General Gaming Article |
- Operation Upgrade: How We Rebuilt Three Old PCs, Part By Part
- Western Digital Expects HDD Prices to Return to Pre-Flood Levels in 2013, But Analysts Don't
- DNSChanger Server Deactivation Wasn't A Big Deal, ISPs Say
- Microsoft Only Expects Modest Surface Tablet Sales Through the End of 2012
- HP's All-In-One Desktop Family Grows By Four
- AMD Begins Funeral Procession for Five Phenom II Processors
- RIM Chief Discusses Company Woes, Sees 'Great Future' with BlackBerry 10
- Google Proposes $22.5 Million Settlement in Apple Privacy Suit
- Chrome Takes Another Step Toward Plugin-free Web with Latest Beta
| Operation Upgrade: How We Rebuilt Three Old PCs, Part By Part Posted: 10 Jul 2012 02:18 PM PDT Note: This feature first appeared in the July issue of Maximum PC. Some pricing info may have changed. The PC upgrade is, sadly, a lost art form today. Fifteen years ago, the vast majority of PC buyers bought machines with long-term plans to upgrade them as newer, more capable parts became available. Today, most people would rather just chuck an aged PC into an e-waste bin and buy a completely new computer. We say boo to that. A well-thought-out upgrade can be the most economical option, extending the life of your PC's still-useful parts—not to mention giving you a tremendous sense of satisfaction at your resourcefulness. The trick is in knowing where and when an upgrade makes sense. Sometimes the lure of an upgrade can walk you down a path you never should have started on. For example, it may be tempting to buy that Core 2 QX9650 on eBay for $300, but you'd be much better off upgrading the CPU and motherboard to a Core i7 instead. On the following pages we detail three distinct PC builds desperately in need of performance boosts. We walk you through our thought process in determining realistic upgrade goals for each PC and how and why we choose the parts to get there. Before and after benchmarks reveal the fruits of our labor. While these are just three case studies, let them serve as useful examples of sound upgrading practices that you can apply toward the resurrection of any elderly PC, within reason. The first step is always to thoroughly weigh the costs/benefits. Some PCs, after all, truly should be retired.
Because We CanOne of Dell's first PCs to eschew proprietary parts is just begging for an upgrade
The Dell XPS 630i was budget state-of-the-art in 2008, but is now in serious need of more performance. THE MACHINE Crank back the clock to 2008 and you get Dell's XPS 630i. A nicely outfitted gaming rig for its time, the XPS 630i sported a 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600, a GeForce 8800 GT, a 750-watt PSU, and—get this for a last-decade flashback—a Hitachi 320GB 7,200rpm HDD. In 2008, this was a decent machine in a very nice brushed-aluminum case for around $1,500. What made the XPS 630i particularly special was its use of off-the-shelf industry components. Dell has long been kicked around by the media for using proprietary power supplies and motherboards in its machines. Dell's defense has been that the changes were made to improve the specs. For example, Dell was one of the first consumer PC makers to use larger, server PSUs and plugs in its machines—a practice that bugged everyone, including us. Today those server power plugs aren't unusual at all, but a staple of ultra-high-performance machines, so it seems like Dell was on to something. But we digress…. More to the point: The XPS 630i was one of the first rigs in which Dell exorcised proprietary parts. It's industry standard all the way, or so the company said at the time. Well, baby, we're going to find out. THE MISSION Since the XPS 630i began its life as a budget gaming rig, we thought we'd keep the machine's mission the same, with upgrades that would transform it into a budget gaming rig fit for the modern day. Since we've always been fond of XPS 630i's case, we had no intentions of upgrading the enclosure—just pretty much everything else. THE UPGRADESIf you run old games or a browser all day, the classic Core 2 Quad Q6600 is plenty of computer—but we wanted more. We pondered a CPU upgrade for about five seconds, but the prices of older LGA775 chips and the performance it would yield didn't seem worth it, particularly since we didn't know if the board in the Dell would support higher FSB chips or even 45nm parts.
