CES 2008: Pretec Sets New CF Storage Record with 48GB Card - Also announces 24GB and 16GB models

Pretec, which was the first to offer the 8GB SDHC and 16GB CF in 2006, is once again making a sort of compact flash "fashion statement" by announcing the first 48GB CF (that's forty-eight gigs of storage space).

As the company's press release puts it, this is as much the 12 DVDs or 69 compact discs. If 48GB are a little bit too much, even if you own a 1Ds Mark III that produces humongous files due to its 22-megapixel resolution, you can go for the lower capacity versions, 24GB or 16GB. You won't find too many 24GB CF cards from SanDisk or Lexar, so this one is no small achievement either.

You'd be tempted to think that the large capacity automatically implies a poor performance in speed, but Pretec mentions that these new cards can go up to 333X, which translates into a theoretical 50MB/sec. Once again, if you don't need speeds that high you can always settle for 233X (35MB/sec).

The combo of incredibly high storage space and speed is perfect for photographers who work with the latest 35mm DSLRs or some Hasselblad, Phase One or other professional medium format solutions producing huge files. On the other hand, photographers might prefer several smaller capacity cards than one huge one and the reason behind this lies in two possible unpleasant events: failure and theft.

If your only 48GB card dies on you while you're shooting a beautiful landscape or are in a hurry to finish to photoshoot with an important client, strange words (read curses) might be uttered and even more desperate actions might be taken. The same applies to theft. However, we are digressing.

According to Pretec, these cards also use metal housing and ruggedized construction to resist external impact. You should take this with a grain of salt, but the company says that they are "at least 10 times more durable than typical CF cards".

There's no information on pricing or availability, but given the capacity, expect to pay a hefty sum of money.

Father of All Mods: The Eee That's Eight Devices Richer - USB hub, GPS receiver and a Bluetooth module are the new achievements of the miniature PC

Everybody knows how popular the Asus Eee PC is. I won't even bother mentioning how many units have sold until now, or how much it costs, as these are just some details you Eee lovers already know. I will mention only the fact that its popularity mixed with an affordable price (affordable enough to risk FUBAR-ing it) has made it the main target of the miniature PC modders.

Ivan Cover is one of the greatest craftsmen when it comes to PC modding. Using a regular soldering iron, he managed to bring new and unexpected features to life inside the sub-notebook's casing. You must admit that it's a good darn sold(i)er since he successfully crammed some extra hardware devices inside the small notebook.

Basically, Cover added a USB hub, a GPS receiver together with its antenna, a Bluetooth module, a second SD-HC card slot, a Flash drive, a power switch, an FM transmitter and a standard modem, not to mention the network upgrade that made the Asustek Eee PC capable of working with the 802.11n wireless draft specifications set. Although the 'upgrade' might sound softer than 'replacing', switching to the 802.11n standard was possible by replacing the existing Wi-Fi hardware rather than adding something to it.

The hardware Ivan Cover used for upgrading were cheap, regular peripherals with their plastic cover removed. The tech-enthusiast took the PCBs and the USB sockets and soldered them directly on the Eee's motherboard. Ivan's attempt can be easily labeled as a strange kind of "hardware open-source", since all the modifications are explained in a step-by step walkthrough to be found on his website. Moreover, there is also an image gallery with all the necessary details to transform your Eee into a blade server.

Ivan is a non-conventional user. Apart from its hardware modifications that morphed the Eee into a decent notebook solution, the enthusiast is running Windows XP rather than the notebook's original operating system

ProFire 2626, the New Recording Interface From M-Audio - An elegant and handy recording solution for multiple instruments

Definitely, the guys at M-Audio love recording interfaces more than anything in this world. Far from being a bad thing, this love has led to the development of a new and very cool recording equipment codenamed ProFire 2626, suitable for both professional and home-studio use alike and offering multiple possibilities in terms of connectivity and versatility.

