Solid-State drives (SSDs) have had a lot of coverage lately, mostly negative. Battery life, performance, reliability, those sorts of things have been under close scrutiny of late. Monday, in Sandisk’s earnings call, Sandisk placed the blame for at least one of those issues squarely on Microsoft’s shoulders. Eli Harari, Chairman and CEO of Sandisk, when asked about how his company plans to increase adoption rates of SSDs, said (emphasis ours):As soon as you get into Vista applications in notebook and desktop,

I’ve been using the new Palm Treo 800w for a few days, and I wanted to share my impressions of the device before I post my full review sometime next week.

The Treo 800w is fast – its TI CPU (to my surprise), makes quick work of applications and files, the EVDO connection is more than adequate for most web tasks (particularly on Opera Mobile 9.5), and file transfers are zippy over USB 2.0 or Wi-Fii.  Next, the screen.  The Treo 800w has a square display with an unusual but beautiful 320×320 resolution.  This display offers some compatibility issues with third-party Windows Mobile software, but it looks great.  Lastly, there’s Treo thumb QWERTY keyboard, which is one of the best out there.

After my last ho-hum experience with the WinMo Treo, the Treo 750, I’m very impressed by the 800w.  The 800w isn’t for everyone, but if you’re a Treo fan and a Sprint customer, I recommend you swing by your local store and have a look.  More next week.

Last month CinemaNow conducted a survey on its Website about consumers’ viewing habits. One of the more entertaining tidbits to come from the survey was that the majority of those surveyed thought that of all the actors who plated Batman, Christian Bale looked the best in his Batman outfit. Keep this in mind, because we’ll be coming back to Christian Bale’s Batman outfit in a bit… The main finding from the survey, however, that CinemaNow really wants to publicize is:”94 percent of Americans believe that they

Intel Core 2 Quad Q9300 Review @ OCC and other reviews from around the web can be found by visiting our forums!

“Overclocking each processor is different. With five identical processors you will get five different results. With this Q9300, 456×7.5 was the point at which it was prime95 stable. It would run benchmarks at up to 470×7.5 but was nowhere near stable. Above 456 FSB, the amount of voltage to keep the chip running was significantly more than what other 45nm processors I have tested have taken at similar FSB and raw clock speeds. At 1.55 volts there was no point trying to even push further. The good news is that the CPU would do almost 450 FSB on the stock 1.215 volts. I left the volts at 1.34v during my testing just as a safeguard but have since lowered this to 1.31v at 456 FSB. Pretty low volts for the clock speeds I was able to pull from the little brother of the QX9770. Having a motherboard that will allow high front side bus speeds with a quad core processor is essential with the Q9300 CPU. Raw clock speed is limited because of the low 7.5 clock multiplier. In order to reach 3.6GHz you would need to hit 480FSB, something not all quad core CPUs will do, some, but not all.”

There has been much debate lately as to the effectiveness and reliability of consumer-level storage technology in the enterprise space.  This article on Dell’s future or storage website, details some of the specific considerations and decisions IT managers may have to make…”The fact of the matter is if you’re working with an enterprise application and cost isn’t the only driving factor but uptime and rebuild times are critical, there’s a really strong case for SAS technology, though SATA is a tempting

Video: Acer P243WAid 24″ LCD @ Phoronix Palit Geforce 9600 GSO Sonic 768MB Video Card @ Mikhailtech VisionTek HD 4870 512MB Video Card @ TheTechLoungeMotherboards and Chipsets: MSI P45 Platinum Review @ Neoseeker MSI P45 Platinum Motherboard Review @ Motherboards.org ASUS P5E64 WS Professional X38 Workstation Motherboard Review @ ThinkComputers.orgProcessors: Intel Core 2 Duo E7200 Dual-Core Processor Review @ TechARPMemory and Storage: LG GH22LP20 22x Super-Multi DVD±RW/RAM Review @ CDRLabs.com EagleTech

You’ll recall that in February security researchers found a way to break into encrypted hard drives by using a trick that relies on the fact that RAM dissipates its contents slower if cooled.The research paper, by Princeton, the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and Wind River Systems was titled “Lest We Remember: Cold Boot Attacks on Encryption Keys” (.PDF”).  Over the weekend, timed to coincide with the Last HOPE hacker conference over the weekend in New York, the source code was published to the Web.Of

Google is calling it a beta, but we’re calling it a breath of fresh air (depending on where you live, of course, your air might a bit more fresh than the air we breathe here in New York City). Today, Google has added walking directions to its popular Google Maps page. Whenever you use Google Maps for directions, if the destination is within 10km (about 6.2 miles) of the originating point, walking directions will be offered as an option in addition to the traditional driving directions. Google Software Engineer,

VISUAL COMPUTING INDUSTRY LEADERS LINE UP TO SPONSOR NVISION 08Christie, EVGA, HP, Microsoft, and PNY Technologies Head Up Key Sponsorships of First-Ever Visual Computing Mega-Event SANTA CLARA, CA–JULY 22, 2008–NVIDIA today announced the key sponsors for NVISION 08, the premier event for visual computing professionals and enthusiasts. Leading the list of sponsors and key contributors for the conference are Christie Digital Systems, EVGA, HP, Microsoft, and PNY Technologies. NVISION 08 will be held August 25-27,

VISUAL COMPUTING INDUSTRY LEADERS LINE UP TO SPONSOR NVISION 08Christie, EVGA, HP, Microsoft, and PNY Technologies Head Up Key Sponsorships of First-Ever Visual Computing Mega-Event SANTA CLARA, CA–JULY 22, 2008–NVIDIA today announced the key sponsors for NVISION 08, the premier event for visual computing professionals and enthusiasts. Leading the list of sponsors and key contributors for the conference are Christie Digital Systems, EVGA, HP, Microsoft, and PNY Technologies. NVISION 08 will be held August 25-27,