General Gaming Article |
- OWC Extends Warranty on Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD to Five Years
- Google Adds Appointment Management to Calendar
- News Corp Can't Sell MySpace, Looking into "Partnerships"
- Chrome Web App of the Week: Amazon Cloud Player
- Maingear Shift Super Stock Review
- Tiny, Free and Kick-Ass: 20 More Awesome Apps Under 2 MB
- Research Proves Your Password Sucks
- Microsoft Dances Over The Body Of Rustock Botnet
- 15,000 Facebook Users Accept Girl's Accidental Party Invite
- New Malware Breaks Windows 64-Bit PatchGuard, Inexplicably Targets Mac OS X
| OWC Extends Warranty on Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD to Five Years Posted: 06 Jun 2011 07:16 PM PDT
Last month, Intel increased the warranty period on solid-state drives in its SSD 320 range from the original three years to five years, making them the first consumer SSDs to have such a long warranty period. Now, Woodstock, Illinois-based Other World Computing (OWC) has taken a leaf out of Intel's book and extended the warranty on its Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD line to five years. According to OWC, this move has made it "the industry's first SandForce processor-based 6Gb/s SATA Revision 3.0 SSD offering an enterprise-class level 5 year warranty." Those who bought the Mercury Extreme Pro 6G SSD prior to this announcement need not worry, as "OWC is also retroactively extending two additional years of warranty coverage to owners of the Mercury EXTREME Pro 6G who purchased their drive beginning mid April 2011 when it was offered with a three year warranty." The SSD, which promises up to 559MB/s sustained reads and 527MB/s writes, is available in 120GB SSD, 240GB and 480GB capacities priced at $297.99, $569.99 and $1279.99, respectively. "We're very pleased to offer the industry's longest warranty coverage on the latest and fastest SSD data interface and make it retroactive on all purchases of our Extreme Pro 6G SSD," said Larry O'Connor, founder and CEO, OWC. "By building OWC Mercury SSDs with the best components and engineering processes available, we can offer consumers the best pre and post purchase assurances for the ultimate in SSD ownership confidence."
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| Google Adds Appointment Management to Calendar Posted: 06 Jun 2011 02:35 PM PDT
With the continued expansion of Google Apps, many businesses and individuals use Google Calendar to organize everything. Making a calendar publically visible has always been a great way to let others know when you're available, but a new feature of Calendar will help people actually set up appointments right from another user's calendar. All a user needs to do is set up appointment slots on their calendar. Google then provides a unique URL for setting up appointments on that calendar. The link can be set to anyone that may need to grab one of those slots. The other party won't have full write access to your calendar. They can only modify open appointment slots. When a person views your appointment slots, their own Google calendar will be overlaid on your available appointments. As is customary, the new feature will be rolled out to all users over the coming days. We imagine this is going to be a big help in business and education. Will you use it on your personal calendar as well? |
| News Corp Can't Sell MySpace, Looking into "Partnerships" Posted: 06 Jun 2011 01:59 PM PDT
After seeing a few offers significantly below the minimum asking price of $100 million, News Corp has decided selling the faltering site isn't an option. Instead, Murdoch and company have turned their attention to a "strategic partnership". The exact nature of what this partnership might be is not clear, but we imagine it would need to involve a social property that people still frequently use. But who would be willing to sully their good name by getting in bed with MySpace? The former social networking king has seen traffic drop dramatically in recent years. Hits are about half what they were just a year ago, and the site lost $165 million last quarter. News Corp paid $580 million for MySpace in 2005. It's really become a money sinkhole for them. We wouldn't be surprised if the site is just shuttered and sold off in bits before too long. |
| Chrome Web App of the Week: Amazon Cloud Player Posted: 06 Jun 2011 01:36 PM PDT
Dropped into the Chrome Web Store by Will McSweeney (who MMO fans will know for his excellent Wowhead Utility), Amazon Cloud Player for Chrome is a fan-built labor of love. Once installed, the app, allows Amazon Cloud users to enjoy their streaming tunes from a dedicated window that foregoes everything but what you need to get your groove on.
