| Daily Deals 9/26/12: Samsung 830 256GB $180, Dell 24" IPS Monitor, and More Posted: 26 Sep 2012 10:30 AM PDT 
Top Deal: Installing an SSD as your boot drive can significantly increase the performance of your computer. Luckily, one of our favorite SSDs, the Samsung 830 series 256GB (MZ-7PC256B), is on sale today for $179.99 with $2.29 shipping at TigerDirect (normally $199.99, use coupon code: GHX71608). To read more about the Samsung 830, check out our review of it here. Laptops: Dell Inspiron 15R Special Edition 15.6" 1080p Laptop with Core i7, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 2GB AMD Radeon HD 7730M graphics for $849.99 with free shipping at Dell (normally $1,138.99 - use $150 coupon code: QH3XW509GT$BBL). |
| Maingear Alpha 24: Fully Loaded All-in-One Desktop for Gamers Posted: 26 Sep 2012 08:06 AM PDT  It's supposed to be common knowledge that all-in-one (AIO) desktop systems are ill equipped for heavy duty gaming, but if that's the case, good luck explaining Maingear's new Alpha 24 Super Stock. The Alpha 24 SS is truly the alpha of AIO systems, or at least it can be when going all-out during the configuration stage with large size solid state drive (SSD) storage and even an Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 graphics card.
Pricing starts at $1,349 and includes the following: - 24-inch 1920x1080 touchscreen display
- Intel Core i3 3240 processor (3.4GHz, 3MB L3 cache)
- 8GB Corsair DDR3-1333 memory
- Nvidia GeForce GTX 650 graphics card
- 1TB Seagate Barracuda 7200 RPM hard drive (64MB cache)
- 8X DVD burner
- Memory card reader
- 802.11n Wi-Fi; Bluetooth; GbE LAN
- 1.3MP webcam
- Windows 7 Home Premium 64-bit
That's not a bad setup, especially in an AIO form factor, but it's also just the tip of the configuration iceberg. Depending on how many bills you're willing to throw at this thing, you can opt for up to an Intel Core i7 3770K processor (add $254), 16GB of RAM (add $77), up to 256GB Crucial M4 mSATA SSD (add $245), up to 600GB Intel 320 Series SSD (add $960) or 2TB Seagate Barracuda HDD (add $50), 6X Blu-ray burner (add $220), up to a GeForce GTX 680 graphics card (add $508), and various other odds and ends. Fully loaded, you're looking at spending anywhere from $2,400 to over $3,000, dependent upon your SSD options. You don't have to do everything at once. Maingear claims the Alpha 24 SS is fully upgradeable, something that's still a rarity in the AIO space. 
"In this day and age, there shouldn't be a reason anyone would need to compromise for an all-in-one performance PC," says Wallace Santos, CEO and founder of Maingear. "Other all-in-one PC solutions pale in comparison to the Alpha 24 and can be summed up with just a few words: 1080p gaming set to Ultra, maxed anti-aliasing and tessellation." You can configure an Alpha 24 Super Stock starting today and it will ship on or around October 10, 2012. |
| Watch Out Amazon, Here Comes Barnes & Noble's Nook HD and Nook HD+ Tablets Posted: 26 Sep 2012 07:28 AM PDT  Feeling the heat from Amazon's new Kindle Fire and Kindle Fire HD models, Barnes & Noble responded today by announcing a pair of next generation tablets of its own, the Nook HD and Nook HD+. The Nook HD is a 7-inch slate that will cost $199 for the 8GB model and $229 for the 16GB model, while the Nook HD+ sports a 9-inch display and starts at $269 for 16GB or $299 for 32GB.
