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Thursday Morning Reviews (1 Comments) (link)  Thursday, 4-December-2008  04:30:26 (GMT +10) - by Agg Audio / Visual: Sennheiser HD 595 Headphones on TheTechLounge. SouthWing SF605 Bluetooth Car Kit on LegitReviews. Motherboards: ECS A780GM-A Ultra AMD 780G+SB750 AM2+ board on OCWorkbench. Intel X58 Smackover LGA775 board on Bjorn3D. Asus P6T Deluxe LGA775 board on Bit-Tech. Cases: Thermaltake Spedo Advance Package on OCClub. Antec Veris Fusion Remote Max Premium Home Theater on Tweaknews. SilverStone Fortress FT01 on Phoronix. NZXT Whisper on Modders-Inc. Video Cards: Palit Revolution 700 Deluxe Radeon HD 4870 X2 2GB on ThinkComputers. Zotac Nitro OC Controller VGA overclocking tool on HWZone. NVIDIA Quadro FX 5800 & 4800 professional cards on TechARP. XFX GTX260 Black Edition on InsideHW. Sapphire Radeon HD 4870 Toxic on OCModShop. Portable: HTC Touch Diamond smartphone on DigitalTrends. ASUS Lamborghini VX3 on TBreak. ASUS G71V Gaming Laptop on ITReviewed. Storage: In-Win 'NA USB Hard Drive Enclosure on CPU3D. USB Super Kid Flash Drive on Pro-Clockers. Thecus N4100PRO Networked Area Storage on Bjorn3D. Wednesday Night (11 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-December-2008  21:31:23 (GMT +10) - by Agg From Dan: Thought you might want to get behind this cause: Desert Bus for Hope. This Youtube video gives a good idea of what it is like. More info: Every year, (well, every year since last year,) we put on this gaming marathon for Child's Play, that requires us to play the world's most boring video game "Desert Bus" for as long as you, the viewers, keep donating to buy hours. Each hour costs a little bit more than the last, though. Last year's drive went 108 hours long, and raised $22,805. Tech-Report explored memory speed on i7. The Core i7's triple-channel DDR3 memory controller offers mind-boggling peak theoretical bandwidth, but does the CPU need fancy DIMMs to excel? Join us as we explore the performance impact of memory bus speed, latencies, and even the number of channels on a couple of Core i7 processors. NVIDIA has released a "power pack" for GeForce owners, about 1GB of software showing off PhysX and CUDA etc. Details here, discussion here. From David: I thought TrueCrypt might be useful as some people in the forums are having problems with the microsft version of 'secure my files' if they have lost the encryption key. PayPal Australia are copping some flack for using modified currency images in their advertising. PayPal super-imposed police and military helmets on each of the individuals pictured on the notes to imply enhanced safety and fraud protection for its users. Rockstar Games reckon the PC version of GTA4 sold in Australia will be unmodified, even though the console versions had to be modified for classification here. GamesOnNet have more info from the Classifications Board about this. Tweaktown have been overclocking an i7 920 CPU. Being the optimist I am, I thought I would go straight to 4.2GHz (hey, it’s worth a try) and while it got into Windows without too much drama, firing up prime found us quickly greeted with a BSOD. Dropping to 4GHz increased stability, but since the system must be 100% stable, a further drop to 3.8GHz was the perfect point. LegionHW compared GeForce GTX 260 (216SP) and Radeon HD4870 video cards. The GeForce GTX 260 (216SP) is now matching the price of the Radeon HD 4870 (1GB), and we have even found examples online that are much cheaper, so price is no longer a concern. There is also no longer any concern with the performance of the GeForce GTX 260 (216SP), particularly when focusing on the more recently released titles. iXbit meanwhile compared flash drives. Today we are going to review seven interesting USB drives from different manufacturers. The products differ in capacity, performance and functionality. Some of them are well-known, some are less known, and one drive is a newcomer. GoN also have a video report from eGames 2008 in Melbourne. The event's now in its third year, and this time, we took the video camera and have prepared for you the Games On Net Video Report - showing you everything that you missed out on! knowsfords pointed out this cool timewaster, where you use the arrows to make the stream fill the box things.. you'll work it out. Ingraham by slipperyskip (0 Comments) (link)  Wednesday, 