets. These 2-gigabit (Gb) and 4 Gb "DDR3Lm" solutions focus on low self-refresh power (IDD6) for longer battery life, while maintaining the high performance and cost effectiveness of PC DRAM.

The first 2 Gb DDR3Lm will provide up to 50 percent self-refresh power savings versus standard 2 Gb DDR3L while driving performance up to -1600 MT/s when needed. Micron's 4 Gb DDR3Lm product delivers the same optimized power efficiency as the 2 Gb part, with a reduced chip count that is ideally suited for ultrathin and tablet customers. Both 2 Gb and 4 Gb DDR3Lm will be adopted into Micron's 30-nanometer (nm) class to further optimize the power and performance features, with the 4 Gb device hitting a 3.7mA IDD6 target in standby mode, yet still supporting speeds up to -1866 MT/s.

VIA Technologies, Inc, a leading innovator of power efficient x86 processor platforms, today announced the VIA EPIA-M910 Mini-ITX board, the latest dual core Mini-ITX board featuring one of the richest I/O sets available for a wide range of embedded applications including ATM, kiosks, POS, digital signage, healthcare and digital media applications.

The VIA EPIA-M910 is available in both active and passive cooling configurations with the choice of either a performance oriented 1.6 GHz VIA Nano X2 dual core processor or a fanless 1.0 GHz VIA Eden X2 dual core processor and is paired with the VIA VX900 media system processor, which provides the ideal platform for today's HD-intensive applications.

Among the sea of tower-type CPU coolers which are the same old tripe packaged and colored differently, few companies are actually investing in innovation, one of them is Prolimatech. The company is working on two new yet-unnamed CPU coolers specifically designed for socket LGA2011 motherboards, one has already taken shape, the other is still in its CGI form.

The first one (first two images below), appears to be an leaner, fitter evolution of the Prolimatech Genesis. While the Genesis uses a dual-independent fin-stack design in which one stack propagates perpendicular to the plane of the motherboard while the other propagates parallel to the plane, on this new design, both stacks propagate parallel to the plane, in opposite directions, and both being dissimilar in size.

Enermax offers a wide range of power supplies for various applications and target groups, starting with the entry-level series NAXN right through to the flagship series MaxRevo and Platimax. Following the demands of partners and end users, the premium manufacturer now adds two new models to its offer:

While the MaxRevo 1200W (EMR1200EWT) is designed to meet highest performance and efficiency standards of hardware enthusiasts, the 80 PLUS Bronze certified NAXN 650W (ENM650AWT-B) will strengthen Enermax' position in the competitive segment of budget power supplies for gamers.

Shacknews is reporting a new adventure game from Tim Schafer, Ron Gilbert, and the rest of the Double Fine Productions gang is on its way, having hit its funding goal of $400,000 only eight hours after launching a crowd-funding plan. What's more, Double Fine is now having "a lovely chat" with Minecraft creator Markus 'Notch' Persson about his offer to fund a Psychonauts sequel.

"If I were to go to a publisher right now and pitch an adventure game, they'd laugh in my face," Schafer said in a video for the KickStarter project. So Double Fine turned to its fans, seeking $300,000 to fund a new adventure game and $100,000 for video game documentary team 2 Player Productions to record its progress. The project launched at 6pm Pacific on Wednesday, and reached the $400,000 mark a touch over eight hours later.

As Intel's tick-tock CPU development Juggernaut rolls on, things seem very much on track, looking into the near future. Intel will launch its new "Ivy Bridge" 3rd Generation Core processor family in early-April 2012, which is a miniaturization of what is essentially the "Sandy Bridge" to the new 22 nm process, with IPC and instruction-set improvements, along with a faster graphics controller. The new process will also up clock speeds and overclocking headroom for chips that support it. What's more interesting, though, is that the architecture that succeeds Ivy Bridge, codenamed "Haswell", will be less than an year away in April...well almost.

A roadmap slide sourced by DonanimHaber pins the launch of Haswell to March-June, 2013. Haswell is a brand new CPU architecture that will succeed Ivy Bridge. According to the conventional idea of Intel's tick-tock CPU development strategy, it will be built on the 22 nm fab process, which will have gained some maturity by then. Intel follows a "tick-tock" product development model. Every year, Intel's product lineup sees either of the two. A "tock" brings in a new x86 architecture, a "tick" miniaturizes it to a newer silicon fabrication process. Earlier reports indicated that Haswell Core processors will be based on a newer socket, the LGA1150, and hence it will not be compatible with LGA1155 platforms.


Source: DonanimHaber

A market scout at Tokyo's Akihabara electronics goods shopping district spotted this tasty-looking rodent for all you chocolate-lovers. Called the ChocoMouse, the device is shaped like a bar of chocolate (a chocolate ice-cream sandwich?), with a corner bitten off (which ends up making it ergonomic for right-handers, in a creepy way). Its catchy shape aside, the ChocoMouse is your average 3-button scroll mouse with an 800 dpi optical sensor. The mouse uses standard USB interface, its cord can be wrapped around its grooves and its connector locked into one of them. What could make for a very nerdy February 14 gift, is priced at 1,680 JPY (US $21.7).


Source: PCWatch

With Windows 8, Microsoft is introducing a new OS feature that works to improve performance and battery-life, called App Suspension. Simply put, it is a kernel optimization that "suspends" applications that are running in the background without much activity. This is done by freezing the machine to them, when suspended, an application no longer uses any CPU cycles, freeing up the CPU for other applications, and potentially reducing power consumption due to lower CPU activity.