Since digital recording is more and more popular among music producers, sound engineers and musicians alike, it seems like the M-Audio ProFire 2626 is really well-targeted, especially as it comes with extensive features letting the user customize the recording specs and parameters. The first big things you'll notice about the M-Audio ProFire 2626 is the 26x26 simultaneous analog/digital I/O, a perfect feature for studio projects, letting you monitor and record a lot of instruments in the same time, giving you a better idea on what's actually happening.


Enlarge pictureThis interface also comes with eight preamps running on the widely-acclaimed Octane technology; even cooler, the M-Audio ProFire 2626 can also run as a standalone 8-channel microphone preamp or an 8-channel A/D-D/A converter, allowing a 24-bit/192kHz operation. And as if this was not enough, the M-Audio ProFire 2626 sports the revered JetPLL jitter elimination technology whose use will make sure that your recordings have a pristine sound and perfect synchronization.

While compatible with the industry standard set by Pro Tools and therefor easy to integrate with any recording studio running on this DAW, the M-Audio ProFire 2626 sports an on-board DSP engine, routing routines and mixer which will let you customize your experience; additionally, the master volume control is user-assignable and it will provide you with unprecedented control over your mix. The volume knob can be set up to control up to four output pairs (for a 7.1 array), it can trim any of the channel pairs or headphone outputs and it can even be operated independently. Connectivity is ensured via FireWire, optical and analog channels.

The M-Audio ProFire 2626 will be shipping in Q1 2008 for a MSRP of $899.95. For more detailed specs, check out the product's page.

The HOC-9000 CPU Cooler Gives Your Processor the Chills - The cooler's heatpipes are seated directly on the processor

Professional cooling solutions provider Nexus has made quite a name with its silent case fans, that have become an industry standard reflecting the balance between high performance and low noise level. The company tries to shift its case fan technology to the CPU cooling segment, and they seem to do a pretty good job.

Nexus has recently released an update to its XiR series of CPU coolers, but the main focus point in its CPU cooling offer is the HOC product family. The Nexus HOC-9000 is setting new standards for CPU coolers, powered by a revolutionary technology and efficient design. Four extremely wide (8 millimeters) heatpipes have been flattened and fit directly on the processor's core heatspreader. The new approach allows the heat be directly transferred to the heatpipes, and not get there via a cooler base, as lower-end coolers do.

The heatpipes also feature greater heat dissipation power then plain aluminum or copper bases, which increases the cooler's efficiency. The aluminum fins on the cooler have also been given a face-lift and optimized for rapid heat dispersion. The V-shape area underneath the fan maximizes the heat transfer, and at the same time, eliminates the hissing noise produced by the air being forced in.

The dimpled fin surface is covered by a 120-millimeter, high capacity CPU fan. It is managed via the BIOS PWM feature, that allows it to slow down when the system is idle or increase its rotation count when the system is working at full load. The cooler can perform at 0.15°C/W, while the fan's speed can can vary between as low as 600 RPM (17dB) and 1500 RPM (21.6 dB).

System builders and PC modders will enjoy its customizable aspect: you can decide upon how the cooler will look by applying any of the 3 supplied artwork designs: race-car, race-boat or camouflage-look stickers.

AMD Rumored to Delay High-Performance Phenom CPUs to Q3 - The company dismissed the allegations, but it won't give further details

AMD has been rumored to have rescheduled the release dates of its quad-core AMD Phenom CPUs with increased computing power. According to some Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers, the company will delay the quad-core Phenom 9700 and 9900 parts to the end of the third quarter of 2008.

The delay is caused by a buffer-related glitch in the original design that forced AMD to practically "cancel" the chips in order to re-introduce the repaired versions during the third quarter. The 9750 and 9950 chips are meant to "improve consumer confidence", although the best method for doing that is actually releasing the products as long as there is interest in them.

Advanced Micro Devices will have to rely on its entry-level and mainstream chips in the whole first half of 2008, which is extremely uncomfortable for world's second largest x86 processor manufacturer. The sources say that quad-core AMD Phenom 9700 (2.40GHz) and 9900 (2.60GHz) microprocessors have been canceled and will not be released anytime soon, but AMD will release the Phenom 9750 (2.40GHz) in May or June, while the Phenom 9950 (2.60GHz) will come out sometime during the third quarter.

