Thursday 29 September 2011

Intel's Market Share Further Ahead of the Pack after Crossing Sandy Bridge

04:12 RENJIN BOSE R.K No comments

Intel's obscene share of the microprocessor market has grown even more grotesque, at least if you're AMD or any other chip maker fighting for scraps. If you're Intel, well, life just keeps getting better. New numbers are in, and according to data from market research firm IHS iSuppli, Intel now dominates the competition by accounting for 81.8 percent of global microprocessor revenue. If you work for AMD, you just threw up a little bit in your mouth.

Intel claiming the lion's share of the market isn't anything new, it just so happens that the Santa Clara chip maker took a bigger bite in the second quarter. Intel increased its lead by 1.1 percentage points, which had double the impact on AMD as it slid by the same amount.

"Intel in the second quarter benefited from the combination of a recovery in PC demand and strong shipment growth for its new Sandy Bridge line of microprocessors," said Matthew Wilkins, principal analyst for compute platforms research at IHS. "Strong corporate PC sales were particularly beneficial to Intel, as the enterprise computing segment has been outperforming the consumer market."

IHS iSuppli says Intel got a boost by increasing production of its Sandy Bridge processor line, and that it represented the fastest ramp-up of any product in the company's history. Meanwhile AMD's Bulldozer platform on the consumer side is taking its sweet time to make it to market.

Intel Commemorates Nokia N9 By Killing MeeGo, Launching Tizen

04:10 RENJIN BOSE R.K No comments

Nokia's ill-fated N9 launched today and may have already made history as the first phone to debut on the same day as its OS is canceled. The N9 will go down as the only MeeGo phone ever created and is the last major Nokia launch before the company transitions to an all windows Phone 7 lineup. It's hard to imagine the N9 will ever go anywhere given that both Nokia and Intel have abandoned its operating system.

As for MeeGo, Intel announced today that it would partner up with Samsung and launch a new project: Tizen. Imad Sousou discussed the move at Intel's MeeGo blog.

This new project is first and foremost open source, and based on Linux. So it begs the question: why not just evolve MeeGo? We believe the future belongs to HTML5-based applications, outside of a relatively small percentage of apps, and we are firmly convinced that our investment needs to shift toward HTML5. Shifting to HTML5 doesn't just mean slapping a web runtime on an existing Linux, even one aimed at mobile, as MeeGo has been. Emphasizing HTML5 means that APIs not visible to HTML5 programmers need not be as rigid, and can evolve with platform technology and can vary by market segment.

Much like MeeGo, the Tizen project will support multiple device categories, including Tablets, Netbooks, Handsets, Smart TV, and In-Vehicle Infotainment systems. Over the next couple of months, we will be working very hard to make sure that users of MeeGo can easily transition to Tizen, and I will be working even harder to make sure that developers of MeeGo can also transition to Tizen.

Judging by the comments on the MeeGo blog, a number of developers are concerned about the future of Qt support. Current scuttlebutt indicates the Qt development framework will be supported, though Intel seems set on pushing apps to use HTML5 for future projects rather than Qt. The new OS targets the same types of devices as MeeGo--the preferred development framework may have changed, but the device types the OS targets hasn't.

From MeeGo to ItWent

Meanwhile, in related news, Samsung has signed a cross-licensing agreement with Microsoft that covers development and marketing of Windows phones as well as a broad patent agreement. This is likely a move by Samsung to protect itself from the Android-related lawsuits currently dogging other manufacturers like HTC.

As for Tizen, it's hard to work up too much enthusiasm for the third iteration of a project that began as Moblin, transitioned to MeeGo, and has just been rescued and retitled for the third time. Samsung's decision to invest in the OS project could be seen as a hedge bet against future legal issues with Android, but no one seems willing to commit to MeeGo as a front-and-center product as opposed to a sidelined developer hobby. In this case, we're dubious that the third time will turn out to be the charm.

Kingston Expands Secure USB Drive Line With DataTraveler 6000 Series

04:07 RENJIN BOSE R.K No comments

Kingston Digital, Inc. (an affiliate of Kingston Technology Company, Inc.) is not messing around with its ultra-secure USB flash drives. Today, the company announced that the DataTraveler 6000 series is now available, joining Kingston Digital’s already robust crop of secure USB flash drive products.

The 6000 series features a slew of security features, including Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) 140-2 Level 3 Validation, 256-bit AES encryption enabled by Spyrus using XTS block cipher mode, and military-grade elliptic curve cryptography (ECC).

Additionally, the drives feature secure channel communication, firmware updates that are digitally signed with Suite B SHA-384 and ECDSA P-384, tamper-free AutoRun enforcement, and the ability to run with AutoRun disabled.

