Low-cost Notebooks with Intel's Atom Processors - $250-$300 for a so called “netbook”

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Intel's Atom processor project, formerly called Diamondville, strikes the low-cost notebooks market. The low power chip called Atom processor is especially designed for that class of inexpensive notebooks that are called 'netbooks' by Intel and others. The machines are made for the consumers from the emerging markets, first time buyers, and also for that part of the market that wants to complement
the existing performance with low-cost computers.

As the market is dominated by Asustek Eee PC, Intel has to strike hard to make a good entrance. That's why there are more than 25 Atom-based notebooks in the works. Also some models for multinationals PC vendors are included in the offer. The average price for a unit is situated between $250 and $300, but Navin Shenoy, general manager of Intel's Asia-Pacific operations, said that there will be some "slightly richer configurations that get up to $350".

The Atom processor won't be able to do too much, but it will be enough for Internet browsing or sending e-mails, Shenoy said. The chips will be similar to Intel's Pentium M series launched in 2003. That means their speed will reach 1,8GHz, which is not that slow after all. It is not an Intel Core 2 Duo, but it will do the trick.

The notebooks are expected for launch by the middle of this year. Vendors rushed to build the chip into low-cost notebooks, having as example the success that Asusteck's Eee PC had on the market. Yet, there are some skeptics that do not believe in such a great demand for low-costs notebooks as replacements for some more expensive PCs or as secondary computing devices for high-performance computers.

Bryan Ma, the director of personal systems research at IDC Asia-Pacific expressed his belief that the impact of the low-cost notebooks on the market will be a small one, as the consumers are interested rather in performance and features. According to his opinion, the price is not the best way of selling these computers. He has a reputation of a skeptic, and we are more attracted to believe that Intel made its homework well enough.

Shenoy also presented some features for these models. Their screens will be sized between 7 and 10 inches, and some models will have screens that will allows users to make them swivel and lay flat against the keyboard, transforming the netbook into a tablet PC. The storage will be either a hard disk or a solid state drive using flash memory. Battery life is expected to range from three to five hours. All the models will probably have Wi-Fi, no matter the appearance.

The low-cost notebooks will be shipped with either Windows XP or Linux, as Vista would be too expensive. On the other hand, we should notice that Microsoft announced that licenses for Windows XP won't be available after June 30, while these notebooks are planned to be launched around the same time. The deadline for XP licenses remains unchanged, but "There are probably going to be certain exceptions here and there," as Ma said.

The GeForce 9800 GX2: Almost Here, Same Old Architecture - The G92 chips are built on the 65-nanometer process

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Nvidia's highest-end graphics card offering is about to hit the market in just a few days. Although it has been anticipated to come with a totally new architecture, the successor of the popular GeForce 8800 series will
feature the same core logic as the GeForce 8800GT.

The GeForce 9800GX2 and the GeForce 9800GTX will be based on the same 65-nanometer G92 graphics core found on the GeForce 8800GT, but at least, all the 128 shaders will be enabled by default. In comparison, the last year's G92 graphics core would come with only 112 enabled shaders. The ultra high-end enthusiast graphics card is made of two G92 cores on a single board. Nvidia's manufacturing partners have been instructed to tune the graphics core frequency at 600 MHz, while the memory will be fixed at 2000 MHz.

The stock GeForce 9800GX2 graphics card will come with a dual-slot cooling fan that will ventilate both processors. It is placed centrally, between the two graphics processors. Also, Nvidia's reference design card comes with two DVI outputs to replace the VGA ports and just one HDMI interface. At the moment, the details about Nvidia's top offering are scarce, given the fact that the Non-Disclosure Agreement ends on March 18, as announced during this year's CeBIT expo and show.

Nvidia will also introduce the nForce 790i chipset, a refurbished version of the previous nForce 780i. The new chipset will come with full support for Intel's 45-nanometer quad-core processors and high-frequency DDR3 memory.

On March 25, the graphics expert will introduce the GeForce 9800GTX model. Nvidia has chosen to first release the highest-end technology, and then to introduce the 9800GTX model. AMD did the other way around last month, when it first released the low-end and mid-range offerings, in order to conclude with the highest-end Radeon HD 3870X2.

The 9800GTX will come with a core frequency set to 675 MHz, while the memory clock will reach 200 MHz. The reference design will also come with dual-DVI ports, but there will be no HDMI connector.

Epiphan's FrameGrabber Can Take Screenshots of Your Dumb TV - You never know when a screenshot comes in handy

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It does not take rocket science to grab an average screenshot of your desktop workspace. Screenshots come in handy when you have to snatch a photo on a copy-reluctant website or to surprise a funny/not
so funny/idiotic status message in your messenger contact list. Of course, you can put screenshots to much serious use, but sometimes taking them is merely impossible.