No search field, no tabbed browsing, no bookmarks--just you and your music. After one use, we're sure you'll agree that McSweeney's app elegantly simple app fills a void that Amazon has left empty for too long. Be sure to check back next Monday for another Chrome Web App of the Week.
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| Maingear Shift Super Stock Review Posted: 06 Jun 2011 12:45 PM PDT A bronze statue of powerHow far can you take a Sandy Bridge processor? We've heard that even extreme overclockers seem to hit a wall just beyond 5GHz with Intel's darling new chip. Whatever the limitations, Maingear seems content to take its Shift Super Stock to the brink of madness by clocking the 3.4GHz Core i7-2600K to 5GHz. The company credits some of that high overclock to its new partnership with CoolIT and the use of a massive and exclusive 18cm EPIC cooler. EPIC, in this case, stands for Enhanced Performance InterCooler. Perhaps even more impressive, you can't even find the cooler in the Shift SS.
The Shift sports a well-tamed quad-SLI setup. When we cracked open the case, we scratched our heads as we searched for the new cooler. It happens to be hidden away between the bottom of the hard drive cage and the case frame's center support. While inside, we also saw the reason the Shift SS's two GeForce GTX 590s run so quietly: an 8cm fan sits atop the quad-SLI setup and blows cool air directly onto the GPUs. Another aid to system cooling is the inverted motherboard that allows air to rise straight up out of the case. Any hot air that doesn't intend to leave is forced out by another large 12cm mounted at the base of the cards. The case itself is Maingear's custom Silverstone enclosure with an attractive paint job applied. It's not the most refined we've ever seen, but it's certainly good and sets the machine apart from the standard black or off-the-shelf aluminum systems. The case interior is wired tight and two sets of LED interior lights are tastefully set into the rig. Performance is what you'd expect of a Sandy Bridge rig running at 5GHz with a pair of GTX 590s. In our Vegas Pro 9 test, it was fastest of the Sandy Bridge–based boxes that we've tested to date. However, our Vegas Pro 9 test favors threads, so the record continues to be held by the hexa-core Velocity Micro rig we reviewed in March. The Maingear set the record in our ProShow Producer benchmark. It also smashed right through the record that had been held by—believe it or not—a Digital Storm system we reviewed back in May 2010. In our STALKER: CoP benchmark, the quad-SLI GTX 590s still couldn't muscle past AVADirect's monstrous machine from our Holiday 2010 issue. That rig used two Xeons paired with four GeForce GTX 480 cards. The Shift SS is close, very close, but it's still a couple frames behind. Against our zero-point, a 2.66GHz Core i7-920 overclocked to 3.5GHz, it's a slaughter, of course. Basically, expect tasks to take half the time with the Shift SS and games to run, well, from 90 percent to 213 percent faster. $5,650, www.maingear.com |
| Tiny, Free and Kick-Ass: 20 More Awesome Apps Under 2 MB Posted: 06 Jun 2011 12:23 PM PDT A month or two back, we posted our list of 30 amazing apps under 2MB. We thought it was a pretty fun concept, and apparently you guys agreed, because we got some great feedback, and some excellent suggestions. Our first list was far from complete, of course, so we decided to do some more investigating, and found 20 more great apps. They're all free, all easy to download, and all great at what they do. Read on, and hit the comments if we've still missed any of your favorites. If you're looking for still more tiny software goodness, check out our list of 21 great games under 5MB. HWMonitor
Another of CPUID's gems, HWMonitor is like the tricorder of utilities. Want to know the maximum temp of core #2, or some other esoteric readout, HWMonitor probably has it listed. GPU-Z
If you want the full 411 on your graphics card, we know of no better app for that than GPU-Z. The tiny utility, which doesn't require installation, supports both Nvidia and AMD GPUs and provides a thorough accounting of a card's specs. We're talking clock speed, die size, ROPs, texture fillrate, release date, the works. Sandboxie
Protect your PC and data from suspicious or malicious sources. The app provides a sandbox, wouldn't you know, in which you can surf the web, run programs, and open questionable emails with abandon, knowing that all these activities are confined to an isolated space. Restoration
