Professor_Quail writes "C|Net News reports that PC maker Systemax is going to be offering a new line of PC's aimed at gamers and performance enthusiasts. The computers, priced at approximately 3-4 thousand dollars, are touted by the company specifically for their overclocking performance; the DoubleX line comes equipped with a water-cooling system and dual hard drives configured with RAID-0. The systems will be sold through the company's TigerDirect subsidiary."

vaxzilla writes "China's People's Daily Online is reporting in this article that the Computer Institution of the Chinese Academy of Science have developed a new CPU, which they're calling the Dragon Chip. The report isn't clear on the technical details of the chip, though it does state, somewhat confusingly, that it, `is based on the RISC structure, a totally another standard. Therefore, it will not fall into the intellectual property right trap.' They're running Linux on the chip and have built a server around it, Soaring Dragon. It looks like China is starting to tell both Microsoft and Intel to take a hike. Interesting times are ahead."

Tremblay99 writes "Tom's Hardware has a review of the Yamaha CRW F1 CD burner. Not interested, you say? Well, it can burn images on the media side of a CD. While it's not the fastest burner around, it can do CD-RWs at 24x. Not bad at all."

payman writes "WiNRADiO Communications has just announced news of its forthcoming WR-G303i PCI based shortwave, digital radio, narrowband FM receiver. This is said to be "the world's first dedicated shortwave receiver on a PC card. It is also the first commercially available receiver where the entire final intermediate frequency stage and an all-mode demodulator are entirely executed in software, running on a personal computer." Winradio has in the past supported Linux for its products (see Linradio), and it most likely will continue to do so with the WR-G303i."

Powerdog writes "After 10 years of lab work, Sharp has developed a 3D LCD display that works without glasses. They expect to use the displays in games at first, and expand into PCs and TVs. Production begins in a few months and products using them should be shipping in early 2003. Naturally, I just bought two 2D LCD displays for my home office two weeks ago."

Mark J. Foster writes "After searching for a solution that would let me control my home theater PC without disturbing the video to the projector, I finally decided to roll my own. I've integrated a Shuttle SS40G, with a Xenarc 700Y RGB-interfaced 800x480 TFT widescreen LCD: The fully-integrated package looks like this. For full details, check out my 'Special Edition' Shuttle 40G." This machine reminds me of the "lunchbox" style of PCs, but this one's got a much smaller footprint. Excellent mod.

vrmlguy writes "I've seen recent posts about low-power, off-grid computing and about small systems, but neither quite captures the object of my desire. I'm looking for the ideal LAMP-based server for home use. Cost of ownership (though not TCO!) is one of my primary concerns, followed closely by reliability. Here's my idea of the perfect server. The software requirements are easy. I want to run Slash, WIKI and/or blogging software that I and my family can access worldwide. The system should be able to keep up with requests coming in via DSL or cable-modem, but doesn't need to withstand slashdotting. There are Linux-based systems available for under $200, which appeal to me as a low-cost base. I would want to add at least one additional disk for OS-level RAID. Also, since this is a server, it will need to be available 24x7, which could run up my electric bill. Therefore, I'm willing to spend a bit more for something that supports a 'napping' mode that can, say, spin down the disks and slow down the CPU, but still respond to web-page requests. Are there systems available that do what I need at a price I can afford?"

ttennebkram asks: "OLED's are the cool technology behind the new displays that will be bright, thin, and energy efficient. I bought my Motorola Timeport back in 2001 and LOVE it. Lots more products were supposed to be on the market by now. I was disapointed that the new Handspring Treo's don't use it, instead opting for the old fashioned color LCD's. Searches on Google return the hype from 2 years ago, but very little recent info. Any word on upcoming handhelds or cellphones using this technology? Thanks."

clarencek writes "Apple has released Rendezvous as Open Source, as promised. Excerpt: Starting today, developers can download Rendezvous as open source under the Apple Public Source License. Rendezvous is part of a broader Open Source release today from Apple which includes the Darwin 6.0.1 operating system and additional Open Directory plug-ins. Together, these underscore Apple's commitment to making core protocols freely available as open standards and open source."

Brent writes "In this installment of 'Secrets of the wireless elite,' you'll learn about the prevalent technologies in the Japanese market. In addition, it shows why publishing Web sites for wireless -- while not technically revolutionary -- is where the market is right now."

