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Blizzard dominates May PC game sales
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Gaming research firm NPD Group revealed May’s top 20 selling PC games and unsurprisingly World of Warcraft: Wrath of the Lich King sits at number one...
The original title was the best-selling PC game of 2005 and 2006, and the Burning Crusade expansion sold 2.4 million copies in its first 24 hours. With more people playing WoW than ever, Wrath of the Lich King sold 2.8 million copies on its opening day, making it the fastest selling PC game of all time.
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The worst may be over for the tech industry
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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The worst might be over for the technology market, according to the prophecy division at Forrester Research...
After receiving confirmation from the coffee grounds, the research firm revised its forecast for 2009. It now expects the US technology market to shrink by five percent this year.
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Intel to mass produce 32nm CPUs in Q4 2009
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Intel plans to start transition to 32nm process technology considerably earlier than originally scheduled...
Apparently, the company plans to start very aggressive promotion of its code-named Clarkdale processors in the Q4 2009 by shipping them in very mass quantities about a quarter ahead of the original plan.
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Some Vista users say they're getting the Ultimate shaft
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Microsoft promised that by purchasing the pricey Ultimate edition of Vista users would get all kinds of extras...
Now, that frustration has turned to anger after Microsoft offered its pre-order program for Windows 7.Through July 11, Microsoft is offering a steep discount for those moving to cheaper versions of Windows 7, but nothing for those who want to stay on Ultimate. Under the terms of Microsoft's discount pre-order program, users can buy an upgrade to Windows 7 Home Premium or Professional at roughly half the list price, but the Ultimate version is offered at the full $219 price.
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Mozilla slates first Firefox 3.5 patch
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Plans to patch bugs this month that went unfixed in final version...
Firefox 3.5.1, which Mozilla intends to deliver in mid-to-late July, will include fixes for at least three bugs and "topcrashes," the term the company uses to describe the frequently-reported crashes. Like many applications, Firefox asks users to report crashes by displaying a prompt after the browser goes down.
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AMD creates "Formula 1" CPUs for setting the records
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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AMD has officially unwrapped its AMD Phenom II X4 42 Black Edition TWKR central processing units (CPUs)...
"AMD wanted to give back with [microprocessors] that have characteristics that are specifically attractive to overclockers: can handle more voltage and scale really well under extreme conditions (LN2 and LHe)," a statement by AMD reads.
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Asus slashes netbook prices again
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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ASUS has slashed prices on its 7-inch and 8.9-inch Eeeeee PCs in order to clear out its inventory...
So how much money is Asus losing in its Atomic “everything-must-go” super sale? Well, sources in Taiwan tell us it takes about $190 to slap together a little lappie. We figure this is about right, considering Dell sells its cheapest netbook offering online for about $230 and usually gets a gross margin of around 25 per cent.
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New Nvidia graphics cards in October
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Rumor has it that Nvidia only plans to release its desktop DirectX 10.1 supporting chips in October...
The new graphics cards will be called Nvidia GeForce G210 and GeForce GT 220 and will be aimed at the entry-level market segments. The GeForce G210 (GT218 chip) graphics processing unit will have only 24 stream processors and will target $30 - $35 price-range. The GeForce GT220 (GT215 chip) graphics cards will sport 48 stream processors and will be priced between $55 and $60.
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Dell to make iPod touch-like gadget
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Dell is developing a pocket-sized gadget fashioned after Apple's iPod Touch...
Dell hopes to break a bad streak of luck with consumer gadgets. It wasn't very successful with its DJ Ditty music player line or with the Axim PDAs, which got axed a few years ago. Dell is giving pocket-sized devices one more shot, this time with an iPod Touch-style mobile Internet device (MID). So will it make a difference?
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The Pirate Bay users delete themselves
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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The operators of The Pirate Bay will allow users to delete their accounts on the torrent-tracking site, a feature many users have requested since a deal to sell the site was announced Tuesday...
Swedish Internet cafe operator Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) announced on Tuesday that it plans to buy The Pirate Bay for $7.8 million, prompting negative reactions from many of the site's users.
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Touch in Windows 7: Just for show?
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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There's a reason that the first thing in Windows 7 that Microsoft chose to show publicly was its support for touch input...
However, many say that comparatively few Windows 7 PC owners will actually be reaching out to touch their screen. That's because, to use one's fingers in such a manner requires a screen that can support the technology--something that often adds $100 or more to the cost of a PC.
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Firefox 3.5 is live!
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Mozilla organization has now officially released its Firefox 3.5 Web browser to the general public...
Naturally, Betanews is beginning its first round of performance tests on the final build of 3.5, especially to see whether that last boost of speed we saw in the final private preview builds was integrated into the final product. We'll let you know what we find out later today.
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$7.8 Million offer for The Pirate Bay
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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The owners of The Pirate Bay have agreed to sell the site to a Swedish Internet cafe operator for 60 million Swedish kronor...
Global Gaming Factory X (GGF) said it wants to find ways to pay content providers and copyright holders when their content is downloaded via The Pirate Bay, which tracks who is sharing files over the BitTorrent peer-to-peer service.
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Slim DVD drive designed to complement netbooks
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Lite-On unveils USB-powered DVD drive weighing 300g...
Philips and Lite-On Digital Solutions marketing manager Jelmer Veldman said that many external DVD-Rom drives disappeared from the market once DVD writers appeared, but owners of lightweight systems such as netbooks often find they need to install software from a DVD.
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With 3.5 launch, Firefox faces new challengers
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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A funny thing to happened to Firefox on the way to vanquishing Internet Explorer: the Mozilla browser's success opened the door for a host of its other competitors...