3-December-2008  15:02:22 (GMT +10) - by Agg Looks like slipperyskip has finished his most recent project: Click for the PCDB entry! There's a detailed worklog in the forums. Some of my favourite previous mods from slipperyskip are here, here and here. Interesting Forum Threads (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 2-December-2008  16:44:24 (GMT +10) - by Agg A quick snapshot from the forums: Getting into microcontrollers in Electronics. Black Mesa: Source - A Half-Life 2 Modification in Games. Do you have a gamer wife? in Games. Whats with driver sizes these days? in Video Cards. Triple Screen (3x24"s) - Best way to do it? in Video Cards. Project: DrawPC in Modding. Silverstone TJ09, Ferrari "Rosso Corsa" Red Paint in Modding. Hennels' Tech Bench Build in Modding. Scratch Built MDF Torrent Box in Modding. Seagate New Firmware for Freezing 1.5TB HDDs in Storage & Backup. Hold On, This Console Generation Will Be Long in Game Consoles. How to set up a guitar: All types, Stringings, and Electronics in Musicians. Post Your Moon Jupiter and Venus Shots in Photography. Lightbox from materials around the house! in Photography. The Use of Nuclear Explosives To Disrupt or Divert Asteroids in Science. 'Boris' 1954 Morris Minor Ute Project in Motoring. NSW students to get netbooks in 2009 in Current Events. Skaife Bankrupt in Current Events. Russian hackers infiltrated into Pentagon in Current Events. Late-night IT food. I'm sick of it in Geek Food. Tuesday Afternoon Reviews (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 2-December-2008  15:06:40 (GMT +10) - by matthudson Motherboard Gigabyte X48-DQ6 on Viper Lair ASUS Rampage II Extreme on Techgage ASUS P6T X58 Deluxe on Benchmark Reviews ASUS P6T X58 Deluxe on Neoseeker MSI P6NGM on Viper Lair RAM OCZ Platinum Edition PC3-16000 2x1GB on Hardware Logic OCZ PC3-10666 Gold 2x1GB on Sharky Extreme GFX Card PowerColor HD 4830 on Overclockers Club Sapphire Radeon HD 4650 512MB OC on Phoronix Asus 9800 GTX+ Dark Knight on Bjorn3D Storage Intel X25-M SSD on InsideHW Seagate FreeAgent XTreme 1.5TB External HDD on Everything USB Patriot 128GB Warp SSD on Bjorn3D Western Digital My Passport Studio 320GB Portable HDD on Future Looks Patriot Warp v2 SSD on Benchmark Reviews Case Xclio 1000 Full Tower on Hi-Tech Reviews Antec Skeleton on Virtual Hideout Antec Veris Fusion Black HTPC Case on Legit Reviews NZXT Guardian 921 on XSReviews Thermaltake MD9 on Legion Hardware Games Castlevania: Order of Ecclesia on bit-tech.net Left 4 Dead on Guru3D WOW: Wrath Of The Lich King on Gaming Heaven SAS Secure Tomorrow on Gaming Nexus Dokapon Kingdom on Gaming Nexus Need for Speed Undercover on I4U Call of Duty: World at War, Dead Space, Fallout 3, Far Cry 2 and Left 4 Dead on PC Perspective Guitar Hero: World Tour on Trusted Reviews Pick 'n' Mix Generic PSU on JonnyGuru AMD's 'Shanghai' 45nm Opterons on The Tech Report Zotac Nitro on Tweaktown Sony Ericsson C902 on Digital Trends Sitecom WL-308 Wireless Gigabit Router on bit-tech.net Samsung L210 Digital Camera on Techware Labs Keysonic ACK-612 RF Wireless Multimedia Keyboard on Overclock3D Nintendo DS Lite Ice Blue Pack on Hardware Secrets LG 26LG3000 26in LCD TV on Trusted Reviews EK Water Blocks 4870 X2 on PureOC Brando Wireless Tiny Multimedia Keyboard on Extreme Mhz Terminator 2 HD on Tweaktown The New Xbox Experience on Hot Hardware Razer Boomslang Collector's Edition 2007 Gaming Mouse on Techware Labs Thermaltake RamORB on Techware Labs Forum Articles (0 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 2-December-2008  14:30:03 (GMT +10) - by Agg Some interesting projects from the forums: windwithme checked out the GIGABYTE GA-EP45-UD3P dinos_22 thrashed GB's X58-UD5 Corsair 1866 and Intel i7 920 while Salad_Fingers has a few watercooling bits.. Tuesday Morning (1 Comments) (link)  Tuesday, 2-December-2008  07:57:56 (GMT +10) - by matthudson The internet filter is being slammed by child welfare groups. Holly Doel-Mackaway, adviser with Save the Children, the largest independent children's rights agency in the world, said educating kids and parents was the way to empower young people to be safe internet users. She said the filter scheme was "fundamentally flawed" because it failed to tackle the problem at the source and would inadvertently block legitimate resources. Furthermore there was no evidence to suggest that children