Hank asks: "I work for Hewlett-Packard and just recently installed my first SAN at a customer site. It was much fun, I was blown away by the ease of the storage device management and the allocation of storage space across the systems. Being a professional environment, it was high-available, ran over FibreChannel through switched fabric, and cost upwards of US$250k -- not really affordable for most households. Roughly at the same time I started looking at IEEE 1394 cards for some video-editing, and an idea came up: Would it be possible to build a lowcost SAN based on Firewire cards, hubs and devices? How would storage device mgmt look like (the (de-)allocating of LUNs / slices / partitions)? What about support of multiple OS's on the SAN? How about this: would it be possible to create a Linux-based disk-array with an IEEE1394 interface (Old P200, crammed with disks, software RAID, lots of RAM for caching, Firewire interface, looking/acting like a single disk to the outside world, storage device mgmt via web-frontend)?"

seek3r writes "Found this interesting article on BusinessWeek.com regarding Apple's potential switch to Intel chips. I wonder what the implications this might have for Apple with regards to market share and software support. Have Motorola's chips really lagged behind Intel?"

logicalstack writes "The folks over at AnandTech have written an expose on their visits to both ATI and NVIDIA. Interestingly enough ATI's facility shrouded in secrecy and NVIDIA's is quite open, Including full color pictures of their server farm, and a pic of the NV30 test machine the 'Ikos.' The CEO even showed off the old school NV1 with 1MB of ram!"

MadCow42 writes "With the professional imaging trade show Photokina opening this week in Koln Germany, digital camera manufacturers are announcing a stunning new lineup of professional digital cameras. These include a 13.8 megapixel monster from Kodak, and a 11.1 megapixel camera from Canon. I'm sure Nikon isn't too far behind, but no news yet on their offerings. These cameras are positioned for the professional photographer, but with list prices from under $4k to $6k, they're not out of reach for the 'pro-sumer' market either. The best news is that new products like this will push prices down on the 4-6MP cameras at the high end of the consumer level." We mentioned the premature release giving Canon's hand away; like MadCow42, I want to see what Nikon has to say.

EconolineCrush writes "Trying to decide between whether or not to get a 64MB graphics card, or spring for that 128MB version? Hit up this article, which explores the performance of ATI and NVIDIA-based cards with 64 and 128MB of memory, before swiping your credit card. Not so long ago 32MB was the top end for graphics memory on consumer video cards, but now even budget cards are available with 128MB. 128MB might seem excessive now, but a year from now 64MB cards might just be obsolete."

ahecht writes "On Thursday, Palm's Solutions Group's CEO Todd Bradley announced that 3 new handhelds will be released in October. Within 24 hours, pictures of all three handhelds have leaked out on the web. The first to be released, the sub-$100 Zire, can be seen here. The second handheld, previously known as Oslo, now has the name Tungsten T, and features OS 5 and built in bluetooth (pictured here). The third handheld is the Tungsten W, pictured here, which is a GPRS smartphone (although it does not have a built-in speaker or microphone). Zire will be released October 7th, while both Tungsten models will be released on October 28th." Could just be rumors or fakes, but it seems reasonable.

An anonymous reader writes "This has been a busy week for the announcement of the latest crop of MP3 portables, probably just the start of many more with the holiday season only a few months away. First Samsung has announced their first jukebox model the Yepp YP-900, a 10GB unit using Toshiba's 1.8-inch drive for storage (same one as in the iPod) and eschewing FireWire (400 mbps) for a USB 2.0 (480 mbps) connection to transfer files. Mambo has also announced a jukebox player called the Digital Media-X PhotoBank Jukebox that is more akin to the Archos Jukebox Multimedia in that it can store and display photo files and possibly video files in the future. The Mambo holds 20GB of memory on a more common 2.5-inch hard drive, making it a heavier unit than the YP-900. Like the Yepp, the Mambo also goes with a USB 2.0 connection, heating up the competition between FireWire in digital music portables. The most interesting feature about the Yepp? It also has a MMC/SD card slot to facilitate trading tunes to and from other digital music players. (Take that SDMI). Finally SonicBlue has started shipping replacements for the Rio 600 and the Nike PSA[play 120 (made by Rio for gym workouts). Both the Rio S30S for the exercise-minded and the Rio S10 come with 64MB of memory and are upgradeable to 192MB through MMC flash cards. The S30S comes with an FM radio, while the base-optioned S10 is claiming 35 hours of running time on a single AA battery. Both players transfer files via USB 1.1's 12mbps port."

Gerard J. Pinzone writes "Here's a page that details the construction of a homebrew subwoofer." Another in a long line of "You can, but should you?" projects.

swg101 writes "These people (openbrick.org) have developed a small computer designed for open source and free software. I quote: "This great little Linux box can be used as a firewall, micro-server, PABX, thin client, multimedia, almost anything imaginable. It contains a fanless 300 Mhz x86 compatible Geode processor and 128 MB SDRAM. Software can be installed on a Compact Flash or on an optional Hard Disk." Sounds like a nice solution for many applications."

babycakes writes "The BBC has an article about the concealment of mobile phone antennae in the UK, where the masts have been disguised as clock face hands, chimneys and so on. The company behind them, The Undetectables (flash site) aim to 'eradicate this architectural acne' - pics available."