By Douglas McIntyre January 26, 2010

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By Randall C. Kennedy January 25, 2010

It’s the thought experiment we all like to engage in. What would life be like without Microsoft Windows? To listen to the free open source software crowd, the demise of Windows — and by extension, Microsoft’s hegemony over the PC universe — would signal a kind of rebirth for information technology. Software would finally be free of the corporate shackles that have stifled innovation and dragged down the best and brightest among us. Such thinking is naïve, at best. Rather than freeing IT, the demise of Microsoft would plunge the industry into an apocalyptic tailspin of biblical proportions — no visions of hippie utopia here. The withdrawal of the Redmond giant’s steady hand would cause today’s computing landscape to tear itself apart at the seams, with application and device compatibility and interoperability devolving into the kind of Wild West chaos unseen since the days of the DOS big three: Lotus, WordPerfect, and Ashton-Tate.

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by Matthew Murray 01.25.10

Intel’s launch of its line of Clarkdale CPUs earlier this month introduced six new processors, exclusively intended for budget and mainstream systems. Ranging in price from $113 (for the Core i3-530) to $284 (for the Core i5-670), these chips offered a lot of performance variety for reasonable prices—with the added benefit of integrated graphics capabilities built right in. So it’s not that surprising that the competition isn’t far behind: AMD announced today that it’s releasing five new desktop CPUs of its own, also spread across the lower and middle price ranges. In terms of big surprises, there’s only one: the Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition. AMD boasts that this chip is its “fastest-ever dual-core desktop processor,” with a clock speed of 3.2 GHz and, as its name implies, an unlocked multiplier for those who want to sate a craving for overclocking. They don’t have to spend a ton of money to do it, however: The X2 555 Black Edition lists for just $99, and its TDP of 80 watts won’t be piling onto most people’s power bills.

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By Brian X. Chen January 24, 2010

Multiple independent reports have described the tablet’s appearance as a 10- to 11-inch iPhone or iPod Touch. (AppleInsider’s sources describe the tablet as “a first-generation iPhone that’s met its match with a rolling pin.”) The tablet, many have reported, will serve as a slate-like substitute for magazines, newspapers and books, while also offering the general-purpose functions seen in the iPhone, such as gaming, viewing photos, web surfing and using apps. A recent report from The Wall Street Journal adds that Apple will market the tablet as a product that can be shared among multiple people at home or in classrooms, thanks to its bigger screen. A few reports have claimed the tablet will sport a 10-inch OLED touchscreen, which would be great for reading books. But there aren’t many of these displays on the market, and they would also cost Apple about $400 apiece. A 10-inch LCD touchscreen, on the other hand, would cost Apple $60 — much more in line with the expected $1,000 price tag.

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New policy will take at least a year to implement
By Shane McGlaun – January 19, 2010

For most internet users, the privacy and security of their online information and search history is an important thing for many reasons. Some users don’t want their search history stored on servers where it could be stolen or released to unauthorized parties. Many search engines store the IP address information along with a search query for 18 months or more before deleting the data. Microsoft announced today that it would improve the privacy of searches by deleting search information after six months. Microsoft wrote in a blog post, “[Microsoft will] delete the entire Internet Protocol address associated with search queries at six months rather than at 18 months.” The Wall Street Journal reports that the change in how long Microsoft stores search data is in response to negotiations with European regulators. The move is expected to pressure search firms like Google to follow suit. Microsoft hopes that by deleting user search quires more frequently it can lure users concerned about privacy to use Bing rather than Google. Google still claims that it needs to keep search queries stored for up to nine months to improve search quality and fight fraud. The fraud in question is termed click fraud and is when users or companies click on ads repeatedly to run up the advertisers bill with no intention of buying.

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by Anton Shilov 01/19/2010

Advanced Micro Devices said that Nvidia Corp. had specifically altered its PhysX application programming interface (API) so that it could not take advantage of multi-core central processing units (CPUs) while making physics effects computations. According to AMD, the reason for such modifications was to increase importance of graphics processing units (GPUs) that are used to process physics effects in select games that are powered by PhysX. “The other thing is that all these CPU cores we have are under-utilised and I’m going to take another pop at Nvidia here. When they bought Ageia, they had a fairly respectable multi-core implementation of PhysX. If you look at it now it basically runs predominantly on one, or at most, two cores. […] I wonder why Nvidia has done that? I wonder why Nvidia has failed to do all their QA on stuff they don’t care about – making it run efficiently on CPU cores – because the company doesn’t care about the consumer experience it just cares about selling you more graphics cards by coding it so the GPU appears faster than the CPU. It’s the same thing as Intel’s old compiler tricks that it used to do; Nvidia simply takes out all the multi-core optimisations in PhysX,” said Richard Huddy, AMD’s Worldwide Developer Relations manager, in an interview with Bit-tech.net web-site.

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By Gregg Keizer January 19, 2010

Apple on Tuesday patched 12 vulnerabilities in Leopard and Snow Leopard, including seven in Adobe Flash Player and one in the protocol used to secure Internet traffic. Security update 2010-001, the first from Apple this year, is noticeably smaller than the monster issued last November that fixed almost 60 flaws. The seven fixes for Flash Player, Apple’s first update to the popular media player since September, brought the program up to version 10.0.42.34, the same edition that Adobe shipped Dec. 8, 2009, for Windows and Linux. Adobe tagged six of the seven vulnerabilities as critical in its own security advisory last month. Because Apple bundles Flash Player with Mac OS X, it regularly distributes patches for the Adobe software, at times months after the latter has shipped patches. The six-week gap between Adobe’s issuing fixes and Apple delivering them this time was similar to the time it took Apple to update Flash in the summer of 2009.

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By Techtree News Staff, Jan 20, 2010

With the Mobile World Congress fast approaching, the rumor mills have started to work overtime with some of them sounding outright preposterous and contradictory to earlier reports. This particular rumor we are about to talk of is one such thing. Most people here might be aware of Microsoft’s Zune Phone (also known as the “Pink” phone). While most of us thought it was what it was – just a rumor and forgot about it, here comes yet another wave of rumor that seems to indicate that a Zune Phone might actually be on the cards – and that too in the next few months. If that wasn’t enough, it would run Windows Mobile 7, the rumor states! Now, the problem with this is, if Windows Mobile 7 arrives so soon, whatever happens to Windows Mobile 6.6 that is rumored to be arriving during the MWC? In fact, according to Katherine Egbert, a technology analyst at Jefferies, the Zune Phone might see an announcement at the MWC or at CTIA 2010 (in March). The features set of the Zune Phone includes a “music subscription/purchasing service” and a 5MP camera with HD video recording. If we are to go by yesterdays reports, there are apparently two versions of Windows Mobile 7 – the Business Edition and the Media Edition. If that report is correct, then we have to assume that this phone will run the Media Edition of Windows Mobile 7.

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