Moreover, the delay of its quad-core microprocessors based on the B3 stepping is half of the bad news. The chip manufacturer will also postpone its triple-core AMD Phenom 8450, 8650 and 8750 to May or June at least, but the 8400 and 8600 models, based on the B2 silicon stepping will be released in March.

AMD however denies all these rumors and company representatives claimed that they are ahead of schedule on the B3 Phenom silicon. The chip manufacturer claims that all the known bugs have been fixed and the new silicon works just fine, so there will be no further delays on technological grounds.

The company also denies the fact that its chips would feature any buffer-related glitch. The new silicon will be able to work flawlessly without requiring a BIOS update or any software patches (as required by the previous B2 stepping). However, the manufacturer refused to disclose further details, such as model numbers or clock speeds.

The actual launch date is still a mystery, but AMD still claims that it is on track with a Q2 release. However, there's a long way ahead until the last day of Q2, and AMD might as well pick it as the release date.

What Happened to Dell's AMD-Based Systems - Dell tries to shed some light on the incident

Dell has just retired all its AMD-based computing systems from its online store earlier this week. The only three available AMD-powered products feature a small note asking the users to "Shop for Dell computers with AMD processors in retail stores. See our retail partners for details. Computers with AMD processors are not available online."

This may seem the ending of a beautiful business relationship that has paid off for both of the parts. Dell's decision comes immediately after it has updated its XPS notebook line to "Penryn", which is strange enough.

However, Dell refuses to admit that it is slowly phasing out its AMD-based offer, except for its online store. "We have not walked away from AMD," Anne Camden, a spokeswoman for the company. "AMD-based Inspirons are now available to our retail partners, and not available on Dell.com." Dell has just shifted its AMD-based Inspiron consumer notebooks to its retail stores, where they belong.

According to the company, the online shop will continue to distribute enterprise-class products based on AMD processors: the Vostro, Latitude, and PowerEdge servers. Inspirion desktops also vanished from the website offering. "We are constantly adjusting product offerings and how we can sell those product offerings," Camden said. Dell made the transition a week ago, so adjusting their business model is not too much a good excuse. Dell is known for mixing business with personal opinions: if the company does not like a manufacturer for various reasons, it is immediately cut off.

Selling PCs in the retail manner can be regarded as a worth-mentioning disadvantage. The systems come pre-configured and changes or customizations are not quite possible beyond this point. The online distribution method allows Dell's customers to pick additional hardware to be included in the computing system.

Dell issued an official statement to explain the situation. Removing AMD products might not be quite a wise idea, given the fact that Dell does not enjoy the love and appreciations that make some other company's customers tattoo bitten apples on miscellaneous part of their body.

"To ensure we deliver the best value to our customers, Dell regularly adjusts its product offerings, and how customers can purchase those products. Currently the majority of our consumer AMD-based systems are available through our retail partners such as Wal-Mart, Best Buy and Staples, and through telephone sales. Dell also sells a range of AMD-powered business notebooks, desktops and servers online. Certain product ranges or models may only be available through specific channels such as retail or phone. We are committed to the AMD product lines as a long-term partner to provide the maximum choice for our customers."

Intel's Tukwilla Comes With 30MB of Cache - The chip is twice as better as the fastest processor in the Itanium series

Chip manufacturer Intel has announced earlier this week world's first processor to feature two billion transistors on the die. Called "Tukwila", the chip is part of the Itanium family and has a thermal envelope of 170W.

The members of Intel's Itanium team yesterday took the floor and came with further juicy details regarding the biggest processor ever built. Tukwila is built on the 65-nanometer process and is the first quad-core chip in the Itanium Product Family (IPF).

Tukwila is built on a 21.5x32.5 square-millimeter die and will initially run at 2GHz. It has a pretty respectable thermal envelope of 170W, but this is normal, given its size and the 65-nanometer production node. Justin Rattner, an Intel senior fellow, claimed that the Itanium Tukwila processor will sport 30MB of on-die cache and will be able to simultaneously handle up to eight instructional threads.

