By now, most enthusiasts are aware of the bold claims concerning the performance potential of USB 3.0 peripherals, but supporting controllers have only recently started dribbling onto the scene. However, fully testing the capabilities of this technology would require some kind of data device that is at least as fast as the fastest controller and such a device does not yet exist (we’d need something capable of pushing more than 500 MB/s).
We probably shouldn’t expect to tickle the upper reaches of what USB 3.0 can do any time soon. After all, it was more than a year after the introduction of “hi-speed” USB 2.0 before devices were able to offer 35 MB/s speeds, which still fell far short of the interface’s rated 480 Mb/s (60 MB/s) specification.
Due to a similar lack of adequately-speedy devices and an even more fantastic-sounding data rate limit, it could be years before we have a chance to push USB 3.0 as far as the interface will go. Yet, the relative scarcity of USB 3.0-enabled peripherals at this point in time doesn’t prevent us from taking a closer look at the way USB 3.0 is being implemented on the latest motherboards. If the results are good, you can be sure we’ll see more and more hardware hitting the scene with support for the interface.
Before we examined the “how” of USB 3.0 implementation, we asked ourselves “why?” Wasn’t eSATA good enough? Casual observers could cite the fact that its 5.0 Gb/s interface is potentially faster than the 3.0 Gb/s supported by eSATA, but insightful readers know that eSATA already outpaces consumer-level storage solutions and is due for an update to 6.0 Gb/s soon. Thus, while USB 3.0 is generally promoted as a performance enhancement, its primary raison d’être might be as a solution to eSATA’s problems.
The first problem USB 3.0 solves is that, unlike SATA, it’s not limited to ATA and ATAPI devices. Designed to function like a PCI Express (PCIe) 2.0 external link, combining it with USB 2.0 on a single jack provides connectivity similar to what ExpressCard slots offer with which so many notebook users are familiar. We look forward to seeing it adapted to a similar variety of devices, such as video capture and graphics cards. Borrowing power from the USB 2.0 interface with which it co-exists, USB 3.0 becomes a more convenient solution for portable drives compared to non-powered eSATA. USB 3.0 also specifies higher amperage capacity for the USB 2.0 power pins it shares, making it a better solution for portable storage than even the combination USB 2.0/eSATA connections present on some motherboards and thumb drives.
But perhaps the most important of USB 3.0’s advantages is that, by being designed for removable devices from the beginning, the standard isn’t likely to meet the engineering abuses that have prevented onboard SATA/eSATA controllers on many motherboards from supporting the “Safely Remove Hardware” function of Windows. Thus, while USB 3.0 might be “just another interface” from the storage perspective, improved flexibility makes it an important step away from the eSATA interface against which it competes.
With the question of USB 3.0’s relevance settled, let’s take a closer look at how manufacturers are implementing it . . .
Thanks Tom’s for helping me out while I’m on vacation
With 30″ monitors still priced at $1,400 and up (in some cases, way up), PC aficionados in need of lots of screen real estate might consider purchasing a couple of quality 24″ monitors instead.
With just about every graphics cards able to handle at least a pair of digital display outputs with ease these days, working with two 24″ screens is just a matter of hooking them up to your graphics card’s single- or dual-link DVI ports, and then extending the desktop from whichever screen takes the primary position to include the secondary. From there, you’re ready to enjoy more room to work than you’d otherwise get from a pricier 30″ model.
And with a list price of $599 (currently on sale for $529) buying a pair of Dell U2410 monitors will set you back at least $100 less than the least-expensive 30″ models, $200 less than the UltraSharp 3007WFP, and $500 less than an UltraSharp 3008WFP (though it’s hard to deny the sexiness of the 3008WFP, too).
