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3D Game Man has posted a video review on the 301 Minion4000 Full Tower Video Check it out

Thanks to Mark for this one: Despite growing speculation that Microsoft has moved up delivery of Windows XP´s final code to manufacturing, a source close to the company says it is sticking to its original plan of delivering it the week of August 20. The delivery date of the gold code to original equipment manufacturers was set for August 22 quite some time ago, the source says. But due to what is described as a "couple of minor security glitches," the final code may not be ready until later next week. Read more

3D Chipset has posted new ATI Radeon Beta 5.13.3226 drivers for Windows 2000 Release Notes: - No word yet on performance or compatibility - Files are dated: Aug 16, 2001 Download

Hardware Extreme has finished another Gadgets Showcase. It´s gadget showcase time, this is when Hardware Extreme scours the web looking for the coolest newest electronics available or soon to be available. The gadgets 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. This list is full of all the greatest but with your help we can make each edition even better. Enjoy the showcase and when you are done reading please vote on your favorite gadget in the forums. The contenders are : Xbox Video Game System RS-01 RoboDog i-Cybie Pet Olympus Eye Trek PS11 Sony PEG-N710C Archos Jukebox 6000 Panasonic e-wear™ Ricoh RDC-i700 Nintendo Gamecube Apple iBook Nokia Music Player Nokia 8310 MobilePhone Read more

M3DZone has posted new detonator drivers for Windows 9x, 2000, and NT 4.0 Download

Franknet has put up a Abit VP6 review. As you can see, the VP6 is a dual processor capable motherboard. However, it does not support ANY Celeron processors. That´s right folks, this is a Pentium III only board, so be warned. You can run 1 or 2 Pentium III´s in the FC-PGA (Flip Chip-Pin Grid Array) Socket 370. However, to make use of that 2nd cpu, you need to have an operating system that supports SMP (Symmetrical MultiProcessing): Windows NT/2000/ XP Pro, Linux, Unix, BeOS, BSD are examples, but their are many more. Read more

Maximum Hardware has posted a review on the WinTV TV/Radio card. I decided to purchase a TV/Radio card due to two main reasons; I originally had a PCI radio card, but it had a major compatibility problem with my sound card. And I thought a TV on the computer would be handy and meant I would never have to leave the computer for my entertainment. I looked for a card with TV and FM Radio, and decided to purchase this card for around £80. This model (no.747) is placed between the Hauppauge WinTV Primo (no Nicam stereo) and the WinTV Theatre (with Dolby pro Logic sound). This card proved to be perfect as it had the Radio... Read more

Overclockers Online has posted a review on the AMD Athlon 1.4GHz If we look at the 1.4GHz counterpart, we are reading a maximum heat output of 72W! Is this a bad thing? Yes! ... Heat is something we don´t want to see near a computer, as it reduces lifetime of a component. There is a rule that says the lifetime doubles every time the temperature drops 10 degrees celcius. The days that we ran our CPUs without fans or with those tiny heatsinks are definitely over!! To get rid of 72W of CPU power, good cooling is needed, and even with a high end heatsink, temperatures of 50 degrees Celsius are no exception at full load. Read more

Digit-Life has posted their first look on new solutions from ATI So, the first chips have been already officially released - R200 and RV200. Half a year later a new mainstream chip RV250 will appear with the R300 family. It will have all possibilities of the R200. By the way, the diagram shows that the division of the market into sectors by the companies differs. The chips marked by ATI as "performance" are, at present, competing against "mainstream" sector of NVIDIA (GeForce2 MX). Having divided the GeForce2 MX into three subsectors, NVIDIA considerably extended the concept "mainstream", and it positively told upon the sales volume. Let´s clarify the concepts and let the "performance" mean a sector where you can find everything which is not mainstream or professional, and let forget the concept "enthusiast" since this is not a sector of the market at all. Read more

A new version of RAM Idle 4.5 is out. RAM Idle is a free memory management program that is designed for Windows. With an easy to use interface, RAM Idle enables your applications to load faster and more responsively by making more physical memory available for the system. Use it to free up a selected amount of physical memory when the minimum level is reached. You can also use it to free up a selected amount of physical memory at a regular interval, and free up the physical memory manually as needed. Download

