Asus launches XG Station, the world’s first external graphics card for laptops

by Doug Berger

Today at CES Unveiled, we had a chance to look at Asus’ new XG Station - an external graphics card station for your laptop. The unit includes USB 2.0 ports, and a Dolby headphone jack, and supports both HDCP and HDMI for all of your high-def enjoyment. You get that? You can plug your regular laptop into the XG Station, plug the XG Station into an HD monitor, then watch your screen in awe. According to Asus, “Lab experiments on a notebook based on Intel 945GM graphics connected to the XG station with an ASUS EN7900GS graphics card showed an astounding 9 times increase in acceleration.”

The XG Station not only adds extra graphics, but it’s easy on the eyes with its LED information display - showing volume, clock speed, GPU temperature, Dolby status, Frames Per Second (FPS) and more.

(c) www.gadgetell.com

Dell's Black Ice Finds Home in New Quad-Core XPS Desktop?

An anonymous tipster sent us this flyer of Dell's mysterious Black Ice technology. Apparently it's a two-stage thermoelectric liquid cooling solution that will be a part of Dell's forthcoming XPS 710 H2C, which our tipster says will come with an Inel Core 2 Extreme QX6700 CPU and two GeForce 8800 GTX cards (in SLI configuration). We'll keep our eyes peeled for the full scoop as the show progresses. – Louis Ramirez

(c) www.gizmodo.com

Duracell FM transmitter, extended battery combo for iPod Video

by Christopher Grant

Already available for the iPod nano, Battery-Biz is rolling out their Duracell PowerFM line to the iPod Video, complete with FM transmitter, extended battery, and bonus protective silicon case. The extended battery more than doubles the iPod's run-time while powering the FM transmitter, with unlimited channel selection. It also replicates the iPod's dock connector, so you can still use all those other accessories without unplugging your 'Pod. No date yet (they're saying end of Q1, early Q2) but expect a retail price of $79.99.

(c) www.engadget.com

Asus S6 Pink Leather Limited Edition

CES Unveiled – I am posting this article because none of the guys wanted to write about a pink laptop… We published about this cute notebook last year during the CES Unveiled: This time, Asus released the matching mouse ? Even if I do not believe that technology in pink is the real way to attract female customers, I do appreciate the creative effort of designing computers in other colors and texture than black or gray. By the way, it won an IF award and a G-Mark award – Eliane.

(c) www.uberzigmo.com

Toshiba unveils world's first HD DVD writer

Always expect firsts from Toshiba America, the maker of computers/storage/projectors and so much more. The company announced the world's first HD DVD burner for desktop computers. (Wondering what HD DVDs are? Catch up on a story I wrote last year)

We knew this was coming. High-def DVD players has been available for since April 2006 (mostly thanks to Toshiba's computer and consumer electronics divisions). Toshiba says more than 1.5 million HD DVD movies have been sold. But who can resist using the same discs for storage purposes? Since high-definition video needs oodles of gigabytes, the discs can hold 30 GBs of digital files (that's approximately up to five full-length standard DVD films, up to 7,500 MP3 songs or up to 30,000 high-quality images, according to Toshiba).

The SD-H903A internal drive will be sold to computer companies and manufacturers beginning in February. The good news for consumers, we may start seeing PCs with HD DVD burners in the spring or summer.

Other specs:
It only writes HD DVD content in real time (that's 1x speed)
Also compatible with all older DVD and CD formats.

(c) blogs.ocregister.com

Three Intel quad-cores coming Monday

Intel plans to launch three quad-core processors on Monday, covering two Xeons for lower-end servers and one mainstream model for desktop computers, sources familiar with the plan said.

As expected, the desktop chip is called the Core 2 Quad 6600 and will join the Core 2 Extreme QX6700 model Intel already ships. The new processor will run at 2.4GHz, and the front-side bus that links the chip to the rest of the system will run at 1066MHz, the company is expected to announce at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas next week.

Also set to arrive are two low-end Xeons, the 2.13GHz 3210 and 2.4GHz 3220. Both are designed for single-processor servers. The chips have 8MB cache and a 1066MHz front-side bus.