We next considered an X79 board paired with a 3.6GHz Core i7-3820, but most X79 boards are simply too wide for this chassis. We also had to mind the Intel-style front-panel connector, which rules out any Asus board without doing some wiring surgery. Then we remembered the internals from our May 2012 "Build a PC on Any Budget" story. The Sweet Spot PC and its Core i5-2500K part seemed perfect for this upgrade. Yes, Ivy Bridge would have been nice, but we simply didn't have access to the budget IVB parts yet. Since the Sweet Spot indeed seemed like the sweet spot, we figured we could just migrate all the internals over to the XPS 630i. Well, almost all of them. We hit a problem with our GeForce GTX 560 Ti 448 card. It requires an 8-pin PCIe plug, and the Dell only gave us two 6-pin units, so we opted for a slightly pricier XFX Radeon HD 7870 card instead. It's faster than the 560 Ti 448 card. Another option would have been to spring for a GeForce GTX 680, but that seemed to break our budget mantra. The machine originally came with the 32-bit flavor of Windows Vista Home Premium, so that was ejected for 64-bit Windows 7 Home Premium. The 320GB hard drive was dismissed from its boot duties in favor of a 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 drive. THE RESULTWe've always wondered if Dell was true to its word when it pledged that the XPS line used industry-standard parts. Our experience here shows that Dell wasn't fibbing, provided you stick with a narrow board that uses a standard Intel-style FP connector. The Gigabyte GA-Z68XP-UD3 fit like a glove. The only sticky part was that the front USB and FireWire connector cables were too short. There are two ways to overcome this: $5 extension cables or a $20 NZXT internal USB expansion. We opted for the latter. You'll also need to pick up a $5 internal cable for the front FireWire port if you plan to use it; we just left it disconnected since the board has a rear FireWire port, too. The original 320GB drive gets erased and reused for storage to keep costs down. It's easy enough to swap in a 1TB or 2TB drive, though.
AFTER The Dell XPS 630i was surprisingly easy to upgrade and exceeded our expectations in performance.
The performance difference was like night and day. If you're idling a Core 2-class machine today and wondering if you really need to upgrade, we say hell yes (unless you get paid by the hour and want things to go slower.) The 4GHz Core i5-2500K smokes the 2.66GHz Core 2 Quad Q6600 part in everything we could run. And believe us, some apps would not run, such as Sony Vegas 9, which gave us "out of memory" errors in 32-bit Vista. In Lightroom, we saw a 257 percent improvement; in ProShow Producer 4 we saw a 181 percent boost; and in MainConcept the difference was 178 percent. Even in general use, it was hard to believe how far we've come in just a few years. Thanks to the SSD, our boots went from two-minute affairs to 30‑second ones. In the end, we're declaring mission accomplished, because this old dog now sings. OLD LYNNFIELD GETS NEW LIFEThe LGA1156 socket is a dead end, but it's still plenty fast
BEFORE
At two years old, this CyberPower Gamer Xtreme 3200 can get a boost from the replacement of a few key components. The MACHINECyberPower PC's Gamer Xtreme 3200 is only 14 months newer than the Dell XPS 630i, but what a difference that time makes. The Xtreme 3200 packs the dual-GPU-based GeForce GTX 295 (two GeForce GTX 285 chips), a 2.66GHz Core i5-750, 4GB of DDR3/1600 RAM, and a 1.5TB Seagate Barracuda hard drive. When new, this machine sold for $1,600. In 2009 dollars, that's a pretty good deal for this much hardware, especially when you consider that it packs a dual-GPU graphics card. Much of the credit goes to the Core i5-750 chip, which made Intel's new Nehalem architecture affordable for the masses but that felt wasteful. Yes, we'd pick up new technologies such as SATA 6Gb/s and the like, but the Core i5-750 is still very serviceable and really only two years old. With that decided, our mission was to boost the PC's performance capability and make it DirectX 11-ready with a few key upgrades. The UpgradesWe picked two main upgrades: the first was to dump the GeForce GTX 295 for a GeForce GTX 680 card. The original GeForce GTX 295 sold for $500, so swapping it out for the $500 EVGA GeForce GTX 680 card seems apt. This gives us modern API support, higher frame rates, and—over time—a savings in power, too, as dual-GPU cards don't exactly sip power.
