Apple introduces new MacBook Pro with Retina display

Apple has unveiled an all new 15-inch MacBook Pro featuring a stunning Retina display, all flash storage and quad-core processors in a radically thin and light design. Measuring a mere 0.71 inches and weighing only 4.46 pounds, the completely redesigned MacBook Pro sets a new standard in performance and portability for pro users.

The new MacBook Pro Retina display is the world's highest resolution notebook display with over five million pixels, three million more than an HD television. At 220 pixels-per-inch, the Retina display's pixel density is so high the human eye cannot distinguish individual pixels from a normal viewing distance, so text and graphics look incredibly sharp. The Retina display uses IPS technology for a 178-degree wide viewing angle, and has 75% less reflection and 29% higher contrast than the previous generation.

Featuring a precision engineered aluminum unibody design and an all flash storage architecture, the new MacBook Pro is the lightest MacBook Pro and nearly as thin as a MacBook Air. Flash storage that is up to four times faster than traditional notebook hard drives enables the all new MacBook Pro to play four simultaneous streams of uncompressed 1080p HD video from internal storage. The flash storage architecture also delivers improved reliability, instant-on responsiveness and 30 days of standby time.

The MacBook Pro with Retina display features the latest Intel Core i7 quad-core processors up to 2.7GHz with Turbo Boost speeds up to 3.7GHz, Nvidia GeForce GT 650M discrete graphics, up to 16GB of faster 1600MHz RAM and flash storage up to 768GB. Two Thunderbolt and two USB 3.0 ports allow pro users to connect to multiple displays and high performance devices, and a new HDMI port offers quick connectivity to HDTVs. Read More

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Apple Updates MacBook Pro, MacBook Air, Introduces iPad-Like MacBook

At its Worldwide Developer Conference, Apple introduced laptops influenced by the iPad with new Intel and Nvidia technologies. A super-thin next-generation MacBook, says Apple, is the best notebook it’s ever made.

Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference kicked off with a number of device introductions, including updates to its MacBook Pro and MacBook Air lineups, as well as an iPad-like, next-generation laptop that Apple—in a move as awkward as deciding to call the third-generation iPad “the Pad,” instead of the iPad 3—is calling the “the next-generation MacBook."

The latter—the most fun of these notebook announcements—is as thin as the MacBook Air, at 0.71 inches. In building it, Apple executives said they figured out how to eliminate the need for a separate glass cover. It weighs 4.46 pounds and features a 15.4-inch display that, like that newest iPad, is a Retina display with a resolution of 2880 by 1800 pixels. It’s the world’s highest-resolution notebook, according to Apple.

“The pixels are so small that your retina cannot discern them,” Apple’s Phil Schiller told the WWDC crowd, according to the live blog from The Verge. Read More

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Enterprise Networking: IPv6: 10 Things You Didn`t Know About Internet Protocols

The Internet Society, an international nonprofit organization that advises on Web standards, policy and education, has selected June 6, 2012, as the World IPv6 launch day. This date will mark the beginning of a new phase in the life of the Internet, when IPv6 begins to become a normal part of the Internet experience for everyone—taking over from IPv4. Last year, the Internet Society declared June 8, 2011, as World IPv6 Day to give enterprises and Internet service providers (ISPs) a chance to “stress test” the next-generation Internet protocol to see what works, what breaks and what they need to do to seamlessly migrate their networks to IPv6. It also served as a wake-up call that it’s time to upgrade the World Wide Web. On that day, more than 200 Web companies—including giants Facebook, Google and Yahoo—worked with ISPs and content-delivery networks to conduct the first global-scale trial of IPv6. For a 24-hour period, participating companies around the world enabled IPv6 on their main services. Operating systems—including Apple Mac OS X, most versions of Microsoft Windows and most major Linux distributions—have supported IPv6 addresses for a number of years. In fact, since IPv6 addresses are enabled by default in the operating system, if the network has the capability to assign an IPv6 address, the user machine most likely already has an IPv6 address, James Lyne, director of technology strategy at Sophos, told eWEEK in 2011. At some point, the entire Internet infrastructure has to move to using the newer address space, since the differences in the protocols mean that computers with IPv4 addresses cannot communicate with machines with IPv6 addresses. The Internet Society says that time is now. eWEEK takes a look at some of the key differences between IPv6 and IPv4. It also identifies some information you may not know about IPv6. Read More

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Intel launches next wave of Ultrabook with new 3rd Generation Core Processors

MUMBAI: Intel today displayed its newest wave of ultra sleek Ultrabook systems powered by 3rd Generation Intel Core processors and made with the world's most advanced 22nm 3-D tri-gate transistors.

With a price range beginning from Rs 50,000, these new Ultrabook devices are responsive and more secure to better protect personal information. The new chips also offer increased media and graphics performance, long battery life and more choice in stylish designs.

A special feature is the enhanced security Intel Anti-Theft technology that lets people automatically disable the system if it is lost or stolen. Available in 11 languages and in major markets worldwide, people can activate free, limited-time Intel AT service subscriptions from Absolute Software, McAfee, Norton and Intel on an Ultrabook right out of the box. In India this service is currently being offered by Croma.

Just about a month ago, Intel had introduced the quad-core 3rd Generation Intel Core processor family, delivering dramatic visual and performance computing gains for gamers, media enthusiasts and mainstream users alike. 

"Similar to the introduction of Intel Centrino nearly a decade ago, this is a time of revolutionary change in personal computing," said Debjani Ghosh, Managing Director, Sales & Marketing Group, Intel South Asia. "The innovation will continue in the coming years as Intel and the industry aim to raise the bar for personal computing experiences, evolving to more natural and intuitive interactions. Personal computing as we know it today will suddenly seem old fashioned."

She added: "Intel Insider technology, when combined with Intel Wireless Display (WiDi), will allow streaming of premium HD movies from a 3rd Gen Intel Core processor based PC or Ultrabook to an HD television, without cables, thereby delivering the ultimate movie-viewing experience to consumers, with stunning image clarity." Read More

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HP Bursts CloudSystem

HP's CloudSystem is now being expanded such that burstable cloud demand can be delivered via Amazon, Saavis or HP's own cloud services infrastructure. With CloudSystem, enterprises can manage demand for their workloads and move them to public or private cloud infrastructure as needed.