Intel declined to comment for this story.

The chipmaker began its quad-core product launch in November but now is fleshing out the lineup. It often launches desktop products with extreme models geared for demanding video game systems, then adds more moderately priced mainstream models later.

"I expect, with respect to the desktop quad-core, it's mostly a matter of maintaining a certain cadence, even if, practically speaking, there won't be a whole lot of near-term buyers," Illuminata analyst Gordon Haff said.

Intel's quad-core processors combine two dual-core chips into a single package. Rival chipmaker Advanced Micro Devices has a quad-core processor code-named Barcelona under development that puts all four cores on a single slice of silicon. However, that chip won't arrive until midway through this year.

Servers, which often juggle multiple independent tasks, are well-suited to taking advantage of multiple processing cores. With desktop machines, however, the benefits aren't as clear because software often isn't able to use all the cores effectively.

(c) news.com.com

Month of Apple Bugs Releases QuickTime Flaw

The Month of Apple Bugs project promised to unveil security flaws in Mac OS X and Apple programs during January...and it's started with a Mac and Windows QuickTime bug.

The Month of Apple Bugs project—a follow up to a Month of Kernel Bugs and A Month of Browser Bugs—vowed to release details of bugs and securty exploits in Apple's Mac OS X operating system and popular Mac OS X applications…and the project is off and running, publicizing the details of a possible security exploit in Apple's QuickTime software by overflowing buffers with specially crafted rtsp:// URLs. The bug impacts QuickTime 7.1.3 for both Mac OS X and Windows.

The Month of Bugs projects have been the center of some controversy; many software developers and security analysts feel it is irresponsible to publish the details of working security vulnerabilities in widely-available software, arguing that only feeds the ever-active malware communities lurking on the Internet's dark underbelly and the possibility of real-world exploits. The responsible thing to do, they argue, is report the issues to the software vendors and security agencies, and publicize the details only when a patch or fix is available.

On the other hand, the "report and keep quiet" methodology rubs some people the wrong way: if their computers are vulnerable, they want to know the details now, regardless of whether a patch or fix is available, so at least they know what they're up against. The participants in the Bug a Month projects—such as the "mysterious" programmer operating under the tag "LMH"—have also expressed frustration at the amount of time software developers like Apple and Microsoft take to patch seemingly trivial vulnerabilities.

In any case, it would appear that Apple's Mac OS X and key applications—certainly not immune to security problems but thusfar spared the malware pain of the Windows world—are under a very public microscope.

(c) news.digitaltrends.com

WiFi on the highway: Avis to offer 3G-to-802.11 bridge

by Eric Bangeman

Business travellers will soon have another option for connectivity when they are on the road. Start-up Autonet Mobile and car rental giant Avis are partnering to offer renters a device that will provide laptop users with WiFi access on the road. You can take "on the road" literally in this case, as the device is designed to create a WiFi hot spot accessible from within 100 feet of the car.

Autonet Mobile's In-Car Router is about the size of a laptop and draws power from the car's cigarette lighter outlet. The hardware itself is a bridge for a cellular provider's 3G network (Avis will likely have contracts with 3G providers around the country), acting as a WiFi gateway for those connected to it. Other 3G-WiFi bridges are already available from the likes of Linksys and Kyocera, but this appears to be the first targeted exclusively at vehicles.

Autonet Mobile CEO Sterling Pratz told the International Herald Tribune that the In-Car Router will function in around 95 percent of the country, including all major US cities. Pratz claims to have minimized the problem of dropped signals with a technology similar to that used by the space shuttles to maintain an Internet connection.

In the absence of a WiFi network, laptop users can already get on the Internet at faster-than-dial-up speeds via 3G PCMCIA cards from the major cellular provides. Should you need to share that connection, it's easy enough to do so without using additional hardware via functionality built into your favorite modern OS.

