tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-140304152009-12-15T23:48:15.356-08:00Get the latest IT related news, product releases, reviews and opinions from the expert techies at The Chip Merchant.Devinhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/13422254201624184819noreply@blogger.comBlogger106125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1154988125593722222006-08-07T14:54:00.000-07:002006-08-07T15:02:06.493-07:00

Today at WWDS, Apple unveiled their newest workstation and server level machines. The new Xserve and the Mac Pro feature Intel Woodcrest powered Xeons for a total of 4 64-bit cores per machine. There was some argument about weather or not the Mac Pro would feature Xeons or Conroe CPUs at their center but all arguments have been layed to rest.The bad news is the as of right now all third party

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1154536660565935342006-08-02T09:35:00.000-07:002006-08-02T09:37:41.116-07:00

Anandtech is running a story about the effects of the AMD & ATI merger from many points of view. Good story, I found it interesting.Check it here.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1145985545789316892006-04-25T10:18:00.000-07:002006-04-25T10:19:06.093-07:00

eWeek.com has a first run review of Linksys' 802.11N draft router. From what they have discovered, the draft run products seem to have problems with legacy network devices. There was also some concern regarding the range tests. According to the article the tests show promise, but the fact that they have only tested one product doesn't really show too much.Netgear has a draft product out that

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1144858611358203292006-04-12T09:08:00.000-07:002006-04-12T09:16:51.666-07:00

Microsoft is finally ridding itself of its old children. The handy but now dated Windows 98 & 98 SE, and the absolutly awful Windows ME. Support officially end on the 11th of July. We have known this to be coming for a while now, but the time has finally arrived. Check out more here.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1144345308758561362006-04-06T10:39:00.000-07:002006-04-06T10:41:49.513-07:00

Apple has helped facilitate its hardware customers in installing Windows on their new Intel Macs. They released a new boot loader called boot camp that will allow the user to choose which OS they want to boot. Check out more here.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1143061676878034842006-03-22T13:07:00.000-08:002006-03-22T13:38:34.940-08:00

100th post.... woot !!

Chuckhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/02582332632266811519noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1143053967077077582006-03-22T10:59:00.000-08:002006-03-22T13:10:03.473-08:00

Now that the race to get Windows XP dual booted on a Mac is over, benchmarks of course will follow. GearLog seems to be the first out of the gatew. They took the results of their study, benchmarking Windows Media Encoding, Photoshop Scripts and compared it to an PCMag benchmark of native Windows Core Duo laptops. From the looks of it, the MacBook is a tiny bit faster than an equivalent Acer

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1143052931793171552006-03-22T10:38:00.000-08:002006-03-22T10:42:38.963-08:00

InfoWorld is running a quick and dirty Op-Ed article (click here) about the new AMD v Intel CPU news. This doesn't even touch on the lawsuit between the two.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1142294710858057442006-03-13T16:07:00.000-08:002006-03-13T16:05:11.236-08:00

Desktop replacements have been around for a while now. Laptops with the power of a desktop. However the graphics have always scared away hard core gamers, 3D modlers and any other users of heavily graphics intesive software. This is all slated to change with the upcoming release of nVidia SLI enabled laptops. These behomoths will sport dual nVidia 7xxx series GPUs and massive screens.Pictures are

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1141928797875886982006-03-09T10:25:00.000-08:002006-03-09T10:26:38.093-08:00

Bit-tech is reporting that Intel will drop specifications for the long used ATX platform in favor of the quieter (and more expensive) BTX, said Peter Brandenburger speaking at a small form-factor tech session. BTX employs an In-Line cooling scheme that pull air across the CPU first, then across the rest of the components. The powersupply is also shifted to a position away from the CPU, separating

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1141779040623355302006-03-07T16:53:00.000-08:002006-03-07T17:27:05.900-08:00

Today Intel allowed visitors at the Spring Intel Developer Forum: 2006 to view their upcoming Desktop offering, code named 'Conroe'. Reports put the new chips far ahead of current Athlon chips in both performance and power consumption. With the buildup we have been seeing, all of us have been anxious to see where Conroe will go, and how it will stack up to the K8 architecture.From what is being

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1139360194043425032006-03-06T16:59:00.000-08:002006-03-06T15:39:38.256-08:00

Socket AM2, AMD's first socket that will hold processors capable of using DDR2 memory will hit the market in April or May of this year. They may seem to be a ways behind, but the delay comes from AMD's use of an onboard memory controller which allows Athlon and Opteron CPUs to take advantage of massive memory bandwidth channels. Instead of just reworking the Northbridge like Intel, they have to

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1141671181999804392006-03-06T10:49:00.000-08:002006-03-06T10:53:02.286-08:00