The second big upgrade was a 120GB Corsair Force GT SSD. Using the second-gen SandForce controller, the NANDs in this SSD are a bit faster than those in the OCZ SSD we used in the Dell, so we decided to splurge a bit.A third, less significant upgrade was adding 8GB of DDR3/1600. Yeah, 4GB is fine for most chores, but, what the hey, memory is still cheap. That brings the machine up to a total of 12GB of DDR3/1600. We also decided that since the machine is a bit older now, we'd push the overclock a bit harder. The Lynnfield CPU is overclocked by increasing the base clock (remember that?), so we increased it from 160MHz to 175MHz. That takes us to 3.5GHz, and with Turbo Boost on, we saw the clocks hitting the 3.8GHz range. The last upgrade was moving from Windows Vista to Windows 7. We long ago made peace with Vista after Microsoft released SP1 and SP2, but we've become so accustomed to Windows 7 that we think it's worth the $100.
AFTERA modern GPU and SSD and a bit more RAM do wonders for performance.
THE RESULT We didn't expect the same stellar performance difference with the Cyber‑Power PC as we got with the Dell rig. After all, that machine received completely new innards. But despite being the most modest upgrade here, the CyberPower surprised us with its improved performance. The combination of the increased RAM footprint, slightly higher clocks speeds, SSD, new GPU, and clean OS install gave us more than we expected in a few benchmarks. Sony Vegas Pro 9, surprisingly, saw a 47 percent performance bump. Adobe Lightroom also achieved a very healthy increase of 79 percent. In gaming, we saw an 86 percent jump in Far Cry 2, and our DirectX 11 test, STALKER: CoP, actually ran. In some tests, the results were more as expected, though. Main Concept Reference and ProShow Producer 4, for example, gave us about a 10 percent improvement, which matched our 10 percent overclock. Overall, we think our upgrades make sense and extend the machine's service life. We might consider this stage one of our upgrade. Perhaps next year it'll be time to dump the Core i5-750 for Intel's next-generation mainstream socket, the LGA1150 and Haswell CPU. | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
| ORIGINAL BUILD | ||
|---|---|---|
| CPU | 2.8GHz Core i7-920 Running at 3.5GHz | |
| RAM | 16GB Corsair Vengeance DDR3/1600 | |
| MOTHERBOARD | Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD3R | |
| GPU | Sapphire Radeon HD 7950 | |
| Cooler | Thermalright TRUE-120 1366 | |
| HDD | 1TB WD Caviar Black | |
| ODD | LG Blu-ray player | |
| OS | 64-bit Windows 7 Professional | |
| PSU | Thermaltake Element S / Corsair 850 TX | |
Here's our aging warrior after the first round of upgrades in May—still X58, but with a modern GPU and more RAM.
THE MACHINE
In our May 2012 issue's Build It section, we took a $1,400 gaming PC from our September 2009 issue and gave it a modest upgrade. The original rig was the midrange box in a trio of lean-year Dream Machines and was built around an Intel Core i7-920 and an ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2. It had three 2GB DDR3/1333 DIMMs, a 1TB hard drive, an LG Blu-ray drive, and an 850W Corsair power supply. The case was a Thermaltake Element S mid-tower.
In the course of our May upgrade, we took that aging PC and boosted it from 6GB of DDR3 RAM to 12GB (by buying a 16GB kit and using only three DIMMs). We also swapped the ancient, power-hungry dual-GPU card for a sleek Radeon HD 7950, but otherwise left the rig unchanged. The goal was to offer an immediate performance boost while paving the way for a second, more comprehensive round of upgrades down the line. That time is now.
THE MISSION
The Core i7-920 was an enthusiast CPU back in the day, and this Hyper-Threading-enabled quad-core is still no slouch. In fact, we could take the upgrades we've already made, add an SSD, and call it a day—and we wouldn't blame anyone who stops there. We'd still be stuck with a dead-end socket that has no feasible upgrade path, so we're biting the bullet and going for the major upgrade.