Intel has also announced that it will release a 130W part that is expected to double the performance of the previous chips in the Itanium 9100 series (the Montvale dual-cores). The estimations are based on a mix of benchmarks, including TPC-C, Specintrate, and Specfprate.

Tukwila has four cores, but each of them can execute two threads simultaneously in order to achieve a total of 8 threads. The chip's design places these cores in a large pool of L2 cache. As you can see, the processor is made of two billion transistors, yet it runs at a modest speed of 2 GHz, which is less than an average 500,000-transistor desktop processor can provide. You might wonder where the rest of 1.5 million of transistors is. The answer is simple: they are used to create a huge amount of L2 cache – 30 MB to be exact.

The available cache will allow the CPU cores to keep the data close and fetch them when needed. The CPU cores will crunch them and spit the results. In order to understand this, think of taking the food from the fridge, rather than from the corner supermarket. The large cache pool will help the processor achieve high scores in branch-intensive database benchmarks.

This is not it, however. The Tukwila will bi the first chip to "wear" Intel's alternative to HyperTransport, namely the QuickPath Interconnect. The new technology promises bandwidth speeds of up to 96GB/s for processor-to-processor links, and memory bandwidths of up to 34GB/s from Tukwila's four FB-DIMM channels.

Tukwila will target the same market as Sun’s 16-core Rock processor, but at the same time, it will arrive earlier than the latter, since Sun pushed back one year its release date.

Intel's Dual-CPU Beast: Skulltrail Finally Gets Detailed - Based on the Xeon server platform and 45-nanometer technology

The Xeon platform, although extremely powerful and overclockable, has been kept off the consumers' hands for 10 years now. It was about time that Intel released a consumer-oriented alternative based on the powerful Xeons, and the 10th Xeon anniversary will bring us the Skulltrail beast in all its splendor.

Skulltrail is a strange kind of platform, comprised of an Intel D5400XS motherboard and a pair of LGA771 quad-core Xeons that have undergone some significant tweaks. The manufacturer had them rebranded as Core 2 Extreme QX9775, since the Xeon name would make the user associate it with those expensive servers.

The Skulltrail platform basically inherits all the important aspects of the Xeon technology, but at the same time, they are different in some key points. The Xeon X5482s are fully interchangeable with the Core 2 Extreme QX9775 chips and are based on the same socket LGA 771, rather than the usual LGA775 for desktop systems. Moreover, both processors have the same four cores running at 3.2GHz, 12MB of L2 cache (6MB divided per two cores) and a 400MHz (1,600MHz effective) front side bus.

At the same time, while the Xeons are optimized for pre-fetching workstation/server applications such as database functionality, the QX9775 are tweaked for gaming and multimedia computing. Moreover, the Core 2 Extreme name shows that the processor comes with an unlocked multiplier, that comes in handy for those who are planning to overclock a lot. Based on the Penryn 45-nanometer architecture, both Xeon X5482 and Core 2 Extreme QX9775 CPUs are energy-efficient and feature low thermal envelopes.

The Intel D5400XS motherboard is built around the Intel 5400 chipset that also powers new Xeon motherboards (such as the SuperMicro X7DAW-N, for instance). The bad thing about this chipset is that you will be forced to feed it the expensive and slower 800MHz PC2-6400 FBDIMM memory, since DDR2 or DDR3 modules are not supported.

The good side is that the D5400XS is extremely expandable. It provides four 16x PCI-E 1.1 slots and two PCI slots. The chipset is also fully compatible with the PCI-Express 2.0 standard, but Intel rigged the four graphics expansion slots with Nvidia's nForce 100 chips, the cornerstone of the SLI technology. CrossFire is also supported, so it's up to you whether you pick Nvidia or AMD to power your display(s).

