General Gaming Article

General Gaming Article


Gigabyte Shows Off The Booktop M2432 Notebook... And It's Docking Station

Posted: 30 May 2011 05:20 PM PDT

Whew! Is it getting hot in here, or is it just all the smoking new tech coming out of the Computex 2011 trade show? We've already spent some time looking at Gigabyte's AMD AM3+ CPU boards, but the company's Booktop M2432 notebook is looking mighty fine too. The successor to the Booktop M1405, the M2432 includes an Intel i5 processor, Intel's integrated HD 3000 GPU with HD graphics support, a USB 3.0 port, and a 14 inch backlit monitor with a 1366 x 768 resolution. But enough about the notebook – the cool thing about the M2432 is its docking station.

Slipping the M2432 into its docking station is kinda like feeding a Mogwai after midnight – it unleashes a whole new kind of bad-ass. The docking station turbocharges the M2432 with a built-in Nvidia GT 440 GPU with 1 GB of DDR5 RAM and support for dual external monitors. You want ports? The docking station has ports. In addition to hosting six additional USB 3.0 ports, it also features HDMI, DVI and standard D-sub connections, plus "other useful ports normally found on a desktop PC," whatever that means. The notebook itself comes with Intel's Turbo Boost 2.0 and THX audio, probably to help it keep up while you're getting your game on with the docking station's dual-screen goodness.

The notebook itself weighs it at just under 4 lbs, but who cares? We're totally leaving the M2432 hooked up to the docking station once one ends up in our sweaty little hands. You can check out more details in Gigabyte's press release.

Administrators of French File Sharing Site Arrested, Face Jail and Fines

Posted: 30 May 2011 01:41 PM PDT

llThe administrators of one of France's most popular file sharing sites, "Liberty Land" have been arrested, TorrentFreak is reporting. The French trio are facing charges of organised counterfeiting, which could net them up to 5 years in jail and $700,000 in fines. The site is, as you might expect, down.

Liberty Land was one of many sites hosted in Canada where copyright law is unusually friendly. The site did not host any content, but did provide links to pirated music, movies, and TV shows on sites like MegaUpload and RapidShare. Despite the questionable legality of simply linking to content, French content owner groups SACEM and ALPA filed complaints against the sites.

After a long and complicated investigation, French authorities managed to identify the owners of Liberty Land and make the arrest. The severity of the charges stems from the fact that the site operators are alleged to have pulled in about $285,300 in advertising revenue. They have been released pending trial. Do you think sites like Liberty Land should be targeted?

Iran To Develop Islamic-Compliant Version Of The Internet

Posted: 30 May 2011 11:47 AM PDT

So what do you do if you're the leaders of the Glorious Iranian Revolution, and you see all sorts of un-glorious revolutions springing up in countries like Libya and Egypt? If you were rational, maybe you'd turn an eye inward and see what's making your citizens so unhappy in the first place. Or you could do what the current Iranian regime is planning: cut off the World Wide Web and put your own version of the Internet in place. Because, you know, that'll work.

Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials view the influx of Western influences via the 'Net to be a new kind of war, a "soft war," according to an article on the Wall Street Journal's website. So they're working to cut the cord and replacing the Web we know and love with what Ali Aghamohammadi, the country's head of economic affairs, calls "a genuinely halal network, aimed at Muslims on an ethical and moral level."  By the way, halal means "permissable with Islamic law." Iranian officials expect their version of the Internet to be rolled out within two years, and Aghamohammadi says the actual Internet may one day be entirely removed from the country.

Apparently, no one's clued Iranian President Ahmadinejad that trying to cut off Internet access didn't work so well during Egypt's recent revolution... or during the bloody riots after Iran's own widely criticized 2009 "elections." The WSJ article also reports that Iran is possibly working on its own operating system designed to phase out the country's reliance on Microsoft's Windows.

Asus Unveils $200 Eee PC X101

Posted: 30 May 2011 11:21 AM PDT

Asus displayed more than just the Ultrathin UX21 during Computex's opening hours. Although it seems more minimum PC than Maximum PC, the company also unveiled its all new Eee PC X101. The diminutive notebooks will be just as thin as their UX21 cousins, measuring a slim 17.6mm thick and weighing only 2.1 lbs. And get this – the base model will only set you back about $200, or the cost of a few Xbox 360 games.

So how'd Asus get the X101 so cheap? One way was by developing the notebook hand-in-hand with Intel's engineers and installing Intel's MeeGo Linux operating system on the base model. Hot Hardware reports that the Eee PC will include a 10.1 inch screen, Wi-Fi and the Intel N435 processor. Another version of the system, called the X101H, will include the option to replace MeeGo with Windows 7, but Asus says it'll (obviously) cost more.

The guys at TweakTown got their hands on the X101 at Computex: they report the system includes 1GB of DDR3 memory, a widget-based homescreen and very quick start up and shut down times. Plus, while it may not appeal to the fervent build-your-own Maximum PC crowd, we think it looks cool.

Linux Turns 20, Finally Upgrades Version

Posted: 30 May 2011 10:46 AM PDT

It's been a long time and a lot of variations in the making, but Linux is finally uprevving. Linus Torvalds introduced the very first Linux kernel 20 years ago, and his new release marks the 40th major change to said kernel. Combine that kind of numerical synchronicity with the Linux community's passionate pleas to upgrade and leave obsolete features behind, and you're left with the perfect mix for Linux 3.0 RC 1, which Linus posted to the kernel.org mailing list late Sunday evening.

