Joel Hruska
Opinions and content posted by HotHardware contributors are their own.
Recent posts
It's been just over a year since AMD completed its spinoff of GlobalFoundries in an attempt to radically change its own financial trajectory. The gamble appears to have paid off for both companies; we recently sat down with...
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Microsoft has confirmed that there's a service pack in the works for both Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2 but the company isn't saying when it plans to release the updates—at least not yet. The fact that Windows 7 and Server 2008 R2...
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Customers of the antivirus/antimalware company BitDefender ran headfirst into a major problem over the weekend, courtesy of a (very) faulty virus definition update for systems using 64-bit flavors of Windows. After installation, users flooded the company's forums complaining that BD was now...
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When Palm demo'd the Pre a year ago in January, the phone was seen as the company's last chance to reverse its fortunes. Despite positive reviews and praise for the company's WebOS and Palm Pixi, the once-dominant cell phone and PDA manufacturer has continued to lose ground (and money). For Q3...
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When we previewed Internet Explorer's new rendering engine this week we noted that the same features that made IE9's hardware-acceleration possible probably aren't compatible with Windows XP. Microsoft initially dodged giving a straight answer to the question of XP support but has since admitted that the new browser won't be XP-compatible...
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The NPD Group released a statement today that points toward surprising growth in desktop sales this past February. Historically, desktop sales have trended steadily downwards for the past ten years; notebook shipments first surpassed desktop shipments in 2008. New data suggests the pendulum has oddly swung the other way—desktop unit sales...
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When Intel announced its plans to develop a discrete graphics card capable of scaling from the consumer market to high-end GPGPU calculations, it was met with a mixture of scorn, disbelief, interest, and curiosity. Unlike the GPUs at SIGGRAPH in 2008 (or any of the current ones, for that...
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Last week we reported that Dell's Adamo XPS was apparently dead after it vanished from the company's website, online store, and was listed as out-of-stock everywhere but a handful of Best Buys. It didn't make sense for Dell to have canceled the product just three months after shipping, but...
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The hardware specifications for the components in the XBox 360 or Playstation 3 may not have changed since launch day, but semiconductor manufacturing has advanced significantly. Supposedly leaked photos of a new XBox 360 motherboard indicate that Microsoft could be poised to take advantage of...
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See that headline? If you'd asked us last week if we'd ever use the word "sexy" to describe a browser—particularly a Microsoft browser—we'd have beaten you with a stack of TPS reports. This week, well, it's a different story. The actual IE9 browser isn't available for download yet, but...
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When it comes to hardware-accelerated PhysX and the future of GPGPU computing AMD and NVIDIA are the modern-day descendents of the Hatfields and McCoys. Both companies attended GDC last week, where a completely predictable war broke out...
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Intel announced its new Xeon 5600 series today in a move the company claims is great for server admins, businesses concerned about security, world peace, and puppies. (We made those last two up). The new chips (codenamed Gulftown) are...
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Fans of the reimagined Battlestar: Galactica TV series and its spinoff Caprica have another title to look forward to in a few months. At GDC last week, German game-developer Bigpoint announced it's developing a BSG-themed MMO designed for...
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It's been a few months since we've talked much about the FTC's investigation of Intel's alleged abusive, monopolistic behavior but the case isn't sitting still. NVIDIA is a major party of the inquiry and the GPU manufacturer has just...
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The Khronos Group that maintains the OpenGL API launched two new flavors of the specification at the Games Developer Conference (GDC) this week. OpenGL 4.0 is designed to update the API to DirectX 11-level functionality, while the 3.3 release is meant to allow previous generations of OGL...
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Broadband speed tests are nothing new, but the FCC is offering Internet users a chance to weigh in on just how fast connections are across the country. Unlike regular speed tests, the FCC's program records the street address from which the program is run (no other personal information is...
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It wasn't supposed to happen this way. Back when all three consoles were just spec sheets and demo units it was Microsoft vs. Sony and Blu-ray vs. HD DVD. Even the pundits who thought the Wii's motion control interface could win it market share weren't predicting that the modest device would...
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The specs and capabilities of modern smartphones/handheld devices have been increasing rapidly for several years and according to the GPU developers of Imagination Technologies, the sky's the limit. The company owns and develops the PowerVR 3D architecture that dominates the mobile 3D segment;...
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Not every high-end, haute couture product turns out to be a bestseller—even Steve Jobs had the Cube—but it's rather odd for a manufacturer to design, advertise, tease, and launch a product only to pull it off the market barely four months...
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Zotac announced its upcoming next-generation-based Ion system at the beginning of March and has firmed up its launch plans and final system price. The ZBox (model number HD-ID11) is going to be a bit more expensive than what we were initially quoted; instead of $209.99, the ZBox will sell for...
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Earlier this week we covered the news that nearly 80 percent of all Internet users worldwide feel that Internet access is a right. In a week, the FCC will present its specific plan for bringing broadband Internet to the estimated 35 percent of Americans who currently either don't have or can't...
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Check monthly console sales from the XBox's launch in 2005 to the present day, and Sony's PS3 lags both the XBox 360 and the Wii. According to the most recent data available, Sony has sold 33.5 million PS3's, Microsoft is at 39 million XBox 360s, and Nintendo has moved 67.45 million Wiis. It...
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