Those of us who read Gizmodo and other technology-oriented websites have been showering in mockups of how the iPad would look like and truth to be told, most of them look better than this chunky piece of an eBook reader. What's this supposed to be anyway? A phone? But it has no 3G... An eBook reader? But it costs $1000... An MP3/video player? BUT IT COSTS $1000!

Come on guys, who does not sincerely believe that Apple has just shot themselves in the foot please raise your hands and drop me a comment with sound reasoning. As for me, if I had Apple stock I'd be hitting the sell button as hard as I could right now... poor move Jobs, poor move...

Photos after the break (courtesy of Gizmodo).

UPDATE: Alright, alright, it only costs $500 after all. My point still remains: it is ugly and it only allows one app running at a time... $500 for a giant iPhone? Meh.

The issue is the fact that Mark's iMac was exchanged but the replacement computer is also icteric. So what's the deal? Well, I'm not a fan boy for either side, I'm not fanatic so this brings me no special joy; despite that, I share Mark's opinion on the issue: multi-thousand dollar computers, computers that are known for being overpriced for their specifications, shouldn't have issues like this. Moreso, the issue should never happen again on a replacement computer. This can only mean one of two things - either the issue is happening on a large percentage of iMacs or Mark has just been extremely unlucky. Considering Apple's previous rapport with manufacturing issues and faulty parts, I would go with the former.

Right now Apple has been creepy and resorted to shady backstage data mining to flag Mark's Apple account to disallow any other exchanges; apparently his computer will now be repaired instead. Mark isn't happy and he's trying to spread the word; this is my attempt to help him and to get Apple to change this behavior. This would be acceptable from a cheap computer brand but not from Apple, THE most expensive computer brand, whose flagship is to produce computers with above-par quality. This sure as hell isn't above-par.

[via Gizmodo]

Well, first things first so I should introduce myself. I'm an HP Compaq Presario CQ60-200EP and by the looks of it, I must be pretty darn good as my owner uses me every single day! It can be maddening at times... having him (literally) push my buttons all the time...

Lately he's done a smart move though and installed Windows 7 on me. I feel so much lighter now. It's as if I went to the gym regularly for a year... except I didn't!

I don't get to do much fun stuff very often but he does a lot of work with me and in a way I'm happy with that. I like feeling useful and handy and I know my owner trusts me with some pretty serious stuff...

I pack a generous 15.6 inch screen which is pretty wide and still portable (in your face, you 17 inch monsters!). All in all I was very affordable and I'm a dual core, from Intel - by far the best CPU maker out there right now. My graphics are also by Nvidia which is pretty darn good, I say. You know, I also have a DVD burner with lightscribe which is the next best thing these days and did I mention that I have an integrated card-reader, a webcam and an HDMI output?! I love it when he plugs me in to his 52 inch flat screen. I feel like a whole different computer when he watches 1080p movies with me!

Do you need a laptop? If you do, I have a few brothers that would gladly live with you and accompany you everywhere! I'm a sexy piano-black and have a cute aluminum "Q" on my lid. Interested? Well, for a limited period I can get you $30 off in orders over $150 on the HP Home Store. Sounds good?

Just go over to the HP Home Store and use the following coupon code: SV2132.

Keep in mind though! This coupon is valid through the 31st of October or while supplies last! So get yours while it is still time!
(Restrictions and exclusions apply)

Sponsors:

HP

Yes, you read correctly. Under load (running Team Fortress 2) this card would easily reach the 100 degrees Celsius. The funny thing about it? It wouldn't absolutely stutter at all!

After having done research on it, I came to the conclusion that this card was simply hot by nature. Or, better put, the stock cooler is not appropriate for the kind of heat this graphics card generates. There is being hot and there is not having appropriate cooling. This case is most certainly the latter.

My results, despite not having screenshots of it, were of:
- 80ºC idle (with the fan at 40% - which is the maximum I was willing to go noise-wise)
- 100ºC ++ load (with the fan at 80% and a deafening noise that even got my mom scared about it)

Now, while the card was most certainly designed with this sort of temperatures in mind, heat rarely does any good to electrical components. When we're talking about temperatures enough to make your kettle whistle, then you know you should do something about it.

I did.

Today, I bought the Accelero Twin Turbo and at first I was a little reluctant. I was afraid it was just going to be more of the same as the stock cooler, with little improvement. I couldn't have been more wrong. The installation is pretty straight-forward, although, to its own right, the RAM and voltage regulators heatsinks definitely could use more glue. With a little nudge I managed to remove one of the heatsinks so I am still wondering how they will hold up through time (literally).

This cooler packs quite a punch when compared to the stock cooler. It comes with two 80mm fans, attached to a massive aluminum block, which has a copper pipeline system that goes straight to the actual block that attaches to the GPU. Keep in mind that space may be an issue with this cooler; if you are going for CrossFire then think again about buying the Twin Turbo as your graphics card will use up THREE slots on the back of your computer case.

It is crazy, I know, but right now I have the same 40% setting on the fans (this cooler is pluggable to your graphics' card fan power supply) and I get a cool 33ºC . While gaming, it never goes above the 36ºC and that is with the very same 40% !

