Blu-Ray to Debut in Spring of 06

The BDA (Blu-Ray Disc Association) has announced that they will formally unveil their next-gen optical storage technology this coming spring. We will start to see the products that will utilize this technology at the Consumer Electronics Show next month in Las Vegas. CES will also host the BDA's rival in the current format war, HD-DVD which is being championed by Toshiba.

The register has some more info here.

Ars System Buying Guide

Since we love ArsTechnica I have decided to post their 'November PC Buying Guide'. I will start doing it every month.

Read the guide here.

Firefox 1.5 to Launch this Week

Mozilla Foundation's popular web browser, Firefox will unveil its second stable release this week. Version 1.5 is set to hit the streets along with a marketing blitz targeted at Firefox 1.0 users, and users of Microsoft's Internet Explorer. Firefox has been making waves since its release last year. It is the only browser to actually decrease Internet Explorer's market share. The Foundation's target is a 10% market share by the end of December.

The browser that introduced us to tabbed browsing is definitely worth a try. I have been using it since the beta stages, and I am pretty well hooked. The plugins are readily available, anything you can do with IE you can do with Firefox (Except Windows Update, but I have heard rumors that it is changing soon). Anyway, you can check out more here. Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving..

Microsoft's Big Loss

Since the big new thing these last few days has been the Xbox 360, I promise you this will be my last post about it this week. Unless something big happens you won't hear about it for a while. iSuppli, a market research firm and Business Week has calculated the cost of components and accessories that are offered for the base $400 price tag. According to them, Microsoft is losing a suprising $126 per unit. I guess their hopes hinge on game royalties.

Article here.

PCI-Express vs PCI-X

Anyone who has bought a new computer in the last couple years probably has a few PCI-Express slots sitting empty. Beyond the 16x slots we now use for video cards, PCI-Express has been slow to come into the mainstream. It has always shown promise, but a lack of devices has killed its adoption.

PCI-X, the 64-bit older brother of the PCI slots we all have in our PCs has been rapidly adopted in the server workstation segment. Its promise of bandwidth has attracted the manufacturers of Fibre Channel Cards, SCSI Cards, InfiniBand etc.

Now that these two technologies have come to stay, which one is right for you? Tom's hardware puts them to the challenge, comparing bandwidth, clock speeds etc. their conclusion is that both are more than capable of offering a high bandwidth solution, but the more devices you are using, the more PCI-Express seems to shine. Anyway, good read.

Tom's Article here.

Xbox 360 "Very Unstable"

Xbox-scene is reporting that its forums are flooded with people reporting crashes on their brand spakin' new Xbox 360s. The one of the problems seems to be with 'Project Gotham Racing', one of the popular titles Microsoft is counting on to carry the 360 through the holiday season. There are also reports of crashes in other games as well. Microsoft better hope that their very agressive timetable on the 360 hasn't come back to bite them in the rear. Check out more here.

ATI's All-In-Wonder X1800 XL Released & Reviewed

ATI, the long standing Video Chip manufacturer has released it's latest board in its All-In-Wonder line. The cards, designed to do incorporate a TV tuner and a video card on to one board have been the long standing champion in that market. Fending off offerings from Matrox and Nvidia to maintain its dominance.

The latest in this line, the All-In-Wonder X1800 XL combines ATI's latest video chipset with the capabilities we have all come to expect from our AIW cards. The board its self comes with a remote, dongles for RCA and component video, VGA and DVI video connections for dual monitors, and a pair of coaxial connections on the back of the card. Firing Squad did a nice benchmark on this card, versus the Nvidia 7800GT (why not 7800GTX I wonder?) and the 6800GT. Check it out below.

From what they conclude, ATI will continue to dominate this segment. They have killed the competition in this area before and its no suprise that they will continue. The 7xxx series seems to still be faster, but Nvidia has nothing to compliment the features of the AIW. Good news for ATI..

Firing Squad Review Here.

Xbox 360 Launches

Interesting fact, Microsoft has yet to turn a profit on it's Xbox line. They have dumped a ton of money into this line, and it appears they are in it for the long haul. On that note, at 12:01am this morning, hard core gamers finally got their hands on the first of the next generation consoles to hit the streets. The Xbox 360 retails for about $400, and is going to be in short supply until well after the holidays. It was leaked that Microsoft was going to be purposely releasing the 360 slowly, so they can be sure that there are sell outs across the globe. I am not the only person to want one in the world, and I am sure this will be where Microsoft reaps the benefits from its Xbox line. Especially since they beat the competition to the next level by well over 6 months.

Dell Goes AMD

Hell has frozen over, the pigeons have come home, etc etc. Dell has reportedly informed it's taiwanese contractors to start planning for devices based on AMD's microprocessors. This comes at a time when Intel, Dell's long time exclusive CPU partner finds itsself under fire by Anti-trust groups in many countries and from AMD. The smaller chip maker sued Intel earlier this year. I guess this had to happen sometime. Intel's technological shortfalls are catching up with them.

Article here.

Zubbles

I just thought this was too cool not to post. Colored Bubbles!!!!

Intel's New Naming Conventions & Montecito News

With the release of their 65 nanometer chips next year, Intel will change their CPU naming conventions. The Yonah core as it is called, will feature a 5 digit naming code. The first digit will be a letter which specifies the CPU's TDP (thermal design power) rating. The next digit will be either a 1 or a 2, and that represents either single or dual core CPUs. After that I am sure the numbering will deal with chip clock speeds.

Intel also announced they will abandon plans to take their next generation Itanium chips, dubbed 'Montecito' to a 667MHz front side bus. You can check out more here.

Microsoft Server Software to be 64-Bit only

In an announcement at a supercomuting conference, Bill Gates revealed some of Microsoft's server software road-map. Any releases in this line of products will only be able to run on a 64-Bit system. This really only effects the people trying to use new software on older machines. Included software packages will be Microsoft's new Cluster Server, Longhorn Server, and Exchange 12.

Hardware wise this will be no problem since by the middle of next year all CPUs will be enabled with either EM64T or AMD64 technology. With the releases of Intel's 64-Bit Celeron line and AMD's 64-Bit Sempron line, every segment of the market has a CPU option that will run the new software. Now they will only multi-thread enable their software we will be in business.

Article here.

OS X on x86, the First Look

As the day approaches when Apple will release its first Intel based Macs, it was only a matter of time til we got our first look at OS X running on a PC. Steve Jobs has stated that OS X will be locked to run only on Apple hardware, but needless to say many saavy hackers have circumvented this. Check out what ZDNet has to say about their trials with Apple's new beast.