The Patriot Box Office is a media player that frees your digital media library from the constraints of a PC and bridges digital media to your home entertainment system to bring your entire media library to the comfort of your living room. Box Office is optimized for full 1080P HD video playback, includes the latest in video processing technology, and a Dolby®/DTS™ encoder to create a stunning HD video and 5.1/7.1 channel surround sound experience on your home entertainment system. With support for the most popular media formats (H.264, ISO, VOB, DivX, xVid, MKV, MOV, MPEG and more) you can remove the limits of your media collection. Box Office offers a variety of ways to connect to your media library: 3 USB ports for any USB storage device, internal 2.5” hard drive (not included), UPnP streaming, 10/100 Ethernet connection and optional WiFi USB adapter. The Box Office is the all-in-one solution to bridge your digital media collection and your living room.
Product Features
All anodized aluminum
Full 1080p Media Play back
Support 2.5-Inch HD
Support H. 264
Support HDMI
Technical Details
Brand Name: Patriot Memory
Model: PCMPBO25 (black color)
Width: 5.5 inches
Depth: 5.7 inches
Height: 1.5 inches
Weight: 1.2 pounds
Works with any USB storage devices – Play content from most USB drives or any portable device that can be recognized as a mass storage device.
Expandable internal storage – Use the internal 2.5″ SATA drive slot with any SSD/HDD to increase the storage capacity for your expanding media library.
Full HD video playback and navigation – Up to 1080p – Experience the highest quality HD video possible and crystal clear audio with Dolby® and DTS™ surround sound. Use the included remote control to navigate and control your media collection with ease.
Network Streaming – Stream media files through your wired or wireless (optional wifi adapter required) home network from desktop PCs.
File transfer – Copy or transfer files between connected USBs, the internal hard drive (not included), network PCs or other network attached storage (NAS) devices.
PC less download management – Download files via P2P sharing for easy access to media from the web.
Universal Plug and Play (UPnP) – Support for UPnP streaming on UPnP cabable devices such as Sony Playstation® and Microsoft Xbox®.
Picture viewing – Create custom slide shows and add your own background music to create a truly unique experience. Zoom and pan on each image to view hard to see details.
Movie preview and playback – Quickly preview video files prior to playback. Once selected, control movies at your own pace… Fast forward, rewind, pause, zoom, and pan. Supports subtitles.
Music playback – Listen to your entire music library with fast forward, rewind, pause, repeat and shuffle options.
HDMI and composite video connections – The High-Definition Multimedia Interface (HDMI) port lets you connect to the highest quality HDTV or home theater. Additional composite (RCA) outputs ensure compatibility with virtually all television sets.
File Formats Supported Music – WMA, MP3, Real Audio (RA)
Graphics – JPEG, BMP, PNG
Video – [MPEG-1] MPG/MPEG/DAT, [MPEG-2] MPG/MPEG/VOB/ISO/TS/TP/M2TS, [MPEG-4] MP4/AVI/MOV, WMV9, FLA, [H.264/AVC] MKV/TS/AVI/MOV/M2TS, [DviX 3/4/5/6, Xvid] AVI/MKV, [Real Video 8/9/10] RM/RMVB
System Requirements: External USB storage device or internal 2.5″ SATA SSD/HDD with supported video or audio content stored on it. Standard or high definition television with HDMI or composite video connections.
Package Contents: Box Office Media Player, remote with batteries, composite AV cable, HDMI 1.3 cable, AC adapter, Quick Install Guide, Software and CD Manual.
I was a tiny bit disappointed that the LAN port wasn’t gigabit, but only 10/100. This should be fine for current generation 1080p titles, I just see little reason not to put a gig-e port on anything new these days. I am impressed they actually included all the needed cabling accessories.
Patriot cautions than they only recommend their own USB wireless B/G adapter for the system, for guaranteed compatibility, which is normally not included. At this Amazon.com link, they are offering it thrown in, whole package for under $100 (including shipping, if you choose the super saver option) by clicking the appropriate button there.
The newest firmware adds support for Blu-ray ISO files and gives the player support for multi-channel HDMI audio out.
I’ve been using two of the Cyberpower CP1500AVRLCD UPS for about 18 months now (one per desk system) with satisfaction.
It has the following features :
The Intelligent LCD Series CP1500AVRLCD UPS, designed for mid to high-end computer systems, features dynamic line conditioning and a LCD diagnostic display. Real-time system vitals can be viewed from this Crystal-Blue (see below) display.
