Items tagged with MS
At the Tech-Ed 2011 NZ event going on in New Zealand, Microsoft’s Jeff Johnson and Patrick Hevesi showed off what was reportedly a quad-core powered, Windows slate / tablet device. There seems to be no question that the device was in fact a quad-core tablet, but there are conflicting reports as to whether it was running Windows 7 or the upcoming, more tablet-friendly Windows 8. Current scuttlebutt seems to indicate that more details regarding this quad-core device will be revealed during the BUILD Windows Conference that will take place in Anaheim, CA September 13-16. According to the conference’s website, “BUILD is a new event that shows modern hardware...
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When the Department of Justice and Microsoft hammered out the terms of their agreement in 2001, one of the strictures was that the software giant would be subject to official DOJ oversight for a period of five years. In 2006, the DoJ opted to extend the term another five years, but the government body won't be doing the same thing again. On May 12, Microsoft will no longer be subject to special federal oversight. Analysts anticipate we'll see Microsoft making some bolder moves as a result, though no one anticipates a return to the old days. Rob Enderle, principle analyst at Enderle Group, told reports that "Any type of consent decree like the one that was over IBM and the one that is over Microsoft...
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Just in case you haven't heard, the Windows 7 Release Candidate is scheduled to hit on Tuesday, May 5. In addition to numerous bug fixes and usability tweaks since the original public beta, Microsoft has also incorporated a number of personalization options. In a note on the Windows Engineering blog, MS had this to say..."One of the most exciting parts of engineering Windows 7 has been the wide variety of work that gets done over the course of a full product cycle. As evidenced by the variety of topics just in this blog, one can see that we are hard at work at all levels of the product. For fun, we thought folks might enjoy hearing some of the story behind the new personalization work in Windows...
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Samsung Now Producing 256GB Solid State Drive; Substantial Performance Gains Make it Best Overall Performing SSD for PCs Seoul, Korea - November 20, 2008: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd., the world leader in advanced semiconductor technology, announced today that it has begun mass producing 256 gigabyte (GB) solid state drives for use in notebooks and desktop PCs. With the addition of the high-speed 256GB drive, Samsung now offers the most extensive line of SSDs in the industry with 8, 16, and 32GB SSDs for low-density designs and 64, 128 and 256GB alternatives for the higher densities.The new 256GB SSD more than doubles the performance rates of Samsung 64GB and 128GB SSDs to become the SSD with...
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MSI LAUNCHES COLORFUL NEW VR220 YA EDITION NOTEBOOKAvailable in Denim Blue, Coral Pink, Wasabi Green and Empire Black, the VR220 combines the latest mobile technology with style CITY OF INDUSTRY, CA - November 19, 2008 - MSI Computer, a leading manufacturer of computer hardware products and solutions, is pleased to announce the release of the new VR220 YA Edition Notebook. Available in Denim Blue, Coral Pink, WASABI Green and Empire Black, the VR220 combines the latest in mobile technology with brilliant color and style. Beautiful inside and out, these eye pleasing notebooks also feature Intel® Pentium® Dual-core processors and MSI's exclusive ECO Engine Power...
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Gaming notebooks and an affordable price tag generally don’t go hand in hand. Today, however, MSI announced its newest GX630-028US gaming notebook with a price tag of just $799.99. So just what do you get for this price? Well, the GX630-028US comes with an AMD Athlon X2 Dual-Core Processor, 15.4-inch WXGA display, NVIDIA GeForce 9600 GT, a 250GB SATA hard drive, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, Super Multi optical drive, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, and a 2 megapixel Web cam. Not a bad deal, it seems. Like other MSI gaming notebooks, the GX630 features MSI Turbo Drive engine technology, which lets you over clock the notebook by as much as 15%. It also has the MSI ECO Engine with five different operating modes...
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YouTube, the world's largest video site, has partnered with MGM to begin showing full-length films from the studio's archive. Recently the video giant has been trying to play catch up to video site Hulu. The partnership hopes to boost revenue to both Youtube and MGM along with giving more direct competition to Hulu, the NBC owned site that features free full-length shows from Fox, NBC, and CBS, along with various full-length movies. Jim Packer, co-president of MGM Worldwide Television, is optimistic, saying, "They have a lot of people walking through their front door everyday. And if they are smart in how they grow this, YouTube should have a successful business also." The video presentation...
