If you can use your regular phones with VoIP services such as Vonage, why not also with Skype? Actiontec's IPWS lets you do just that.

Tom's Networking

Today, ATI has released their counter-attack to TurboCache with the release of their HyperMemory Technology. On paper, HyperMemory is similar in design to TurboCache, using a combination of local memory and system memory to offer advanced performance in a business-class card. However of course, ATi is claiming to one-up their competition on all fronts, including price, performance and features.

HotHardware

Intel has usually dominated the chipset market for a long time. While chipsets from SiS and VIA were always there, Intel?s core logic chipsets were the choice of many Intel preferring enthusiast. If we were to take out Alderwood and Grantsdale out of the picture for the time being, their Springdale and Canterwood chipsets were a new step in performance for the last generation of Intel microprocessors. Intel offered almost all features desired by the enthusiast crowd and with new performance discoveries and features of the Springdale chipset, no other chipset maker could take the crown away from the world?s largest chipmaker in both mainstream and high-end performance segments. In fact, after third party board makers started tweaking the Springdale core logics, they were robust enough to compete against its high-end counterpart. Click here to read the full preview.

Paul Thurrott has updated his "Roadmap to Longhorn". It´s very interesting to see, what we can expect from Redmond throughout the year.

Road to Longhorn

Quote:
"Microsoft may really have a winner here. Most definitely due to their own previous lackadaisical approach to security issues with Windows, and even more obvious, Internet Explorer. This is one program that should be considered in your arsenal to combat the current epidemic of Spyware that is going around for Windows based Computers. Although this is a public beta, I had no problems with stability on XP Pro SP1 myself. Since the AntiSpyware program was pretty well established and mature before M$ purchasing it, not that much work was done under the hood. Unless you count making it NOT compatible with 9x core Windows as it was previously with Giant. And actually, upon further research, a couple things are missing. Such as Inoculation that would block bad sites from being viewed, and there is no file shredding tool. While that may not be a big deal to some, some people want files destroyed so you can't get them back."

We all know that Half-Life 2 is the most popular game ever for all the first person shooter fans. Million things happend from start till now with the developemt and ofcourse do we all know about the code theft which included sensitive information about the physics engine, sound engine and some more.

Anyway, you see in the above picture that Valve releases the game in DVD format and thats ofcourse necessary with all the eye candy. Half-Life 2 is a sequel on Half-Life but then with improved features like the weapons and ofcourse much better physics.

In dieser News möchte ich ein wenig über die Zukunft auf dem Grafikkartenmarkt eingehen. Darum handelt es sich hier eher um eine Preview, welche natürlich ohne Gewähr hier steht. Nun aber zur Preview.
Als Beispiel hier dienen zwei bald kommende Karten der beiden größten Hersteller. Anhand dieser beiden Karten sieht man, dass die Namensgebung bei ATi, sowie NVIDIA sehr zu wünschen übrig lässt. Aber wie sieht es aus mit den inneren Werten? Hierzu werden die namentlich nächstgelegenen Karten verglichen. Klickt auf 'mehr', um die Details zu erfahren.

With a Parsimonious 133 megabytes per second of shared bandwidth, PCI has definitely become the short bus of PC expansion standards. Nearly every other port, slot, and link inside a modern computer is faster than the bus shared by a collection of 16-bit, 33MHz PCI expansion slots and a couple of onboard devices on the typical PC motherboard. A single Serial ATA connection can burst up to 150MB/s, saturating an otherwise-empty PCI bus.

Steve "Chaos" Ruxton has been preparing for a forthcoming review and has decided to give us all a little sneak peak "preview" of the new Artic Cooling VGA Silencer 4.

The VGA Silencer draws cool air from the inside of your computer enclosure and exhausts the warm air out the rear of your case using their DHES - Direct Heat Exhaust system. This feature will not only keep your VPU cooler but it will also lower overall case temperatures. It features a long life ceramic bearing fan that runs at 1100 RPM with 5V or 2200 RPM with 12V of power fed to it.

Driverheaven just posted a preview of Catalyst control centre which also contains an exclusive ATI interview.

