• The Secret World of Triangle Rendering Technology
• NYC Fines Microsoft for Sidewalk Ads
• Nintendo Faces EU Antitrust Fine Next Week -Sources
• Nvidia backs out of ATI hockey match
• Head of Microsoft Germany hangs up his mouse
• FBI warns of possible rail terror attacks

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Steven Kuo, the Product Manager who is kind enough to spare some of his time to show me around various departments and be interviewed by me. The visit to R&D department is rather interesting as many new boards and chips are currently under testing there.

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The arguments against pushing write-once speeds higher fall into two camps: cost, and safety. Price-wise, CD burner prices "are already in the toilet," said Bob DeMoulin, marketing manager for branded storage products in Sony Electronics' IT products division. For example, CenDyne's 48X CD burner costs $99, and with rebates drops to $49. Prices of 24X burners can be found for $36 or less.

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Although it was earlier said that Intel would not launch any new Celeron processors this year, it seems that now the company changed its plans. As I have heard from certain sources, the Santa Clara-based semiconductor manufacturer will reveal the 2.1 and 2.2GHz Celeron processors on the 10th of November. The facts remained without any comments from Intel officials, however, I consider them to be pretty probable.

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shortage of Nvidia’s GeForce4 Ti 4200, Ti 4600 and MX 440 chips graphics chips due to seasonal demand has started to be reported in the market. According to graphics card makers, the tight supply has been felt most for GeForce4 Ti 4200 and 4600 chips, and so far they do not know when the situation will improve. Due to the shortage, card manufacturers have begun worrying that their October shipments may be affected.

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Samsungs SyncMaster 172T performed extremely well during all tests and has delivered some of the best quality I have had the chance to test. I am giving this monitor a perfect score based on its quality, versatility and competitive price. I would have liked to have seen an S-Video input on it but am not knocking anything from it for not having it. Samsung has made an impressive showing with this monitor and if you’re looking for a new monitor and would like to gain a little territory back from your desk I would strongly suggest the Synchmaster 172T.

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It is easy to think that all you need to succeed in the 3D market is a high-end card that takes all awards. However – this is far from the truth. Looking at the NPD data for August 02 we see that the high-end cards actually only stand for a few percent of the total cards sold.

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Samsungs SyncMaster 172T performed extremely well during all tests and has delivered some of the best quality I have had the chance to test. I am giving this monitor a perfect score based on its quality, versatility and competitive price. I would have liked to have seen an S-Video input on it but am not knocking anything from it for not having it. Samsung has made an impressive showing with this monitor and if you’re looking for a new monitor and would like to gain a little territory back from your desk I would strongly suggest the Synchmaster 172T.

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LCDs have come a long way since their appearance in early laptops, where even rendering a moving cursor was a problem. We've run these screens through basic desktop tests, DVD playback, slow- and fast-paced gaming, and even a suite of synthetic monitor test programs. Which LCD comes out on top? Let's have a look.

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Once I had the materials gathered and the design work done, I was able to complete the entire project in less than four hours! I can’t stress how easy this was to make and am stunned by the output of the subwoofer for such a simple project. Please understand that a standard cheap subwoofer system advertised for computers at $29 simply isn’t in the same league as a professional larger system like this. Most computer "subwoofers" have 4" or 5" drivers that are physically not capable of producing an adequate low frequency response. You WILL be pleased with the difference.

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A primary selling point of the A950 is ease of installation. It does work straight out of the box; like a laptop all that is needed is the power cable plugging in, and the mouse and keyboard connections and basically that's it. No hassle, no troubleshooting it works from the word go.

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Another day, another motherboard. It seems as if a day doesn't go by without another motherboard announcement. Today we're looking at the ABIT AT7-MAX2 motherboard - a Socket A motherboard using the new VIA KT400 chipset. Today though isn't an ordinary motherboard day, as the AT7-MAX2 definitely has broken the mould as far as socket A boards go.

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Thermaltake has fallen in love with their Smart Fan II. Truth be told, we have too. The Smart Fan II is extremely versatile in that it allows three ways to control the speed (air volume and noise level) so you can adjust things to your needs at hand. The Smart Fan II on the Spark 7 is the slightly smaller brother of the original unit. It is a 70mm jobber as opposed to the 80mm ones you see around. Being 13% smaller restricts its raw performance somewhat.

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Cooling is a very important subject, and for some users (especially overclockers), getting the most cooling is a top priority for them. This may even include devices that regular users don't normally consider, such as your hard drive. Why would you cool your hard drive then? Apart from keeping the overall system temperature from becoming too hot, a cooler device also runs for alot longer. Even a few degrees difference will help to maintain the device's integrity over a period of time. With 7200RPM hard drives now running in excess of 40-50°C it gets pretty toasty in there. We're about to see how well the Antec Hard Disk Drive Cooler handles the daunting task of keeping it cool.

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You have heard me mention a few times already about the small size of this heatsink. For comparison, I snapped a few shots of the Vantec cooler alongside a Swiftech MCX462.

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The SV1204H is the largest capacity model of Samsungs newest line of value hard-drives the V60 series. The V60 series of hard drives are limited to 5400 rpm spindle speed, but utilizes a micro-processor that has a Dual DSP (Digital Signal Processor) function and improves data processing capacity drastically, through parallel processing of HDD data and Servo signal. The V60 series of hard-drive also incorperates Samsungs NoiseGuardTAcoustic Noise Suppression Technology and their SilentSeekT Technology to silence their hard drives?

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A computer is actually quiet equipment, it flows mainly only electric currents. Tones, noises in addition, music result from moved parts, which bring the air molecules to swinging. Noises come thus from drive assemblies of all kinds and evenly the exhausts, which energize the air molecules in nevertheless quite drastic way for swinging. As rule of thumb one can say, the slower an exhaust turns, is the quieter he (depends naturally also on the Design) and the smaller an exhaust is the high frequency is the clay/tone which he delivers.

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Sometimes the simple and inexpensive things in life are worth more to you than things that are complex and expensive. One such item is the Thermaltake Fan Speed Controller. This product has one purpose in life, and that is to adjust the speed of a single fan, namely the CPU heatsink cooling fan. We've all see those fancy bay busses and fan speed controllers that require special tools, not to mention a considerable amount of time to install. Those devices are nice, but they are also quite expensive and may be more complex than what your really need.

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