Since X58 was Intel's enthusiast platform at the time, we want to stay in the enthusiast realm while offering a generous upgrade path, so we'll need a CPU with plenty of juice now and a motherboard with room to grow. We hate to run a fancy rig without an SSD to improve load times and all-around system responsiveness, so we won't.
THE UPGRADE
We'll keep the RAM and GPU from May's upgrade, as well as the case, power supply, Blu-ray drive, and hard drive from the original build. Everything else gets an overhaul. In place of the Core i7-920, we'll use Intel's Core i7-3820. We briefly considered keeping the X58 platform and upgrading the CPU to a hexa-core Core i7-970, but they're $650 new and around $525 used. The Core i7-970 would add performance for multithreaded apps, but paying so much for a CPU on a dead-end socket didn't sit well with us. The Core i7-3820 is a quad-core Sandy Bridge-E part with Hyper-Threading that overclocks well despite not being an unlocked part. And our internal benchmarks indicate that its performance is competitive with older Westmere hexa-core chips anyway, so there's no point in buying the i7-970 when we can get the i7-3820 and a new X79 motherboard for the same price
| UPGRADES | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| PART | URL | PRICE | |
| CPU | Intel Core i7-3820 | www.intel.com | $300 |
| Motherboard | Intel DX79SI | www.intel.com | $270 |
| Cooler | Xigmatek Aegir | www.xigmatek.com | $68 |
| SSD | 240GB SanDisk ExtremeSSD | www.sandisk.com | $290 |
| Front-panel USB 3.0 | Biostar USB 3.0 Adapter | www.biostar-usa.com | $14 |
| 5.25-to-3.5-inch Drive Bay Adapter | Silverstone FP55 | www.silverstonetek.com | $16 |
| Front Panel Extensions | NZXT Front Panel Connector Extension | www.nzxt.com | $8 |
| Total | $966 | ||
We'll recycle the three 4GB DIMMs from the first part of our upgrade, and add the fourth. This is why we bought a 16GB kit instead of a 12GB kit in May—so we'd have the extra DIMM ready when it was time to go quad-channel.
Because of LGA2011's integrated universal backplate, we'll need a new cooler—
Thermaltake doesn't sell an LGA2011 mounting kit for the Ultra Extreme 120. We like Xigmatek's Aegir due to its direct-contact heat pipes and powerful cooling performance.
Last we'll add an SSD. Solid-state drives dramatically reduce load times and come with blazing-fast read and write speeds. SanDisk's 240GB ExtremeSSD is a speedy SandForce-based 6Gb/s SATA SSD and is price-competitive with others in its class. 240GB is generous enough that we won't need to micro-manage programs, though we'll still want to make sure media and documents are kept on the 1TB drive.
Because the Element S is an older chassis, it has a few problems of its own. It doesn't have front-panel USB 3.0 ports, and though it shipped with 2.5-inch drive‑bay adapters, they've long since vanished into the depths of the Lab. The front-panel connectors are just a few inches too short to reach the pins on the motherboard, though we split the blame for that between Intel and Thermaltake. Fortunately, all of those problems are easily solvable. Biostar makes an inexpensive 3.5-inch bay device with two USB 3.0 ports on an internal header, and Silverstone makes a 5.25-inch bay adapter that accommodates a 3.5-inch device and two 2.5-inch SSDs. A few NZXT front-panel connector extenders, and our case is ready for 2012.
And here's what it looks like now, complete with quad-channel RAM, a hefty Turbo overclock, speedy SSD, and front-panel USB 3.0.
THE RESULTS
| BENCHMARKS | ||
|---|---|---|
| PRE-UPGRADE | ||
| Vegas Pro (sec) | 3,234 | 2,322 |
| Lightroom 2.6 (sec) | 394 | 256 |
| ProShow 4 (sec) | 1,184 | 857 |
| MainConcept 1.6 (sec) | 2,268 | 1,711 |
| stalker: CoP (fps) | 60.3 | 61.2 |
| Far Cry 2 (fps) | 1,185 | 121.8 |
Color us unsurprised: A modern Sandy Bridge-E quad-core at 4.4GHz trounces a 2008-era Bloomfield quad at 3.5GHz. Thanks to the overclocked i7-3820 and the SandForce SSD, we saw huge gains in CPU- and drive-limited benchmarks. Our MainConcept Reference score was 33 percent faster than the pre-upgrade rig, ProShow Producer showed 38 percent improvements, our Vegas Pro 9 score went up 39 percent, and our Lightroom test was as whopping 54 percent speedier.