To continue the surge in Intel based Mac reviews, Ars is running a review of the single core Intel Mac Mini. Not only does it hold more memory but from the benchmarks, it appears to beat its older G4 brother in just about everyway.Read more here.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1141320485589219172006-03-02T09:26:00.000-08:002006-03-02T09:32:43.586-08:00

Jocqui Cheng over at ArsTechnica has reviewed the new generation of Apple laptops, the MacBook Pro. Here general feeling is that the machine is quite nice, but there are some negatives. Check it out, she does quite a thourough battery of tests.Click here to see it.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1141063898047962372006-02-27T10:08:00.000-08:002006-02-27T10:11:38.110-08:00

ArsTechnica has an article about the editions of Windows Vista. Nothing new but it is worth checking out.Click here to read.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1141063374821623942006-02-23T10:07:00.000-08:002006-02-27T10:08:03.906-08:00

AMD has released images of the new LGA Socket that will run their new Dual-Core and Quad-Core Opterons. Socket F (LGA-1207) is the name and you can see pictures here. I can only hope that the heat sink retention system is better than Intel's P4 fans.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1140461794905736772006-02-20T10:57:00.000-08:002006-02-20T10:56:35.143-08:00

Bad news for all of those out there that love their IDE connections. Intel's new generation of south-bridge chips will leave the tried and tested technology by the wayside. Even though the technology is older than sin, it has stood up to the test of time. Up until a few years ago it was the defacto standard for PCs to run any drive attached inside the case, boasting efficiency and low cost.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1140458998656984032006-02-17T10:11:00.000-08:002006-02-20T10:13:53.246-08:00

Working here at TCM has subjected me to numerous situations where I need to test memory in a Mac. MacWorld finally has an answer for that with this article. I guess they ported good old memtest to the Mac. It takes a bit of Unix knowledge to use but nothing difficult.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1139939713173327132006-02-14T09:42:00.000-08:002006-02-14T09:55:13.473-08:00

Plextor has released a Dual Format 18x DVD burner. It is compatable with 16x certified media, and it comes with the standard accessories and software. It also touts an impressive 10x DVD+DL speed. I was always under the impression that 16x was as far as DVD media could go, but I guess through some tricks anything is possible.More here.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1138751635988043072006-01-31T15:26:00.000-08:002006-01-31T16:00:43.053-08:00

The rumors of a Google OS have been around for a long time now. I actually thought they were dead until I read this. I guess people were now saying that an Ubuntu based Google OS was on the horizon. Well Goobuntu is now officially, just a rumor says Sonya Borälv or Google's Press Relations Office. "[W]e use Ubuntu internally but have no plans to distribute it outside of the company" she says.She

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1138304733739671372006-01-26T11:41:00.000-08:002006-01-26T11:45:34.323-08:00

TG Daily has a short article about Intel's future memory plans. The plan seems to be that a transition to DDR3 memory (starting at 800MHz) will happen during the second half of 2007. Read it here.

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1138152196961076402006-01-24T17:10:00.000-08:002006-01-30T14:11:43.753-08:00

ATI, the technological runner up in the video card race over the last year or so has released its latest Radeon video card, the X1900. While availability is still in the air (when is it not with ATI??). The reviews are in and the consensus seems to be that the X1900 is one amazing card. In single card setups it seems to outpace the GeForce 7800GTX 512MB. The secret seems to be the new GPU the

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1137808198562876082006-01-20T17:52:00.000-08:002006-01-20T17:49:58.883-08:00

My love for anything Open-Source is no secret around this place. However we are a Windows based company and I treasure the moments I get to lash out with my inner geek. Now my love is carrying over to the blog.Slashdot, the linux users Mecca has a short blurb referencing an ArsTechnica article about OSS adoption climbing in the business world. The down and dirty facts are that companies love the

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1137712520661302102006-01-19T15:16:00.000-08:002006-01-19T15:17:17.793-08:00

AMD, the persistant underdog in the CPU race has gained market share over the last quarter of 2005, outselling Intel in systems equiped with their CPUs. Intel was expecting a 1 point loss, however their US market share slipped from 64.4% to 53.3%, a loss of 11.1% over a three month span. These numbers only incorporate retail sales, and exclude the likes of Dell who sells only through their

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-14030415.post-1137462718594637662006-01-18T11:59:00.000-08:002006-01-19T15:15:57.896-08:00

Apple released its systems based on Intel's Yonah dual core mobile CPU last week, and benchmarks are starting to pour in. The general consensus is that the machines are faster, not as fast as Steve Jobs claims they are but still faster.However there are a couple problems from what I can see. Apple's main user base has and probably will remain the creative design crowd. Problem lies in the lack of

Brandthttp://www.blogger.com/profile/15186217903386173853noreply@blogger.com2