Cool Gizmos – Gizmora

Albatron Technology is hot for Hannover, Germany for this year’s CeBIT 2007 Exhibition, one of the top three computer tradeshows in the world. As always, Albatron is eager to showcase its major product lines to the world and will arrive full force with top performing VGA cards, Mainboards, Memory Modules and Mini-PC Systems.
      This year’s Mainboard and VGA products will include the latest wave of technology sweeping through the market including mainboards supporting CoreTM 2 Duo, CoreTM 2 Quad and CoreTM 2 Extreme CPUs. Also displayed will be a full line of AMD based AM2 mainboards, an MXM graphics module and the latest DirectX 10 VGA cards. Several product demonstrations will be on hand giving customers an up-close look at Albatron’s reliable quality and top performance.
      No doubt that all eyes will be on a much anticipated AMD based Mini-ITX Mainboard (model name pending late Feb. release date) capable of supporting the latest AMD technology and a full range of AMD’s latest Dual Core and 64-bit processors. This diminutive Mini-ITX mainboard is no bigger than your outstretched hand (17×17cm) but brims with power, versatility and capability. It boasts ferocious performance with HyperTransportTM technology supported by 2 GB of Dual Channel DDR II memory using two SO-DIMMs. It will boast one of the market’s most powerfully integrated graphics engine. Also, SATA II with RAID and GBit LAN will allow users nonstop surfing and downloading. This board is also very well connected with 8 possible USB ports, IEEE1394 and even an HDMI connector.

An affordable 320MB edition of nVidia’s GeForce high end 8800 GTS is the card making the headlines and with an RRP of well under £200 it should bring cutting edge gaming to a wider audience.
     As for the specs they make good reading: 500MHz core clock frequency, 96 unified shaders zipping along at 1.2GHz and 1.6GHz effective memory. All this equates to a mighty 26.4bn texels per second and a massive 64GBps of memory bandwidth. For multimedia fans you’ll be pleased to know the card is HDCP enabled and offers up dual DVI-I and is VGA capable via a DVI to VGA converter. As for gamers they obviously get Vista-friendly DirectX 10 compatibility.
     Naturally all the usual suspects have made an appearance with offerings from ECS (£155 ex VAT), EVGA (349 euros), PNY (£174.90), Albatron, XFX and Leadtek (the last three withheld pricing). Meanwhile Foxconn is releasing vanilla and overclocked versions of the card. It claims the latter provides between 10 and 15 per cent more performance and will retail for £210 excluding VAT.

The ScreenDuo measures roughly 4″ wide, 2.5″ tall, and 0.75″ thick, and features a 2.5″ diagonal QVGA display. It has a four-way directional pad and a couple of buttons up front, in addition to three buttons located along the top edge of the unit.
         A handy stand pops out of the back of the unit, making it possible to mount on a desk for easy viewing. Asus also throws in a USB cable to connect the ScreenDuo to your PC, and that’s where the fun begins.
         Windows Vista’s SideShow feature was conceived to allow laptops to display information on a secondary display, but that functionality hasn’t been limited to the mobile world. Auxiliary displays are nothing new on the desktop, of course—I’ve been running dual monitors for years. However, SideShow isn’t quite the same as a secondary monitor. Instead, it’s designed to be an interface for what Microsoft calls gadgets—mini applications similar to widgets on the Mac.

ROMANIAN PRESIDENT Traian Basescu told Microsoft’s Supreme Vole, William Gates III that his country’s IT industry would be nothing if it was not for pirated Windows software.
Basescu met Gates at the opening of a global technical centre in Bucharest.
       According to Reuters, Basescu said, during a joint news conference with Gates, that piracy helped the younger generation discover computers. It set off the development of the IT industry in Romania. It also helped Romanians improve their creative capacity in the IT industry, which has become famous around the world. He claimed that all this piracy “ten years ago” was an investment in Romania’s friendship with Microsoft and with Bill Gates.
       Gates didn’t say a dickey bird as we suspect it was not the sort of thing that he wanted to hear. We would have thought that Gates would not have supported any piracy in any country even if it helped the nation get where it was today. Romania introduced anti-piracy legislation 10 years ago but only tends to make arrests when it has to make a point to the EU, or a pirate forgets to pay his bribe money to the local constabulary..