Firefox has gained about 3 percentage points to 22.5 percent in market share, according to Net Applications' statistics since July 2008, and Firefox backer Mozilla doubtless hopes for more gains with the release of Firefox 3.5 planned for Tuesday. But Apple's Safari and Google's Chrome each gained 2 percentage points, to 8.4 percent and 1.8 percent, respectively, indicating a growing appetite for alternatives to Internet Explorer that's not completely met by Firefox. Opera stayed flat at about 0.7 percent.
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Windows 7 preorder a hit
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Microsoft's program for preordering Windows 7 at a discount is proving quite popular, at least at Amazon...
The program, which kicked off on Friday, allows people to order an upgrade version of Windows 7 Home Premium for $49, more than half off its $119 suggested price, or Windows 7 Professional for $99, half of its suggested price.
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Microsoft to put Windows 7 on USB sticks
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Rumors have it that Microsoft will offer Windows 7 on USB thumb drives, about time we say...
The thought is that doing so will enable netbook owners to upgrade their machines, but it will break the tradition that only allowed Voleware to be distributed on DVDs or through downloads.
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2010 will be the breakthrough year for Micro USB
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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With an European Commission document signed today, Micro USB is very nearly the continent's mobile charging standard...
To cut down on electronic waste and increase interoperability, ten mobile phone makers have signed a European Commission Memorandum of Understanding that commits them to using Micro USB as their standard mobile phone charger and data connection by 2010.
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Pirate Bay continues to battle copyright laws
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Controversial organisation launches video streaming service to rival YouTube...
The men behind The Pirate Bay are facing jail and have to pay £2.4m in damages after being found guilty of promoting copyright infringement. But they still plan to launch the new site, called The Video Bay, which could also put them in violation of copyright law.
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Samsung to release new F3 HDD
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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So it would appear Samsung will be replacing its wildly popular Spinpoint F1 drives for a new souped up model dubbed F3...
Spinpoint F1, a range of high-end enthusiast targeted hard drives, including a whopping monster with 1TB capacity, has all the bells and whistles an enthusiast user could dream of - 7200RPM spindle speed, an average seek time of 8.9ms, average latency of 4.17ms, a MTBF of 600,000 hours, a SATA 3.0 Gb/s NCQ interface and onboard cache of 32MB. At 640 grams, it's also light on its feet.
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Intel brings forward schedule for Clarkdale CPUs
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Intel has brought forward the mass-production schedule of its new 32nm processor codenamed Clarkdale to the fourth quarter of 2009 from the originally planned first quarter of 2010...
The company's 32nm Clarkdale CPUs will account for 10% of Intel's total OEM desktop CPU shipments in the fourth quarter, while 45nm Core i7 processors will account for 1%, Lynnfield-based processor 2%, Core 2 Quad processors 9%, Core 2 Duo E8000/E7000 series processors 35%, Pentium E5000/E6000 series 31%, Celeron E3000 and Atom series together 8%, and 65nm-based Pentium E2000 and Celeron 400 together 4%.
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Seagate unveils storage kit for small businesses
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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BlackArmor provides network-attached storage, while Replica backs up home PCs...
Available immediately, Seagate's Black Armor family holds up to four drives that can be configured in a number of ways, and ships with software for backing up Windows PCs. Also available immediately is Replica, a compact external drive that backs up one or more home PCs by simply being connected to each computer's USB port.
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Firefox 3.5 gears up for a possible Tuesday public release
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Unless someone out there in the community can locate another big bug, Mozilla may finally be ready to lift the curtain on its biggest Web browser release to date...
A Mozilla spokesperson confirmed to Betanews early this evening that, if all pans out as planned, the organization will officially release the Firefox 3.5 Web browser to the general public as soon as Tuesday, June 30. No longer a beta, users will get the first opportunity to see a completely stable version of Firefox's new TraceMonkey JavaScript engine, whose latest new features were demonstrated to us today by two of its engineers.
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Intel Core 2 price drops
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Intel sees ‘largely unchallenged’ Core i7 processors stay at their existing price points though the old Core 2 chips like the Q9400 have dropped by $33...
But If AMD fails to successfully challenge Intel at any given price point, it will ultimately be us poor punters who suffer the consequences.
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Rambus demos 7.20GHz XDR memory sub-system
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Rambus has demonstrated an XDR-based memory sub-system that ran at 7.20GHz...
“Future graphics and multi-core processors require significantly higher memory performance under extremely challenging power and thermal constraints. This technology demonstration highlights the outstanding power efficiency of the XDR and XDR2 memory architectures at performance levels from 3.2 to 7.2Gbps with scalability to well over 10Gbps,” said Martin Scott, senior vice president of research and technology development at Rambus.
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Intel's 34nm NAND SSDs launch in two weeks
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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Intel could be launching new SSDs based on the firm's 34nm NAND chips within just a couple of weeks...
Solid State Drives (SSDs) have been around for a while, but their high costs, limited capacities and sometimes questionable reliability have ensured the drives have remained somewhat niche. But this is all about to change, apparently.
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BenQ to launch LED TVs in 2Q10
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Posted By: Steven Walton
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BenQ plans to launch LED TVs in the second quarter of 2010 at the earliest as the current prices for LED TVs are still too high...
Samsung Electronics has revealed that it has already shipped 400,000 LED TVs since April taking a 90% global market share. LG Electronics (LGE) has also unveiled its LED TVs, which are expected to hit the market in July. LGE said the LED TVs will be available in Taiwan by the end of this year.
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