DFI BloodIron G41-T33 Motherboard Review @ Ninjalane

In terms of basic motherboards you can't go wrong with the DFI BloodIron G41, this MicroATX motherboard not only supports the latest Intel 775 processors but comes with an onboard graphics processor giving you the flexibility to use this system in a variety of different situations from a high-end HTPC application to a budget gaming or family rig.

One key part of solving the PC's multicore problems draws from the world of big iron, and Windows 7 can support much bigger iron–servers with as many as 256 processor cores compared with 64 for its predecessor. Now a few years into the multicore era, even today's laptops are able to juggle as many tasks as reasonably powerful servers from just a few years ago. Intel's new Core i7 “Clarksfield” processor for mobile computers has four cores that manage a total of eight separate “threads” of work.

“One dimension is support for a much larger number of processors and getting good linear scaling on that change from 64 to 256 processors,” said Jon DeVaan, senior vice president of Microsoft's Windows Core Operating System Division. “There's all kinds of depth in that change.”

Bluetooth 3.0+HS-enabled devices will account for 23% of all certified Bluetooth-enabled devices in 2010 and further climb to 61% in 2011, according to estimates from the Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG). Bluetooth 3.0's main new feature is AMP (Alternate MAC/PHY), the addition of 802.11 as a high speed transport.

Bluetooth 3.0+HS technology may initially be incorporated in external USB dongles for PC/notebook applications and then find its way into built-in modules for handsets, notebooks and other consumer electronics products, said industry sources in Taiwan. By 2013, the number of handsets using Bluetooth 3.0+HS technology will top 300 million units, followed by PC systems at 60-70 million units, personal media players at 30-35 million units, external dongles at 10-15 million units and DSCs at 1-2 million units, the sources quoted data from IMS Research as indicating.

QNAP Systems today expanded their Turbo NAS lineup with the addition of the TS-210 desktop NAS server targeted specifically at the SOHO and Prosumer market segments. The TS-210 supports up to 2 3.5″ SATA hard drives with up to 4TB of total capacity (using 2TB drives) and features a Marvell 800MHz CPU and 256MB DDRII memory which provides sustained high performance with low power consumption. The TS-210 can be configured to RAID 1 for high data redundancy. The TS-210 also supports iSCSI Target service with Thin Provisioning and a Gigabit LAN port, features generally found on much higher end NAS servers. The TS-210 is equipped 3 USB ports (1 front, 2 back panel) for expanding the storage capacity, printer sharing, or data backup to an external storage device. The TS-210 will be available in October globally through popular commercial distributors, resellers, and e-tailers.

The TS-210 is a smart choice for installation in home or home-based business as it is fully compatible with Windows, Macintosh, Linux, and UNIX networks. It features a built-in UPnP/ DLNA media server (with TwonkyMedia enabled) supporting a wide range of DLNA media players such as Sony PS3 and Microsoft Xbox 360 gaming consoles. By installing the DLNA/ UPnP application on your iPhone or iPod touch, users can access the TS-210 on the home network and play the videos, music, and photos from the server over the network. In addition, the high-speed PC-less Download Station with the unique QGet utility enables users to manage the BT/ FTP/ HTTP download tasks remotely over the local network or the Internet. The TS-210 can perform centralized backups of all computers attached to the network to protect valuable paid downloaded music and video content, digital pictures, and documents.

The patent-pending Skooba checkthrough rolling laptop case looks and functions like a high-end business case, but is designed and rigorously-tested to be “checkpoint-friendly,” so you can run it through airport x-ray screening without removing your computer. This is a great product for any frequent traveler!

Trend Micro has found a zero-day exploit targeting Adobe Reader and 9.1.3 and earlier versions of Adobe Acrobat. The exploit drops a backdoor onto computers using JavaScript. The CNET article states that Adobe is releasing a patch this Tuesday to coincide with Microsoft's patch Tuesday.

Trend Micro identified the exploit as a Trojan horse dubbed “Troj_Pidief.Uo” in a blog post. It arrives as a PDF file containing JavaScript-based malware, “Js_Agent.Dt,” and then drops a backdoor called “Bkdr_Protux.Bd.”

Microsoft Senior Research & Development employee Robert Morgan made big news yesterday when it was discovered that he had posted his current project information on social networking site LinkedIn. His profile stated, “Working in high security department for research and development involving strategic planning for medium and longterm projects. Research & Development projects including 128bit architecture compatibility with the Windows 8 kernel and Windows 9 project plan. Forming relationships with major partners: Intel, AMD, HP and IBM.” While this statement has now been removed, the 128-bit plans are now out of the bag! It will be interesting to see if there will be a benefit to 128-bit data in CPUs (now expected by 2012, 2011?) because there likely won't be a need to address more than 16 exabytes anytime soon!

Microsoft has said very little publicly about Windows 8, although on a visit to the UK earlier this week, CEO Steve Ballmer denied rumours that Windows 7 would be the last major client OS the company produced. Ballmer admitted that planning was underway on Windows 8, although it's highly unlikely that the OS will arrive until 2012 at the earliest.

As graphics kingpin Nvidia tries to reshape itself into a broad-based computing company, it is taking big gambles with potentially big payoffs, while it fends off challenges from rivals Intel and Advanced Micro Devices. The world's largest supplier of standalone graphics chips for PCs needs to grow. Established markets have matured and Nvidia must seek out other ways to make money.

Enter supercomputing and Nvidia's brand-new Fermi architecture. “That's a huge market and big margins,” said Peddie. Fermi was announced last week at an Nvidia conference to great fanfare when prestigious Oak Ridge National Laboratory said it plans to use Fermi in a future supercomputer. It would be an understatement to say that the Fermi chip potentially packs a computing wallop. The chip integrates an astounding 3 billion transistors, about three times the number of transistors in Nvidia's most powerful graphics chip now on the market, and it has been designed with features that make it more suitable for high-performance computers, the first time that Nvidia has architected a chip this way.

The Pocket PC Central Hands-On T-Mobile Touch Pro2 Review has been posted in the Windows Mobile Review Center.

Best CPU Cooler Performance LGA1366 Q3-2009 @ Benchmark Reviews and other reviews from around the web can be found by visiting our forums!

Overclockers and performance enthusiasts both share the same desire to cool their processor with the best possible hardware solution, but they each have different needs. The Benchmark Reviews test lab is rife with cooling products, ranging from silent low-profile to full-size tower coolers. The purpose of this series is to measure products for the best cooling performance in both stock and overclocked forms. In this article, Benchmark Reviews tests a new collection of LGA1366 coolers using the Intel Core i7-920 processor overclocked to 3.8 GHz @ 1.4V, allowing only the very best CPU coolers to endure our tests and reveal the most desirable heatsink for your computer system.