were stumbling across child pornography when browsing the web. Doel-Mackaway believes the millions of dollars earmarked to implement the filters would be far better spent on teaching children how to use the internet safely and on law enforcement. Firefox and Vista have both broken 20% market share. NetApplications has released data for November so it’s time once again to dig through the trends: Note: I know that many of you distrust NetApplications data, but remember that we are only using them to look at trends. Also, let’s remember that as far as Mozilla is concerned, NetApplications data is good enough. Are you obsessed with audio quality, but still want to move your music to computer? If you're one of those people in search of the holy grail of audio fidelity, there's no doubt that using a PC as a complete front-end solution has probably crossed your mind at one time or another. Saving your entire music library to a hard drive and having all your favorite tracks just a few clicks away is certainly appealing, but what about the sound playback quality? Can it compete with dedicated disc transports costing thousands of dollars? The internet is breeding a new generation of hypochondriacs. A team at Microsoft studied health-related Web searches on popular search engines and surveyed 515 employees about their health-related searching. Web searches had the potential to escalate fears - like a headache was caused by a brain tumour, for example. Experts said people concerned about their health should see a doctor. Greenpeace is attacking Apple's green image. Perhaps Steve Jobs and company were tempting fate when Apple announced in a recent series of ads that the MacBooks were "the world's greenest family of notebooks", referencing their power saving use of Intel processors and their halogen and plastic free construction. Unsurprisingly, Greenpeace was there to punch a hole in Apple's dreams Is high school actually worth it? Is the child father to the man? Or is the woman a reaction to the child she was? Maybe each of us is the result of a combination of straight lines and U-turns on our life's journey. We asked nine IT leaders to reflect on their high school selves and how their younger personas affected the adults they've become and the careers they've forged. Their insights are surprising, funny, tender and wise. Google Street View is debuting in New Zealand. Google is expected to launch the New Zealand version of its Street View mapping application tomorrow. Street View has encountered opposition in Europe and North America, because pedestrians and vehicles can be made out in some pictures. Microsoft is allowing DX10 to be run off the CPU. If your graphics card doesn't support DirectX 10 or 10.1, don't worry about it, Microsoft has your back. The resourceful programmers at Redmond are working on a new component called WARP10 (Windows Advanced Rasterization Platform) to be included in Windows 7, which essentially ports DX10 duties to the CPU. The nuclear shield's laser has been fired at full power. "This test demonstrated that the Airborne Laser missile defense program has successfully integrated the entire weapon system aboard the ABL aircraft," said Scott Fancher, jumbo-blaster veep at Boeing. "The team has now completed the two major milestones it hoped to accomplish in 2008, keeping ABL on track to conduct the missile shootdown demonstration planned for next year." Go Outside, Look Up (4 Comments) (link)  Monday, 1-December-2008  20:18:39 (GMT +10) - by Agg Between 8 and 10pm tonight there's a big smiley face in the sky. No, really. :) Discussion here. OCAU Mandatory Internet Filtering Poll (5 Comments) (link)  Monday, 1-December-2008  16:18:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg I've made a simple poll to get the general feeling of our members about the proposed mandatory internet filtering in Australia. The poll is in this thread. For some background info on the issue, see our Wiki page. Monday Afternoon Reviews (5 Comments) (link)  Monday, 1-December-2008  15:51:11 (GMT +10) - by matthudson Motherboard ECS A790GXM-A ‘Black Series’ on Tbreak Intel X58 Motherboards on Hardware Zone GFX card ASUS EN9800GT HybridPower on motherboards.org Sapphire HD 4830 on Bjorn3D Storage Intel 80GB SSD on Bjorn3D G.Skill 64GB SSD on Bjorn3D ATP EarthDrive 4GB on Darkvision Hardware Case Antec Three Hundred on Techware Labs