We bang on fresh keyboards from Microsoft, Logitech, Matias, and Eclipse, and determine whether they deserve to sit in front of your monitor.
While summer isn’t traditionally keyboard season, this year manufacturers decided to launch new keyboards just ahead of the back to school season.
If your current keyboard is getting a bit crusty, or you’re simply looking to upgrade, consider one of these: we’ve got options for multimedia gurus, budget-oriented consumers, and gamers looking for something different.
To compare these new keyboards, we’ll examine them based on five areas: design, value, features, performance, and build quality. For design, we’ll look at how well the keyboard looks and feels when used, and answer the question, “Is this something we would want on our desk every day?” For value, we’ll look at the price point and see what you’re getting for the money – not all cheap keyboards are bad, and clearly not every expensive keyboard delivers bang for the buck. Next we’ll examine the features of the keyboard: its options and characteristics that make it stand out. One keyboard doesn’t have to offer more features than another to do well here, but it must offer a good set of features for its type.
Performance is judged by day-to-day use. Even the most attractive keyboards can be clumsy and difficult to use, and a good looking keyboard that’s horrible to use is no good for anyone. Finally, we’ll examine build quality– whether or not the keyboard feels like it will hold up over time and is made from quality components.
Google announced today Android 2.2, a major update for Google’s mobile operating system. There are many changes and a lot of new features that are really useful.
Android now uses a just-in-time compiler that improves the performance for some applications, especially for games. “The new Dalvik JIT compiler in Android 2.2 delivers between a 2-5X performance improvement in CPU-bound code vs. Android 2.1 according to various benchmarks,” says Xavier Ducrohet.
Android’s browser includes the V8 JavaScript engine created for Google Chrome, so web pages that use JavaScript heavily will load much faster (some benchmarks show a 2-3X improvement). Google claims that Android’s browser is the fastest mobile browser available today.
Developers have a new API for app data backup, which is really useful if you want to switch to a new Android device or you want to install a custom version of Android. There’s also an extremely useful messaging API for sending data to an Android phone from another device. For example, you’ll be able to send a link from your computer to your Android phone and the phone will automatically open the browser and navigate to the web address. You can also send files and install applications from your computer over the air.
Android Market will have a web interface, applications can auto-update and you can quickly install all the updates, instead of manually installing each update. Another change is that applications can be moved to the SD card. Google also announced that it has acquired SimplifyMedia, a company that developed some cool applications for streaming your music.
Android 2.2 has built-in support for tethering and it can transform a phone into a portable hotspot. Android Market includes some great applications for tethering, but it’s nice to see that’s now a built-in feature.
You can add multiple languages to the keyboard and switch between them by swiping across the space bar, there’s a new UI for the camera, there’s support for Exchange calendars and remote wipe, LED flash for the Camcorder, support for sharing contacts with other phones and much more.
Flash 10.1 is now available as a beta application in the Android Market, but it requires Android 2.2. Nexus One and Motorola Droid will be updated to Froyo next month. The other HTC phones launched this year will be updated in the second half of the year. “This includes popular models like the Desire and Droid Incredible as well as hotly anticipated phones like the Evo 4G, MyTouch slide and upcoming models.”
(yes, I’m hoping this capability comes to the HTC Hero (sprint version / cdma) soon ) – and for those wondering – relocation was typically painful, but is now complete
So you are thinking about upgrading your gaming rig or workstation to the latest AMD 6-core Phenom II X6 processor. While most of the components today will work with the new processor from AMD, not every case, power or cooler will provide the same level of performance to ensure optimal gaming or working experience.
So here are some of today’s hottest products for you next upgrade!
Case
Armor A90<
(P/N: VL90001W2Z)
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Black Armor Design for Combat w/ Massive Protective Mesh Door & Drive Accesses.
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10 Drive Bays w/ Tool-Less Structural Mechanism.