The Windows NTOS kernel is a client-server type kernel, where processes and services function in a hierarchy as clients to the "server", which dispenses system resources to them. One would imagine a suspended process to be that which has no CPU time allocated by the kernel, which is probably told that the system is sleeping. This feature will be particularly handy for Metro applets, which in typical usage scenarios, will be running in the background most of the time. The feature could also come handy in scenarios such as gaming, where the OS could freeze supply of resources to useless processes.


Source: Hexus.net

Taiwan-based Aerocool Advanced Technologies has just announced the European release of two new Strike-X Series mid-tower PC cases, the Strike-X One and Strike-X One Advance. Both models feature a steel structure, are painted black both inside and out, and have support for ATX and micro ATX motherboards, four 5.25-inch drive bays (with tool-free mounting systems), six 3.5-inch internal bays, a PSU dust filter, and pre-drilled holes for watercooling tubes and cables.

The Strike-X One has an I/O panel with two USB 2.0 ports, and is equipped with one 120 mm rear fan, while the Strike-X One Advance comes with two USB 3.0 ports, a 120 mm rear fan, and a front 120 mm fan with red LEDs. The Strike-X One and Strike-X One Advance cost 34.99 Euro and 39.99 Euro, respectively.

Google is going to monetize its ocean of data storage and bandwidth by starting a new service that will rival the likes of DropBox. Called Google Drive, the service could allow people to make use of their G-Mail storage quota (like G-Mail Drive once did) for free, and probably offer additional storage at a cost. According to Wall Street Journal, the service is expected to be launched "soon" (in the next few weeks or months). To compete with other similar service providers, Google could come up with attractive prices. Unlike services such as MegaUpload, Google Drive would be strictly personal storage. The Drive service will be inter-twined with Google Docs, and facilitate better remote collaboration between co-workers.


Sources: The Verge, Wall Street Journal

Lenovo Group reported results for its third fiscal quarter ended December 31, 2011, highlighted by record highs in quarterly sales, pre-tax income and market share, and the 11th quarter in a row that Lenovo has grown faster than the industry as a whole. For the ninth quarter in a row, the Company grew faster than any of the top four PC manufacturers, a result of Lenovo’s continued focus on balanced growth across all geographies, customer segments and product lines. During the third quarter, Lenovo recorded its highest-ever worldwide market share of 14.0* percent, and its highest-ever market share in China of 35.3 percent, an increase of 3.7 and 3.1 share points year-over-year respectively.

During the third fiscal quarter Lenovo’s pre-tax income increased 59 percent year-over-year, to a record high of US$192 million.

For the end of this month I-O Data has planned the release of a new widescreen monitor, a 23-inch model called LCD-MF234XPGBR which features LED backlighting, an IPS panel with 178/178 degree viewing angles, and a native resolution of 1920 x 1080 pixels.

I-O Data's upcoming display also has a 14 ms response time (8 ms when overdrive is activated), a maximum brightness of 250 cd/m2, a contrast ratio of 1,000:1 (80,000:1 DCR), two 1.5W speakers, an ECO mode that saves power, and D-Sub, DVI, and HDMI (x 2) connectors. The LCD-MF234XPGBR is set to cost about $347.

Japanese built-to-order gaming PC maker Ark PC unveiled an AMD-powered variant of its Tathlum Gaming PC desktop (model: CY-AF8A99A-C2). The machine is built into a Cooler Master HAF 912 Advanced chassis, and is accompanied by a 23-inch full-HD monitor. In the driver's seat is AMD FX-8150 processor, seated on an ASRock Fatal1ty 990FX motherboard, with 8 GB dual-channel DDR3-1333 MHz memory, and AMD Radeon HD 7970 3 GB graphics. The processor is cooled by a Zalman CNPS9900MAX Red. Other components of interest include a Hitachi DeskStar 1 TB 7200 RPM SATA 6 Gb/s hard drive, onboard HD audio, and gigabit Ethernet. A SilverStone ST75F-SST-P 750W 80 Plus Silver PSU powers it all. Windows 7 Home Premium x64 is the OS of choice. The Tanthum CY-AF8A99A-C2 is priced at 167,800 JPY (US $2,175).


Source: Hermitage Akihabara

AverMedia, specialists in video encoding and archival hardware, introduced the Live Gamer HD addon card. This product solves the problem of gameplay streaming/recording software introducing lag because the software syncs the framerate to match the framerate of the encoded video/stream, not to mention the additional burden on the CPU and hard drive. The addon card acts as an intermediate between the graphics/audio cards and the display/headset, encodes gameplay at resolutions up to full-HD, that's 1920 x 1080 @60 FPS, without affecting the framerate the gamer experiences (the display stream and the recording stream needn't be at sync). The card packs a hardware H.264 encoder, which then works with a software to either stream it online (via streaming services such as Livestream), or records it onto local storage (since it's writing a pre-encoded video, HDD activity will be much lower compared to screencapture programs that write heavy lossless video). AverMedia did not give out pricing information.


A video presentation by AverMedia follows.

HP's posterboy Ultrabook, the Envy 14 Spectre, was announced last month amidst some fanfare, though it wasn't immediately available. As announced it is now available via HP's online store for US $1,399.99 for the base-configuration, and 1,899.99 for HP's "recommended configuration", which includes a 256 GB SSD, and a Core i7-2770M processor instead of a 128 GB SSD and Core i5-2467M on the base-configuration, among other HP-exclusives. The 14-incher measures 12.88" (W) x 8.7" (D) x 0.79" (H), weighing 1.8 kg, packs a 1366x768 pixel screen; two of its most notable features, apart from its size, include solid-state storage and near-field communication (NFC).