Users must set their own password, and Kingston designed the drives to force users to actually use strong ones; there are no pathetically weak “admin”, “password”, or “123456” passwords allowed. In fact, the passwords have to have at least three of the following: lowercase, uppercase, characters, and numbers. Once that password is set, users had better remember it, because after 10 intrusion attempts, the drives lock down and kill the encryption key.

Even the casing is designed to be impervious to tampering. It’s also waterproof up to four feet, has a titanium-coated stainless steel casing, and comes with a five-year warranty.

Despite all the powerful features built into these drives, the DataTraveler 6000 series don’t support USB 3.0. Kingston claims read/write speeds of 11MBps and 5MBps, respectively.

The DataTraveler 6000 series flash drives are compatible with Windows XP/Vista/7 and Mac OS X 10.5 through 10.6 and come in 2GB, 4GB, 8GB, and 16GB capacities.

How much will all this secure goodness run you? The 2GB version is $100, and you’ll pay $116 (4GB), $147 (8GB), or $208 (16GB) for the larger-capacity versions.

For as useful as USB flash drives are, they cause their fair share of problems for enterprises and government agencies. Unsurprisingly due to their diminutive size, flash drives are frequently misplaced, whether they’re left plugged into a computer in lab, fall off of a keychain, or slide out of a pants pocket in a taxi, leaving their contents exposed to whomever stumbles across the little device next. Flash drives also tend to be vulnerable to user-inflicted destruction; if you’ve never accidentally dropped a flash drive or sent one through the laundry cycle, you’re in a very small minority.

When you consider how sensitive the information on a flash drive can be, especially in financial companies and government agencies, the preceding two paragraphs are deeply unsettling. However, the Kingston DataTraveler 6000 series of USB flash drives protect users (and by proxy, organizations) from much of the aforementioned maladies. In that light, $100 for a 2GB drive may be well worth the cost.

Acer Aspire S3 to Cost $899 in the U.S.?

03:38 RENJIN BOSE R.K No comments

We gushed a bit about the new Acer Aspire S3 ultrabook a few weeks ago, but at the time, Acer had not announced U.S. pricing. Now, it appears as though the ultrabooks may retail for $899 in the U.S.

According to a report by CRN, the Acer Aspire S3 was spotted for sale at online retailer New Age Electronics at that $899 price point. Acer for its part hasn’t confirmed the price, so take the news with a grain of salt, but if indeed that’s what the Acer ultrabooks will cost, the Aspire S3 is the first ultrabook to break the $1,000 barrier.

Some believe that this could ignite a price war between ultrabook makers, which would be a delight to consumers hankering for one of these sleek, light laptops. Offerings from Lenovo and Toshiba cost much more than $899, and HP is still keeping us in the dark.

ASUS has yet to announce pricing for its forthcoming ultrabooks, but rumor has it that the company may introduce a range of ultrabooks starting at $799. We certainly hope that’s the case. Ultrabook pricing, round 1: Fight!

Motorola Xoom Owners to Finally Get Their LTE Love

03:35 RENJIN BOSE R.K No comments

Only a few months late, Verizon is now offering its promised 4G LTE upgrades to Motorola Xoom users. The Xoom, the first Honeycomb (Android 3.x) tablet, shipped in March, while promising an LTE upgrade, which kept getting pushed out, and out, and out.

eanwhile, Verizon has shipped other tablets that came with 4G LTE support built-in, such Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1. The Motorola XOOM with 4G LTE pre-installed will be available in Verizon Wireless Communications Stores and online at www.verizonwireless.com beginning on Oct. 13 for $499.99 with a new two-year contract.

Those with 3G versions of the Motorola Xoom can visit http://www.verizonwireless.com/Xoom4GLTEupgrade for instructions on how to begin the 4G LTE upgrade process. Customers who signed up for email alerts will receive an email notification with instructions tomorrow.

Despite the fact that we found out previously that converting a Xoom to LTE shouldn't really take that long, and could be done by a technician in-store in probably about half an hour (or so), customers will be required to ship their devices in, losing their device for about six days, total. The upgrade is free of charge, and nicely, the customer's data plan does not have to be changed.

Customers are "encouraged" to back up their data prior to shipping the device.

Currently (these are slightly different than when the Xoom launched) the data plans for the device are:

$30 monthly access for 2GB monthly allowance
$50 monthly access for 5GB monthly allowance
$80 monthly access for 10GB monthly allowance

When the Xoom 4G LTE reaches stores on Oct. 13, it won't differ from the original model in any way except for the addition of LTE connectivity. Whether or not this is enough to attract customers away from the iPad 2 and even the aforementioned Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 remains to be seen.