It's happened to us all. You delete a file, empty your recycle bin, and then later realize you want the file back. Restoration's sole purpose is to help you retrieve that data. No install is necessary. Just run the app, selecting to scan all deleted files or only those within select parameters. You can opt to recover files or select to wipe the files, making them unrecoverable to future attempts. Stickies
As handy as sticky notes are in real life, the same holds true on your PC. Stickies lets you affix digital sticky notes—small text-based .ini files—anywhere on a desktop, webpage, file, or folder, where they will stay until closed, even through reboots. There are options to customize your notes' font, color, format, size, and even the times at which they appear. Secunia PSI
One of the most common ways for a PC to get infected with malware is through out-of-date, unpatched software. Secunia Personal Software Inspector (PSI) makes it its business to monitor all the software on your PC and inform you when a patch is available. EasyBCD
An award-winning utility, EasyBCD extends and takes control of the Windows Vista/Windows 7 BCD bootloader, allowing you to dual-boot between Windows 7,Windows Vista, and older versions of Windows, as well as Linux, Ubuntu, BSD, and Mac OS X. Paint.net
You don't need a shotgun to swat a fly. And you don't need an enormous and expensive image-editing program like Photoshop (or even a small, free, and complex program like GIMP) to do basic image editing. Featuring layers, robust edit history, and powerful tools, Paint.net is a great app that takes up almost no space. Volumouse
An essential utility for music fans, Volumouse gives you the ability to control the volume on your PC by rolling the wheel on your mouse. You define the rules for how the mouse wheel controls volume (when the Alt key is held down, when the left mouse button is pressed, etc). If your rules are undefined, the mouse wheel reverts to regular scrolling tasks. Startup Programs Tracker
Want to know what programs are automatically loading on startup? Startup Programs Tracker tells you, by scanning both the Start Menu and the system registry for such items. Then it automatically pastes results to the Windows Clipboard for easy sharing via email or other documents. SPT can also check for disabled Start Up items and changes to the default Shell value. DSClock
This is an awesome way to create, customize, and turbo-charge your desktop clock. DS Clock 2.5 allows a remarkable array of configurations, including fonts, colors, transparencies, positions, and sounds. You can also choose to synchronize your desktop clock with atomic time servers, and integrate your Google Calendar into the clock, as well. PowerMenu
Ever since its debut back in 1998, PowerMenu has been a staple of our Windows environment. Once installed, it grants you additional right-click menu options such as the ability to make windows transparent, add system priorities to applications, and to set a Window to always remain on top. Pro tip for Win7 users: You have to hold down L+ Shift to enable these options in the taskbar. www.abstractpath.com/powermenu Taskbar Shuffle
Like the best wee apps, Taskbar Shuffle does a few things and it does them well. First, it allows you to quickly and easily rearrange and reorganize your Windows taskbar by simply dragging and dropping icons. Second, you can do the same to applications in Windows system tray. Third, an options menu in the app allows you an even wider range of controls. It's also fully compatible with UltraMon. SumatraPDF
Ninety percent of the times you open a PDF, you just want to look at a PDF. You don't need attach rate tracking, digital signing, password-protection, DRM, an STMP server, or any of the massive security holes that seem to riddle Adobe Acrobat Reader. SumatraPDF is uber-fast, responsive, and won't bog down your system. Also reads .xps, .cbr, and .cbz files. Defraggler
One of Piriform's many fine utilities (others include Recuva, CCleaner, and Speccy), Defraggler does what it says on the tin: It defragments. You can use it to defragment an entire drive, or drill down and defragment individual folders and files. More useful for XP or older machines that lack the auto-defrag feature of Vista and Windows 7. And, of course, you shouldn't defragment an SSD. AutoHotkey