The unit can be conveniently placed in a workstation cabinet, or directly on the desktop. The CP1500AVRLCD guards against surges/spikes, and offers battery backup in the event of brownouts or total power loss. Automatic Voltage Regulation (AVR) ensures that all your electronics are receiving clean power and maintains a safe voltage level.
PowerPanel PE Management Software automatically saves and closes open files and then shuts down the computer system in an intelligent and orderly manner.
(personally, OS X and Windows 7 support most of the USB functionality natively, so I no longer use the included software – Ed.)
The Intelligent LCD Series units are also equipped with full dataline protection: RJ11/RJ45 (phone, fax, Ethernet, network, DSL) and RG-6 coax (DSS, cable modem, satellite, cable TV). “Surge-Only” outlets are perfect for the addition of peripherals such as monitors, printers, scanners, iPods, or CD/DVD players.
The “GreenPower UPS” technology used in this UPS unit significantly reduces energy-usage and cooling costs associated with UPS power protection. In fact, the GreenPower UPS” advanced circuitry bypass reduces energy use by up to 75% compared to a traditional UPS design. As a result, you can expect to save between $50-to-$150 annually (varies based on model, and regional kilowatt per hour costs) by using “GreenPower UPS” technology. CyberPower stands behind its products by offering an industry-leading 3-year warranty, professional Technical Support, and Connected Equipment Guarantee of $500,000.
It comes in at a size of 13.2 x 4 x 9.8 inches and an actual weight of 25.1 pounds. Internally, the system was pretty easy to remove and replace the batteries from (for test purposes only – batteries are still holding up fine, even though they blip usually once a day to stabilize ‘dirty power’, and once a week for a very short power loss, typically under 10 seconds).
All said, I can honestly recommend these units over my former APC choices, at least for the home / home office scenarios. Cheerio !
$26 Software Is Used to Breach Key Weapons in Iraq; Iranian Backing Suspected
DECEMBER 17, 2009
By SIOBHAN GORMAN, YOCHI J. DREAZEN and AUGUST COLE
WASHINGTON — Militants in Iraq have used $26 off-the-shelf software to intercept live video feeds from U.S. Predator drones, potentially providing them with information they need to evade or monitor U.S. military operations.
Senior defense and intelligence officials said Iranian-backed insurgents intercepted the video feeds by taking advantage of an unprotected communications link in some of the remotely flown planes’ systems. Shiite fighters in Iraq used software programs such as SkyGrabber — available for as little as $25.95 on the Internet — to regularly capture drone video feeds, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter.
U.S. officials say there is no evidence that militants were able to take control of the drones or otherwise interfere with their flights. Still, the intercepts could give America’s enemies battlefield advantages by removing the element of surprise from certain missions and making it easier for insurgents to determine which roads and buildings are under U.S. surveillance.
The drone intercepts mark the emergence of a shadow cyber war within the U.S.-led conflicts overseas. They also point to a potentially serious vulnerability in Washington’s growing network of unmanned drones, which have become the American weapon of choice in both Afghanistan and Pakistan.
The Obama administration has come to rely heavily on the unmanned drones because they allow the U.S. to safely monitor and stalk insurgent targets in areas where sending American troops would be either politically untenable or too risky.
The stolen video feeds also indicate that U.S. adversaries continue to find simple ways of counteracting sophisticated American military technologies.
U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered the problem late last year when they apprehended a Shiite militant whose laptop contained files of intercepted drone video feeds. In July, the U.S. military found pirated drone video feeds on other militant laptops, leading some officials to conclude that militant groups trained and funded by Iran were regularly intercepting feeds.
In the summer 2009 incident, the military found “days and days and hours and hours of proof” that the feeds were being intercepted and shared with multiple extremist groups, the person said. “It is part of their kit now.”
A senior defense official said that James Clapper, the Pentagon’s intelligence chief, assessed the Iraq intercepts at the direction of Defense Secretary Robert Gates and concluded they represented a shortcoming to the security of the drone network.