Mobile USA Grabs White HTC Radar 4G With Windows Phone 7.5 (Mango)

03:33 RENJIN BOSE R.K No comments

With Mango hitting devices this week, the flood of handsets designed specifically for Microsoft's next-gen build of WP7 has begun. T-Mobile USA is first in line, with the new HTC Radar 4G sailing their way in a glistening white outfit. It's the carrier's first Windows Phone capable of 4G speeds (HSPA+, in this case), also boasting a 3.8" touch display, a virtual QWERTY keyboard, a 1GHz Snapdragon processor, Internet Explorer 9 and a 5MP rear camera with LED flash.

The carrier isn't doling out a price or release date, but it'll be out before the holidays. So, is this the white handset of your dreams? Or is the presume white iPhone 5 still calling your name?

T-Mobile Announces Upcoming Availability of the HTC Radar 4G

Today, T-Mobile announced the upcoming availability of the HTC Radar™ 4G, our first Windows® Phone capable of 4G speeds on America's Largest 4G Network®. The completely customizable smartphone pairs rich mobile entertainment features with the top-notch communications experience delivered by the latest version of Windows Phone, code-named Mango. This intuitive new operating system update will keep HTC Radar 4G customers connected and entertained just about wherever life takes them with its new and innovative communication features centered on people, along with preloaded entertainment applications and the ability to multitask between apps.

The HTC Radar 4G is elegantly crafted with an aluminum unibody design for a sleek and stylish appearance. Sporting a large 3.8-inch LCD touch screen display with a virtual QWERTY keyboard and powered by a 1GHz Snapdragon™ processor, the HTC Radar 4G delivers an efficient mobile communications experience at 4G speeds. The smartphone provides a comprehensive productivity experience with fully integrated Microsoft® Exchange and calendar as well as Microsoft Office Hub and Internet Explorer® 9 for a fast, beautiful Web experience. Additionally, the new smartphone is equipped with dedicated camera button for easy access to the 5-megapixel camera with LED flash so you never miss a photo opportunity, even if the phone is locked.

Intel’s latest graphics driver boasts 37 percent 3D gaming performance gain

03:28 RENJIN BOSE R.K No comments

If you own a high-end graphics card then you know that applying the latest graphics driver update is probably going to give your games a bit of a performance boost as well as sort out a few bugs. What kind of performance gain you see depends on the games and the age of the card, but a single-digit percentage gain is most likely.
Intel also has to release graphics driver updates for the chips it sells that include an integrated graphics solution. For example, the latest Sandy Bridge Core processors with Intel HD Graphics 3000 integrated. What we didn’t expect to see is the latest version of Intel’s drivers boasting as much as 37 percent 3D gaming performance gain in a certain Blizzard-developed title.
That’s exactly what Intel is claiming though, with the release notes accompanying driver versions 15.22.50.2509 and 15.22.50.64.2590 listing substantial performance gains for six popular titles. Here’s the games and claimed frames-per-second gain you should experience:

Starcraft 2: Wings of Liberty – Devil’s Playground – 37% gain
Dawn of War: Chaos Rising – 29% gain
Battlefield: Bad Company 2 – 28% gain
Supreme Commander 2 – 16% gain
DIRT 2 – 12% gain
Resident Evil 5 (Benchmark) – 10% gain

The reference machine used to log those gains was an Intel Core-i7-2677M running at 1.8GHz on an Intel 6 Series Chipset coupled with 4GB RAM and Hitachi 320 hard drive. The Intel graphics and Media Control Panel Power Plan was set to “Plugged In, Balance” and the games were all running on low settings.
The new drivers also fix an issue with HDMI monitor connections crashing machines intermittently, and rendering artifacts have been resolved in a long list of titles. Any games using OpenGL should also see some performance improvements due to a new extension, performance optimizations, and a few fixes.
One thing is clear, if you run a version of Intel’s HD Graphics solution then it’s definitely worth updating your drivers if you use your laptop for gaming or anything involving 3D rendering.
Read more at the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator Driver page and associated release notes (PDF), via Hot Hardware

Intel predicts 10GHz chips by 2011

03:23 RENJIN BOSE R.K No comments

intel is predicting that its microprocessors will hit 10GHz by the year 2011. In addition, it is currently working on a system bus that is 10 times faster than its upcoming 400 MHz (4*100MHz) Pentium 4 system bus, working at effective speeds of around 4 GHz. What will we do with all that processor power? Intel is working hard to bring high-end applications to your desktop featuring much more video, speech interaction, and more complex and functional user interfaces.
Read more at