The new HP CloudSystem Matrix software is the orchestration layer, providing a graphical user interface for server admins to setup, deploy and manage cloud workloads.

"The HP Converged Cloud is all about making available a set of choices for our customers," Magdy Assem, Vice President Horizontal Solutions at HP, told InternetNews.com . "I have yet to find a customer that is going all private or all public in the cloud."

While HP's CloudSystem is about developing a hybrid cloud approach it is however somewhat limited from a virtualization approach. Currently HP is only supporting a pair of virtualization technologies. Read More

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IPv6 Traffic Growing at Google, Facebook

In terms of IPv6 traffic, that also is now beginning to grow, though it's still currently standing at approximately 1 percent of all Internet traffic. According to Google Engineer Erik Kline, there has been a rapid growth of IPv6 at Goggle. For Google, IPv6 traffic has grown by 150 percent in the last year.

"At this rate, approximately 50 percent of users will have IPv6 in six years," Kline said.

Comcast’s John Brzozowski, Distinguished Engineer and Chief Architect for IPv6 said that on his network there was a 3.75 percent increase in IPv6 traffic compared to World IPv6 Day in 2011.

Facebook also participated in the World IPv6 Launch. Donn Lee, network engineer at Facebook said his site has seen over 27 million active Facebook users that have IPv6.

"That's a number that is three to five times what it was on World IPv6 Day, twelve months ago," Lee said.

For Content Delivery Network Akamai, the IPv6 traffic growth has been even great.

"The amount of traffic we have over IPv6 is a function of how many customers we have that have content available over IPv6 as well as how many end-users there are,"Eric Nygren, Chief Systems Architect at Akamai said. "We've seen both of those go up such that the amount of traffic, we're serving over IPv6 this year is over 100 times as much as we were serving during World IPv6 Day last year." Read More

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Why Cloud Pricing Comparisons Are So Hard

Public cloud computing companies all perform similar functions, so why is it so hard to compare the value of one cloud infrastructure service with another? There's a variety of reasons, but one of them is that vendors don't want you to be able to do too direct a comparison.

Each service supplier assembles a compute package that's different enough from the others that a comparison is difficult. Microsoft, for example, surpasses Amazon in CPU strength and storage. But in another important measure, Amazon offers more RAM for larger server sizes while matching Microsoft in the smaller sized servers.

Confused? The problem is there's no standard "serving size" when it comes to cloud computing, so IT pros have to juggle the many variables of RAM, local disk, CPU power, and more themselves. Is it a better deal to get lots of CPU but less RAM? The answer depends on what the cloud customer is trying to do with that computing power. For companies weighing public cloud options against running the computing services in-house, it complicates the calculation. Read More

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Intel's New Xeon Powerhouse: 5 Key Facts

Aside from that other little announcement out of Cupertino, one of the worst-kept secrets in the tech world was the impending release of Intel's successor to its vaunted Xeon 5600 series processors--the chip that's currently the power plant for the cloud. The new E5's Sandy Bridge micro architecture is well known as it debuted on Intel's desktop and laptop lines over a year ago, and its successor, the Ivy Bridge generation, will show up on consumer devices in a couple months. Formerly known as the Sandy Bridge-EP, the new E5-2600 series chips further cement Intel's preeminence atop the processor landscape. Here are a few reasons why.

1. More Power Scotty. Not only does the E5-series increase the top Xeon core count by a third, from 6 to 8 per chip, it almost doubles the L3 cache from 12 MB to 20 MB at only a slight loss in clock speed. The 8-core part tops out at 2.9 GHz. Intel claims these combine to yield an 80% performance improvement and they have a slew of benchmarks to back up the claim. While we hold a skepticism toward benchmarks that would make Mark Twain proud, this is an impressive list with 13 records for two-socket systems and two overall records for system-level energy efficiency (workload/watt). Read More

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Six Good Reasons to Download Firefox 13

Between its use of SPDY by default and speed gains through Mozilla's “Project Snappy,” Firefox 13 has been generating excitement for some time already. Now, the final version of the software is here at last.

Mozilla on Tuesday launched this latest version of its popular free and open source browser, which comes packed with numerous significant new features that promise to make life better for users in myriad ways.

If you already use Firefox, this new update will likely be on its way to you automatically through Mozilla's now nearly silent update process, which debuted in the Windows version of Firefox 12.

If you've been using something else to browse the Web, though, this would be a great time to give Firefox a fresh look. The video below offers an overview of what's new, but here are a few key reasons why Firefox 13 is well worth checking out. Read More

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Ubuntu 12.04 LTS “Precise Pangolin” Launches, Sets Sights on the Enterprise Desktop

Running the Unity GUI, Precise Pangolin users can opt to run office applications remotely with virtualization, use browser-based programs, or run the many native productivity programs. Commercial support is optional and consists of audit, compliance, and ongoing maintenance; users can choose between covering all deployed machines with Canonical’s support or just a select group.

Canonical also mentioned in the press release that Ubuntu 12.04 LTS is certified with almost two dozen laptops and desktops, with more being added to the list all the time, so users can expect strong compatibility and performance.

As always, the most beautiful part of any Ubuntu distro is the price tag ($0.00), so head over to Canonical and give Precise Pangolin a spin. Read More

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Corsair Vengeance K60/M60 and K90/M90 Input Devices

Dedication. Diligence. Sacrifice. These are the words that describe us here at Hot Hardware, because when we set out to review these Corsair Vengeance gaming keyboards and mice, we sent the family off to bed night after and night and worked deep into the early morning hours. We spent many--many--hours testing, testing, and testing some more, all for you, dear readers.

Granted, the primary testing method was gaming, but that counts as work in this industry.