The board's PCB has been reshaped in order to allow enthusiasts use LGA 775 cooling solutions, since the LGA 771 offering is extremely poor and cheap. The fans, however, must be positioned in a way that would allow them to blow cold air over both FBDIMMs and the Northbridge.

The motherboard also comes with RAID-capable S-ATA II ports, plus a pair of eSATA ports that allows users to connect external storage devices. The board also features 10 USB 2.0 ports, two FireWire connectors and a single EIDE port for older optical drives.

AMD is Playing Hide And Seek With Its Phenom Processors - Users are just playing “Hide and Sick”

Advanced Micro Devices' latest Phenom processors are hidden by a complete veil of mystery in a game that it's not funny anymore. Rumors about extended delays knock heads with other pieces of news claiming that the processors are ready to roll on the market even earlier than scheduled. Although this is quite impossible, given the fact that AMD's latest CPUs are almost six months late.

The Phenom processors built on the B1 and B2 silicon stepping were affected by a Translation Lookaside Buffer (TLB)-related erratum that would crash the system when the processor reaches full load. The erratum especially occurs when the processor is working in virtualized environments or when it is using nested memory pages.

The chip manufacturer changed once again the announced date for launching its high-power Phenom processors. According to some sources (yes, the eternal snitches), the high-performance processors in the Phenom family will be launched in April this year.

The Phenom processor models 9550 (2.20GHz), 9650 (2.30GHz) and 9750 (2.40GHz) will kick in sometime in April, at an undisclosed date. All the chips will be built on the B3 stepping silicon and will be free of the Translation Lookaside Buffer errata issues. However, the future of the Phenom 9950 is still uncertain and the company won't speak about it.

The top-level AMD Phenom 9700 and 9900 at 2.40GHz and 2.60GHz, respectively, were announced to hit the market during the first quarter of the year, but it was delayed too many times, which pushed its release date to late Q2 or even Q3. Moreover, miscellaneous reports coming from the Taiwanese motherboard manufacturers claim that B3-based AMD Phenoms will arrive in May or June, while AMD Phenom 9950 at 2.60GHz was supposed to kick in during the third quarter.

It's high time for AMD to cease its hide-and-seek game with the more and more angry customers. It's fancy to be late, but the company could ultimately end up being dumped for the prompter Intel competitor.

Academic Resource Kit – Free Tools and Resources from Microsoft - A Microsoft Romania initiative aimed at fueling technology access and adoption

Enlarge pictureWhether you want to build an AJAX-based web application, or a Windows game, the Academic Resource Kit is a great place to start. A Microsoft Romania initiative aimed at driving technology access and adoption, ARK is designed as a comprehensive collection of tools and resources addressing both the development and design aspects of building software solutions. I had the chance to chat with Microsoft Romania's Todi Pruteanu about the ARK initiative, and the interview below will provide you with a great insight into the Academic Resource Kit.

1. Just to get started, please tell our readers who you are and what is your role at Microsoft.

Pruteanu: My name is Todi Pruteanu, my role is Academic Developer Evangelist at Microsoft Romania for more than 4 years now.

2. What is the Academic Resource Kit and how does it benefit students today?

Pruteanu: ARK is a set of powerful development and design tools plus useful educational resources, such as documentation, code samples, curriculum materials, and tutorials that demonstrate the value of the Microsoft platform in technical education.

The result is a fully loaded DVD that we’ve produced in a quantity of 100,000. We have disseminated most of the copies during the summer and in back-to-school campaigns, especially in High Schools and Universities. The product is described on www.microsoft.ro/ark (in Romanian).

3. Please tell us a little about the background of the initiative. In what manner has it evolved since its introduction?

Pruteanu: It all started with a couple of facts we have in mind.

On one side, we need more and better equipped professionals in the IT industry. We hope that ARK, with the technology included and usage scenarios we’ve described, will create enthusiasm amongst the young audience. For instance, it has never been easier to program games for Windows or Xbox 360 consoles or Web applications or data-intensive applications, to describe only a couple of usage scenarios of ARK – we now hope that the young developers will realize even more the magic of the software and will follow a career in information technology. For the more experienced students, ARK should play the role of free tool set always available for school or personal projects.