“There did appear to be a vulnerability,” the defense official said. “There’s been no harm done to troops or missions compromised as a result of it, but there’s an issue that we can take care of and we’re doing so.”
Senior military and intelligence officials said the U.S. was working to encrypt all of its drone video feeds from Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, but said it wasn’t yet clear if the problem had been completely resolved.
U.S. Air Force U.S. enemies in Iraq and Afghanistan have used off-the-shelf programs to intercept video feeds from Predator unmanned aircraft.
Some of the most detailed evidence of intercepted feeds has been discovered in Iraq, but adversaries have also intercepted drone video feeds in Afghanistan, according to people briefed on the matter. These intercept techniques could be employed in other locations where the U.S. is using pilotless planes, such as Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, they said.
The Pentagon is deploying record numbers of drones to Afghanistan as part of the Obama administration’s troop surge there. Lt. Gen. David Deptula, who oversees the Air Force’s unmanned aviation program, said some of the drones would employ a sophisticated new camera system called “Gorgon Stare,” which allows a single aerial vehicle to transmit back at least 10 separate video feeds simultaneously.
Gen. Deptula, speaking to reporters Wednesday, said there were inherent risks to using drones since they are remotely controlled and need to send and receive video and other data over great distances. “Those kinds of things are subject to listening and exploitation,” he said, adding the military was trying to solve the problems by better encrypting the drones’ feeds.
The potential drone vulnerability lies in an unencrypted downlink between the unmanned craft and ground control. The U.S. government has known about the flaw since the U.S. campaign in Bosnia in the 1990s, current and former officials said. But the Pentagon assumed local adversaries wouldn’t know how to exploit it, the officials said.
Last December, U.S. military personnel in Iraq discovered copies of Predator drone feeds on a laptop belonging to a Shiite militant, according to a person familiar with reports on the matter. “There was evidence this was not a one-time deal,” this person said. The U.S. accuses Iran of providing weapons, money and training to Shiite fighters in Iraq, a charge that Tehran has long denied.
The militants use programs such as SkyGrabber, from Russian company SkySoftware. Andrew Solonikov, one of the software’s developers, said he was unaware that his software could be used to intercept drone feeds. “It was developed to intercept music, photos, video, programs and other content that other users download from the Internet — no military data or other commercial data, only free legal content,” he said by email from Russia.
Officials stepped up efforts to prevent insurgents from intercepting video feeds after the July incident. The difficulty, officials said, is that adding encryption to a network that is more than a decade old involves more than placing a new piece of equipment on individual drones. Instead, many components of the network linking the drones to their operators in the U.S., Afghanistan or Pakistan have to be upgraded to handle the changes. Additional concerns remain about the vulnerability of the communications signals to electronic jamming, though there’s no evidence that has occurred, said people familiar with reports on the matter.
Predator drones are built by General Atomics Aeronautical Systems Inc. of San Diego. Some of its communications technology is proprietary, so widely used encryption systems aren’t readily compatible, said people familiar with the matter.
In an email, a spokeswoman said that for security reasons, the company couldn’t comment on “specific data link capabilities and limitations.”
Fixing the security gap would have caused delays, according to current and former military officials. It would have added to the Predator’s price. Some officials worried that adding encryption would make it harder to quickly share time-sensitive data within the U.S. military, and with allies.
“There’s a balance between pragmatics and sophistication,” said Mike Wynne, Air Force Secretary from 2005 to 2008.
The Air Force has staked its future on unmanned aerial vehicles. Drones account for 36% of the planes in the service’s proposed 2010 budget.
Today, the Air Force is buying hundreds of Reaper drones, a newer model, whose video feeds could be intercepted in much the same way as with the Predators, according to people familiar with the matter. A Reaper costs between $10 million and $12 million each and is faster and better armed than the Predator. General Atomics expects the Air Force to buy as many as 375 Reapers.
Yes, security lapses like this are unfortunately all too common. It is easy to see why there’s a need for hardware based encryption here. How much would it really cost to add an ASIC with something at least of the level of 256 bit Twofish, or AES, etc. While the tactical value of the drone video may decay pretty quickly, perhaps we don’t want any random folks reviewing an entire day’s video feed in, say, 10 years.
