Computer Advice

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Tablet PCs

He we go again. Like an evil pope preparing to recapture the Holy Land, Jeff Jones, Microsoft’s self-proclaimed “Security Guy” (and Microsoft Director) just published the Vista One Year Vulnerability Report. As you can see from the graph above, JJ’s methodology concludes that Microsoft’s Vista easily bests the first year vulnerabilities found in XP, Red Hat Enterprise Linux, Ubuntu, and Apple’s own OS X. As contentious as the report is, is anyone else reflecting on the fact that Vista is more than a year old for businesses (almost exactly one for consumers) yet XP continues to ship standard on many PCs?

[Via Slashdot]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Via’s on the CPU warpath today, announcing a new line of 64-bit 65nm processors, dubbed Isaiah. The little Bible-themed chip-maker that withstood the AMD-Intel duopoly where others, like Transmeta, folded, is claiming that their new architecture, developed in conjunction with subsidiary Centaur, is four times as efficient as current generation Via CPUs, while remaining pin-compatible with C7 chips, as well as retaining the same thermal envelope (read: they don’t make any more heat). Available in clock speeds up to 2GHz (to start) with FSBs at 800 and 1,333MHz, dual 64KB L1 caches, 1MB L2 cache, and Adaptive PowerSaver energy reduction technology, expect these chips to start showing up in the first half of this year. Those interested in geeking out further on Via’s new gig can hit some of the technical details after the break.

Continue reading Via launches Isaiah: 64-bit low-power, high-performance processors

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Vista SP1 has already been previewed, gone through a Release Candidate cycle, and had a changelog released — so all that’s left is for Microsoft to hit us with it, right? Not so fast, Sparky — according to various sources, you’re still going to have wait three more weeks to get your hands on that hot SP1 action: circle February 15th on your Ballmer / Gates pinup calendar and start counting the days. Of course, Microsoft isn’t confirming anything one way or another other than Q108, so don’t get too excited, but after all we’ve been through together, we can’t imagine the Redmond crew not giving us a (late) Valentine’s Day present — we’re like, totally serious, right?

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Filed under: Desktops

We wouldn’t normally get excited about two more random HP enterprise desktops, but you know how we love all things SSD, and if the HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-Slim Desktop with SSD lights a fire in corporate IT departments, sales volumes may actually drive the price of SSD units down. So, uh, wow, check out this hot new HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-Slim Desktop! Man, can you imagine how worker productivity would increase due to its speedy 2.3GHz Core 2 Duo processor? And how many more charts and folders you could fit on a desk thanks to its 46 percent smaller footprint? And let’s not even talk about the energy savings due to its compliance with the latest Energy Star guidelines — just TOO exciting. Truly the progressive, “with-it” large enterprise can’t afford NOT to purchase the $1,258 HP Compaq dc7800 Ultra-Slim Desktop with SSD in large enough volumes to affect the commodity pricing of SSD storage. No sir!

There is also a $579 HP Compaq dc5800 Business PC that has a regular hard drive, pictured after the break. It’s pretty much the same, but instead of productivity apps, it, uh, only runs MySpace. Yeah, that’s what we heard for real.

Continue reading HP bumps SSD to business class with new enterprise desktops

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Filed under: Desktops

They may not have quite the broad appeal of the companies more gaming graphics cards, but ATI and NVIDIA’s relatively recent FireGL V8650 and QuadroFX 5600 workstation graphics cards still have no shortage potential users, and an old-fashioned shootout between the two $1,000+ cards is hard to ignore. That spectacle comes courtesy of the folks at HotHardware, who loaded up each card in a suitably high-end system and put ‘em through the usual array of benchmarks and tests. After all that was said and done, they gave the edge ever so slightly to the NVIDIA card, although they say it’s “not completely cut and dry” as to what the absolute best option is. Working the ATI’s favor, however, is its lower MSRP (despite having more memory than the NVIDIA) and its top of the line Maya performance, although it fell short of the NVIDIA in overall Open GL and Direct 3D performance. If that’s not enough to sway you one way or the other, you can hit up the link below for the complete blow by blow benchmark action.