B&N is pitching the Nook HD as the lightest and highest resolution 7-inch tablet in the world. Compared to the Kindle Fire HD, the Nook HD is 20 percent lighter and nearly a half-inch narrower at 11.1 ounces (315 grams) and 5 inches wide, the company says. As for the display, it rocks a 1440x900 resolution "with an unprecedented 243 pixels per inch" and support for HD video playback up to 720p. That works out to 25 percent more pixels than the Kindle Fire HD. Rounding out the hardware specs is a dual-core 1.3GHz processor, 1GB of RAM, and that all-important microSD card slot that's too often neglected. You can pre-order a Nook HD now in two color choices -- Snow or Smoke -- and it will ship November 1. The Nook HD+ is a larger, sharper, and faster tablet, and also the lightest, lowest priced Full HD slate, according to B&N. It's 9-inch display features a 1920x1280 resolution and 256 PPI, which is just a hair under the third generation iPad's 264 PPI, and two more than the Kindle Fire HD (254 PPI). At 18.2 ounces (515 grams), the Nook HD+ is the lightest of the bunch. It does, however, share the same 1.5GHz dual-core OMAP 4470 processor as found in the Kindle Fire HD. Like the Nook HD, the Plus model has 1GB of RAM and a microSD card slot. "With the combination of the highest resolution screen, lightest weight and expansive access to content rendered in a digital quality never before seen, Nook HD is the world's best 7-inch media tablet," said William J. Lynch, Chief Executive Officer of Barnes & Noble. "We designed our larger format tablet Nook HD+ because we think there's big demand from customers for a super-light, extremely high quality 9-inch tablet, at half the price of the iPad. Both our 7-inch Nook HD and 9-inch Nook HD+ deliver an exceptional customer experience and we enthusiastically encourage customers to go to nook.com and learn more about them." The Nook HD+ is also available for pre-order today and will ship November 1. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| MSI Rolls A10 Trinity Powered GX60 Gaming Notebook with 'Super RAID' Posted: 26 Sep 2012 06:45 AM PDT  If you just assumed your next high-powered gaming notebook would sport Ivy Bridge inside, you should take a gander at MSI's new GX60 notebook. This thing sports a potent AMD foundation consisting of a quad-core A10 series "Trinity" processor (A10 4600M) flanked by a Radeon HD 7970M GPU. On paper, it's a solid looking one-two punch, and just the beginning of what appears to be a well-rounded gaming laptop.
The GX60 is a 15.6-inch machine with a Full HD 1080p (1920x1080) LED backlit display, up to 16GB of DDR3-1600 memory, DVD or Blu-ray reader/writer, 720p HD webcam, Killing Gaming Networking NIC, 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 4.0, three USB 3.0 ports, a single USB 2.0 port, HDMI output, and a few other bells and whistles. 
A couple of standout features include a backlit SteelSeries keyboard and so-called "Super RAID," which allows you to pair two mSATA SSDs in RAID 0 with a mechanical hard drive. In doing so, MSI claims data transfers can exceed 1,000MB/s. No word yet on price or availability. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
| Google Awards Bug Hunting Duo $5,000 for Discovering a Windows Flaw Posted: 26 Sep 2012 06:13 AM PDT  Bug collecting can be quite the lucrative hobby, provided they're of the software variety. Google routinely pays out three-, four-, and sometimes five-figure bounties to bug hunters who find and report vulnerabilities in the company's Chrome browser, but yesterday, it took the unusual step of paying a pair of software gurus $5,000 for reporting an issue in Windows.
"Occasionally, we issue special rewards for bugs outside of Chrome, particularly where the bug is very severe and/or we are able to partially work around the issue," Google's Chrome team stated in a blog post. Eetu Luodemaa and Joni Vähämäki from independent software vendor (ISV) Documill were the recipients of the $5,000 award, which tied for the second largest sum awarded in this round of bug bounties. They discovered a kernel memory corruption issue in Windows. 
Bug bounty rockstar Sergey Glazunov also received $5,000 for a single bug discovery, along with a $10,000 bounty for rooting out a cross-site scripting vulnerability in Chrome that, if left unchecked, it would have allowed remote attackers to inject arbitrary web script or HTML code. Google paid out $29,500 in all for this round of bug hunting focused on vulnerabilities found in Chrome 22. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook |