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Awesome Cooling Capability: Oversized Top 200mm Blue LED Fan, Rear 120mm TurboFan, Front 120mm Blue LED Fan (Supports 200mm Fan Upgrade) and Optional Side 120mm Fan Mount.
For starters: customize your Android phone’s background. Some devices will even let you add a moving, interactive image. Just hit the menu button and select the Wallpaper option. Follow the directions to select images from your phone’s camera, images loaded onto your phone, or a default wallpaper. But images are just the beginning of what you can put on your desktop. Clever programmers have created dozens of widgets that can also be moved to your home screen. Press down on an empty spot of real estate on your home screen, and that will pull up a menu to let you add everything from widgets, to program shortcuts and folders. If you can bear to part with a little over $1, Beautiful Widgets from the Marketplace is a great place to start for finding home screen add-ons.
An Android tablet PC from Google and a two-screen slate from Microsoft may join devices from Acer, Dell, Hewlett-Packard, and Lenovo to vie with Apple’s iPad.
ByAntone Gonsalves InformationWeek April 13, 2010 08:35 AM
Google and Microsoft are reportedly working on their own slate computers that would challenge Apple’s iPad.
Google chief executive Eric Schmidt told friends about the company’s new device at a recent Los Angeles party, and the company is talking to publishers about delivering books, magazines and other content to the device, The New York Times reported Sunday. The gadget would run exclusively on Google’s Android operating system.
Microsoft, on the other hand, has built a prototype of a slate. The device, called the Courier, is about the size of an average paperback and unfolds to reveal two screens, a Microsoft employee claiming to have seen the device told the Times. Users would be able to write on the screens using a stylus and would be able to drag content between the two screens.
While Microsoft engineers have talked about having the device ready for release by early 2011, no official announcement has been made on whether to sell the computer.
Man, if only books were like CDs, and we could just slide them into our computers and have them perfectly ripped into e-books within minutes. Not since the CD was launched have we been faced with buying all our content over again, just to use it on a new device.
For those willing to put in a little effort, though, a book-ripper can be made for pennies. At Instructables you can learn how to make a “portable, paperless, digital copy machine” from a few metal strips and rods and an old digital camera. The principle is simple: To scan properly, you need to have a clear picture, and the pages need to be flat. This method uses a rectangular frame to press the open book flat without putting glossy, reflective glass over the top. The corners are connected by rods to the camera, keeping it parallel to the paper-plane, and making sure you get sharp, shake-free images.
You don’t need a dedicated camera: The project details a wooden platform onto which any camera can be screwed. If you have a spare old digicam, though, you can make a permanent scanning station, which means you’re more likely to use it.
After that, you can either keep the JPEGs or run them through some OCR (optical character recognition) software to turn the images into proper, searchable, resizable text. Mac users might try out an application called Prizmo ($40), which cleans, straightens and OCRs images all in one package. PC users have a far better selection, some of which are detailed on the Instructables page.
Get to it! Clear some shelf space, and give yourself a fun weekend project, too.
Core i7-980X: Do You Want Six Cores Or 12 Threads?
2:00 AM – March 22, 2010 by Patrick Schmid and Achim Roos
Intel first used Hyper-Threading when it introduced the Pentium 4 “Northwood” processor at 3.06 GHz and the Xeon MP “Foster” series in 2002. The proprietary technology’s main purpose is to improve processor utilization through increased parallelization. With the latest Core i7-980X and its six physical cores, Hyper-Threading yields 12 logical cores on desktop PCs.
This raises the question: how much of the software that you run truly takes advantage of eight or more threads? Is Hyper-Threading good or bad for power efficiency? And wouldn’t it make more sense to stay with six physical cores, rather than risking performance hits caused by less-heavily-threaded applications unnecessarily distributing workloads to logical units?
Intel’s Gulftown implements Hyper-Threading to provide 12 virtual processing cores. Serious performance benefits can only be found in a few, specific applications.
Hyper-Threading History
Hyper-Threading was introduced almost out of necessity. Because the Pentium 4 processor employed a rather long instruction pipeline, it was imperative to ramp up operating clocks as quickly as possible and keep the pipeline busy. Therefore, Intel duplicated the units that store the architectural state, allowing a Hyper-Threaded core to appear as two logical processors to the operating system. The scheduler could dispatch two threads or processes simultaneously, and if Intel’s branch prediction worked well, it would ensure that instructions got loaded and executed efficiently.
The benefits for the Pentium 4 were mainly increased system responsiveness on single-core systems and small performance gains on applications. However, this applied to the desktop space. In servers, where parallel processing is key, Hyper-Threading showed more impact. Naturally, this was a reflection on the software industry at the time. Applications written for desktop users weren’t threaded yet, since the hardware enabling this usage wasn’t around. Initially, Hyper-Threading got a bad rap because it failed to improve performance in those titles that ran in a single thread.
The situation is much different today than when Hyper-Threading made its first rounds. For starters, software developers are much more in tune with the hardware ecosystem, so it’s uncommon to find a popular title that can benefit from parallelism and isn’t threaded. Beyond that, AMD currently can’t apply pressure to Intel in the performance segment, and Hyper-Threading has turned into a value-added feature and series differentiator, rather than a must-have innovation. With six physical cores, does Hyper-Threading really make sense?
We decided to look at the quad-core Core i7-975 Extreme Edition (Bloomfield) alongside the new six-core Core i7-980X (Gulftown) and compare performance, as well as power efficiency, using our updated platform benchmark suite.
There appears to be quite a few mobile WP blogging tools out there, too. One thing I really like is the fact that the app store is “open” – and you can choose to use apps from anyone, so no “jailbreaking” needed.
I think this is totally the direction of the future : sure, you can be featured on the “official apps” page, but there’s nothing stopping you from hosting an app on your own web page, and charge or not for it independent of the Android pages . . .
The Nexus One would be a contender, again, were it not locked down to a single network. Any such lockdown is an immediate strike against a device for me, let alone if the network is not going to meet my needs (shout out to the iPhone!)
Anyway, that’s the current plan. The prior 2 years of contract is up tomorrow, and this beauty is on sale for $75 locally . . . no need for rebates, etc. a definite plus.
Security is an important topic these days. However, it’s typically only recognized as important by professionals. If security were to suddenly turn into a mainstream selling point, though, then perhaps it’d make more sense for companies like Intel to promote it.
The Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) has already been adopted by the United States government—including the NSA—along with many other institutions. Intel’s 32nm Clarkdale-based CPUs (only the Core i5-600-series, so far) now promise significant performance benefits for AES encryption and decryption via new instructions. Today we’re looking at the real-world benefits of Intel’s AES-NI functionality, comparing a dual-core Core i5-661 with AES New Instructions (AES-NI) to a quad-core Core i7-870, which lacks the new encryption acceleration capability.
Encryption is used much more intensively than you might suspect. Consider Internet sites that hold you sensitive personal information, or utilize sensitive data for transactions. They all use protocols like Transport Layer Security (TLS) or Secure Sockets Layer (SSL). VoIP, instant messaging, and email may also be protected with these protocols. Virtual Private Networks (VPNs) and electronic payments are other popular encryption applications.
However, TLS and SSL are cryptographic protocols for secure communication, while AES is a general-purpose encryption standard. It can be used to encrypt individual files, data containers, archive files, entire drives (including thumb drives), and even multi-drive volumes. AES can be implemented in software, and there are products based on hardware acceleration as well, since encryption/decryption represent a rather significant workload. Solutions like TrueCrypt or Microsoft’s BitLocker, which is part of Windows Vista and Windows 7 Ultimate, are capable of encrypting entire partitions on the fly.
(for the rest of the first page, and all the other pages, hit up Tom’s)
) – and for those wondering – relocation was typically painful, but is now complete 