With the GPU and RAM upgrades we made a few months ago, we've gone from an aging X58 gaming PC with a hot, slow GPU and a dead-end motherboard to a fresh, speedy gaming PC on Intel's latest enthusiast socket—one that doesn't lack for modern amenities like front-panel USB 3.0, a capacious boot SSD, or modern graphics.
Granted, the only parts this machine has in common with the one we built in September 2009 are the case, power supply, optical drive, and hard drive, but it's still the same rig, right? Or maybe it isn't. What's important is that it's blazing fast, actually draws less power than the original, and is ready for the future.
UPGRADING DOs AND DON'Ts
Adherence to a few simple guidelines can make your upgrade go much more smoothly
DON'T REUSE YOUR THERMAL PASTE
If you upgrade your CPU or heatsink, you may be tempted to just plop the old heatsink back in place, but it's generally recommended that you clean off the old thermal paste and re-apply fresh paste to the new CPU or heatsink. If the old thermal paste is gunked on like concrete, it may take more than elbow grease to clean it off. We use Arctic Silver's ArctiClean, but a bit of 99 percent isopropyl alcohol also works in a pinch.
DON'T UNDERESTIMATE YOUR POWER NEEDS
Just upgraded from a single card to a dual-GPU card? Sure, the plugs may fit, but if your PSU is sagging under the load on a cool day, it'll get even worse when temperatures rise. It can be tough to gauge the power requirements, so check with the GPU vendor for what your new card requires.
DON'T UNDERESTIMATE YOUR COOLING NEEDS
If you just swapped a G-series Pentium for a Core i7-2700K you should probably upgrade your heatsink fan, too, as a faster CPU usually means more heat. If you're using the stock Intel cooler, keep in mind that the budget chip's cooler might look the same, but it's actually different from the higher-performing heatsinks.
DON'T THROW AWAY THOSE OLD PARTS
So you just added a second optical drive and upgraded the GPU. Just throw away that old bezel and expansion card slot cover, right? Not so fast, buddy. We recommend that you save those parts for the future when you decide to give away the case. That's usually when you start looking for that old bezel or other parts that you thought you didn't need anymore.
DON'T REUSE YOUR OLD WINDOWS INSTALL
We know, we know, one of the pains of doing a major upgrade is dealing with an OS reinstall. However, when your upgrade involves swapping the motherboard and chipset, it's recommended that you do a clean install. You can get away with just letting Windows redetect the new hardware, but a clean install will protect you against any potential problems.
DO PERFORM A BACKUP
Before you do your upgrade, we recommend that you take the time to perform a full backup of your files. Why? Because this is the time when something breaks and the last person who touched it gets blamed for the breaking, even if you had nothing to do with it. So consider this your public service announcement.
DO MOVE YOUR DEFAULT LIBRARIES
If you just upgraded to an SSD, don't forget to move your default library location from that limited-space SSD to your HDD. Do this by clicking the Start button on Windows 7 and selecting Documents. In the left-hand pane, expand the Documents entry by clicking it and then right-click My Documents. Select the Location tab and click Move to move it to your HDD.
DO TIDY UP THE INTERIOR
If you have four years' worth of cat hair circulating in your PC, it's time to clean it. We use a vacuum cleaner to carefully suck up the dust bunnies. Take care not to get the vacuum so close as to remove components from your motherboard and GPU. Also clean the case's filters and vents of dust. If your wiring is a mess, now is also a perfect time to make it ship-shape.