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NVIDIA’s and AMD’s graphics board partners usually take differing approaches when releasing factory overclocked variants of each company’s respective high-end GPUs. When NVIDIA launches a new part for example, their board partners typically have factory overclocked versions at the ready, and at launch, it’s sometimes easier to find overclocked cards than stock reference models. AMD’s board partners, however, don’t usually take the same approach. When AMD launches a new ATI Radeon, the first batch of cards to hit typically follow the reference design to the letter, and custom, factory overclocked models don’t arrive until some time later. That’s what happened with the Radeon HD 4870 X2. At launch,...
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It was rumored earlier that AT&T and Apple were in discussions over tethering. And at the Web 2.0 Summit, AT&T Mobility CEO Ralph De La Vega indicated in an interview with Michael Arrington that an official, AT&T sanctioned method of tethering (using the iPhone as a 3G modem) is on the coming "soon." There are already some tethering apps for jailbroken phones, such as PDANet, but nothing you can download from the App Store, at least not since NetShare was pulled from the store. It's unclear when AT&T will roll out the tethering service; some point in 2009 is the only vague indication given. Would that mean that both PDANet (denied from the start) and NetShare would be allowed...
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SANDISK INTRODUCES ExtremeFFS – NEW FLASH MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR IMPROVING SSD PERFORMANCE AND RELIABILITY SanDisk Also Proposes Two Metrics for End-Users to Measure Performanceand Endurance: virtualRPM (vRPM) and Long-Term Data Endurance (LDE) ExtremeFFS™ greatly accelerates SSD random write speeds and endurance vRPM allows consumers to measure and compare SSD and hard disk drive performance Industry encouraged to adopt a simple endurance metric to determine the lifespan of an SSD LOS ANGELES, CALIFORNIA, Nov. 5, 2008 —SanDisk® Corporation (NASDAQ: SNDK) today unveiled an advanced flash file system for solid-state drives (SSDs) that yields dramatic improvement in performance and reliability...
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Oh, well. It sounded so good, and it would have been, too: Gmail adding, through its Labs, the ability to send SMS messages through Gmail Chat and at the same time associate a permanent phone number with your account. Normally, a temporary ID is set, but this would have enabled you and your friends to SMS back and forth without worry. You would have been assigned a number in the 406 area code once you sent your first SMS message. However, Google found a bug, and had to pull back the feature. According to their blog post: Oh snap. Last night, we started rolling out a new feature to Gmail Labs that lets you send SMS text messages right from Gmail. It combines the best parts of IM and texting: you...
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Before you say, "So What?" we are well aware that you could send an SMS from email by using an address of the form number@att.txt.net (we're also aware AIM supported this). But when you did that, you only got a temporary ID that your friend could text you back on for a limited time. This new feature will give you a permanent "number" they can use all the time for SMS, which goes directly to your Gmail Chat.So, how does it work? Well, first of all it's a Google Labs feature. Unlike Mail Goggles, we like this one. Go into your Gmail Settings, then Labs, and enable the functionality (most will not see this feature yet, at the time of this writing). Go into chat, type...
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A few months back, Intel released the P45 Chipset -- at the time it was considered to be their mainstream offering, playing second fiddle to the X48 Express. With official support of a 1333MHz FSB, PCI-E 2.0, ATI CrossFire, and support for both DDR2 and DDR3 memory, there's a lot of roads to go down with the construction of one of these boards, and MSI went down all of them. MSI fleshed out a complete top-to-bottom assortment of boards, which means that they have a P45 motherboard that suits just about every potential buyer's needs. Two of these, the P45 Diamond and P45 Platinum are found towards the top end of their food chain, and we'll be taking a look at them today......
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A few months back, Intel released the P45 Chipset -- at the time it was considered to be their mainstream offering, playing second fiddle to the X48 Express. With official support of a 1333MHz FSB, PCI-E 2.0, ATI CrossFire, and support for both DDR2 and DDR3 memory, there's a lot of roads to go down with the construction of one of these boards, and MSI went down all of them. MSI fleshed out a complete top-to-bottom assortment of boards, which means that they have a P45 motherboard that suits just about every potential buyer's needs. Two of these, the P45 Diamond and P45 Platinum are found towards the top end of their...
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It looks like Dell is moving forward with its somewhat bizarre idea of pre-bundling movies starting at $25 a pop onto new systems. Dell's first foray into this new business model was a few weeks ago when you could order Iron Man pre-installed on a Dell system. Now that it has partnered with CinemaNow, the selection of titles grow. The press release is below...Dell Jump-Starts Digital Libraries with Pre-Installed Movies Powered by CinemaNowMovie Bundles include Spider-Man, The Matrix, and Children’s pack starting at $25Round Rock, Texas, October 23, 2008--Today Dell and CinemaNow teamed to provide a simple, economical way to jump-start a digital music library by pre-loading movie bundles on select...
