NVIDIA GeForce 8800M Preview

When we first looked at the NVIDIA GeForce 8M series of mobile graphics chips, over six months ago in early May, the series had just been announced. At the time, the lineup only consisted of the 8400M mainstream series and the 8600M mid-range series. Although rumors had been circulating about the possibility of a high-end, G80-based enthusiast chip for some time, and hopes were high, none were announced. This was compounded by the fact that the fastest chip in the initial lineup, the 8600M GT was quite a bit slower than last generation's top chip, the GeForce Go 7950 GTX.

A month later, NVIDIA announced what was supposed to be the first enthusiast-class chip in the GeForce 8M family, the GeForce 8700M GT. Again, this wasn't the rumored G80-gone-mobile super chip. Instead the GeForce 8700M GT turned out to be essentially a higher clocked version of the GeForce 8600M GT. While substantial core and shader clock frequency boosts allowed the 8700M GT to handily outperform the 8600M series, it still wasn't enough to take the title of fastest overall mobile graphics chip away from the GeForce Go 7950 GTX.

Several months of silence followed the GeForce 8700M launch and it seemed like the rumored mobile G80 chip was just that, a rumor. The most popular theory seemed to be that the G80's massive 185W TDP simply couldn't be tamed enough for a notebook to handle and we were unlikely to see G80 class performance in a mobile form factor until NVIDIA moved its technology to a more advanced manufacturing process.

This theory seems to be correct as the wait is finally over. Today NVIDIA is finally unveiling the rumored and much anticipated GeForce 8800M series of mobile graphics cards. The 8800M is powered by the new G92M GPU which is built on a 65nm manufacturing process and as its name suggests, it shares a lineage with the desktop-bound G92 GPU announced three weeks ago. The 8800M series will come in two favors, a GTX and a GTS. The GeForce 8800M series is available immediately and over a dozen manufacturers are announcing new products today and in the coming weeks that will support the new chips.

Read on for specifications and preliminary benchmarks.

AMD Spider Platform - Phenom, 790FX, RV670

A few days ago, AMD officially unveiled their RV670 GPU, the chip at the heart of the ATI Radeon HD 3800 series of graphics cards. Just in case you missed it on the day of the launch, our coverage of the new Radeon HD 3870 and HD 3850 cards is available right here. While we did thoroughly explain the RV670’s architecture and explored its performance in that article, we did not tell you that the new Radeon HD 3800 series is but one part of an entirely new platform from AMD dubbed “Spider”.

The rest of the Spider platform is comprised of not only new desktop processors, but core logic as well. The second piece to the Spider puzzle is AMD’s native quad-core Phenom processor and the third is the new 7-series chipset.

News of Phenom and the 7-series chipset has been circulating for what seems like an eternity. We’ve shown you glimpses of the platform and talked about its new features in a number of articles and news posts here at HotHardware. But today we can finally give you all of the details and show you just how AMD’s new processors and chipsets perform.

Before we get started, some specifications are in order. What we have for you in the table below are the main specifications and features of the AMD Phenom 9600 and 9500 processors. Take a gander at the specifics and then strap yourself in as we take a hands-on look at AMD’s latest and greatest and even check out the Phenom 9700, which won’t be available until early next year.

Drag and Drop Bluetooth Patent from Sony Ericsson

Here's another intelligent solution of making things easier with the help of Bluetooth, this time coming from Sony Ericsson. The handset producer thought of a more convenient way of transferring files through Bluetooth, without having to go
through all the classic steps.

Sony Ericsson's patent looks to get rid of all the steps of browsing through the phone's menu, selecting a specific file, as well as the communication method or channel and then activating the communication function such as Bluetooth in order to transfer it to another phone. The company looks to make the best of touchscreeen features to simply drop the file that the user intends to send to another mobile phone by dragging it on the side of their screen in the direction of the phone they want to transfer the file to.

The handset producer's concept sounds pretty bold and innovative, although it might be a long while until actually seeing this feature introduced at a large scale in mobile phones. First of all, the devices will have to be touchscreen enabled, which means that only the high-end ones will benefit from it.

The action of dragging the item initiates an automatic data transfer procedure using short range communication. When the user drags the item towards the direction of the other phone, a question will pop-up, asking him whether he really wants to send it. Moreover, in case of NFC and short range radio, the user can drag the file towards any direction, as position no longer matters if they are within range for communication.