DO MAKE THE JUMP TO AHCI
If your machine is old enough, you likely did not have AHCI, or Adaptive Host Control Interface, enabled, as many motherboards left it off by default. AHCI lets you take advantage of advanced capabilities such as support for booting to devices larger than 2.2TB, native command queuing, and hot swapping. You should only enable AHCI if you're doing a clean install of the OS, which would be the case if you're installing a hard drive or SSD. If you enable AHCI without doing a clean install, Windows 7 will fail to boot until you turn it off.
DO CHECK YOUR AIRFLOW
Since you're in your box tinkering around, we recommend that you take a look at the case's airflow. Generally, you want air flowing from the front of the case to the rear of the case where it's exhausted. You can reposition fans and adjust fan speeds to help with this. We generally recommend running more intake fans than exhaust fans in dustier environments. This should aid positive air pressure in the case and help reduce dust issues.
Western Digital Expects HDD Prices to Return to Pre-Flood Levels in 2013, But Analysts Don't
Posted: 10 Jul 2012 11:03 AM PDT
Just in case you haven't gotten the memo yet: HDD prices haven't returned to pre-flood levels, and don't expect them to anytime soon. Don't take our word for it; that information's coming straight from the horse's mouth, as a European sales director for Western Digital -- one of the two big HDD manufacturers -- recently said that prices won't drop that low until next year.
Sure, the production facilities are fully up and running, but WD's Ian Keene says that the company still needs to recoup some of the massive costs associated with battling the devastating Thailand floods.
"There are a lot of added costs right now," he told The Register. "WD spent a lot of money on capital damage, running (under-utilised) factories that still paid people and mitigating risks of (future) floods." He also says that shifting some of the company's manufacturing capabilities to Malaysia in response to the floods has also added additional costs.
Industry analysts at IHS iSuppli aren't nearly as optimistic. In a June report, iSuppli said it doesn't expect prices to drop to pre-flood levels until 2014. The firm notes that just two manufacturers, Western Digital and Seagate, control over 85 percent of the HDD market after a series of mega-mergers in late 2011 -- which gives them the ability to keep prices skewed towards higher levels.
iSuppli analysts also point out that during the height of the floods, OEMs signed long-term agreements with HDD makers in order to ensure availability, but those agreements locked hard drive prices in at rates that are around 20 percent higher than pre-flood levels.
DNSChanger Server Deactivation Wasn't A Big Deal, ISPs Say
Posted: 10 Jul 2012 10:37 AM PDT
The e-sky is falling! The e-sky is falling! At least, you'd think so with all the hype the DNSChanger Trojan received in the days leading up to the FBI's disconnection of its servers. It was supposed to spell the end of the Internet for hundreds of thousands of innocent Web goers! Well, the feds flipped the switch yesterday; did the world end? Not so much.
Computerworld and PCMag.com checked in with several of the top ISPs around the country and found that despite all the doom and gloom, the disconnection of DNSChanger's servers didn't really affect the lives of too many people. Verizon and Comcast each reported that less than 0.1 of their customers lost DNS access from the switch, Cox says that less than 1 percent of its users felt the change, and AT&T said there was "very little impact" on service.
The various ISPs had been actively contacting users infected by DNSChanger in the days leading up to disconnection. Subscribers who didn't heed the warning were either automatically switched to their ISP's DNS servers or pointed to an information page that explained what happened, depending on the provider. Those band-aids only work for a limited time, however; the handful offormerly infected users will need to point their PCs to a new DNS connection sometime soon to avoid an interruption in service.
Microsoft Only Expects Modest Surface Tablet Sales Through the End of 2012
Posted: 10 Jul 2012 10:06 AM PDT
Despite all the media interest (and in spite of all the OEM heartache) swirling around the Surface tablet, Microsoft doesn't expect the Windows 8 slate to give the iPad a serious run for its money, at least this year. At Microsoft's Worldwide Partner Conference yesterday, company CEO Steve Ballmer said that rather than shooting for the moon and crashing and burning, Microsoft only expects to sell "a few million" Surface tablets in 2012.
By comparison, Apple shipped 11.8 million iPads in the last quarter alone. IPad sales just keep rolling and increasing on a quarterly basis.