We’re also typing this review with the keyboards (in turn), and after spending some quality time with the Corsair Vengeance K60 keyboard/M60 mouse and K90 keyboard/K90 mouse combos, we’re fans of all four devices. Read More

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Intel Debuts New Smartphone Chips at MWC

Intel launched its Medfield platform only six weeks ago, but the company is moving ahead with plans for additional processors based on the 32nm SoC. At Mobile World Congress today, Santa Clara announced plans for two additional system on a chip (SoC) designs to flesh out its product roadmap. The current Z2460 that we covered in January will be augmented by the Z2000 at the low-end and a new dual-core chip, the Z2580. Of the two, the Z2000 will ship in retail products in the second half of this year, while the Z2580 won't be available for purchase until early 2013. 

The already-launched 1.6GHz Z2460 is also getting a performance nudge; the core is now officially capable of a 2GHz maximum frequency rather than the 1.6GHz Intel specified originally. As far as we know, all current manufacturers are sticking with 1.6GHz, but the option is there for those who want to push the present design. The low-end Z2000 is a single-core Atom clocked at 1GHz with no Hyper-Threading; it'll ship with a companion XMM 6265 modem that supports HSPA+ but no LTE. Read More

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REPORT: SECRET CYBERWAR AGAINST IRANIAN NUKES BEGAN UNDER BUS

In an attempt to disrupt Iran’s nuclear program, the U.S. and Israel initiated a series of cyberattacks against an Iranian enrichment plant, according to The New York Times.

The U.S. has recently acknowledged developing cyberweapons but to this point has not admitted using them. Suspicions were raised with the discovery of the "Stuxnet" worm in 2010. The Times reports that the worm was part of a program, begun under President George W. Bush, that aimed to disrupt the centrifuges at the Natanz nuclear facility in Iran. It was released onto the web due to a programmer’s error.

A new cyberweapon called Flame was recently discovered to have attacked Iranian computers, and while The Times says that Flame was not part of the program used against Iran, officials declined to say whether the U.S. was responsible for it.

It is not clear how effective the attacks had been. Administration officials say Iran’s efforts have been set back by 18 months to two years, but other outside experts are more skeptical. Read More

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ENERGY INVENTORY MISSED 500 DATA CENTERS

The Energy Department’s July 2011 inventory of its data centers neglected to include more than 500 centers managed by contractors, the department’s internal auditor said Thursday.

Energy told the Office of Management and Budget that month it was operating only 58 federal data centers, excluding at least 520 contractor-operated centers totaling 314,000 square feet, the department’s Inspector General Gregory Friedman said in the report.

“We noted that omissions of contractor-operated data centers continued despite OMB’s request that the department resubmit an updated and complete final inventory prior to Dec. 31, 2010,” the audit said.

The 520 uncounted facilities all meet an old OMB definition that included only data centers larger than 500 square feet, Rick Hass, Energy's deputy inspector general, told Nextgov.

In October 2011, the Obama administration expanded the definition of data centers to also include everything from smaller centers down to server closets. Under the new definition, the number of uncounted data centers at Energy could be significantly larger.

Federal Chief Information Officer Steven VanRoekel expects to save $5 billion dollars by closing and consolidating government data centers. Read More

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INTERNET TRAFFIC REPORT: GET READY FOR THE ZETTABYTE

If you follow global data traffic trends, it's time to learn a new word. A zettabyte is 1 trillion gigabytes, and it succeeds the exabyte to describe the unimaginably gigantic amount of data zooming around the world's broadband networks.

According to a report released on Wednesday by Cisco, by 2016 the world's 19 billion global network connections will generate 1.3 zettabytes of data. To put this spike in perspective, this represents more traffic than the total amount of data generated between 1984 and 2011, Cisco says in its Visual Networking Index Forecast.

This explosive growth is being driven by a rise in the number of users, an increase in the number of connections per user, faster connections, and--most critically--what users are doing online. Video is taxing the world's fixed-line and wireless broadband networks.

By 2016, the connected world will include 4.5 billion mobile users, up from 3.7 billion in 2011. Residential fixed-line users will total 2.3 billion, up from 1.7 billion last year. The Cisco report predicts steep growth in Internet adoption in South America and Africa, where penetration has been lagging. India is expected to show some of the fastest growth in wireless broadband. The report predicts that in much of the developing world, broadband access will be more ubiquitous than electricity. Read More

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Apple Inoculates OS X Leopard Against Flashback

In the wake of the Flashback malware outbreak that last month infected more than 600,000 Macs, Apple Monday pushed two security fixes for users of OS X 10.5 Leopard.

Flashback was the largest-ever malware outbreak involving OS X users, and at its peak exploited over 600,000 Macs. The malware spread by targeting a Java vulnerability that was first disclosed in a Windows security notice in February 2012. Apple last month released Flashback eradication software for its current Mac operating system, 10.7 Lion, as well as for 10.6 Snow Leopard.

Now, the 10.5 Leopard version of Apple's new Flashback Removal Security Update will likewise search for multiple Flashback variants, including SabPub. "This update removes the most common variants of the Flashback malware," according to the update's release notes. "If the Flashback malware is found, a dialog will notify you that malware was removed. In some cases, the update may need to restart your computer in order to completely remove the Flashback malware." Read More

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Dell, HP Caught In Apple-Amazon Crossfire

It was a bad week for Dell and Hewlett-Packard as both companies reported results that disappointed Wall Street.

Dell reported that profit fell 33% as sales were hurt in part by what one analyst termed the Apple effect as consumers and businesses embracing the bring-your-own-device model are picking Apple products. Dell is in the midst of transitioning out of consumer and low-margin products into servers and services for the enterprise, but the popularity of Apple is hurting Dell's bottom line, at least in the short term.

The Apple effect is also dinging the other personal tech giant: Hewlett-Packard. HP is in the process of cutting 28,000 employees as Meg Whitman (the latest in a revolving door of CEOs) tries to sort out the consumer, enterprise, and commercial businesses. The Apple effect is in full bloom in the consumer sector and may even be reaching into the once high-profit margin printer business. I'm positing the widespread use of tablets means fewer documents are getting printed, but I can't back that up yet. Read More

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Dell Latitude, OptiPlex Lines Get Intel Ivy Bridge Makeover

On May 31, Dell announced new Latitude and OptiPlex business laptops and desktops that speak to the consumerization of IT trend. That is to say, a demand for business-use devices that are powerful and feature rich—here, Dell has incorporated Intel’s new Ivy Bridge processors—but also as well-designed and pleasant to use as the devices one buys for personal use.