SmartLine has released a new beta of DeviceLock 5.0 for Windows NT/2000 DeviceLock gives network administrators control over which users can access what devices (ports, floppies, Magneto-Optical disks, etc.) on a local computer. Once DeviceLock is installed, administrators can assign permissions to LPT ports, CD-ROMs, COM ports or any other device, just as they would to share-permissions on a hard disk. Network administrators can use DeviceLock to flush a storage device´s buffers (very useful for removable media) and to get extended information about devices and NTFS partitions. Remote control is also available. Download

Thanks to Mark for this one: RESPONDING TO THE growing popularity of server appliances, Microsoft plans to roll out a dedicated Web server in next year´s first quarter as part of its upcoming Windows .NET Server Family, according to a source close to Microsoft. Called the Windows .NET Web Server, Redmond, Wash.-based Microsoft hopes the product can cash in on corporate users´ increasing interest in appliance servers -- lower end, turnkey systems dedicated to performing specific tasks -- as well as stop some of the momentum Linux competitors have built in this market, the source said. Read more

Slautech has posted a review on the Razer Boomslang The drivers that come with the Boomslang provide many features other mice don´t offer. The best of these being the ´on the fly´ sensitivity change, this really comes into its own when railing in Quake 3, drop to a low sensitivity for railing then *bang* straight back up to a higher sensitivity for your rocket launcher. Read more

Thanks to Andrew for this one: Microsoft Personal Security Advisor (MPSA) is an easy to use web application that will help you secure your Windows NT™ 4.0 or Windows 2000™ computer system. Simply press the Scan Now button to receive a detailed report of your computer´s security settings and recommendations for improvement. MPSA will scan your system and build a customized report on items such as: missing security patches, weak passwords, Internet Explorer and Outlook Express security settings, and Office macro protection settings. More details on the specific tests performed by MPSA are available by clicking on the Features menu option above. Read more

I am Not a Geek has put up their Samsung Baby Yepp review It looks like this Baby Yepp has the same 12MHz 16-bit CISC processor as its bigger brother so MP3 playback should be up to the exact same level of quality. This unit is available with both 32 or 64MB of ram, but is not upgradeable. The full size Yepp comes with a smart media slot but there is obviously no room for that on this version. The model I received for review has only 32MB but that doesn´t really make a difference for review purposes. Read more

Hot Hardware has posted a review on the Abit TH7II-RAID Socket 478 Pentium 4 motherboard. Typically, Abit seems to like to let the competition lead the introduction of new platform and then enter the scene with a more refined and matured offering. This time around the TH7II-RAID (noticed the "II" in there, as in the "second coming") is the first Socket 478 board to hit the market, as far as we can tell. From our initial look at this new gem from Abit, the refinements seem to already be built in. So, in typical HotHardware fashion, we put it through its paces to find out just how refined this board really is. Read more

On July 12, 2001, Microsoft released the original version of this bulletin, to advise customers of a vulnerability affecting Microsoft Outlook and to recommend that they temporarily use an administrative procedure to protect their systems. A patch that eliminates the vulnerability is now available. An updated version of the bulletin was released on August 16, 2001, to announce the availability of the patch and to advise customers that the administrative procedure is no longer needed. The Microsoft Outlook View Control is an ActiveX control that allows Outlook mail folders to be viewed via web pages. The control should only allow passive operations such as viewing mail or calendar data. In reality, though, it exposes a function that could allow the web page to manipulate Outlook data. This could enable an attacker to delete mail, change calendar information, or take virtually any other action through Outlook including running arbitrary code on the user´s machine. Read more

Maximum Reboot has posted new nVidia Detonator drivers 14.60 for Windows 2000. Download

Source Magazine has posted an article "Windows 2000 MCSE: Time to Upgrade?" An interesting thing is happening on the way to Windows 2000 Microsoft Certified System Engineer (MCSE) recertification: we are running out of time. If you’ve been on an extended summer vacation and haven’t heard, all existing Windows NT 4.0 MCSEs must be recertified on Windows 2000 by December 31, 2001 (a mere five months away and counting). This month I write about the conflicting data regarding the Windows 2000 MCSE program. Granted, I probably bring up more questions than I answer, but such is the current state of the MCSE designation. Read more

ActiveWin reports that Easy CD Creator 5.1 Platinum will offer XP support. Q. Is Easy CD Creator compatible with XP? A. Easy CD Creator 5.1 Platinum will offer XP support. This version will be available in retail stores soon after the release of XP. For customers that own older versions 5.0, 4.X or 3.X, Roxio will offer upgrade options to 5.1. We will post information, as we get closer to the XP launch.

