Philipp

T-Break has posted a review on Creative´s latest sound card- the Audigy. Audio Prodigy- those are the two words that gave birth to the new Sound Card from the company that dominates the PC audio market. Creative introduced their latest Sound Card- Audigy, here in the sunny city of Dubai on the 16th of September and we were invited to the launch party where the Senior Vice President of Creative, Mr. Low Chee Seng gave a brief overview of his company’s past, present and future. After that, the regional Marketing Manager, Mr. Wesley Yee presented a demo of the Audigy Sound card. Read more

VR-Zone has posted a review on the ABIT TH7II-RAID motherboard. ABIT has followed up with a product to replace their previous Pentium 4 board, the TH7-RAID using the Socket 423 P4. This product is none other than the TH7-II RAID, i850 based Socket 478 board. However, there are distinct differences between the two boards other than the sockets. TH7-II RAID is much more tuned towards overclockers as much emphasis is placed on its overclocking features such as SoftMenu III and Engineered Overclocking Strips. ABIT has put in alot of "ABIT Engineering" effort into this board so as to make it a truly overclocker´s board. The main motive of ABIT is to Overclock With Stability. Read more

Hercules has released new drivers for the 3D Prophet 4500 video card. Thanks Mark. Download for Windows NT 4.0 Download for Windows 2000

MSI has released a new KT266 bios for powerusers and overclockers. Thanks Mark. Download

FrostyTech has posted a review on the Thermaltake Volcano 6Cu+ Heatsink review Ever since the ORB shocked the cooling world with its shape and functionality the eyes of performance users have been glued on Thermaltake. While heatsinks like the Dragon Orb 3 have brought about some of the heaviest designs on the market one thing remains constant - copper, and the quest for absolute performance. When used properly, copper can help increase the effectiveness of just about any heatsink design, but when misused it really only adds dead weight. With that in mind we are going to review the Volcano 6Cu+ and specifically the large copper slug in its´ base to see how effective it really is. Read more

NeoWin send words that a new version of Powertoys for XP is out. Read more

Microsoft has released a new version of their keyboard software. Thanks Mark. Download

Microsoft has released TV Photo Viewer 1.1. Thanks Mark. Download

FrostyTech has put up a Akasa Silver Mountain Heatsink review Take one solid copper heatsink and plate it entirely with silver and you have the Akasa Silver Mountain. Strap on a powerful Delta AFBO612EH fan and you have the potential for a wickedly adaptable cooling solution. As shiny as the silver coating is on the Akasa heatsink, it really won´t influence thermal results by any significant degree however. What the silver coating will do is prevent the underlying copper from oxidizing. Provided the silver coating is thick enough, it may even fill in some small gaps between the 18 sets of mechanically joined fins to the 6mm thick base plate. Read more

Savage News send words that a new S3/VIA Twister Windows XP driver is out Download

Accelenation has posted a review on the Soyo SY-K7V Dragon motherboard. Look at this review as more of a preview of the KT266A Dragon that should come out with almost identical features, but with better stability and a heck of a lot more speed due to a better chipset. If Soyo releases that board on time and it is as good as the original Dragon, it will certainly be a contender. Read more

Adrian´s Rojak Pot has posted revision 6.50 of their BIOS Optimization Guide Here is the list of updates :- - Added the Read Wait State BIOS option. - Added IBM´s recommendation for the PNP OS Installed option. - Added a note about disabling PNP OS Installed when using the ABIT BP6 with Windows 2000. - Updated the Video BIOS Shadowing feature with reasons why the video BIOS should still be updated even if it´s apparently only useful for DOS functions. - Added a note on why Award recommends that SDRAM Bank Interleave be disabled for 16Mbit SDRAM DIMMs. Read more

NeoSeeker has posted a review on the Z43 Photo printer from Lexmark. After having reviewed the impressive Z33 budget printer, we decided to take a look at some more of Lexmark’s offerings. Thus we were faced with the $99US Z43, which features a 2400x1200dpi for both black and white prints in all paper types. It also lays claim to a speedy 12ppm black and 6ppm color print speed. Read more

Everything USB send some USB related news: VIA unveils USB 2.0 plan The VIA´s first USB 2.0 solution - VT6202 PCI USB host controller - can power up to 4 USB 2.0 ports, which deliver speed of up to 480Mb/s. Complying to the USB 2.0 specification, the VT6202 is available in two formats: a 4-port PCI USB 2.0 add-in card or a USB2.0 host controller installed on the motherboard. Read more M-Systems ups DiskOnKey size The previous DiskOnKey was 32MB maximum, but M-Systems now sells capacities between 8-128MB, and has chosen to colour-code the necks of them depending on size. 8MB will be grey, 16MB will be yellow, 32MB orange, 64MB blue, and 128MB green. Read more Yamaha unveils USB 2.0 MP3/CD-RW combo The CRW-70 Spyder is Yamaha´s answer to a very non-existent ´all-in-one´ CD device market. Capable of not only burning CD´s at fast speeds via USB 2.0, the CRW-70 Spyder also functions as a portable CD/MP3 player, allowing users to burn a CD and take their burner with them to listen to the music. Cool! Read more FID announces low-cost, portable MP3 player First International Digital, the pioneer of the Karaoke MP3 player, today announced a follow up to their ´popular irock! 600 series MP3 players´, with the unveiling of the irock! 500 series. Read more