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Netflix and Samsung Partner to Instantly Stream Movies on Next Generation Blu-ray Disc Players Samsung BD-P2500 and BD-P2550 Blu-ray Players Transformed into Gateways that Give Consumers Access to More Than 12,000 Choices of Movies and TV Episodes from Netflix Partnership will Include Streaming to a Range of Home Entertainment Products LOS GATOS, Calif. and RIDGEFIELD PARK, N.J., Oct. 23 /PRNewswire-FirstCall/ -- Netflix, Inc. (NASDAQ: NFLX), the world's largest online movie rental service, and Samsung Electronics America, a market leader and award-winning innovator in consumer electronics, today announced a broad partnership to offer consumers the ability to instantly stream movies and TV episodes...
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World’s Leading Motherboard Manufacturers Turn to NVIDIA SLI for New Intel Bloomfield Platforms 3-Way SLI Will Deliver the Fastest Gaming Solution for Intel Bloomfield CPU Platforms SANTA CLARA, CA—OCTOBER 21, 2008—NVIDIA Corporation today announced that the world’s preeminent motherboard manufacturers, ASUS, EVGA, MSI, Gigabyte, and DFI, have all licensed NVIDIA® SLI® technology for their new lineup of motherboards designed to work with Intel Bloomfield CPUs and X58 chipsets. The addition of SLI to these motherboards and adoption by major OEMs including Dell and others means consumers will be able to harness the power of award-winning GeForce® GPUs in single, SLI, or 3-way SLI...
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PANASONIC ANNOUNCES PRICING FOR LUMIX DMC-G1, THE WORLD’S FIRST MICRO FOUR THIRDS SYSTEM CAMERA Secaucus, NJ – Panasonic today announced pricing for the world’s first Micro Four Thirds System camera, the LUMIX DMC-G1 – available in mid-November for a suggested retail price of $799.95, which includes the LUMIX G VARIO 14-45mm/F3.5-5.6 ASPH/MEGA O.I.S. kit lens. Also available in November, the LUMIX G VARIO 45-200mm/F4.0-5.6/MEGA O.I.S. telephoto Micro Four Thirds lens has a suggested retail price of $349.95. The LUMIX G1, available in black, blue and red models, is the first interchangeable lens camera to offer consumers a choice of colors. Weighing about half as much as a standard digital single-lens...
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Beginning early next year, you’ll be able to buy a Samsung TV with built-in support for DivX movies. The DivX Certified Samsung devices will be able to play DivX media files via an Ethernet connection that is certified by the Digital Living Network Alliance or directly through a USB port. DivX developed video codecs that compresses digital media files so that they can be streamed over the Internet while still allowing for high-quality playback. Samsung currently offers DivX Certified DVD players, mobile phones, and other devices. To ensure the best media experience, products must undergo rigorous testing before they can bear the DivX Certified logo. “As an innovator in the consumer...
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MySpace Music was expected to be successful, but this successful? It was launched at 12 AM EDT on Sept. 25th, and despite that short period of time, it has already streamed over a billion songs (and yes, we have contributed to that streaming). In comparison, (though obviously not fair as iTunes is a pay service, while MySpace Music streams for free) it took Apple nearly 3 years, from April 28, 2003 to February 23, 2006, for its one billionth music download. MySpace hasn't provided info such as username, song played or the like, but it did say the following: We’re extremely pleased with the launch of MySpace Music—clearly our users around the world are engaged and excited about the new music experience...
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No matter what you think of AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series of video cards, you'd be crazy not to love what AMD did with the pricing of the first two cards (Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870) from the series. As a result of AMD's aggressive pricing, NVIDIA felt compelled to lower the price of its latest GeForce video cards, the GeForce GTX 260 and the GTX 280. Today, we have a look at MSI's Radeon 4850 offering. To see how well the new MSI R4850 512M performs, we'll pit it against a Radeon HD 4870, a Radeon HD 3850, a GeForce GTX 260 and a couple GeForce 9800 GTXs. ...
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No matter what you think of AMD's ATI Radeon HD 4800 Series of video cards, you'd be crazy not to love what AMD did with the pricing of the first two cards (Radeon HD 4850 and HD 4870) from the series. As a result of AMD's aggressive pricing, NVIDIA felt compelled to lower the price of its latest GeForce video cards, the GeForce GTX 260 and the GTX 280. It's not often that ATI can actually make NVIDIA fans smile as big as its own or vice versa. Ultimately, though, you don't have to favor one brand over the other to appreciate the downward pressure that the new Radeon HD 4850 and Radeon HD 4870 put on pricing. Overall, we've been quite impressed with what we've seen of the HD 4800...
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