As far as noise goes, it can't even compare to the stock cooler, which is actually expectable. There is a trade-off between the size of a fan, the amount of air it can move per second and the noise in decibels it produces. Basically, with a bigger fan, you can move the same (or a bigger) amount of air with the same (or less) noise. These two fans are really silent, barely audible. If I push them to 100% then you actually start to hear them, but at 100% they are less audible than the single, stock fan, at 80%.

So if you still needed any proof that this is the cooler for you, look no further. This will solve ALL your temperature problems and I advocate that this graphics card should actually come with one of these coolers by default.

I was thinking the other day (yes, this does happen every now and then) and something hit me: what is the big issue with developing any kind of software these days? Optimization, right? This is truer on a special case and I am refering to the operating systems. Windows, Mac OS, Linux-based... you know the drill.

Optimization is by nature, a very herculean task, especially when you are developing a piece of software to run on a wide variety of platforms and environments. Sure, some of the most recent computers come with dual-core CPUs, but pretty much all operating systems must still be able to operate on single-core processors, just as they have to be able to handle 4 or 8 cores effectively. This is not only true in the case of processors but also on RAM. If an operating system is running on 256Mb of RAM, it must certainly behave differently resource-wise than it will behave on a system with 4Gb of available RAM. More to the point, what is the use of having 4Gb of RAM, if 3Gb stay unused at all times? One could argue that having available memory is good because it allows the applications to use more as they need it, without resorting to swap files, but for the most part it is wasted memory, a precious resource in our computers.

With this said, for companies like Microsoft, it certainly is hard to develop an operating system that will efficiently handle old and new, resource-limited and resource-boasted platforms, simply because they create Windows for a variety of hardware. Windows will run on AMD, Intel and VIA and although they all are x86-based, there are certain instructions, that could be used to optimize but are not, because if my Core 2 Duo has SSE4, my friend's Athlon XP 3000+ hasn't got this set of instructions and therefore an application optimized for my CPU won't actually run on his.

This is, to some extent, the story of Windows Vista. Windows Vista brought quite a few innovations when compared to XP but it had a problem: if your resources are on the lower end, your computer will feel like a sloth on a lazy day and XP feels like cool breeze when compared to Vista. However, if you have ever had the chance to try out Vista on a powerful system, you'll be in awe simply because it will feel as fast as XP and you have all the goodies. Windows 7 by the way, is set to change this, but let us keep that to a different post as that is off-subject.

So, what is the main characteristic of a Macintosh computer? Until very recently, they used hardware unlike that of PCs but not anymore, their hardware is now similar and compatible with PC hardware. Actually, its parts are normal PC parts, with Intel CPUs and Intel/Nvidia/ATI graphics cards so what is really different? It's simple: they come assembled and are not meant to be disassembled at the risk of getting your warranty voided.

My point is that if Apple keeps such a high-standard on their computers and keeps them so expensive, why not turn the competition knob a notch? Pack their computers with like 8Gb of RAM at least and with 1Tb hard drives. In a way, Apple has started optimizing since Mac OS 10.5 will only run on at least the Core 2 Duo platform and this is a good thing, but I still think that RAM is a major factor in computers that is being systematically (and wrongly) left behind. However, if you have 8Gb of RAM, you could almost reserve 4Gb just for pre-fetching most used applications before the user needs them, and still have plenty of RAM for the average user to mess with. Maybe we need to go big and supersize and make a break with the past of computing.

What is the real problem? Not knowing in advance when and how much RAM the user will need. So if an operating system starts using all the available (free) memory to pre-fetch applications, if at some point the user needs an application that requires, say, 512Mb of RAM and that program wasn't pre-fetched, the OS will have to quickly ditch 512Mb of that pre-fetch RAM and quickly load that program into memory. The problem? This can't happen quickly because the program will be loaded from the hard drive and the hard drive is inherently slow.

Effectively, the memory allocation algorithm has to have something like a behaviour analysis module. Something that records the user behaviour and finds patterns, and even then it has to give room for the unexpected. A good memory allocation algorithm isn't the key to all of the problems though, if for instance there isn't enough RAM available, then an algorithm can't make miracles no matter how good it is.

To finish my post: Apple can control both their software and hardware, as the Portuguese saying goes "they have the knife and the cheese" so I sincerely feel that they can do way much more for their users in terms of performance. I do reckon that Mac OS users do not typically complain about performance, but what is also true on a computer is that it can always be faster.

So you thought AMD was dead? Well that is not what this review by Tom's Hardware shows us. It is true that the Core 2 platform has smashed the competition from AMD on pretty much every front of the market, but this tide might be about to turn.

With the recent outbreak of netbook computers like the Asus Eee PC, it leaves us to wonder where the big bucks might be coming from in the near future. Perhaps with this in mind, AMD downclocked and undervolted its Athlon64 segment to start headbutting with Intel's Atom architecture. Truth to be told, they apparently succeeded on creating a platform that outperforms Atom on efficiency, where as by efficiency we understand processing capacity over power consumed. Actually, the Athlon64 2000+ runs at lower a frequency than Intel's counterpart, but as we have seen in the past, when it comes to getting the most out of the same frequency, AMD is on top due to their more efficient architecture. This said, not only the A64 runs at a lower frequency, but it also does outperform Intel's Atom CPU.

Personally, on a time where the dillema is what Intel CPU to choose rather than to choose between Intel and AMD, and being on a stalemate because of it, I think this is nothing but good news. Not only for AMD themselves but for the market in general, because we all know what happens when companies monopolize markets, right?