Don't let the name fool you, AutoHotkey is good for much more than hotkeys. Designed for automating boring tasks, AutoHotkey's scripting language has been used to create any number of useful utilities for Windows. Ultimate Windows Tweaker
What do you call an app that lets you change something about the Windows UI that you never knew was changeable? You call that a great tweak. What do you call an app that lets you make more than 130 tweaks for Windows Vista, 7, and Internet Explorer, all in a sub-500K package? You call that the Ultimate Windows Tweaker. Folder Guide
Windows 7 has made it pretty easy to keep track of your most-used folders, with the inclusion of Libraries and the Favorites menu in Explorer. If you wish you could get those same, useful features in Windows XP and earlier, Folder guide is for you. Just select your favorite folders, and the app creates a custom context-menu entry that allows you to quickly jump anywhere you want in Explorer or the Save/Load dialogue box. RevoUninstaller
Ever get a pesky application that you just can't uninstall? RevoUninstaller is the equivalent of calling Chuck Bronson over to pull a Mr. Majestyk on them. Use the hunter mode, which lets you point the crosshairs at any icon. This lets you uninstall the app from the shortcut, kill its process, stop auto starting, or kill and delete the process. The free version is plenty full featured to make it worthy of checking out. CrystalDiskInfo 4.0
Let's face it, monitoring the S.M.A.R.T. values from your hard drive to head off the next hard drive crash is a bit like trying to predict earthquakes. Still, the research shows that this data can sometimes save your bacon. CrystalDiskInfo lets you constantly monitor your S.M.A.R.T. data as well as graph it. |
| Research Proves Your Password Sucks Posted: 06 Jun 2011 12:23 PM PDT
Troy tested 37,608 accounts in total. Analysis shows that 93 percent of all the passwords clocked in between 6 and 10 characters, not surprising given the 6- or 8-character minimum imposed by most services. Next, Troy took a look at variation of character types in the passwords. As Maximum PC readers no doubt know, varied passwords are harder to crack. Troy defined four different types of characters: uppercase, lowercase, numbers, and everything else. And wow, are the results disappointing! Only 4 percent of users had a mix of three or more different types of characters. Over 50 percent only used a single type, and less than 1 percent used a nonalphanumeric, or special, character. There's lots of more juicy analysis where that came from. Troy was even kind enough to list the top 25 most common passwords. Check them out below. You'll find 22 in all lowercase letters, and two of the three that aren't are "123456" and "abc123". In case you were wondering, yes, "password" is in there. seinfeld, password, winner, 123456, purple, sweeps, contest, princess, maggie, 9452, peanut, shadow, ginger, michael, buster, sunshine, tigger, cookie, george, summer, taylor, bosco, abc123, ashley, bailey |
| Microsoft Dances Over The Body Of Rustock Botnet Posted: 06 Jun 2011 11:37 AM PDT
While it seems like gloating – and it kinda is – the ads serve a very important legal purpose, too. "By placing these quarter-page ads, which will run for 30 days, we honor our legal obligation to make a good faith effort to contact the owners of the IP address and domain names that were shut down when Rustock was taken offline," Richard Boscovich, the senior attorney of Microsoft's digital crime unit, said on the official Microsoft blog. Boscovich couldn't resist taking a few shots at Rustock's operators in the post. Before the legal speak, he kicked things off by calling Rustock "Dead and decaying," then followed up the technical mumbo-jumbo by saying that Microsoft would continue to pursue the case even if the owners of the IP addresses didn't step forward. Dog, you better step aside; Microsoft, Bounty Hunter is on the case! |
| 15,000 Facebook Users Accept Girl's Accidental Party Invite Posted: 06 Jun 2011 11:03 AM PDT
It's a good thing she didn't by hors d' oeuvres. The New York Daily News reports that 13,500 of the 15,000 people who said they'd be there didn't bother to show up. Oh, wait, neither did Thessa or her family – they ran for the hills before the event, probably when they calculated the cost of 15,000 stuffed mushrooms. Thessa's disappearance left a crew of 100 police officers to handle the crowd of 1,500 on their own. Despite the crush of people, police report everything went smoothly as party goers politely milled around for their own right to party. |
