Intel to ship faster Penryn chips in 2007

Ahead of new mobile Core 2 Duos expected in May, Intel on Wednesday announced that it will begin producing its next-generation Penryn family of processors in the second half of this year and outlined its new Nehalem chip architecture expected in 2008. The six new "Penryn" processors, including both dual- and quad-core variations, will benefit from enhancements to the Intel Core microarchitecture and also Intel's new 45nm Hi-k process technology, which the company claims results in higher performance and more energy-efficient processors.

Penryn's new microarchitecture enhancements will bring extended battery life for mobile devices, enhanced performance for single-threaded applications, new SIMD extensions for better performance, enhanced virtualization, more instruction executions per clock cycle, larger on-chip caches, and higher processor speeds of more than 3GHz, the Santa Clara-company claimed.

Source: electronista.com

Tags: microarchitecture | performance | faster | CHIPS | Technology | Santa Clara | Penryn | intel | core

Yahoo! goes! yahoooo! and! offers! unlimited! email!

Yahoo places faith in the gods of storage technology to help them deliver unlimited email storage forever, in a move that seemingly forces Google and Microsoft to respond in kind, or offer infinity plus one instead.As has been noted online, the original web mail services such as Hotmail and Yahoo! Mail offered 2mb and 4mb of storage respectively, which was obliterated on April 1, 2004 by Google’s stunning offer of 1Gb of email storage space, free – with the only catch being that you needed to be invited into the beta to get access, something that was enormously successful at the time, instantly bringing an aura of mystery, desire and admiration for having so boldly changed the web mail landscape forever in an instant.

But you might be surprised to discover that Yahoo! are not the first to offer unlimited storage for email – that honor apparently goes to Rediff.com who launched a similar service earlier this year, while Google has spoken about an ‘infinity + 1’ service along with a GDrive that would store all your data.

Source: itwire.com.au

Tags: Helio Ocean | storage | online | mail | infinity | Email | Yahoo | Technology | South Korea | Google

Microsoft Unveils Xbox 360 Elite

Microsoft on Wednesday took the wraps off its Xbox 360 Elite , a new version of its video game console expected to hit stores at the end of April. The new version of the Xbox 360 will cost $479.99, still cheaper than Sony's PlayStation 3.

The Xbox 360 Elite, widely rumored over the past several days on gaming sites, is an upgraded version of the original Xbox 360, featuring a black exterior, 120GB hard disk drive, High Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port and high definition video cable. It also includes a matching wireless controller and Xbox Live headset.

The US$479.99 price tag comes in $20 less than the PlayStation 3, and the hard drive is six times the capacity of current Xbox 360 models -- enough to store a library of Xbox Live Arcade games and thousands of songs, as well as high-definition TV shows and movies downloaded from Xbox Live, according to Microsoft.

Source: pcworld.com

Tags: Xbox 360 | XBOX | US | Technology | Playstation | Microsoft | high definition | ELITE

Why 20 Million Windows Vista Licenses Are Not Enough

Microsoft triumphantly announced yesterday that Windows Vista has sold 20 million copies in just one month, since the launch of the consumer version. To be more exact, the figure above is valid for the period between January 30, when Vista was officially released, and February 28.

Besides this number, the validity of which is already contested by analysts, Microsoft also launched itself into a comparison between Windows Vista sales and Windows XP sales. On how Windows Vista has been sold twice as well as Windows XP, which only sold 17 million copies on its first two months of availability on the market.

In other words, Microsoft has bettered its own plan, even surpassing CEO Steve Ballmer’s expectations. When Windows Vista was launched Chief Executive Steve Ballmer said he expects to sell twice as many Vista copies in three months as Microsoft did of Windows XP, its last big operating system release in 2002.

And now, 20 million licenses sold in only one month. There certainly were many that exclaimed “Wow, what a performance!” Unfortunately though, 20 million sold licenses is a slow start rather than a reason to release victorious press statements.

Source: playfuls.com

Tags: sales | windows vista | windows | Stuff | money | Microsoft | LICENSES

Wikipedia founder launches rival online encyclopaedia

Larry Sanger, one of the founder members of Wikipedia, has launched a competitor to the online encyclopaedia. Citizendium aims to avoid the inconsistency and vandalism of Wikipedia while retaining its democratic ideals, Mr Sanger said.

Volunteer contributors to the new site will be expected to provide their real names, and experts in given fields will be asked to check articles for accuracy. Approved articles will receive a green tick to indicate their reliability.

“If there’s going to be a free encyclopaedia, I’d like there to be a better free encyclopaedia,” Mr Sanger, 38, says. “It has bothered me that I helped to get a project started, Wikipedia, that people are misusing in this way, and yet the project itself has little chance of radically improving.”

Wikipedia has faced a number of high-profile attacks on its accuracy and reliability, most of which stem from users’ ability to edit articles anonymously. Recently, it also emerged that a Wikipedia editor understood by the site and its users to be a tenured professor of religion at a private university with expertise in canon law, was in fact a 24 year old from Kentucky with no higher educational qualifications.