"I decided to just bite the bullet, and call the next version 3.0. It will get released close enough to the 20-year mark, which is excuse enough for me, although honestly, the real reason is just that I can no longer comfortably count as high as 40," Linus posted. "So I'm just going all alpha-male, and just renumbering it."

Despite the history-shattering numerical change, don't expect anything big from Linux 3.0 RC1. "So what are the big changes? NOTHING. Absolutely nothing... but the point is that 3.0 is *just* about renumbering, we are very much *not* doing a KDE-4 or a Gnome-3 here. No breakage, no special scary new features, nothing at all like that," Linus said in the same post.

Old School Monday: Speed Trap

Posted: 30 May 2011 10:33 AM PDT

Here at Maximum PC we take the "Maximum" part pretty seriously, covering the bleeding-edge, the next-on-the-horizon and the over-the-top. That's a tradition that goes back to before maximum was even part of our name, back to the days of boot. A fine example of this is boot's Speed Trap feature from May 1998. Penned by current Editorial Director Jon Phillips, this feature highlighted and reviewed three top systems from the year. Read on to see which systems were breaking the speed limit, and which were stuck in the slow lane.

speed trap

 

speed trap two

 

speed trap three

 

speed trap four

 

speed trap five

 

speed trap six

 

speed trap seven

 

speed trap eight

Hackers Be Hackin': Defense Contractors Breached

Posted: 30 May 2011 10:21 AM PDT

Holiday weekends are dangerous. Even if we took nothing else away from the movie "Independence Day," we got that. But hey, we're human. All those peaceful weekends in the years since the movie came out lulled us into a false sense of security. Then BAM! The OMG h@x0rs struck while we were grilling weenies and celebrating Memorial Day. And for once, the OMG seems justified – apparently, hackers have breached the networks of several top US defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin.

"They breached security systems designed to keep out intruders by creating duplicates to SecurID electronic keys from EMC Corp's RSA security division," Reuters' Jim Finkle and Andrea Shalal-Esa reported late Friday evening, citing everybody's favorite anonymous "source with direct knowledge of the attacks." The defense companies declined to comment on the breaches, although Raytheon spokesman Jonathan Kasle told Reuters that the company took protective measures when the exploit was confirmed by RSA in March. The Department of Defense also uses SecurID on their networks. Nobody knows what, if any, data was compromised.

Its not all doom and gloom, though; apparently, the really sensitive classified stuff sits on closed networks, meaning they wouldn't be vulnerable to Internet-based attacks. So at least the OMG h@x0rs don't have death rays. Yet.

Asus Shows Off Ultrathin UX21 Laptop with Core i7 Guts

Posted: 30 May 2011 09:40 AM PDT

We love it when the trade shows roll around because that's when companies show off their upcoming products. Not all of them turn out to be winners, of course, but Asus's UX21 ultrathin notebook being shown off at Computex holds a lot of promise. From the pictures we've seen, it's sleek and sexy, and the Core i7 foundation is just icing on the cake.

The UX21 measures 17mm at its thickest point and weighs just 2.4 pounds. It's what you can expect from Asus's UX Series of ultraportables, which Asus said "are made possible through the use of a strong but light aluminum alloy shell with a unique 'spun' finish on polished surfaces."

Asus was short on specs in its press release, but did say that the UX21 is built around Intel's second generation Core processors (up to Core i7), SATA 6Gb/s SSD drives, an oversized keyboard, and smartphone-like touchpad. According to Engadget, the UX21 also sports USB 3.0 connectivity and has the ability to hibernate for up to a full week.

Look for the UX21 to ship sometime in September.

Image Credit: Asus via Engadget

Chrome Web App of the Week: Clicker.TV

Posted: 30 May 2011 09:38 AM PDT

There's never been a better time in the history of geekdom to give your cable or satellite television the slip. Over the past few years, consumers been spoiled for choice, with just about everything we once turned to our televisions for now available online. Add to this the countless steaming video sites that pumping out fresh content to the interwebz on a daily basis, and you've got the makings of a viewing solution that has cable companies and satellite providers running scared. To keep track of it all, many resort to software solutions like XBMC, MediaPortal or Windows Media Center. If you're a Chrome user, you've also got the option of rocking Clicker.TV, our Chrome web App of the Week.

Clicker.TV is a media center solution that resides in your browser window. Users of the web app are able to view content from a wide variety of streaming services such as Hulu, as well as videos from Amazon VOD and iTunes to enjoy high quality, on demand content from the comfort of their computer desk or camped out in front of their PC or Mac connected television. According to the folks at Clicker, 40 thousand movies, 90,000 music videos and over one million episodes from 12 thousands different television shows are available for streaming, via Clicker.TV's user-friendly interface.

Add to this the ability to stream content from other awesome portals like Funny or Die, The Onion or even your Netflix On Demand account, and you'll see why we're excited about what Clicker.TV has to offer.

Be sure to check back Next Monday for another Chrome Web App of the Week.

HP's Expands Notebook Battery Recall to Include More Battery Packs

Posted: 30 May 2011 09:05 AM PDT

Hewlett Packard recently expanded a worldwide voluntary recall and replacement program for select HP and Compaq brand notebook batteries. Some 162,600 additional laptop batteries are affected, joining 54,000 that were already recalled back in May 2010.

According to DigiTimes, this current recall is because of an overheating issue that could potentially create cracks in the product and poses a fire hazard. HP says that approximately 5 percent of notebook PC products manufactured from July 2007 to May 2008 could be affected, a full list of which you can view here. What that means is your recently purchased Sandy Bridge system is in the clear, at least as it pertains to this specific recall.

Since the recall only affects older models, HP isn't sweating the possibility that it could affect production of new notebook models, DigiTimes says.

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