Dell’s newest machines were inspired, says David Lord, Dell’s director of marketing, by desires to improve productivity, give people access to the data they need, and to make no sacrifices on the device side, while “making devices folks really want to use.”

Lord adds: “It’s pretty exciting. The 6430s is the thinnest and lightest 14-inch commercial notebook out there.”

The Dell Latitude E6430s features a 14-inch display in a 13.3-inch chassis. And while super portable at 3.75 pounds and dimensions of 13.2 by 1.06 by 8.8 inches, it’s built around a Tri-metal casing with an anodized aluminum display back, magnesium alloy wrapped corners, steel hinges, a powder-coated base, a spill-resistant keyboard and an LCD coating to protect from spills. A StrikeZone shock absorber, Fast Response Free-Fall sensor and rubber hard drive isolation are further measures to keep the realities of mobility from slowing down workers. Read More

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Enterprise Networking: Super Micro SuperStorage Server Ramps Up Storage Capacity

IT and business initiatives are changing the face of storage in the enterprise. The demands of big data, compliance, archiving and continuity are driving enterprises to rethink storage systems. Super Micro aims to meet that demand with an affordable storage server, which incorporates performance features with redundancy and room for 12 serial-attached SCSI version 2 (SAS-2) or Serial ATA version 3 (SATA3) drives. The 2U device is easy to service, thanks to a removable top panel. Several expansion slots are available as well as a port to add JBOD, or just a bunch of drives, storage capacity to the unit. Integrated sensors and monitoring capabilities allow proactive management and protection from unannounced failures. Then there are 920-watt redundant power supplies and passive cooling routes to further reduce downtime. Support for the latest Intel Xeon E5-2600 series CPUs eliminates performance bottlenecks, while RAM capacity tops out at 768GB, which helps with future expansion. Removable drive bays with support for hot-swap further augment redundancy, as does multiple levels of RAID support. The Super Micro SuperStorage Server SSG-6027R-E1R12N is available in any color you want, as long as it's black.  Read More

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Intel's New Ivy Bridge Chips Include Some for Ultrabooks

 Intel a month ago launched the first of its Ivy Bridge processors, quad-core chips aimed at the desktop market. Now the giant chip maker is unveiling a new batch of its third-generation Core processors, including several aimed at the Ultrabook space.

The new dual-core chips, announced May 31, include four tagged as Mobile Ultra processors that are designed for Ultrabooks, the extremely thin and light notebooks that Intel executives have championed for about a year. The systems are designed to offer the productivity capabilities of traditional laptops with many of the features—including long battery life, instant-on and always-connected capabilities, and for some models touch-screens—that are found in the popular tablets.

Almost two dozen Ultrabooks already are on the market, powered by the Sandy Bridge Core processors that were released last year. However, Intel officials see the new crop of systems that are on the horizon and will be based on the Ivy Bridge chips as the ones that will get the market rolling. Read More

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Windows 8 Power Struggle: Metro vs Desktop

We've been looking forward to Windows 8's Consumer Preview for months. This, after all, is Microsoft's big chance to show what they've been working on and unveiling bit by bit for the past year; a chance to evaluate the sum total of changes and advancements baked into the next-generation operating system. We'll discuss some of the features of Metro and Desktop (aka Classic) separately, but our overall focus will be on how the two environments interact with each other.
 

Metro, Microsoft's new UI, is bold, a dramatic departure from anything the company has previously done in the desktop/laptop space, and absolutely great. It's tangible proof that Redmond really can design and build its own unique products and experiences. Metro's design heavily emphasizes text and uses brightly-colored background tiles as a means of differentiating programs. It uses very little chrome (in this context, the term "chrome" refers to the use of buttons and icons to represent specific functions). Minimize, Maximize, the X "close window" button and the task bar itself are all examples of chrome. Read More

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iBUYPOWER Erebus GT Gaming System Review

So you’re in the market for a smoking fast system, and you have your heart set on a custom build. You can easily drop upwards of three (or four or five) grand on a completely tricked-out enthusiast-class rig that will leave your gamer friends standing in puddles of drool. If you’re on a stricter budget, you can also opt for something in the mainstream range that’s still pretty nice, yet costs closer to $1000-$1500; or, you can look for a sweet spot between the two, where shaking a little more out of the piggy bank gets you a system with all the performance you could ask for in a package that’s still guaranteed to elicit wolf whistles from your friends.

iBUYPOWER has a system for you it thinks hit the sweet spot for a high-end gaming PC, and it’s called the Erebus GT.

With the Erebus GT, iBUYPOWER set out to make a slightly smaller and less expensive line of systems to complement its Erebus custom gaming series, which is now renamed the Erebus XL series. There are actually three Erebus GTs in the new line, with configurations based on the AMD FX platform starting as low as $899, but the one iBUYPOWER sent us to test is an Intel Sandy Bridge-based version that costs $2499 (as configured). Read More

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Toshiba Excite 10 LE: The World's Thinnest 10" Tablet

Toshiba is claiming to have the world's thinnest 10-inch tablet with its Excite 10 LE. This Android 4.0-powered tablet is indeed thin and lightweight, measuring 0.3 inches thick and weighing about 1.18 pounds. In addition to its thin design, the Excite 10 LE also offers a number of ports and expansion slots. With its size, range of IO ports, and good-looking magnesium alloy surface finish, the Excite 10 LE is certainly eye catching.