Lenovo today announced the new ThinkCentre A55 Small Form Factor (SFF) desktop PC featuring Intel Core 2 Duo processor and the Microsoft Windows Vista operating system.
      Lenovo ThinkCentre A55 SFF is approximately 64 percent smaller than Lenovo’s traditional tower form factor and 25 percent smaller than its conventional small desktop. Its smaller footprint can free up desk space for other items, such as an extra monitor for dual-monitor work environments or a personal printer and scanner, the company’s press release says.
      The ThinkCentre A55 SFF, designed and priced for small business customers starting at $579..

Faith-go Japan has launched a gaming rig based on an AMD quad core platform. The machine takes benefit of Athlon 64 FX-70 for the computational power. If you are still not satisfied with the quad core than go for the 8 core processor, I know it’s hard to believe but that’s true, the computer can be upgraded with 8 core processor. In addition to the high processing power, the PC packs NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX (768MB) for true-to-life gaming experience.
      The INSPIRE X FX70XN/DVR-88GTX features 2GB RAM, NVIDIA nForce 680a SLI chip set, 150GB HDD (10k rpm), and DVD super multiple drive. It runs on Windows XP and costs about $3,253..

ASUS today announced four motherboards, designed especially for the new Microsoft Windows Vista operating system. The new mainboards are packed with ASUS special features like ScreenDUO, AI Remote, AP Trigger, TPM (Trusted Platform Module) and ASAP (ASUS Accelerated Propeller).
      The ScreenDUO provides a second display panel to enable the user to conveniently view important information without having to start up the PC. ScreenDUO can synchronize information from the PC or websites; display RSS messages, meeting schedules and other important information.

The Amiga computer has long been the subject of intense nostalgia in the hearts of anyone who owned one. Released in 1985, only a year after the original Macintosh, the Amiga featured vivid color graphics, 4-channel stereo sampled sound, and a graphical, preemptive multitasking operating system that seemed to come from years in the future. Yet the Amiga languished in obscurity, meriting barely a footnote in most books on the history of the personal computer. In the story that arose of the battle between Bill Gates and Steve Jobs for domination of the computing universe, there was seemingly no room for a third protagonist.
       Despite this neglect from the popular press, the Amiga prospered. Its excellent graphics and sound made it the best platform for gaming in the late 80s. Later, when improved, expandable versions of the Amiga were released (such as the redoubtable 3000), the platform found a niche in the burgeoning field of digital video. NewTek’s Video Toaster replaced hundreds of thousands of dollars worth of custom video editing equipment with a $5,000 box and opened up the field to a new generation of professionals, much as the Macintosh did with desktop publishing.

ATX as you know is a standard that defines things like where the mounting holes go, endplate size and location, and the card placement. Power, cabling and drives are also sort of included. ATX is the main reason most PCs are the same general size and shape, and the components are located in the same places.
      This allows people to build parts with the same sizes and shapes as the next guy, and that they will all fit together and work. That leads to plentiful and cheap high quality parts.
     There is no such standard for SFF machines, about the closest you will get is µATX but that is a board, not a complete chassis. Something needed to be done, and AMD is stepping up to the plate in the hopes to kick off a market for standard SFF components.

      According to industry sources, plans to produce CPUs for the Microsoft Xbox 360 game console on 65nm at Chartered Semiconductor Manufacturing will be pushed back until the middle of 2007, at least one quarter behind the original schedule. Microsoft Taiwan declined to comment on the news, while Chartered also declined to comment, stating it did not comment on the production schedule of any of its customers.
       In April 2006, Chartered announced that it had signed an agreement with Microsoft to manufacture CPUs for the Xbox 360 console on 65nm Silicon-on-Insulator (SOI) technology starting in the first quarter of 2007. Chartered is already a major foundry partner for producing Microsoft’s Xbox 360 CPUs on 90nm technology.