Why the low estimate? There could be a few reasons. For one, it could be an honest assessment of a new tablet maker's odds of siphoning off some of those massive iPad sales, especially considering that Windows 8 and the Surface tablet aren't launching until late in the year and the slate is expected to carry a hefty price tag. Plus, setting up a component chain, manufacturing and solid distribution takes time, even for Microsoft.
Two, maybe disgruntled OEM partners like Acer founder Stan Shih are right. Perhaps Microsoft never planned on selling massive numbers of Surface tablets to begin with and is instead taking the bull by the horns to promote Windows 8 to consumers while simultaneously inspiring OEM partners to build better tablets.
However, Steve Ballmer just told CRN yesterday that, "Right now we are working real hard on the Surface. That's the focus. That's our core." He said that while promising to fight Apple tooth-and-nail in every possible market segment.
That opens the door for a third possible reason for the low estimate: maybe Microsoft's low-balling sales estimates just to get some of the OEM heat off of its back and convince Shih and crew to pipe down, already.
What do you think? Will the Surface tablet take off at launch, fizzle out completely or just wait until 2013 to get some solid momentum under its belt?
HP's All-In-One Desktop Family Grows By Four
Posted: 10 Jul 2012 06:54 AM PDT
Hewlett-Packard is rolling out four brand new all-in-one desktop models with prices starting as low as $650. From top to bottom, the new models include the HP Compaq Elite 8300, HP Compaq Pro 6300, HP Envy 23, and HP Pavilion 23. The four models are split between catering to business users (Compaq Elite 8300 and Compaq Pro 6300) and home consumers (Envy 23 and Pavilion 23).
For whatever reason, HP isn't ready to divulge the specific hardware of each machine, though the company did share some general info. The top-of-the-line Compaq Elite 8300 will boast both second (Sandy Bridge) and third (Ivy Bridge) generation Core vPro processors, a 23-inch display, Intel HD Graphics, optional multitouch technology, 2MP webcam, dual microphones, and SRS Premium Sound Pro.
HP's Compaq Pro 6300 is a little smaller with a 21.5-inch display. It too has a 2MP webcam, along with internal speakers and business friendly features like HP Face Recognition and various data safeguards.
For home consumers, the Envy 23 is a 23-inch AIO with multicore processor options, advanced graphics, and up to 2TB of storage. Blu-ray and TV tuner are optional add-ons. The Pavilion 23 is also a 23-inch AIO and will ship with a choice of Intel or AMD processors.
The Compaq Elite 8300 starts at $879 ($929 with touchscreen) and will be available on September 10; the Compaq Pro 6300 starts at $799 and will ship September 10. Both the Envy 23 ($950 and up) and Pavilion 23 ($650 and up) will ship on August 2.
Image Credit: HP
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AMD Begins Funeral Procession for Five Phenom II Processors
Posted: 10 Jul 2012 06:33 AM PDT
All good things come to an end, and for AMD fans, the end is nigh for the Sunnyvale chip designer's 45nm SOI (Silicon On Insulator) processors, which will have reached end of life (EOL) status by December 2012. Among the list of soon-to-be deceased chips are five Phenom II processors, including two quad-core X4 CPUs and half a dozen dual-core X2 parts. A moment of silence is in order.
According to Fudzilla, AMD has begun notifying its partners that the following processors are about to be marked as EOL:
- Phenom II X4 965 (3.4GHz, 8MB cache, 125W TDP)
- Phenom II X4 955 (3.2GHz, 6MB cache, 125W TDP)
- Phenom II X2 565 (3.4GHz, 6MB cache, 80W TDP)
- Phenom II X2 560 (3.3GHz, 6MB cache, 80W TDP)
- Phenom II X2 555 (3.2GHz, 6MB cache, 80W TDP)
The first to reach EOL is the X4 965, which has a date with the Grim Reaper in September 2012. All the rest are scheduled for forced retirement in December 2012.
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RIM Chief Discusses Company Woes, Sees 'Great Future' with BlackBerry 10
Posted: 10 Jul 2012 06:11 AM PDT
It's fair to question Research In Motion's (RIM's) future and wonder if company CEO Thorsten Heins can right the ship. Skepticism comes with the territory when you tell investors your company lost $518 million last quarter, dropped $2.1 billion in sales compared to one year ago, and plan to cut 5,000 employees. Heins understands the grim outlook from those on the outside looking in, but from where he stands, RIM is a "great company" with a "great future" ahead of it.