NZXT Rogue Computer Case on Red & Blackness GIGABYTE Poseidon 310 (translation) on Tweak PC Game Left 4 Dead on Gamepyre Star Wars Force Unleashed PSP on Gamepyre Mix & Match Fujitsu-Siemens Esprimo Mobile U9210 on Trusted Reviews Nerf N-Strike Vulcan EBF-25 Machine Gun on I4U Thermaltake MaxOrb EX CPU Cooler on Think Computers Denon DHT-FS5 X-Space Soundbar on Trusted Reviews Canon PowerShot A590 IS on Tech Review Source Logitech V550 Nano on InsideHW Microsoft LifeCam Show on Hardware Pacers Foldable Multi Notebook Stand on Think Computers HTC Touch HD on Hardware Zone TomTom GO 540 LIVE Sat-Nav on Trusted Reviews Optoma GameTime GT3000 Projector on Trusted Reviews Doug's Boxes (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 1-December-2008  12:16:35 (GMT +10) - by Agg Doug75 posted details of a few custom PC's he's been working on, including this one which I quite liked the look of. I have destroyed about 4 PC cases, a laser printer and an old washing machine for bits to build this with. click for the thread! Monday Morning (0 Comments) (link)  Monday, 1-December-2008  07:44:48 (GMT +10) - by matthudson Adobe is set to include video-object manipulation in After Effects. An After Effects demonstration shows an editor selecting the outside of a cab and typing "taxi" -- once the text is imprinted on the vehicle, it stays on the car as it moves up and down the street. We know, you're totally scratching your head trying to envision what we just said, so why not just head past the break and give it a look? What effect do more cores have on modern games? So, while I was there pondering around with the options, I wondered what would happen if we started disabling cores. How would that affect 3D performance? What I really wanted to know is how many cores we really need; one, two, three or four? – Sure, there have been articles that compare a dual core based Core 2 processor to a quad core one, but what happens if the only difference between every CPU configuration is the amount of cores while FSB, speed and memory settings are all the same? Tech ARP have benchmarked and compared all Core 2 processors. In this article, we compare the performance of 18 Intel Core 2 processors in five benchmarks - two game-based benchmarks and three application benchmarks. We hope to add on more and more results as we get hold of additional Core 2 processors over time. Let's take a look at the Core 2 processors we have rounded up for this comparison. LCDs could allow for over 40 hours of battery life in laptops. The key to the work behind Pixel Qi's proposals is energy-efficient LCD screens that draw less power than current models and allow laptops to run much longer on existing batteries. Pixel Qi, which is run by former Intel and OLPC executive Mary Lou Jepson, says its screens can be made in conventional LCD factories and that they'll be appearing in new products some time next year. CPU3D had an interview with Corsair. Corsair's UK Manager spent a day at our CPU3D labs. We took the opportunity to ask a few questions about their up-and-coming products and what they've got in store for 2009. Elpida has developed DDR3 RAM using a 50nm process. One of the concerns in the transition to Core i7-based platforms was how Intel's new chips would fare with DDR3 memory exceeding 1.65V. Early reports warned that the higher voltage kits might potentially pose a risk to the processor, prompting memory makers to focus on triple-channel kits with lower voltage than their dual-channel counterparts. But voltage restrictions could become even less of a concern now that Elpida has completed its development of a 50nm process DDR3 SDRAM. The computer mouse is nearly 40 years old. The name was never meant to stick. When Doug Engelbart and his team at the Stanford Research Institute in California designed a computer controller encased in a carved-out wooden block, with wheels mounted on the underbelly, one researcher nicknamed it a 'mouse'. 'We thought that when it had escaped out to the world it would have a more dignified name,' Engelbart recalled later. 