ROB'S OPINION
Hopefully, most of you are familiar with Moore's Law, so this doesn't come as a surprise to you. If not, Moore's Law states that the number of transistors in a common microprocessor will double every 18 months. As well, it can be applied to processor speed and many other computing/technology metrics. This law has more or less (no pun intended) held true since the transistor was invented. So, assuming that early 2001 is a time when 1 GHz processors are rampant let's see what we get if we apply Moore's Law:
early 2001: 1 GHz
mid 2002: 2 GHz
early 2004: 4 GHz
mid 2005: 8 GHz
early 2007: 16 GHz
mid 2008: 32 GHz
early 2010: 64 GHz
mid 2011: 128 GHz
This is very interesting indeed. Intel appears to be underestimating progress in 2011 by a full factor of 10. Even by doing that, it's still making headlines with its predictions. Some will call this crazy, but those that yell the loudest have the shortest memories.

Technology Trends

10:49 RENJIN BOSE R.K No comments

Facebook Adds Skype Video Chat Feature

July 8th, 2011 | by Anil |

Facebook has announced a partnership with Skype to add video chat to the social networking site.
The move is likely to be seen as a shot across the bow of Google, which recently launched a Facebook rival, Google+, also featuring video calling.
This is not the first time Facebook and Skype have teamed up – they already share some instant messaging tools.
Skype is in the process of being bought by Microsoft, which is a major shareholder in Facebook.
The new video-call service was launched by Facebook founder Mark Zuckerberg, who also revealed that the site now had more than 750 million users.
However, he said that the total number of active users was no longer a useful measure of the site’s success.
Instead, the amount of sharing – of photographs, videos and web links – was a better indication of how people engaged with the site, explained Mr Zuckerberg.
At launch, Facebook’s video chat service will only be able to connect two users face-to-face, whereas Google’s system allows group video calls, known as Hangouts.

Fastest Mobile Networks 2011

10:19 RENJIN BOSE R.K No comments

AT&T's nationwide 3G network still offers the best balance of speed and performance outside major cities, but the giant carrier is struggling in big cities against Verizon's LTE network and T-Mobile's nimble HSPA+ technology. AT&T is moving to HSPA+ 21 right now and plans to introduce an LTE network this summer, so we could see the carrier's position recover in 2012.
Verizon Wireless has two very different networks: a slow, but reliable nationwide 3G network and a blazingly fast 4G LTE network with limited coverage. The combination seems to be working out, as Verizon's 4G system swept our Fastest Mobile Networks awards while its 3G voice network got top marks in our Readers' Choice awards for its terrific coverage and call quality.
T-Mobile was the second-fastest network nationwide, and it's continuing to upgrade its speeds all the time. The carrier's existing HSPA+ 21 network is being replaced by HSPA+ 42, which could provide LTE-like speeds. . Of course, all of this could come to an end if AT&T buys T-Mobile, as the larger company has pledged to shut down T-Mobile's network to use the airwaves for LTE.
Sprint is in the toughest position in our tests. The carrier is struggling with speed and consistency, and the partner it relies on for its WiMAX network, Clearwire, has perpetual financial problems. But Sprint has one huge advantage: the nation's only truly unlimited 4G plan, making it the only network that you can use to replace a home Internet connection.
Sprint's 4G network has upload speeds that are artificially capped to 1Mbps, as our testing showed. In June, Sprint announced that it would be raising the cap at some undefined point in the future to 1.5Mbps. That isn't reflected in our results, which were tested in May.
We recalculated our numbers to check Sprint's scores to see if its upload speeds were increased by 50 percent in every city. That wouldn't necessarily happen, of course, but it was worth checking out. Faster uploads would definitely solve some of Sprint's problems. A 50-percent boost to upload speeds would have made Sprint 4G the winner in Kansas City, put it in second place to Verizon 4G in Los Angeles, Pittsburgh, and Jacksonville, and made it tie for second with T-Mobile in Atlanta and Las Vegas.
Cricket is a low-cost carrier available in 12 of our 21 cities. While its 3G network is comparatively slow, it currently charges $55 per month for unlimited smartphone usage, which is considerably less than the major players. It also covers many smaller cities. Cricket will be introducing an LTE network next year.
MetroPCS, like Verizon Wireless, offers LTE. But the small carrier, available in 11 of our 21 cities, is doing something very different with its 4G; rather than offering spectacular speeds, it's going for merely decent speeds at very low rates. The carrier's average speed is like a very good 3G network, but unlimited talk, text and Internet access costs just $60 a month—or about half of what Verizon charges.

Thursday 29 September 2011

We gushed a bit about the new Acer Aspire S3 ultrabook a few weeks ago, but at the time, Acer had not announced U.S. pricing. Now, it appears as though the ultrabooks may retail for $899 in the U.S.

Wednesday 28 September 2011

Facebook Adds Skype Video Chat Feature

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