Philipp

Michael P. Fields Jr send me last week a guide "How to change the look & style of Windows 2000 - 10 ways to customize your Win2k" Tired of the same boring Windows 2000 experience? Want to spiff it up a tad? This article will hopefully point you in the right direction and as cheap as possible. Read more

Microsoft is keeping mum amid leaked e-mails and builds suggesting that a final version of its Internet Explorer 6 browser is nearing completion. In an e-mail seen by CNET News.com, the Internet Explorer team called a recent test, or "beta" version of IE 6 "what we expect to be the final build for the Internet Explorer 6 release." The e-mail, to beta testers, requested final comments and suggestions by Aug. 7. Read more

UKGamer.net has posted a review on the ThermoEngine Ultra. So lets start at the top. This is a regular Thermosonic ThermoEngine V60-4210, but Overclock UK have added one of their Delta 60mm focussed fans to increase the air delivery given to the ThermoEngine. In fact, when you compare the Delta 60mm against the fan that is usually supplied in the ThermoEngine, it looks somewhat like diddlysquat. Read more

Gamers Depot has posted a review on the Leadtek WinFast GeForce3 64MB video card. When the GeForce3 first arrived, it was hard to justify its price. Thankfully, it´s been in a steady freefall from its initial lofty heights of $400 (or more) to the low $300´s. It´s likely to continue dropping: ATI seems primed to announce its upcoming competitor, and NVIDIA´s six month product cycle is nearing fruition. Read more

The next stop for artificial intelligence will be speech recognition software, according to Microsoft. At this week´s International Joint Conference on Artificial Intelligence the Redmond giant unveiled a free intelligent speech dictation application that will run on Windows CE. Read more

OC Workbench has posted a new bios for the ECS K7S5A (SiS735) motherboard. Download

Under fire to make Windows XP-bundled products and services optional, Microsoft will instead add more services to the OS that users will be able to download from Microsoft´s Windows Update Web site. Read more

ActiveWin reports that Microsoft has released a new build of MSN Messenger. Download

Voyetra has posted some new Santa Cruz drivers dated August 8th, 2001 for Windows XP. Thanks Shane. Download

... LiveCards To Users of Windows XP Microsoft and PeoplestreetTM, the leading provider of Personalized Relationship Marketing Services (PeRM), today announced a strategic alliance that will bring the power of Peoplestreet LiveCardsTM to users of the Microsoft® Windows® XP operating system. As part of this alliance and Peoplestreet´s commitment to meet or exceed the Designed for Windows XP specifications, Microsoft will showcase Peoplestreet in the new Windows Catalog, offering users of Windows XP a direct link to Peoplestreet, where they can create and send self-up[censored] electronic business cards called LiveCards. Once on the Peoplestreet site, users will have the ability to download the LiveCard Companion for Outlook®, offering them the ability to store and send LiveCards directly within the Outlook® messaging and collaboration client. In addition, Peoplestreet will support single sign-in with Microsoft Passport, speeding the login and registration process. Read more

Elsa has released a new bios update for the Elsa Gladiac 920 GeForce 3 based video card. Download

TweakFiles has posted a new version of Tweak XP Tweak-XP - The tweaking eXPerience. The First Tweaking And Tuning Utility Especially For Windows XP. Unlike other tweaking utilities, Tweak-XP bundles more than 22 different utilities in one: tweaks, tools, hardware optimizations and a lot more - too much to list here... New in this version: Fixing some bugs in the Windows Tweaks section Several enhacements and changes Dutch language files added Some fixes to the english language files Read more

Microsoft has given PC makers the go-ahead to ship Windows XP as much as one full month before the operating system´s official Oct. 25 launch date, sources close to four major PC makers told CNET News.com. Computer makers plan to debut PCs and notebooks with the new operating system in late September, a move that could help jump-start stagnant sales. How soon customers could receive the PCs from the manufacturers is not clear, however, because the testing process could be more complicated for this release of Windows than for its predecessors. Read more

Everything USB send words that Adaptec has posted a USB 2.0 driver The version 1.0 release supports USB 2.0 IDE bridge, USB 2.0 MO Drive, USB 2.0 CD-RW and USB 2.0 scanner, but it does not support USB 2.0 hubs, isochronous devices and USB remote wake up. Also, it would seem the Adaptec driver is limited to supporting a certain USB storage devices employing USB Storage Device Bridge technology from In-System Design. The company advises users to download the latest driver from http://www.in-system.com/ when using ISD products with the USB 2.0 software. Download