To summarize, we hope that ARK will influence the number and the quality of the professionals in the IT industry in the years to come.

On the other side, technology access and adoption has been a priority for many years now at Microsoft, for the STEM students. Speaking now for just Romania, MSDN Academic Alliance is a very popular program that enables free technology access for students, with some tens of thousands of product downloads each year. MSDN AA is essentially a program for STEM departments and most of such departments in the country are members of this program.

Going forward, our product teams in Redmond produce quality educational programs that, on top of our technology access programs, help students and professors better experience our products. Let’s take Windows Academic Program: students in Computer Science have access to Windows NT kernel source code, professors have access to curriculum materials we’ve built over the past years to encourage Faculty teaching Windows as a platform at Operating Systems classes. This is something relatively new from Microsoft and students and professors appreciate a lot this content. But wait, there are many other similar programs, in areas such as Web design and development or database development. We’ve put all this content in Academic Resource Kit.

So, to summarize, ARK is a good exercise we did to include free tools and educational resources from Microsoft in one disk, impacting technology access and adoption. So, to summarize, ARK is a good exercise we did to include free tools and educational resources from Microsoft in one disk, impacting technology access and adoption. We have seen positive reactions from students and professors who received Academic Resource Kit, online on forums and blogs but also in-class, where we know many professors will use it in teaching technology.

4. What tools and resources does Microsoft offer with the Academic Resource Kit?

Pruteanu: As mentioned, the product is described in www.microsoft.ro/ark (in Romanian). It includes tools such as the Express editions of Visual Studio and SQL Server, ASP.NET AJAX, IronPython, Windows PowerShell, Virtual PC and Virtual Server. On the resources side, it contains curriculum materials for Windows and SQL Server, security teaching materials, documentation and code samples for Visual Studio and SQL Server or episodes from our Behind the Code show on Channel 9. We described on www.microsoft.com/romania/educatie/ark/navigare.htm each product included, with more relevant links on the Microsoft website.

5. Are the components of the Kit available as separate offerings from Microsoft? Can these components be upgraded to their latest versions as they become available?

Pruteanu: Absolutely. ARK is not a product per se, it’s a collection of freely available tools and resources from Microsoft. For instance, we included on Academic Resource Kit the 2005 version of Visual Studio (the Express editions) – and the recipients generally upgrade now to the 2008 version, already available on http://msdn.microsoft.com/express.

6. What are the use-case scenarios for the Kit?

Pruteanu: There are many usage scenarios for Academic Resource Kit :o) Let me pick only 3 here.

First of all, we took advantage of the broad dissemination and described some of the most important starting points, i.e., what is MSDN, what is TechNet, the Beginner Developer Learning Center, the Coding4Fun community, Port25, Codeplex etc. We recommend this lecture to anyone interested about Microsoft programs and communities we support: www.microsoft.com/romania/educatie/ark/puncte_pornire.htm.

We’ve already described Windows Academic Program (WAP) before – we wanted to describe this scenario, using Windows at Operating Systems classes with full details regarding the components of WAP (ie.e, Curriculum Resource Kit, Windows Research Kernel, and ProjectOz), how to get access to source code, or how to use the curriculum materials. The result is on www.microsoft.com/romania/educatie/ark/sisteme_operare.htm.

Next, we paid attention to our application platform and underlined the importance of learning .NET Framework, Visual Studio, Expression Studio and SQL Server while in school. There are today many new areas where the .NET Framework model is needed, such as embedded and mobile development, game development using XNA – and these new areas are generally very popular amongst students. The disk includes a vast set of resources for Web design and development and data-intensive applications. Take a look at www.microsoft.com/romania/educatie/ark/platforma_aplicatii.htm.