Before looking to the future, it's important to realize what went wrong. According to Heins, RIM's mistake was putting too much focus on globalizing its smartphone strategy early on and not enough on its high-speed connectivity strategy.
"What also happened, in the U.S., was the drive to 4G started, and it got accelerated," Heins explains to CIO.com in an interview. "Carriers were actually leapfrogging from what they wanted to do with 3G, like HSPA+. They leapfrogged and put a lot of investment into 4G LTE. I think we weren't ready for it. We were busy building our global portfolio."
Going forward, Heins believes BlackBerry 10 will silence RIM's critics and "absolutely prove" once and for all that the company is still an innovative one.
"I think you will be writing that you are surprised by the performance and the user experience of the BlackBerry 10 product, that it helps you achieve you daily objectives but also have fun" Heins said. "I think you will be writing that if BlackBerry gets its execution right and straight then the company has a great future."
Read the rest of the interview over at CIO.com.
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Google Proposes $22.5 Million Settlement in Apple Privacy Suit
Posted: 10 Jul 2012 05:51 AM PDT
Google is attempting to hammer out a record-setting $22.5 million settlement offer to the Federal Trade Commission (FTC) over charges that the sultan of search effectively sidestepped privacy settings in Apple's Safari browser. If agreed upon, the $22.5 million settlement would be the largest fine ever handed out to a single entity by the FTC, which has ramped up efforts to ensure rights of online users aren't violated.
According to a report in The Wall Street Journal, Google used sneaky computer code to fool Safari into letting it monitor users who had blocked the software from tracking them. WSJ first broke the story, after which time Google promptly disabled the code.
Google contends it didn't get caught with its hand in the cookie jar, however, and says that the tracking scheme wasn't intentional, nor did it cause any harm to Safari users. Be that as it may, this isn't Google's first rodeo with the FTC over privacy concerns. Back in March of last year, Google signed a consent decree with the FTC after being charged with using deceptive tactics on its Buzz social network. Part of that decree included agreeing to implementing a "comprehensive privacy program" to assess privacy risks of its products and services.
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Chrome Takes Another Step Toward Plugin-free Web with Latest Beta
Posted: 10 Jul 2012 05:46 AM PDT
Browser plugins have had a huge say in our Web browsing experience over the past many years but now their existence and prevalence is what's preventing us from experiencing the Web in the best way possible across our many Internet-enabled devices. The good news is that not only are plugins dispensable but they are on their way out. However, don't expect them to vanish overnight. As opposed to a sudden and spectacular knockout punch, they are more likely to fall to a succession of small blows like the one Google just delivered in the form of the latest Chrome Beta.
The latest Chrome Beta features two new technologies that have been on the cards for quite some time now. First up is the getUserMedia API, which lets web apps access a user's webcam and microphone without any plugin. Support for the getUserMedia API, according to Google software engineer Robert Toscano, is the first major step on the road to WebRTC, an open source standard aimed at enabling real-time communications within the browser sans any plugin.
In a blog post on the official Google Chrome blog, Toscano shared a number of cool apps that leverage this technology: "The getUserMedia API also allows sites to create cool new experiences that weren't previously possible in the browser. For example, Romuald Quantin and Magnus Dahlstrand at Stinkdigital have created a Magic Xylophone that you can play just by waving your hands in front of the camera."
"Paul Neave has also made a beautiful photo booth app called Webcam Toy. It has dozens of crazy effects to explore--my favorites are 'Snow' and 'Fire.' Check out the Chromium blog to learn more about getUserMedia and follow WebRTC on Google+ for new discussions and demos."
Another cool new feature is support for the Gamepad Javascript API. Hitherto, gamepad support in Chrome was restricted to Google's Native Client (NaCL). But that is no longer the case and developers can now use the Gamepad Javascript API to access input from any standard gamepad.
Image Credit: Google
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