Hitachi HD, MS XP 64bit Pro and More

Good morning everyone :)  With my ISP having more issues then a computer filled with spyware, all I have to say is thank heavens for WiFi !!!  Nonetheless, the clock is ticking away and I am going to be late for work.  Go grab a coffee and settle in, here is your AM update...

 Hitachi Global Storage Technologies' Deskstar T7K250 hard drive @ TechReport

"We've rounded up a collection of drives from Maxtor, Seagate, and Western Digital to find out how the T7K250 stacks up against the competition. We've also tested the new Deskstar's 300MB/s transfer rates to see where—or whether—they may have an impact on performance."

 Talkback: The Console Wars @ Designtechnica

"The good news is all of the products look much better than those preceding them, and they should outperform their predecessors as well; however, there are massive differences between them. The Nintendo product is the lightweight in terms of performance, but it's expected to cost less than half of what the other two products cost, in a market that traditionally has not liked products over $200 very much. Unfortunately, it will also be the last to market and it will enter when the other two players should have vastly greater game support. That gives the Nintendo long odds for this race, which has been increasingly between Sony and Microsoft."

 Microsoft Windows XP Professional x64 Edition @ GamePC Labs

"Today at GamePC, we've taken a look at Microsoft's final, full release of Windows XP Professional x64 Edition. XP x64 Edition is a direct port of Windows XP Professioanl for 64-bit systems using AMD64 or Intel EM64T processors, allowing for native 64-bit software support along with 32-bit application support through Microsoft's WoW64 (Windows on Windows 64) emulation layer. We take an overview of the new features and run some comparison tests to see how the move to 64-bit affects performance."

 VIA EPIA SP 1300 All-In-One @ TweakTown

"Today we're taking a look at VIA's latest small form factor All-In-One EPIA motherboard, the SP 1300 based on the latest processors and chipsets to come from the VIA labs. This low power consumption platform with hardware MPEG-2 decoding and hardware MPEG-4 acceleration might just what you're looking for in a silent HTPC or car computer. Read on as we take a close look at the humble yet impressive EPIA SP 1300 All-In-One motherboard from VIA Technologies."