Although thin and light are definitely key features for any tablet, we also demand performance. Toshiba understands this, and has included a 1.2 GHz Dual-Core Texas Instruments OMAP 4430 processor as well as 1GB of DDR2 RAM in this tablet. The Excite 10 LE is available in 16GB and 32GB model and both models are available with Android 3.2 Honeycomb or with Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich. In this review, we'll take a look at the 16GB Excite 10 LE with Android 4.0 which has a suggested retail price of $529.99. The 32GB model with either version of Android will set you back an additional $70. Read More

 

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Intel Core i7-3720QM Ivy Bridge Mobile Review

You might say Intel has been absolutely killing it as of late.  Whether you consider their recent earnings announcement beating Wall Street's expectations, the Ultrabook craze, their re-entrance into the handset arena with their Medfield platform, or the proliferation of their 2nd generation Core Sandy Bridge-based processors in the market; it's perfectly clear the company is in an execution groove that will fuel both their own growth as well as industry growth for some time to come.  In short, Intel has been a design execution machine recently and when you put that into perspective with their world-class semiconductor manufacturing prowess, the company packs a seriously competitive punch.

As if that weren't enough, the company is obviously champing at the bit for the launch of their 3rd generation Core series processors known by the code name Ivy Bridge.  From full-on leaks of NDA classified information and performance results, to the official, blessed unveiling of Intel's companion 7 Series chipset platform, it's as if we've been hearing about Ivy Bridge for what seems like an eternity, at least in terms of tech years. Incidentally, the Ivy Bridge logo above was created by the Ivy Bridge design team; apparently they were a little fired-up too.  In any event, today is the day that Intel's long rumored and hyped Ivy Bridge 3rd Generation Core processors get real and we've got the full lowdown for you. Read More

AMD Trinity A10-4600M Processor Review

We won't burn up too much of your bandwidth setting the stage here.  AMD's second-generation Bulldozer core processor microarchitecture, codenamed Piledriver, has made headlines at HotHardware many times in the past few months, including our CES sneak peek of the chip that AMD is launching today for the mobile market, codenamed Trinity.  What this launch is all about is AMD's answer to Intel's Ivy Bridge-based Core series processors for notebooks.  It's that straightforward, though we'll start by level-setting expectations based on how both companies and their respective architectures approach computing workloads.

There's little debate that Intel's strength lies in their base x86 CPU architecture, which has held a significant advantage over AMD for several generations of product now, both in desktop and mobile flavors.  AMD has been left to compete on cost more than anything else (and in some recent products, low power) and when you consider Intel's clear advantage in leading-edge silicon manufacturing process, that's a thin line to walk. Read More

Cisco Cius sees us no more

Cisco is pulling back from its Cius tablet computer and all but abandoning it.

OJ Winge, the SVP of TelePresence Technology at Cisco, has blogged that the Android-powered Cius is heading towards the exit because employees of its business customers are bringing their own, consumer-style, devices to the office; iPad tablets and the like.

He writes:
Cisco will no longer invest in the Cisco Cius tablet form factor, and no further enhancements will be made to the current Cius endpoint beyond what’s available today. However, as we evaluate the market further, we will continue to offer Cius in a limited fashion to customers with specific needs or use cases.

Consumers can't buy Cius tablets in the places they buy their tablets as Cisco has no substantial Cius presence in the popular entail/etail channels.

Cius was conceived of as a collaboration device for business users, not as a content consumption device for consumers. As such business users don't want it.

Cisco's interest in tablets is in being "committed to delivering a new collaborative workspace that meets our customer’s needs and empowers users to work their way—anytime, anywhere and on any device." The Cius tablet, an endpoint, is too restrictive for users. Read More

Is Open Source Hardware IT's Next Big Thing?

Those of us with gray hair remember when mainstream companies viewed open source software with extreme skepticism--that is, until it became apparent that the Internet backbone was running reliably on OSS. Now attention is turning to open source hardware.
Open source hardware? Really?
Surely this movement is for hobbyists only, right? You don't want to fork out $50 for a USB battery charger, so you fork out $20 for the kit and work on it with your buddies over the weekend. Read More

Dell Delivers Desktop-as-a-Service

Dell will be at Citrix Systems' Synergy user group conference in San Francisco this week, talking about its ability to deliver virtual desktops in partnership with VMware and Citrix Systems. No surprises there. More surprising, however, is its partnership with a younger and smaller company, Desktone.

Desktone provides virtual desktops through a cloud-based, desktop-as-a-service (DaaS) platform, and will work with both Citrix and VMware virtual machines. As such, it is "hypervisor agnostic," said Desktone CEO Peter McKay in an interview.

Dell's Desktone-based service, Dell Simplified DaaS has been available to a handful of customers for a month, and is now available to all, Dell announced Monday.

Desktone is different from Citrix XenDesktop or VMware View, in that it provides virtual desktops from servers in an external data center, giving an IT department a portal-based management console through which it may manage the desktops that company employees create. Read More

Lenovo launches 2 new desktop PCs in India; prices start at Rs 21,250

New Delhi: Lenovo India announced two new additions to its desktop lineup in India – IdeaCentre H430 and IdeaCentre H520s. These desktops are claimed to offer a host of entertainment features at a space-saving design and an affordable pricing.

The Lenovo H520s desktop PC is said to be 2 times smaller than a standard desktop PC, which combines a slim design with the performance of a 2nd/ 3rd generation Intel Core™ i7 processor. It is priced at Rs 24,990 (taxes extra).

The Lenovo H430 desktop PC is said to offer a multitude of entertainment feature. It has the 2nd/3rd Generation Intel Core i processor with Turbo Boost. The Lenovo H430 is available for Rs 21,250 (taxes extra).

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Android mini computer selling for just $74

Enthusiasts of embedded computing seem to be spoiled for choices nowadays. A Chinese-made computer that's slightly larger than a typical thumb drive can now be purchased online for just $74.

The MK802 is similar to the Cotton Candy computer-on-a-stick. Both are powered by ARM processors and support Android or other ARM-compatible Linux operating systems. It comes with a Mali 400 GPU that enables it to output 1080p video through HDMI.

Despite its small size (it weighs just about 7 ounces), the MK802 has a microSD card slot to add to its built-in 4GB flash storage, together with a full-size USB port and a micro-USB version. Wi-Fi is also supported. Read More

New From HP: Stylish Ultrabooks and a Wafer-Thin 'Sleekbook'

HP announced a slew of refreshed and new HP laptops on Tuesday that should be shipping to retailers this summer. Among the newcomers are several HP Envy models and a business-oriented Ultrabook.