7. Can you give some examples of the kinds of solutions that developers can build with the Kit?

Pruteanu: Some of the preferred examples:

· Modern Web applications written in Visual Web Developer Express Edition, including AJAX support in the front-end and SQL Server support in the back-end;

· Games developed using XNA in Visual C# Express Edition for both Windows and Xbox 360;

· Research projects using Windows Research Kernel (i.e., WRK part of WAP) and Shared-Ource Common Language Infrastructure or Rotor (an implementation of the Common Language Infrastructure and C# standards). Examples: personal Windows NT kernel or a customized C# compiler, etc

8. How does this initiative promote education? What is the overall goal of the Academic Resource Kit?

Pruteanu: As mentioned already, this is a tool set specifically designed for students and Faculty and therefore the academic relevance was a priority for us. We think Academic Resource Kit will improve education in technical areas simply because it brings the technology and the guidelines closer to students and professors. And, again, we hope that later ARK will influence the number and the quality of the professionals in the IT industry in the years to come.

9. Is the Academic Resource Kit part of a Microsoft product roadmap? Where do you see this initiative go in the future?

Pruteanu: No, Academic Resource Kit is not part of the Microsoft roadmap. It’s a Microsoft Romania initiative, in a moment when this is required by both the economic climate and the education system. In the same time, the Microsoft products included in Academic Resource Kit have their own roadmap and, if interested, one should visit the product homepage for details. We will do our best to build useful educational resources for these products.

Academic Resource Kit does not even have a precise recurrence. When we launched .NET Framework 1.0 in 2002, we had a similar project started in Microsoft Corporation, bringing evidence and case studies from Universities regarding various ways .NET Framework can be used in teaching. Five years later we’ve decided to implement another kit but this time with a greater product span and more usage scenarios. Some other colleagues from other subsidiaries did the same thing in other countries in time.

We will continue with such initiatives – the next steps is building more specialized content (e.g. mapped on "Software Engineering", "Databases, BI and Data Mining", "Embedded and Robotics Development") for professors bringing content already available on Faculty Connection (www.microsoft.com/faculty) and more. Stay tuned!

10. Where should the readers that are interested in the Academic Resource Kit go to find additional information?

Pruteanu: The website is www.microsoft.ro/ark and I would recommend it especially to the Romanian readers. Students and hobbyists should get acquainted with the academic offerings from Microsoft and a easy way to do this is visiting www.microsoft.com/romania/educatie/ark/puncte_pornire.htm. For professors, we strongly recommend Faculty Connection (www.microsoft.com/faculty) as the most efficient way to stay in contact with news, curriculum, software and opportunities from Microsoft.

PC Guardian: Lock Your PC to the Desktop - Prevents it from running away

PC security solutions provider PC Guardian introduced a new member in the Master Coded Combo lock family. The Master Coded Combo is a patent-pending technology developed by the company and comes in two additional flavors: Duo Combo and Multi Combo. These security systems can fasten multiple computer devices to the same workstation in order to prevent theft.

The versatile computer locks can fasten multiple devices against theft such as laptop and desktop computers, LCD screen monitors, printers, external hard drives, as well as any peripheral with a standard security slot. Duo Combo and Multi Combo locks are available in multiple configurations but use the same SecureGrip design and SteelShield reinforced bumpers that are part of PC Guarian's patented technology.

"With the new Duo Combo and Multi Combo, we're addressing the increased demand for Combo lock systems brought about by the introduction early last year of our patent pending Master Coded Combo" said Inka Traktman, VP of Marketing & Product Development.

"More companies are choosing our Master Coded Combo systems to streamline their computer security administration. It provides all the control of a master key system without having to manage potentially hundreds of keys. It also reduces staff turnover costs by providing the ability to retrieve the combination and resetting it instead of discarding the lock altogether," Traktman said.

The Ezolution security systems can be purchased in over 30 different configurations, according to each user's needs. The Laptop/Monitor solution can secure a laptop and monitor, but offers the ability to unlock the it independently from the monitor. The Desktop/Monitor solution is a single-piece solution with two locks, that permanently protects a monitor and a desktop computer. It is available in a Resettable or Master Coded version with a Classic cable.

The products are available for purchase directly from the producer's website or through the worldwide retailers' stores.