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Wow, it looks like the cat-and-mouse game of DRM exploits is starting to inflict some collateral damage — the DTrace debugging tool built into Leopard is apparently locked out of iTunes and any other app that opts-out. Reasons aren’t clear, but it sure looks like Apple is trying to keep interested parties from seeing the inner workings of FairPlay and other DRM-enabled apps — which probably makes the RIAA happy, but makes it harder for devs to get work done. In the words of one DTrace developer, the lockout is “antithetical to the notion of systemic tracing, antithetical to the goals of DTrace, and antithetical to the spirit of open source.” That’s pretty harsh — but given Apple’s new love for selective feature enabling, we’re not expecting a resolution anytime soon.

[Via BoingBoing]

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Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

Every so often, we get wind of a mysterious gaming rig that’s so powerful, so mighty, that the entire world just has to see it. Unfortunately for most, this particular one will remain a pipe dream, primarily due to the UK’s impeccably strong pound and America’s woefully weak dollar. Nevertheless, those shacked up on the other side of the pond can grab Computer Supermarket’s (we know, we know) Ultimate Gaming rig, which is home to an Intel Q6600 quad-core CPU, 8GB of DDR2 RAM, a 750GB SATA II hard drive, NVIDIA’s 512MB 8600GT graphics card, a dual-layer DVD burner, 22-inch LCD, Windows Vista, keyboard / mouse and a fairly decent assortment of ports. All this pizazz can be yours for just £938.83 if you’re in the right place, but for $1,829, we’ll probably look elsewhere over here.

[Via RandomlyAccessed]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Peripherals

Confirmed details are scant, but Microsoft’s Nick White over at the official Windows Vista blog says that Windows and Dell with introduce (PRODUCT) RED “products” later this week. Rumor has it that Dell will ship an XPS One all-in-one, XPS M1330 and XPS 1530 laptops (already available in plain ol’ red), and even a Dell 948 AIO printer in fancy RED editions. Besides the paint, the PCs will feature a special edition of Vista Ultimate with — you guessed it — a RED-themed desktop and sidebar gadgets. Perhaps best of all, Dell and Microsoft will donate $80 from the purchase of a RED XPS One, $50 from each RED laptop, and $5 from each printer directly to the Global Fund to fight AIDS in Africa at no additional cost to you. However, let’s wait for the official details before the back patting gets out of control.

[Via istartedsomething, thanks Long Z.]

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Filed under: Desktops

As expected, Intel has rolled out its first dual-core Celeron processors, bringing the low-end and often-derided processor line up a few notches and quite possibly making quad-core the new dual-core once and for all. The first of those processors to hit hte market is the 1.6GHz E1200 model, which relies on the slightly less-desirable 65-nanometer manufacturing process and boasts 512K bytes of cache and an 800MHz front-side bus. Not exactly the most impressive of processors, but nothing to sneeze at either, especially considering its $53 price tag — in quantities of 1,000 units, that is. No word on any other dual-core additions to the line, but given Intel’s track record of processor offerings, we’d expect this to be only a taste of things to come.

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Filed under: Desktops

Drop five grand on a HP Blackbird yet? Good, that means you don’t have to start crying right now, because HP just unveiled its “best of the best” alpha system, complete with a Core 2 Extreme QX9650 processor, for a cool $5,499. There’s also a PhysX card inside, and Dual CrossFire ATI Radeon X2900 XT 1GB graphics, but you still have to spring a few more hundies if you want Vista Ultimate and 4GB of ram — Home Premium and 2GB come standard. Oh, and you’ll also be thoroughly depressed the moment HP unveils some sort of “alpha alpha” system with that upcoming QX9770 processor inside. Good thing everything’s upgradeable.

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