Using Alt+PrintScreen or your favorite snapshot application is not always possible. What if you use a non-PC computing system, or worse: a simple terminal or proprietary hardware systems? Of course, you always can take your digital camera and teach the screen a lesson, but if you're a CRT user, you will have the surprise to encounter some raster lines along your picture.

Before you give up, you'd rather check Epiphan's VGA2USB External Frame Grabber hardware appliance. It is supposed to work with any signal source that streams via a VGA or DVI interface. The FrameGrabber comes in six different versions, depending on the hardware specifications. For instance, the top offering, the VGA 2 USB FrameGrabber can snapshot frames at resolutions of up to 2048x2048. More than that, it will capture video at 2048x2048, in 24-bit, at 30 FPS, with lossless compression, to keep the image quality unaffected.

The VGA2USB PRO FrameGrabber comes with 32 MB of onboard storage, and is packed with FPGA and Philips VGA technologies, that allow the device to acquire frames at high resolutions. There is a major drawback, though, as the device don't pass the VGA and DVI signals back to the initial display, so you need to use a secondary DVI/VGA output if you want to watch the transmission while you are recording it.

The devices are available immediately, but they come with quite a price tag. While the lowest-end model costs $300, the highest-end offering will let you short of $2000.

IBM Invests $1 Billion in Unified Communications - The company wants to outpace Microsoft, its most important rival on the market

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IBM has announced that the company is committed to investing $1 billion in its unified communications strategy for a three-year period. The move will allow the Big Blue to continue the battle with
Microsoft on a market that is developing rapidly.

According to Steve Mills, senior vice president of IBM's software group, the company will continue to invest in software such as the Lotus Sametime suite, in order to provide unified communications to the company's largest business customers. However, developing the Sametime suite would allow IBM to improve its Lotus Notes collaboration software, given the fact that the latter is using the Sametime unified communications client.

The unified communications market is comprised of a combination of services such as instant messaging, Web presence, voice over Internet Protocol, videoconferencing, and other services that allow users to keep in touch and collaborate in real time, using a single interface for all the tasks. Microsoft has pressured IBM with the advent of its latest offering, the Office Communications Server suite.

However, IBM's product is totally different from Microsoft's offering: if the Office Communications Server suite can only work in a Windows-based environment, the Sametime product is able to support heterogeneous IT environments. IBM demonstrated yesterday some new functionalities that will be bundled with the Sametime suite until the end of 2008. the Unified telephony service would allow users to call another co-worker using the Sametime interface by routing calls to various devices. More than that, the user can set rules on how to handle calls based on status: working remotely would direct calls to a mobile phone, for instance.

According to Mills, despite the fact that Microsoft always boasts the fact that the Outlook/Exchange suite wins over IBM's Lotus Notes, the things are not quite exactly accurate. Mills claims that Lotus is gaining share in the "market where we compete with Microsoft," namely the business and corporate sectors.

"Microsoft makes a bunch of statements that are somewhat misleading in terms of what is happening," he said. The company expects 10 percent more revenue in the unified communications business year-over-year.

Running Windows on Your Mac? Symantec Wants You Covered - Symantec claims Mac owners running Windows are vulnerable to Windows malware

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Mac and security just don't make good news together, since the Mac is quite safe for the time being (a programming glitch here and there, but that's it). Still, Symantec believes that Mac users running Windows through Apple Boot Camp software, VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop (virtualization software) are likely to be affected by Windows malware and other threats, according to the Yahoo News.

That's why the security company introduced Norton AntiVirus Dual Protection
for Mac on Monday. Mac owners running Windows via the utilities mentioned above will need to fork for $69.95 if they feel "insecure," while the respective software is available either as a download or on CD. Agreeing to pay $69.95 means you're good for one year of use with the constantly updating Norton AntiVirus Dual Protection for Mac.

I get the feeling we'll be hearing a lot of negative responses over this. It is bad enough to own a Mac and run Windows on it, ever more to claim that the machine itself is vulnerable to Windows viruses:

"While many debate the efficacy of anti-virus software for Mac, given the dearth of viruses and malware for the platform, Macs running Windows using Apple Boot Camp software or virtualization software like VMWare Fusion and Parallels Desktop are indeed vulnerable to Windows-based viruses, malware and other threats," says the report.

It's quite true, nonetheless...

According to the Yahoo News report, the package contains Norton AntiVirus 2008 for Windows and Norton AntiVirus 11 for Mac. The almost identical twins are intended to work with Intel-based Macs who have both Apple's Mac OS X and Microsoft's Windows running on their computers. And yes, it is perfectly compatible with Leopard.

As Symantec confirms, Norton AntiVirus Dual Protection makes its own updates in the background periodically, with scanning and cleaning downloaded files, and e-mail attachments also being performed automatically.

Norton AntiVirus Dual Protection also includes performance and engine improvements which should provide better compatibility, better resource usage and faster system startup, according to Symantec.

Mac system requirements: Mac OS X v10.4.10 or later.
Windows system requirements: Windows XP SP2 or Vista.