"Performance, features, stability and quality, Catalyst 3.8 has them all.
And more importantly it has them all in abundance...
...thats what we said back in October 2003 when ATI released their updated driver to the world. That driver included revolutionary features like Overdrive and VPU Recover. 3.8 could really be classed as the first real result of the Catalyst program which took ATI's drivers from mediocre to world class. Since 3.8 not much has changed on the surface of the driver or control panel, a few tweaks here, some performace increases and bugfixes there however noting out of the ordinary. Today that all changes as ATI release Catalyst 4.9 and Catalyst Control Centre."

Back in March, we explored ATI and NVIDIA's strategies for tackling the new PCI Express graphics standard. At the time, ATI touted the benefits of a native approach to PCI Express that eschewed bridge chips like NVIDIA's High-Speed Interconnect (HSI). ATI's native PCI-E implementation was certainly an elegant solution, but at the time the company didn't have much to say about specific PCI Express graphics products.

PC Perspective has taken a look at Alienware's new "Video Array" technology at E3. They share the unknown information regarding this dual PCi-Express graphics solution complete with the appropriate eye-candy.

OCIA.net checks out the Zalman Theatre 6 Headphones in their latest review. Below is a direct quote from the review:
"The Zalman Theatre 6’s use three headphone jacks to provide six channels of sound. Each plug is clearly marked with F, R, or C for front, rear, and center, respectively. You will need a 5.1 channel sound card to get the full effects of the headphones, but they work on any of the three plugs if you wish to plug them up to a laptop or a computer with a 2-channel sound card. In this case, I would recommend using the center channel."

Outpost Firewall Pro 2.1 scores very well under a few online security test in this review. "Firewall’s attempt to use Mozilla Firefox to connect to the net was prevented. But the fact that Outpost Firewall detected Firehole’s attempt to connect wasn’t what really impressed me, what did impress me is the way the prompt warning is presented. Instead of warning the user that Firefox.exe is trying to connect to the internet, it informs the user that a new or updated component has changed and is trying to access the internet. If a user is informed the Firefox.exe is trying to access the internet, they would most likely accept the prompt and let the application breach the firewall. "

Here's a quote:
"It seems after high performance memory and heatsinks, OCZ now joins the PSU arena.
We have announced this before, but this time we can confirm it, and even give you proof.

It seems the upcoming PSU from OCZ will be called PowerStream, the product will be available in three flavors: 420Watt, 470Watt & 520Watt."

This post on Rage3d.de shows some unofficial R420 and above benchmarks. Click on Read More to view the URL.

Polish site PCLab.pl posted an ATI Tech Day Coverage. Warp Yourself there and see Black & White 2, FarCry and Medal of Honor: Pacific Assault on R420 and ATI labs inside!

I was eager to get my hands on the newest version of SUSE Linux , the first version produced by the company under the Novell corporate umbrella. Like many others, I wondered how it would jell. SUSE has been a leading commercial proponent of the KDE desktop environment. Common wisdom the past few years has held that if you liked KDE, SUSE was your best bet. If Gnome was your choice, Red Hat was the best way to go. Prior to the SUSE purchase, Novell acquired Ximian, with its deep involvement with the Gnome project. Would KDE suddenly find itself a second class environment on the distro that loved it? Many feared that would be the case. What I learned with the beta should go a long way towards allaying those fears.

Tom's Hardware Guide have thrown up their CeBIT 2004 Preview of Major New Products! Here's a snip.

ATI appears in Multimedia Hall 19, C04 with a booth of 360 square meters. With its slogan "Get in the Game", ATI hopes to present its Vision of a modern graphics and gaming world. A podium of 25 square meters offers running shows, raffles and entertainment. 25 PC stations inside the booth entice visitors with the hottest games and gaming competitions.

WHEN WE PREVIEWED the DeltaChrome S8 chip late last year, we saw a promising new GPU with a few of the customary glitches one might expect from an all-new graphics chip and all-new drivers. Since that time, S3 has been hard at work refining its graphics drivers, and now the company is ready to show the world the S8's big brother, the DeltaChrome S8 Nitro.