Spectre XT as an "ultra-stylish" extension of the HP Spectre line, which already looks pretty sleek thanks to its glass top. The XT will have an all-metal chassis (like similar premium Ultrabooks) and a slim bezel (like the Envy 14 Spectre) to pack a larger display in its small 13.3-inch footprint.

The XT is thinner and lighter than the Envy 14 Spectre: It measures 0.57 inch thick and weighs 3.07 pounds, whereas the Envy 14 Spectre comes in at 0.9 inch thick and 4 pounds. A backlit keyboard, a 128GB solid-state drive, and a battery-life rating of 7 hours round out this premium Ultrabook's features. Read More

The Greatest PC Mysteries--Solved!

PC owners know that every computer has a unique assortment of components, applications and peripherals. Nevertheless, certain things--including a host of common PC problems and mysteries--are part of the shared experience of computer ownership. The editors at PCWorld have seen and solved hundreds of PC mysteries, ranging from balky printers to diffident video players to persnickety file attachments. Most of the answers to these tech questions are simple and straightforward, so we've taken the liberty of compiling some of the most frequently encountered PC mysteries into a single list that we'll update regularly. Following each question we provide a short response that summarizes what we know. For a more detailed explanation and some helpful tips, click the links in each answer. Read More

A New Home for Computer Screens: The Face

Employees at eyeglasses designer Michael Pachleitner Group have no reason to consult desktop computers, tablets or old-fashioned paper binders to find items in their 22,000 square-foot warehouse. The information is right in front of their faces.

The Austrian company recently outfitted warehouse workers with a head-mounted device that displays digital information on a clear lens over one of the eyes. The lens gives visual directions through a Wi-Fi connection to the 1.4 million items stored in the vast warehouse. It also confirms they made the right pick, and frees up their hands.

By July, the company's six warehouse pickers will be wearing the device all day, cutting down on picking errors by an estimated 60%, said Chief Financial Officer Neil Lambert. "We were skeptical in the beginning" about the device, which reminded him of military gadgets seen in movies. "It was a nice surprise to see that it works." Read More

AMD 990FX Mobo Round-Up: Asus, ASRock, Gigabyte

In preparation for the impending arrival of its Bulldozer-based FX-series of processors, AMD recently released their 9-Series chipsets. The AMD 9-Series currently consists of three products, the 970, the 990X, and the flagship 990FX chipsets.

At their core, all of the current AMD 9-Series chipsets are similar, and offer support for socket AM3 and AM3+ processors, DDR3 memory, PCIe 2.0 (with a varying number of lanes), and SATA III (6Gb/s). The chipsets differ in their support for AMD CrossFireX technology, however, due to a different number of PCI Express lanes available on each. The flagship 990FX supports up to four graphics cards, the 990X two cards, and the 970 only a single card. We should point out that some motherboards based on the AMD 990FX chipset will get official support for NVIDIA’s SLI technology as well, so those enthusiasts chomping at the bit for an 8-Core Bulldozer chip can enjoy some multi-GPU action with their graphics vendor of choice.

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AMD Trinity A10-4600M Processor Review

We won't burn up too much of your bandwidth setting the stage here.  AMD's second-generation Bulldozer core processor microarchitecture, codenamed Piledriver, has made headlines at HotHardware many times in the past few months, including our CES sneak peek of the chip that AMD is launching today for the mobile market, codenamed Trinity.  What this launch is all about is AMD's answer to Intel's Ivy Bridge-based Core series processors for notebooks.  It's that straightforward, though we'll start by level-setting expectations based on how both companies and their respective architectures approach computing workloads.

There's little debate that Intel's strength lies in their base x86 CPU architecture, which has held a significant advantage over AMD for several generations of product now, both in desktop and mobile flavors.  AMD has been left to compete on cost more than anything else (and in some recent products, low power) and when you consider Intel's clear advantage in leading-edge silicon manufacturing process, that's a thin line to walk.  Read More

Tablet Face-Off: Budget Models From Acer and Asus vs. Apple's iPad 2

It appears that $400 or less marks the new sweet spot for 10-inch-class tablets. First Apple reduced its iPad 2 to that price, and now we have a pair of Android tablets, the Acer Iconia Tab A200 and the Asus Transformer Pad TF300, coming in at $350 and $380, respectively. If you have four C-bills and want a 10-inch tablet, which of these represents the best deal? The answer may surprise you.

Or maybe not. We’ve already established that, for some, an Apple iPad 2 may be enough tablet and represent the better buy over the newer third-generation iPad. But now we have two new Android models, each from large PC manufacturers, and each competing for the same market that Apple’s targeting with its iPad 2.

Of the three, the Asus Transformer Pad excels in some of the PCWorld Labs’ tests, and stumbles slightly in others. Even so, its overall performance score puts it just a few points behind the iPad 2. Acer’s Iconia Tab A200, clearly the most valued-priced model of the three, makes some sacrifices that aren’t worth what you save. Read More

New DDR4 Memory to Boost Tablet, Server Performance

The DDR4 memory standard, which the Joint Electronic Devices Engineering Council (JEDEC) expects to OK this summer, represents a doubling of performance over its predecessor and a reduction in power use by 20% to 40% based on a maximum 1.2 volts of power use.

"It's a fantastic product," said Mike Howard, an analyst with market research firm IHS iSuppli. "Increasing the amount of memory and the bandwidth of that memory is going to have huge implications."

DDR4's significant reduction in power needs means that relatively low-priced DDR memory will, for the first time, be used in mobile products such as ultrabooks and tablets, according to Howard.