Station Drivers has posted new Intel ATA66/100 drivers. Read more

Overclocked Cafe has taken a look at the latest additions to Thermaltake´s CPU cooling line-up: The Volcano 6Cu+, 6Cu, and Volcano 5 Here´s some of the specifics. In this review you will find comparisons of the Thermaltake Volcano series of coolers in both the "boring world"and in the "overclocking world." Take note that I’m defining "boring world" as stock OEM settings that you might find on any off the shelf PC, and "overclocking world"as the PC that a gamer or Geek (this includes myself) will tweak until there is a nice cherry colored glow emanating from your CPU. Read more

I am Not a Geek dot com has posted a review on the Samsung SW-216 While you may have a 52x CD-ROM, the rating of 52X is a maximum rating, and on the inside tracks of the CD where the CD-ROM starts reading from, you are only going to get about 16x at the most. CD Recorders speeds are based on a CLV rating not a CAV rating like the most CD-ROMs past 8x, which means they burn at the same speed throughout the CD. So your 24x burner will actually start burning at 24x while your 52X CD-ROM is only starting to read at 16X, which will cause a buffer underrun error, but more likely your 24x burner has BURN Proof or Just Link enabled and your burner temporarily stops and waits for the CD-ROM to catch up and then resumes the burn, slowing the overall process. Read more

HotHardware has posted a review on Iwill´s latest KT133A based board, the KK266Plus. There are some nice goodies on-board, including some that will appeal to the overclocking crowd. Drop in and take a look! Read more

Nero has posted InCD version 2.32. Thanks Phil. Free InCD Update Filesize: 1.19MB (1,253,260 Bytes) Current version: 2.32 Release date: September 26th, 2001 operating systems: Windows 95 OSR2.x, Windows 98, Win NT4.0 SP5 Windows ME and new Windows 2000! Read more

Serial Addiction has posted a review on Iwill´s newest Socket A offering, the KK266+ Motherboard. Installation of this board went smoothly as per normal though I did find a few layout issues that I didn´t much care for. First of all the area around the socket would be perfect except for the fact that Iwill put a nice row of capacitors close to the bottom edge of the socket. They are however very short cap´s and shouldn´t interfere with and "regular" sized heatsink´s. A large (read: monster) heatsink such as the Swiftek MC462 (or "mutha" as its called around here) could have problems with this part of the board. Read more

UKGamer.net has posted a review on the silver plated Akasa Silver mountain. Copper heatsinks became all the rage once it was seen as a viable alternative to aluminium. Copper has much better thermal properties than Aluminium, and companies like Alpha had been using copper inlay in their heatsinks for years. The first mass produced all copper heatsink to hit UK shores was the Kanie Hedgehog. After seeing the popularity of that, many other manufacturers followed suit, and prices started to drop amid competition. Read more

FrostyTech has posted a review on the Thermal Integration TI-V77L Heatsink Thermal Integration made a lot of waves in the cooling marketplace with their introduction of the Thermoengine earlier this year. If you recall, the Thermoengine had two particular traits which helped to make it one very capable performing heatsink. The first aspect was of course the hollow center which decreased the overall amount of heat energy stored in the cooler, and the second was its very efficient fin design. The TI-V77L follows in those same foot steps and uses Thermal Integration´s very efficient top-down design. The area under the fan motor is usually a dead spot for air flow and TI-V77L gets around this by using that section of material to transfer the heat from the processor throughout the body of the heatsink. Thus, all the cooling fins on the heatsink are located directly under the down draft created by the fan. As a further side benefit, the exhaust air blows directly down onto the top of the processor, adding further cooling into the mix. Read more

Hardware Extreme has posted their September Edition Showcase. The stuffs we present in this showcase are all what we consider the best of the best. They provide some exciting new abilities or they introduce a new technology that will change computers, gaming, or technology as a whole. Some of the items in the Showcase are: Logitech Cordless Freedom Optical Wireless IntelliMouse Explorer Lian-Li PC68 Aluminum Case Solarism LM1503 15" LCD Monitor Creative Audigy Advanced HD Read more

Microsoft Corp. today announced it will launch Microsoft® Windows® XP Embedded, the componentized version of the Windows XP operating system used for building reliable and full-featured connected client devices, at the second annual Windows Embedded Developers Conference on Nov. 28, 2001, at the Bellagio Hotel in Las Vegas. Delivering on the commitment to deliver Windows XP Embedded within 90 days of the release of the desktop version ensures that embedded developers have access to the latest Windows-based technologies. As part of the launch activities, Microsoft and its Rapid Development Partners will showcase the first group of devices based on the new operating system. The Windows Embedded Developers Conference will kick off with a launch event at 9 a.m. on Nov. 28 and will run though Nov. 30. Attendees will also have access to in-depth technical sessions on all the Microsoft Windows Embedded operating systems, technologies and development tools including Windows XP Embedded, "Talisker," the code name for the next version of Windows CE, and Visual Studio® .NET. Read more

Microsoft Corp. today announced that AfriCam, one of the world´s first converged interactive media businesses, has implemented the Microsoft® Windows® 2000 operating system and Commerce Server 2000 as its e-commerce solution and has seen increased scalability and a lowered total cost of ownership. The AfriCam site, http://www.africam.com/, was originally based on Art Technology Group and Oracle software and ran on Sun Microsystems and Linux servers, but AfriCam found that solution costly and unable to scale enough to meet its needs, so it switched to the Microsoft .NET Platform. Read more