Is it time to add surfing the Internet to the already-alarming list of distractions facing drivers? Actually, we're already way past that point. I've used my cell phone and laptop to check e-mail and get on IRC or even engage in some light browsing while on the road (only when someone else was behind the wheel). Autonet Mobile's solution—assuming it has indeed overcome the technical obstacles inherent in maintaining connectivity while travelling at high speeds—seems targeted at a niche market. Once Mobile WiMAX (802.16e) and 802.20 networks—which will provide broadband-class connections on the go—come online in the next few years, the shelf life for devices like the In-Car Router may prove to be relatively brief.

If the In-Car Router comes with a vanilla AC adapter for use outside of the car, it could at the very least provide an additional marketing hook for Avis as it battles for rental customers. Will it offset the increase in insurance premiums due to accidents caused by drivers distracted by YouTube?

(c) www.arstechnica.com

Early AMD ATI "R600" Specs, Benchmarks Leaked

Details of AMD's next generation Radeon hit the web

Newly created site Level 505 has leaked benchmarks and specifications of AMD’s upcoming ATI R600 graphics processor. The upcoming graphics processor is expected to launch in January 2007 with an expected revision arriving in March 2007. These early specifications and launch dates line up with what DailyTech has already published and are present on ATI internal roadmaps as of workweek 49.

Preliminary specifications from Level 505 of the ATI R600 are as follows:

• 64 4-Way SIMD Unified Shaders, 128 Shader Operations/Cycle
• 32 TMUs, 16 ROPs
• 512 bit Memory Controller, full 32 bit per chip connection
• GDDR3 at 900 MHz clock speed (January)
• GDDR4 at 1.1 GHz clock speed (March, revised edition)
• Total bandwidth 115 GB/s on GDDR3
• Total bandwidth 140 GB/s on GDDR4
• Consumer memory support 1024 MB
• DX10 full compatibility with draft DX10.1 vendor-specific cap removal (unified programming)
• 32FP [sic] internal processing
• Hardware support for GPU clustering (any x^2 [sic] number, not limited to Dual or Quad-GPU)
• Hardware DVI-HDCP support (High Definition Copy Protocol)
• Hardware Quad-DVI output support (Limited to workstation editions)
• 230W TDP PCI-SIG compliant

This time around it appears AMD is going for a different approach by equipping the ATI R600 with less unified shaders than NVIDIA’s recently launched GeForce 8800 GTX. However, the unified shaders found on the ATI R600 can complete more shader operations per clock cycle.

Level505 claims AMD is expected to equip the ATI R600 with GDDR3 and GDDR4 memory with the GDDR3 endowed model launching in January. Memory clocks have been set at 900 MHz for GDDR3 models and 1.1 GHz for GDDR4 models. As recent as two weeks ago, ATI roadmaps had said this GDDR3 launch was canceled. These same roadmaps claim the production date for R600 is February 2007, which would be after a January 22nd launch.

Memory bandwidth of the ATI R600 is significantly higher than NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800-series. Total memory bandwidth varies from 115GB/s on GDDR3 equipped models to 140GB/s on GDDR4 equipped models.

Other notable hardware features include hardware support for quad DVI outputs, but utilizing all four outputs are limited to FireGL workstation edition cards.

There’s also integrated support for multi-GPU clustering technologies such as CrossFire too. The implementation on the ATI R600 allows any amount of ATI R600 GPUs to operate together in powers of two. Expect multi-GPU configurations with greater than two GPUs to only be available for the workstation markets though.

The published results are very promising with AMD’s ATI R600 beating out NVIDIA’s GeForce 8800 GTX in most benchmarks. The performance delta varies from 8% up to 42% depending on the game benchmark.

When DailyTech contacted the site owner to get verification of the benchmarks, the owner replied that the benchmark screenshots could not be published due to origin-specific markers that would trace the card back to its source -- the author mentioned the card is part of the Microsoft Vista driver certification program.

If Level505's comments seem a little too pro-ATI, don't be too surprised. When asked if the site was affiliated in any way to ATI or AMD, the owner replied to DailyTech with the statement that "two staff members of ours are directly affiliated with AMD's business [development] division."

(c) www.dailytech.com