It's a daring and rather unexpected concept coming from Sony Ericsson. The handset producer uses touchscreen features only in some of its handsets and has only recently made a strong push on this market with high-end devices equipped with such a feature. Many patents usually never make it out on the market, although it would be pretty interesting to see it available at a large scale.

Windows Live Messenger 9.0 – First Signs of Life

Windows Live Messenger 9.0, Microsoft's forthcoming version of its instant messaging client, is showing the first signs of life. At the beginning of November the Redmond company wrapped up the evolution of its Windows Live suite of services and products, and finished up introducing Wave 2 of its cloud platform. Windows Live Messenger was one of the Windows Live puzzle pieces that fit into place in Wave 2, with Microsoft dropping version 8.5, specifically tailored for Windows Vista.

Windows Live Messenger 8.5 was leaked hours before the official release, and at this point in
time it is the latest version of Microsoft's instant messaging client up for grabs. But at the same time, Windows Live continues to grow, as the company has already started cooking Wave 3 of the online suite's evolution. And Windows Live Messenger 9.0, the successor of the current version 8.5, is at the forefront of the next generation of Windows Live.

In this context, Microsoft has already begun shipping invitations to testers of Windows Live Messenger 9.0. Just a couple of weeks following the release of version 8.5, the Redmond company is inviting testers to grab a hold of early builds of Windows Live Messenger 9.0. As of now, the beta testing program for version 9.0 of the upcoming instant messaging client is a private program that involves Microsoft Connect. This means that users are locked out of test driving early builds of Windows Live Messenger 9.0 unless they receive a specific invitation from Microsoft.

With a community of approximately 300 million users worldwide, Windows Live Messenger betas are generally extremely popular, but for the time being, only previous Windows Live testers are getting invites and the chance of an early taste of the instant messaging client. According to Microsoft's Andrew Jenks, Windows Live Messenger 9.0 is planned for late 2008, early 2009, and will come to the table with a range of enhancements for a new application programming interface for developers to support for Multiple Points Of Presence, allowing for sign in from multiple devices.

Sexy Real-Life Samus Aran in Life-Sized Power Suit

Since Halo 3 is enjoying such a good dose of popularity, especially when it comes to strapping the Spartan armor onto hot chicks, other titles involving heroes (heroines in this case) in armors had to do the same for themselves, right? Well, they didn't really have to, but someone actually thought that Samus' Power Suit would work just great with the girl you see in the picture to the left.

And it does, doesn't it? Just look at the striking resemblance between her and the comic book version of Samus Aran - the protagonist of Nintendo's Metroid series of video games. A bunch of
other pictures depicting the real-life 'Samus Aran' in a life-sized Power Suit can be found below, right at the end of the article. Now here's some information on Nintendo's Metroid franchise, bust mostly on Samus herself, just in case those checking this piece out didn't get their chance to play the game:

Samus Aran is a cybernetic bounty hunter tasked with penetrating the space pirates’ home planet, Zebes, and keeping them from destroying the galaxy with dangerous life forms known as Metroids. She does that in the game. The end! Well, that's what happens in the first installment of course. With the launch of the first Metroid Prime title (the fifth in the franchise), things tend to get a little more complicated.

The first installment in the Prime series of Metroids has an extensive use of storyline, which was considered a major difference from previous Metroid games. One of the most noticeable aspects about it consisted in the short cutscenes appearing before important moments – a boss battle for example. More than that, the Scan Visor could now be used to read text related to the Chozo and Space Pirates.

And so, Samus fought her endless battle with the Space Pirates until Metroid Prime 3, dubbed Corruption, arrived on scene. Prime 3 is the tenth game in the Metroid series and the third and final of the installments in the Metroid Prime trilogy (excluding two spin-offs).

Corruption takes place six months after the events of Metroid Prime 2: Echoes. Leaving aside the graphical improvement and the motion sensitive control scheme possible only with the Wii's controller, the Wii Remote, players again take the role of Samus Aran who, unlike other installments in the series, now meets with other bounty hunters: Ghor, Rundas and Gandrayda. She has to kill them during the events of Prime 3. Sorry for the spoiler guys, but I've given it some thought – if you've read everything up to this point, you must be a fan of Samus and so, Metroid Prime 3: Corruption is certainly old news for you.

Anyway, that's summing up Samus' background in the shortest way possible. Click on each one of the pictures below (courtesy of pixelninja.se) and by all means, save them to your computer if you will, no one blames you if you do.