Source: technology.timesonline.co.uk

Tags: Vandalism | Site | reliability | project | online | founder | encyclopaedia | Accuracy | Wikipedia | Technology | Kentucky | Citizendium

Adobe CS3 finally announced, coming in April

Anyone using computers has undoubtedly heard of Adobe. Whether it’s the Acrobat PDF reader and writer software, through to Photoshop for editing digital photographs, whether in full professional or the simpler consumer versions, through to Adobe’s Flash software to create graphically lush web interfaces, chances are you’ve not only heard of Adobe, but have used at least one Adobe product on many an occasion.

Now, on March 27, Adobe has finally unleashed the announcement that their largest collection of software in their 25-year history is coming in April. It comes at a time when their software has never been more anticipated, especially by creative Mac users itching to upgrade to the ‘Universal’ versions of CS3 products such as InDesign, Photoshop and other Adobe software which will work at full speed on Intel based Macs – as well as older PowerPC models.

Intel based Mac users trying to use the older CS2 editions of Photoshop or InDesign have noticed that the performance through the Rosetta ‘translation engine’ simply wasn’t up to par, with the solution for professional users to either stick with their G5 PowerPC based Macs, or to upgrade to a quad-core Intel Mac Pro, which used the raw processing power of four cores to boost CS2’s performance to a level that is faster than CS2 running on a native PowerPC, something that was most impressive when Apple demonstrated the power of their quad-core Intel based systems – and bodes well for screamingly fast performance when the same quad-core system starts running CS3.

Source: itwire.com.au

Tags: PowerPC | InDesign | software | performance | Technology | rosetta | Press Release | photoshop | intel | Adobe

Microsoft: Vista Intro Outsold XP

Sales of Vista during the first month that the newest Windows operating system was available to consumers were more than double the sales that Windows XP racked up in twice the time, Microsoft Corp. said.

Microsoft sold over 20 million Vista licenses in its first month, the company said. That compares to the first two months of XP sales, which reached 17 million licenses.

The figures didn't impress one expert. "I would be more surprised if that weren't true," said Richard Shim, an analyst with IDC. "Back when XP launched, the cards were really stacked against XP. We were just coming off the bubble bursting and the PC market was in a trough."

In addition, there are a lot more PC users now than when XP launched so Vista sales should naturally be better, he said.

Source: pcworld.com

Tags: Outsold | OEM | Expert | analyst | Windows XP | windows vista | Stuff | money | Microsoft

Mice engineered to see in colour

The not-so-blind mice had their vision enhanced with the addition of a human light-receptor gene.

Scientists were surprised to find that the mice rapidly made themselves at home in their new colourful world.

Their brains quickly rewired themselves to process the extra visual information, so that colour influenced the animals' behaviour.

The researchers at Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore, Maryland, had expected this ability to emerge slowly over several subsequent generations.

The findings, published in the journal Science, suggest that the brains of mammals are flexible enough to allow the almost instantaneous upgrading of colour vision.

Source: channel4.com

Tags: upgrading | colour vision | gene | ENGINEERED | ability | Technology | Mice | Maryland | Life | Baltimore

FCC Takes Another Stab at Net Neutrality

The Federal Communications Commission is launching an inquiry to determine how broadband providers are behaving in terms of providing access to the Internet to subscribers.

The Notice of Inquiry, announced at the March 22 commission meeting here, is intended to seek comments on whether providers are restricting access to sites on the Internet, whether they are giving any sites favorable treatment and whether the companies charge extra for that, and how consumers are affected. The inquiry is also designed to determine whether the FCC needs to issue a new principle of nondiscrimination.

According to a statement released by Chairman Kevin Martin, this inquiry will "provide a convenient forum for various providers, including network and content providers, to tell us what is happening in the market and about their concerns." Martin said in the statement that the FCC has a responsibility to promote infrastructure investment and broadband deployment. He also said it's important that consumer access to the Internet be protected.

Source: pcmag.com

Tags: nondiscrimination | TREATMENT | statement | inquiry | Broadband | access | Washington | Technology | takes | net neutrality | internet | FCC | commission

PS3 PAL launch - a flop or not?

There has been a lot of talk about the Sony Playstation 3 launch. Much of the focus has been on the especially embarrassing Australian launch, where reportedly the press outnumbered the fans. But really, should Sony be concerned?Do we have midnight launches for new Blu-ray disc players? Is there supposed to be a party with radio personalities when a new media center hits the market? No, then why did we expect much more from the Sony launch of their new entertainment hub?

Many web sites, including the respected game bloggers at Kotaku, gave tongue in cheek reports of the Friday midnight PAL launch of the PS3, the lack of people turning up to the flagship launch was indeed embarrassing for Sony, this was to be the hype starter for a media bombardment foisting new technology into the hearts and wallets of a new gaming generation.

Source: itwire.com.au

Tags: Kotaku | Midnight | launch | disc | United Kingdom | Technology | sony | Playstation 3 | ps3 | Europe | blu-ray | Australia

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