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Posts Tagged ‘system’

Google promised to release its new Google Wallet smartphone payment system before the end of the summer, and according to leaked documentation being sent around to Sprint employees, they will hit their self-imposed deadline with full 3 days to spare. According to a memo obtained by TechCrunch, Google Wallet will officially become available tomorrow, but only for Sprint customers using the NFC enabled Nexus S 4G.

The timing of the announcement lines up neatly with the start of the NFC World Congress which kicks off tomorrow in the French Riviera. Google isn’t listed as attending the event, but their primary … [Read More...]

Double the GPUs, double the performance, at almost double the price.

AMD’s dual GPU cards have come a long way in the past several years. The original Radeon HD 3870 was noisy, ran hot and didn’t always perform up to snuff. Since then, AMD’s Catalyst Driver suite has substantially improved the performance and breadth of CrossFire-supported games.

On the hardware side, AMD is pulling out all the stops with its Radeon HD 6990 card. The company understands that a dual GPU card is most appealing to a small band of enthusiasts who really want the card to push the edge … [Read More...]

Hexa-core system has its way with our benchmarks

When we introduced our new system benchmarks last month, we thought it might be at least six months before review machines began stomping the holy crap out of them. Unfortunately for us, Digital Storm couldn’t wait to pile it on. The company has unleashed a rig so damned powerful that we’re wondering if our new benchmarks and zero-point system aren’t already obsolete.

But what would you expect of a rig named HailStorm Black Ops Edition that’s equipped with Intel’s new hexa-core Core i7-980X CPU? The Core i7-980X normally clocks in at 3.33GHz, … [Read More...]

Powermat Wireless Charging

by Legitreviews.com

The holiday season is in full effect and Christmas is right around the corner. If you haven’t gotten a gift yet, you already know that you are in a bad position. That Barnes & Noble Nook eBook reader sold out last month and the arrival date for one is February 1st! Most vacation packages aren’t nearly as discounted as they were a few months ago and gift cards have gotten a bad reputation as being insincere. Time is running out to top off all that bad news, as this past weekend was the last shopping … [Read More...]

Why Wipe Data Securely?

Whether you are preparing to reuse a hard disk for another operating system, clear off your junk shelves by passing along outdated drives to a friend or relative, donate an old PC to a charity or school, discard a too-small USB drive or flash memory card, or repurpose an SSD, you don’t want to leave any information on the storage device. With stories abounding of identity theft aided by information lifted from discarded storage devices, you want devices you no longer plan to use to have no usable information when they head out the door. … [Read More...]

Why

Too bad looks aren’t everything

Thermaltake’s first SpinQ cooler (reviewed February 2009) had style for sure—it looked like a blue-lit stack of bike gears with a fan in the middle, mounted sideways. The SpinQ VT adopts the same basic formfactor—the stack of circular aluminum fins mounted around an 8cm fan—but stands the stack upright, and uses red LEDs instead of blue. Other than that, it’s more of the same—from the variable fan speed to the so-so performance.

The SpinQ VT (we still want to pronounce it “spink”) stands 6.2 inches from base to top, and the fin stack is 4.7 … [Read More...]

If you are looking to make your own media center computer and are still up in the air about which software/OS you should use, an article well worth the time to read is: Which Media Center Is Right for You: Boxee, XBMC, and Windows Media Center Compared.

While there are lots more choices out there, the ones covered by this article among the most popular. Outside of the obligatory master “yes/no” feature comparison, each OS has it’s own writeup with the respective strengths and weaknesses outlined. In addition to the article itself, the comments are rather insightful and worth looking … [Read More...]

This tip is geared towards servers, but is applicable to desktops as well in certain cases.

Whenever you shutdown Windows, a “stop” command is sent to programs and background services which are currently running. Typically programs will respond to this quickly and close, however services are a different animal which can take a while to quit (i.e. Exchange Server).

After waiting for a specified amount of time, Windows will simply force the program to quit in order to continue with the shutdown. To control how long Windows waits before forcing the service to quit, edit this registry entry:

HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\WaitToKillService

Note, … [Read More...]

There are a gazillion apps to turn your iPhone into a remote control, and let you operate your computer, your Sonos home music system or even your DirecTV DVR. The problem is, they work over Wi-Fi, whereas your TV, stereo and DVD-players all swallow up infra-red light in order to follow your distant commands.

That changes with the little $50 L5 iPhone Remote, a dongle that plugs into the dock connector and allows you iPhone to become a proper universal remote, spitting invisible light at all manner of home electronics. It comes with a free companion application that lets you … [Read More...]