| New Malware Breaks Windows 64-Bit PatchGuard, Inexplicably Targets Mac OS X Posted: 06 Jun 2011 10:38 AM PDT
The malware is part of the popular BlackHole Exploit Kit and infects computers through vulnerabilities in Java and Adobe Reader, two third-party programs that basically everybody has on their computer. Kapersky reports that once Rootkit.Win64.Necurs.a gets its foot in the door, it starts downloading those annoying fake antivirus programs – you know, the "OMG! Your computer has umpteen million infected files! Click here to buy a fix!" type. The downloader gets around the Windows 64-bit protection by activating a driver test command that keeps PatchGuard from slamming on the brakes. An interesting tidbit: one of the fake antiviruses the program tries to download is Hoax.OSX.Defma.f, a fake antivirus for Mac OS X. Obviously, it won't work, being downloaded to a 64-bit Windows computer and all, but it points to an not-quite-so-obsure, post-Mac Defender future for Mac users. |
As you are no doubt aware, MySpace has more or less fallen off most people's radar. The once great site, acquired by News Corp in 2005, has been on the auction block for several months. The sticking point? 
If you listen to the pundits, there's little doubt that iTunes users will be getting word that their Apple powered ditties will be making their way to the clouds by the end of the day. That might be great news for anyone rocking Cupertino's resource hogging, behemoth of a music player or an iOS device, but what about the rest of us? If you signed up for a free or paid Amazon Cloud Player account, chances are that over the course of the past few months, you've had a chance to upload all of the audio files in your music library that your Cloud Drive can handle. Too bad Amazon's browser-based music player is, shall we say… clunky? Fortunately, 
Make strong passwords. Make strong passwords. Our high school computer teacher beat the mantra into our heads, at least until the day we forgot our log on, a non-dictionary jumble that consisted of 39 upper- and lower-case letters, numbers, ampersands, exclamation points and any other special characters we could jam in there. After restoring our account, Mr. O'Donnell changed the mantra to, "Make kinda strong passwords." Microsoft MVP Troy Hunt analyzed the user information leaked in the recent LulzSec hack of Sony Pictures, and discovered that most people's passwords not only aren't kinda strong, but usually down-right crappy.
Everybody hates spam, but Microsoft hates spam more than most. The company apparently got sick of spending money trying to block the scads of spam the Rustock botnet was putting out on a daily basis, so it teamed up with federal prosecutors to crack down and wipe the botnet off the face of the Internet. And somehow, it worked! Today, the company rubbed its success in the face of the spammers by taking out quarter-page ads in two of Russia's biggest newspapers, listing the IP addresses of the domains that were shut down and warning... er, informing them of their day in court. 
The Beastie Boys had to fight for their right to party; we haven't heard any songs about Thessa, a 16 year old girl in Germany, having to engage in fisticuffs to earn her celebratory privileges, but we might next year. What should have been an otherwise pleasant, probably mildly boring 16th birthday party for the girl took a turn for the awesome when she forgot to set her Facebook birthday invitation to private. Next thing you know, 15,000 had RSVP'd. 
Windows PCs don't exactly have a reputation for security, but Microsoft's trying to change that. When smug know-it-alls claim that Windows PCs have more viruses than a public toilet, Microsoft points to the PatchGuard driver signing system on 64-bit Windows as their way of saying "Nuh-uh!" PatchGuard keeps the baddies from getting high-level privileges on Windows machines. Bad news: Kapersky's reporting that a new malware program that targets Windows 64-bit users has figured a way around the protection.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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