Storage Review has posted a review on the Western Digital Caviar WD1000BB harddisk With the release of its 20 GB/platter Caviar WD400BB nearly a year ago, Western Digital proved that it was a serious challenger in the ATA drive sweeps. Though IBM´s Deskstar 75GXP managed to retain its throne, the WD400BB nonetheless provided a solid alternative to Big Blue´s drive. Last spring, WD followed up the 400BB with the Caviar WD800BB, a drive that doubled the 400BB´s size while delivering incremental performance gains. Interestingly, around the same time, the Deskstar-GXP series took a step backwards in capacity as IBM abandoned its premiere 5-platter design in favor of a more practical 3-platter implementation. The net result was a Western Digital offering that surpassed Big Blue´s in capacity while creeping ever closer in performance terms. This summer Western Digital brings the industry a product of symbolic significance. The Caviar WD1000BB is the first 7200 RPM ATA drive to hit 100 GB of capacity. It´s also the first three-digit-capacity drive we´ve tested that features a low-profile, 1" high design. The 1000BB achieves its monstrous capacity by utilizing three platters each packing a bit over 30 gigabytes. WD specifies seek time at 8.9 milliseconds. A standard 2-megabyte buffer rounds out the package. Read more

Microsoft has released a new interim build (2535) to the beta testers. This build is not the RTM build. Thanks NaTaN. Registered beta testers can download this build from the Windows Beta Website.

TweakTown has posted a review on the Dragon Orb 3 HSF Thermaltake has been long been making the Orb style coolers, but they have yet to produce one that works well for the serious overclocker...until now. The high performance Dragon Orb 3 is just that; High Performance. It manages to take the great looks of previous Orb coolers and mix in a healthy dose of effective cooling. Read more

PC Stats has posted a review on TwinMOS PC166 256MB SDRAM Quite a few companies decided to continue their support for the SDRAM market, and one of the newer companies making noise in this market is TwinMOS. TwinMOS are Taiwanese company that are just beginning to become known in North America. The company has decided to concentrate on helping the performance crowd with its latest offering, a stick of SDRAM spec’d at 256MB PC166 @ CAS 3. Most enthusiasts will acknowledge that the easiest way to enhance overall system performance is by overclocking the PC. Of course to do this, it always helps to have very high quality memory components that can operate at high frequencies.... Read more

Ace´s Hardware has posted a review on the Matrox G550 The "biggest" changes compared to the G450, are however in the G550´s 3D-engine. The two pipelines of the G550 are equipped with two texture units per pipeline, while G450 had only one unit per pipeline. Unfortunately, our first measurements show that the G550 runs at the same clock as the G450: the core runs at 125 MHz (maybe 133 MHz) and the DDR memory runs at only 166 MHz. The onboard video ram is still accessed via a 64 bit path, which means that in theory, the G550 still doesn´t have more bandwidth than the original G400, a measly 2.656 GB/s. I say in theory, because it is well known that in reality a 128 bit SDRAM memory subsystem (G400) is quite a bit more efficient than a 64 bit DDR solution (G450). Read more

MSI has released bios updates for the follow mainboards: MSI-6330 Lite MSI KT7 Pro MSI KT7 Pro 2 MSI KT7 Pro 2A MSI KT7 Turbo MSI KT7 Turbo LE

A meaner version of the Code Red Internet worm has made its first appearance in Asia, infesting dozens of computers in China, security experts said on Tuesday. South Korea was trying to determine whether it was this pernicious worm which had attacked government computers and Hong Kong also reported at least one confirmed infection. Read more

Acard has released some new driver for their scsi cards which include windows xp support as well. Thanks Weed. Download

McAfee Virus definitions has been updated to version 4152 If you are using VirusScan 5.x, you can easily update your DAT files from the VirusScan Central (the main VirusScan menu) and click on the Update button. The DATS will be downloaded and applied for you. Updates for VirusScan, and all McAfee products that include VirusScan, ensure that your virus protection is constantly updated as cures for new virus threats are published. The cures are included in a virus definition file called a DAT file. The easiest way to obtain new DAT files is to use the UPDATE button from VirusScan 5.x Central. DAT files are published weekly, or in the event of a virus outbreak. Download

Warp2Search send words that a new version of Cacheman is out. Outer Technologies has released a new shareware version of Cacheman 5.0. Cacheman is a performance enhancement and memory recovery utility. By optimizing the Disk Cache and additional system settings it can prevent frequent swapping of the data to hard drive resulting in improved performance, system reaction time and even stability. Besides this, Cacheman corrects generic problems on systems with more than 512MB of RAM. Wizards help novice users to learn more about the tweaks and their results. Download

Hardware-One has posted a review on the ELSA Gladiac GeForce2 GTS Pro 64MB video card. To start off the section on benchmarking, we used the ever-popular Quake III: Arena for the ELSA Gladiac GeForce2 GTS Pro 64MB for quick sampling. In this part of Q3A tests, we pitted the card against the higher-end Gladiac 920 GeForce3 sibling. The demo playbacks used "High Quality" and our self-defined "Super High Quality" mode which maxes out all texture detail and colour depths. Read more