This bulletin discusses three security vulnerabilities that are unrelated except in the sense that both affect ISA Server 2000: - A denial of service vulnerability involving the H.323 Gatekeeper Service, a service that supports the transmission of voice-over-IP traffic through the firewall. The service contains a memory leak that is triggered by a particular type of malformed H.323 data. Each time such data is received, the memory available on the server is depleted by a small amount; if an attacker repeatedly sent such data, the performance of the server could deteriorate to the point where it would effectively disrupt all communications across the firewall. A server administrator could restore normal service by cycling the H.323 service. - A denial of service vulnerability in the in the Proxy service. Like the vulnerability above, this one is caused by a memory leak, and could be used to degrade the performance of the server to the point where is disrupted communcations. - A cross-site scripting vulnerability affecting the error page that ISA Server 2000 generates in response to a failed request for a web page. An attacker could exploit the vulnerability by tricking a user into submitting to ISA Server 2000 an URL that has the following characteristics: (a) it references a valid web site; (b)it requests a page within that site that can´t be retrieved - that is, a non-existent page or one that generates an error; and © it contains script within the URL. The error page generated by ISA Server 2000 would contain the embedded script commands, which would execute when the page was displayed in the user´s browser. The script would run in the security domain of the web site referenced in the URL, and would be able to access any cookies that site has written to the user´s machine. Read more

Dan´s Data has posted a review on the Zippy Technology IR-710 wireless keyboard. Got me another shiny little keyboard for review. Rather than give it a review all to itself, I´ve added it to my existing shiny-input-devices piece at http://www.dansdata.com/shiny.htm . The newcomer is the Zippy Technology (seriously, that´s what they´re called) wireless infra-red IR-710. It´s small, it´s reasonably priced, it´s got a trackpoint mouse and numerous software-controlled buttons which you don´t have to use if you don´t want to. Its battery life should be pretty good, and it actually doesn´t feel too awful to type on. If you´re shopping for a cool-looking wireless ´board with which to control your living room DVD-and-MP3 PC, or your boring business presentation for that matter, this could be the one. Read more

GamePC has put up a IDE/SCSI RAID shootout So today at GamePC, we´re taking a look at two very common RAID arrays for high-end workstations and low-end server users. IDE and SCSI RAID, in RAID-0 and RAID-1 configurations, with the fastest pairs of hard drives on both spectrums. Seagate´s Cheetah X15 36LP will be representing SCSI RAID, while Seagate´s new Barracuda IV will be representing IDE RAID. But before we spin up these drives for some benchmarks, let´s check out the specifics of our drives and controllers. Read more

Accelenation has posted a review on the MSI KT266 Pro-R motherboard based on the KT266 chipset. MSI has consistently ranked in the top 4 in motherboard sales over the past few years thanks to its solid motherboard designs and quick releases. MSI was the first motherboard company to deliver a Socket A motherboard when the Thunderbird was released. This motherboard, the K7T Pro, has evolved into the K7T Pro2 and K7T Turbo. The latest incarnation of the VIA based Socket A series is the K7T266 Pro, with full support for DDR memory. Read more

GideonTech.com has posted a review on the RumbleFX force feedback headphone. After getting into a 20 player game on GT´s CS Server, this unit really stood out. I felt and heard each gun shot coming from every angle. I used to use a Koss headset to play CS, but it didn´t provide any type of increased bass let alone Force Feedback. The Evergreen unit was sharp and precise in outputting the exact location of each noise movement. I also tried it while playing normal MP3s. After about 15 minutes of bass pounding hip hop and dance music, my ears were getting itchy! The vibrations may cause you to constantly scratch yourself, but you´ll probably get used to it over time. Read more