Today, mobile devices use low-power DDR (LPDDR) memory, the current iteration of which uses 1.2v of power. The next generation of mobile memory, LPDDR3, will further reduce that power consumption (probably by 35% to 40%), but it will likely cost 40% more than DDR4 memory, said Howard. (LPDDR memory is more expensive to manufacture.) Read More

Ink-flation: Printer Cartridge Prices Are Climbing Quickly

If you get the feeling that the cost of replacing the ink cartridges on your inkjet printer is getting out of hand, your impression may be more accurate than you realize. Between 2009 and today, the rate of inflation has increased by 7 percent. During that same period, the cost per page of some vendors' inks has risen by anywhere from 4 percent to 30 percent. Yes, 30 percent.
We review 50 or more printers per year, and we price the cartridges for every one of them. About 8 months ago, I began noticing that ink cartridge prices for some models were going up--sometimes sharply. When I dug deeper, I also saw that the price increases seemed to be selective: Some inks went up; others stayed the same; and one even dipped slightly. The biggest hikes I observed came from Lexmark and Kodak, but Epson's color ink costs have been rising as well. Meanwhile, HP seems to be nudging ink costs upward in its newer models.

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How to Convert an Old PC into a Modern Server

You could e-recycle it--hand it off to a responsible company that will dismantle it and recycle the parts--but what do you gain from that aside from feeling good about being environmentally responsible? Allow us to suggest another solution: Repurpose the old hulk as a local server. You can use it as a repository for automatic PC backups, or set it up as a file server that you and your employees can access while you're on the road. Those are just two of the roles that an older PC can perform that are of far more benefit to your business than having the machine collect dust or head for the dump.

Best of all, the software--FreeNAS--that will power this machine is exactly what its name describes: a free operating system for network-attached storage. And side from being free, FreeNAS is easy to install, configure, and run. You'll find everything you need to know in this guide. Read More

RAID Made Easy

What is RAID, why do you need it, and what are all those mode numbers that are constantly bandied about? RAID stands for "Redundant Array of Independent Disks" or "Redundant Array of Inexpensive Disks," depending on who you talk to. Note that the word array is included in the acronym, so saying "RAID array," as a lot of people do, is redundant.
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Back when hard drives were less capacious and more expensive, RAID was created to combine multiple, less-expensive drives into a single, higher-capacity and/or faster volume. On top of that, it was designed to facilitate redundancy, also known as fault tolerance or failover protection, so that the array and its data remain usable when a drive fails. You'll often hear about 1-disk or 2-disk redundancy, which refers to the number of drives that can fail while the array remains viable. Read More

Seagate GoFlex Satellite Mobile Wireless Storage 500GB

The Seagate GoFlex Satellite hard drive takes the shackles off your tablet, freeing it to connect to a greater amount of storage capacity--without having to go through any pesky wires. But although the hardware implementation is adequate, the software app struggles. A lot. At launch, Seagate is offering a messy, limited app for iPad and iPhone; an Android app equivalent is still in the works, so for now Android users must access the hard drive's contents using a comparatively crude Web-browser interface (admittedly, one not unlike the browser interface for standard network-attached drives). Read More

Intel Posts Fix for Bug That Crashes SSD 320 Drives

The firmware update addresses the Bad Context 13x Error, a bug in which power losses caused Intel's SSD 320 drives to crash. When rebooting, the bug also prevented the drive from being accessed and resulted in the system BIOS reporting a SSD 320 unit as having only 8MB of storage capacity.

Users can download the firmware update for the affected drives from Intel's website, a company spokeswoman said in an e-mail. Instructions to install the firmware are in a Read Me file. Read  More

Lenovo Launches Fleet of New Ivy Bridge ThinkPads and IdeaPads

Lenovo Tuesday officially announced its new portfolio of business-friendly ThinkPad laptops, IdeaPad Ultrabooks, and IdeaPad multimedia laptops. Come June, it'll be raining Lenovo ThinkPads and IdeaPads.

We got a peek at many of these refreshed laptops--except for the ThinkPad X1 Carbon--earlier this year at CES, but now Lenovo has revealed pricing and other details.

The new line has been refreshed not just to include the latest Intel Ivy Bridge processors, but with other significant improvements as well. For example, the new ThinkPad X, T, and L series laptops will feature optional HD+ (1600 by 900 pixel resolution) displays. The new multimedia IdeaPad Y series laptops will offer the latest Nvidia Kepler graphics. And the ThinkPad X1 Carbon Ultrabook has been bumped up in screen size from 13 inches to 14 inches, with a new 1600 by 900 pixel resolution. Read More

Study: Phone co customer satisfaction evens out

NEW YORK (AP) — Improvements in customer satisfaction at Sprint Nextel Corp. and AT&T Inc. have narrowed differences among the Big 4 wireless carriers to the point that they're basically even in terms of pleasing their subscribers, according to a study released Tuesday.

The American Customer Satisfaction Index puts Sprint, AT&T, T-Mobile USA and Verizon Wireless within two points of each other on a 100-point scale of customer satisfaction.

That's the smallest spread since the survey started looking at all four companies in 2005. It's also within the margin of error at plus or minus three points.

Last year, AT&T clearly trailed the pack, while Sprint and Verizon led. That was a surprising development for Sprint, which was last as recently as four years ago. Sprint CEO Dan Hesse has made improvement in customer service central to his tenure. Read More

Ahead of Facebook IPO, poll finds user distrust

Facebook's public offering will be the largest and perhaps most highly anticipated Internet deal in history. But faced with great expectations, Facebook is staring down some unnerving obstacles when it comes to key areas of monetization and growth: public distrust and display advertising apathy.

According to a new AP-CNBC poll, 57% of Facebook users say they never click ads or other sponsored content when they use the site, with another 26% saying they hardly ever engage in such activity.

While the company makes money, in part, simply by displaying sponsored content, user clicks are a critical part of an advertiser's calculus when gauging how effective those ads are and how much they're willing to pay for them. In the first quarter, Facebook generated 82% of its $1.06 billion in revenue from advertising sales. In the company's online IPO pitch to retail investors, CFO David Ebersman says the company is working to make ads "more relevant, more social, and more engaging" as it looks to grow. Read More

Yahoo's Scott Thompson gets no severance

Yahoo began closing ranks behind its abruptly reshuffled leadership team on Monday, but stayed mum on how it would proceed after firing its second CEO in the past eight months.