'But it didn't.' If your in the market for a secret lair, then look no further. It seems only fair that we jump across the pond this Sunday and write about a mile-long super secret tunnel lair below London that's currently for sale, don't you think? Asking price: A cool $7.4 million. It sounds a bit much for an empty stretch of nothingness deep below the British streets, but wait until you hear about the history. Oh, the history! Here are 18 amazing images from under the microscope. The annual Nikon Small World photomicrography competition recently announced the winning images. The award-winning images ranged from microscopic organisms to cancer-fighting drugs, carbon nanotubes, and even soap. Geek Recipes (0 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 30-November-2008  22:09:31 (GMT +10) - by Agg More yummy stuff from the Geek Recipes forum: Seared Duck Breast by username_taken Balcon and Balsamic Roasted Baby Snapper from mrs_dan77 Azrael's Spanish Chorizo and Broccolini Salad champagne chicken from TehCamel Creamy Chicken Curry by Meowrrr cheesy nacho wedges from 1shot1kill Sunday Afternoon (10 Comments) (link)  Sunday, 30-November-2008  15:29:00 (GMT +10) - by matthudson Secondary students are one step closer to their new laptops. Every senior NSW public school student will get to keep a mini laptop after a new funding deal was thrashed out at yesterday's Commonwealth-state funding talks in Canberra. Some will receive their custom-built computers, powered by a wireless broadband network, by the end of term two next year, with the State Government planning to seek expressions of interest from manufacturers as early as Wednesday. Criticism has popped up regarding the new widescreen Youtube player. Yet every time something moves forward, there seems to be an outcry. That's what's happened with YouTube. The site has introduced widescreen, high-definition (HD) video playback. [S]ome YouTube users have reacted angrily to the change and have been complaining on the site's blog page. Anyone in the USA with an AGP graphics card made by BFG will be pleased by this news. "Now, for a limited time, if you send us your BFG AGP card in good, working condition, we'll send you the PCI Express equivalent at no cost to you," BFG wrote on its AGP-to-PCI-E promotional page. "If you want to upgrade to an even better performing card, there is a nominal fee to do so. Offer good for U.S. customers only." Google Chrome is rapidly increasing its market share. So I persuaded CNET's tech guys to give a window on what's going on here at CNET News. The result surprised me: 3.6 percent of those visiting the site in October used Chrome, up from 1 percent in September, when Google launched Chrome. Microsoft is in the top 5 worst spam providers. According to Spamhaus, spammers are "abusing Microsoft's live.com and livefilestore.com properties to redirect visitors to sites that peddle fake pharmacy products, porn and Nigerian 419 scams." Richard Cox, the watchdog firm's Chief Information Officer, says spammers use Windows Live services because "they know anti-spam groups are unlikely to block Microsoft properties outright." 65nm Xboxs, codenamed Jasper, are starting to appear in the wild. As we originally predicted back in early October, the first Jaspers were identified by being labeled 12.1A on the 12V rail. Somewhat surprisingly, the first ones discovered also came with a 150W PSU. We of course knew this would happen eventually, but many believed that early Jaspers would use left over 175W PSUs. It's still possible there are some Jaspers floating around labeled as 14.2A and including a 175W PSU that were simply never recognized for what they were. Bit-tech.net have a hands on preview of Empire: Total War. If somehow you’ve not yet heard of the Total War games, you couldn’t be coming in at a better time. The time in question is the 18th Century, which sees the Industrial Revolution, George Washington’s American War of Independence and the French Revolution; it’s the time of Napoleon’s European conquest and the rise of Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington. We’re talking about tall ships laden with cannon fighting for naval supremacy, fields fogged with the smoke of thousands of muskets, and the fanatical endeavour to forge a global empire. What would happen to wireless communications during an apocalypse? Characters in the recent BBC remake of Survivors seem curiously ill-informed about how the UK's communications infrastructure would deal with the collapse of civilisation, so in an attempt to ensure Reg readers are better-equipped we present a wireless guide to the apocalypse

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