It’s high time that folks consider any public venue to be “compromisable”, whether wireless, or wired (copper, fiber, etc.) If many business require the use of strong crypto (often via VPN) from your laptop back to the company office before you can even browse to an intranet https-secured site, perhaps this should be a clue for standards in other places, too.
Most of us here love our computers and also love to blow things up. Just ask Chris Angelini withhis exploits around CPUs and firearms. Things, however, weren’t so funny for Lily Sussman, whoblogged on her WordPress accountabout a run in she had on her way through the Israeli border.
While it’s standard practice these days for border patrol to scan through a traveler’s luggage, discharging a firearm three times into a bag containing alaptopisn’t an action that seems good for security control.
An announcement played over the sound system, interrupting my break in the sunshine. First in Hebrew, then Arabic, then in English. It was something along the lines of, ” do not to be alarmed by gunshots because the Israeli security needs to blow up suspicious passanger luggage.”
I went inside to check on my bag. I had left it unattended, where they instructed. It was still there so I went back outside.
Moments later a man came outside and introduced himself as the manager on duty. And then, “I’m sorry but we had to blow up your laptop. “
What….all my client case notes and testimony, writing, pictures, music and applications. Years of work. NO!!!! What?? Are you insane?? What were you thinking? THAT’S ALL MY WORK!?
After much yelling, crying and frantic phone dialing (don’t be alarmed if I called you repeatedly this morning), he took me outside to see the wreckage. It turned out it hadn’t been quite blown up, but rather shot through with three bullets. We were able to extract the hard drive, seemingly unscaved. Thank goodness…
Here are some other pictures of the damage to the Unibody MacBook.
We’ve already seen Seagate tout the speed advantages of its SATA 6Gbps hard drive, but it’s the 6Gbps SSD that we’re really curious about. PC Perspective managed to snag itself a Marvell prototype drive, and even though they could only test the read capabilities of it, the results are nothing short of titillating. Reviewers pitted the Marvell drive against Intel’s well-respected X25-M G2, and their (admittedly limited) testing led them to discover a 33 percent increase in burst performance over one of the quickest SSDs on the market today. In case you’re still not impressed, you should know that they also saw a 27 percent uptick in sustained read performance (compared to the X25-M G2) and a 175 percent increase over the aforementioned SATA 6Gbps Seagate HDD. Obviously it’s still too early to tell whether the 6Gbps SSD really is the best thing since the vacuum tube, but if these ultra-early results are any indication of what’s to come, we suggest you start packing those pennies away right now to finance your next storage upgrade.
We’d been wondering when ASUS’ NVIDIA Ion and optical drive packing Eee Box EB1501 would touch down on US soil, and lo and behold today it’s showing face for all those eager enough to pre-order. The device is available at Amazon for not a dollar less than $479 (though it does have free shipping), and if you’ll recall, the box is boasting a 1.6GHz Intel Atom dual core N330, NVIDIA Ion graphics, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive. All that and you get Windows 7 Home Premium rather than the ever-graying Windows XP. Of course, if you’re looking for all that in a mobile form factor you can always wait on the $499 ASUS Eee PC 1201N, but for set-top duty, feel free to unleash the credit card right now.
Here are 12 gift ideas for the most generous gifters: people giving computers. From cheapest ($300) to priciest ($1500), these are Tom’s Guide’s picks.
The GeForce 9300 ITX WiFi offers comparably fast 3D performance and a feature set that is far superior to the other solutions. Not only does it feature 802.11 b/g wireless (the AMD counterpart does, as well) but it also comes with HDMI, DVI, and VGA display outputs, eSATA, a reasonable 4-phase processor voltage circuit, and a full x16 PCI Express interface. Since this is the only mini-ITX platform that is truly a desktop replacement, it is the only really flexible product and receives our Recommended Buy Award.
, after I bought it a week ago @97. Gahhhh! (OCZ OCZ2M8004GK PC2-6400 DDR2 800MHz SODIMM 4 GB Kit)