The Sunnyvale Internet giant, which fired CEO Scott Thompson on Sunday after he was revealed to have falsely claimed he earned a computer science degree, filed formal notice of the separation Monday with the Securities and Exchange Commission.

The filing revealed that Thompson, who was earning an annual salary of $1 million, will not receive severance pay for his five months at the helm of the 12,000-person company. But he will receive cash and stock given him to compensate for money he gave up this year when he left eBay, where he was in charge of the PayPal division.

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802.11 wireless development through the ages

Wireless technology has shown rapid development over the last 15 years. With that in mind we look at the progression of the 802.11 protocol from the original legacy mode, through to the current “ac” mode.

802.11 legacy

The original 802.11 protocol, released in June 1997, is now known as legacy mode.

It ran on the Industrial Scientific Medical frequency (ISM) band at 2.4GHz, and employed techniques such as frequency hopping and direct-sequence spread spectrum (DSSS).

Infra-red (IR) signals for data transfer were also part of the standard, however these had no actual implementations.  Continue Reading

Intel To Insure Apple 'Can't Ignore,' Its Chips For iPad, iPhone, CEO Says

Intel outlined its plan to catch up in the smartphone processor business at its annual investor day in Santa Clara, California, Thursday: crush competitors with the weight of its multi-billion-dollar fabs and the thousands of developers it can throw at the problem of tuning mobile software to run on its processors.

Intel Positioning Itself For 'Golden Age,' CEO Says; Rivals Face 'Big Uphill Fight' In Tablets Brian Caulfield Brian Caulfield Forbes

The goal: keep the attention of key customers such as Apple as smartphones, tablets, and personal computing devices converge. Apple relies on Intel processors for its notebook and desktop computers, and ARM-based designs for its booming smartphone and tablet products — leading some to fret that Apple could one day switch to ARM-based chips for the Mac. Read More

Micron in Talks to Acquire Elpida

Micron Technology Inc. said Thursday it is in talks with the trustees of failed Elpida Memory Inc. to acquire the Japanese memory-chip maker, in a move that would allow the U.S. company to grow its portfolio of memory products and become more competitive against rivals in South Korea and Taiwan.

Micron said in a statement it plans to become Elpida's financial sponsor and acquire Elpida's entire business as part of reorganization proceedings approved by the Tokyo District Court. Read More

Myspace settles FTC privacy investigation

Myspace, the once-mighty social network ultimately toppled by Facebook, settled a privacy investigation by the Federal Trade Commission and agreed to submit to privacy audits over the next 20 years.

The settlement, over charges that Myspace misrepresented its privacy policies to users, is similar to deals the FTC struck previously with Facebook and Google.

The FTC said Tuesday that despite telling users it would not share personally identifiable information with others, Myspace provided users' "Friend ID" numbers to advertisers. That allowed advertisers to find users' publicly available personal information, often including full names, and could even lead advertisers to discover users' Web-browsing activity.  Continue Reading

When will Apple patch the Lion flaw that stores passwords in clear text?

An Apple developer enabled a debug log file in OS X 10.7.3 that stores user passwords in clear-text — and a user posted the flaw on Apple’s Support Communities over three months ago.

Lion flaw exposes user's passwords in clear text - Jason O'Grady

There’s a major security bug in the currently shipping version of OS X Lion (10.7.3). ZDNET’s own Emil Protalinski and Ed Bott exposed it after it was first reported by security researcher David Emery on the Cryptome mailing list.

Users of Apple’s FileVault encryption that upgraded from Snow Leopard to OS X Lion update 10.7.3 (build 11D50) were apparently victimized by a piece of errant code that turned on a system-wide debug log file containing the login passwords of every user that logged in since the update was applied  Read More

Hedge Fund Intensifies Attack on Yahoo Amid Storm Over Padded Résumés

Third Point has intensified its assault against Yahoo.
On Friday, the hedge fund, which is the middle of a contentious proxy battle with Yahoo, called for the dismissal of the technology company’s chief executive, Scott Thompson, after revealing that he had inaccurately stated his credentials.
Mr. Thompson had previously claimed to have earned degrees in both accounting and computer science from Stonehill College. After prodding by Third Point, Yahoo conceded that Mr. Thompson had only an accounting degree, calling it an “inadvertent error.”     Read More

Oracle Judge Tells Jury to Keep Trying Amid ‘Possible’ Deadlock

A juror in Oracle Inc. (ORCL)’s copyright- infringement trial against Google Inc. (GOOG) asked the judge for guidance about not being able to reach a unanimous verdict, raising the possibility the panel is deadlocked.

U.S. District Judge William Alsup, presiding over the trial in San Francisco, sent the 12-member jury home yesterday with orders to return today to “start fresh.” He proposed to Oracle and Google lawyers, without the jury present, that they accept a partial verdict if there are questions the panel agrees on, and said the trial should move into the next phase dealing with patent-infringement claims.

While the juror didn’t say in the note, which came on the third day of deliberations, the panel was deadlocked, Alsup told lawyers “it’s possible” that is “what’s going on.”

The panel is weighing whether Google infringed parts of Oracle’s Java programming language that the search engine provider used to develop the Android operating system for smartphones, now running on 300 million devices.

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Microsoft Windows 8-Based PCs and Tablets to Playback Dolby Digital Plus Content.

Dolby Laboratories of Thursday said that Microsoft Corp. will incorporate Dolby decoding and encoding technologies for online and file-based content into all versions of Windows 8. The pact ensures the presence of Dolby Digital format on Windows ecosystem beyond Blu-ray or DVD and creates the opportunity to bring a differentiated audio experience to Windows-based PCs and tablets. What should be noted is that PC makers will be forced to pay for DD support.

"With the incredible growth of online download and streaming media, particularly for video content, this agreement ensures a great audio experience for those consumers who wish to download or stream TV and movies containing Dolby Digital Plus. Additionally, all of their existing and future home videos recorded with Dolby Digital Plus audio will work great on Windows 8 right out of the box," said Tami Reller, chief financial officer and chief marketing officer for Windows and Windows Live at Microsoft.

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