Dell is aggressief bezig om via het Internet geld te verdienen. Dell's nieuwste activiteit is een internet site die min of meer dienst doet als een veiling site voor 2e hands computer apparatuur.

Dell Computer today opened a new website where consumers can sell their old computer systems regardless of brand, bid for used or refurbished Dell systems and buy a variety of computer-related products. The site's benefits include an escrow service, easy navigation, personalized service, a privacy guarantee and cross promotions with other Dell sites. For a limited time, registered users will receive a free modem with the purchase of select Dell Dimension PCs. Thousands of computers, peripherals and related items are now available. These include refurbished systems gathered from Dell's factory outlet, used computers returned to Dell's leasing company and individual PCs and peripherals of all brands that visitors to the site are offering for sale.

Ga hier heen, om te kijken, te bieden of aan te bieden.

Bij onze goede vrienden van Voodoo Extreme hebben ze een linkje naar een Franse site met daarop drie hoge kwaliteit screenshots van Tombraider 4.

Je vind de screenshots hier.

Back Orifice, door velen gezien als een veredeld virus, wordt door eSafe geneutraliseerd, zegt Aladdin.

Actually, BO2K allows hackers to gain unauthorized control of Microsoft Windows-based PCs and networks, steal passwords, delete files and redirect network traffic, says Aladdin. Aladdin officials say their eSafe Protect product line isolates BO2K, then notifies users of an access violation before the program can be used to wreak havoc within a targeted system. Unlike other security programs, however, Aladdin claims eSafe Protect will continue to protect against variations of BO2K without additional patches or updates.

Lees hier het verhaaltje,
of download hier het Aladdin eSafe programma.

Hoewel ik waarschijnlijk een van de weinigen ben in Nederland die Star Wars Episode 1: The Phantom Menace heeft gezien, is het toch fijn dat de wereld die daar nog niet mee gezegend is ook kan kennis maken met een spacecraft uit de film: de Naboo Fighter.

Voor zowel de Nintendo64 als de PC versie van Rogue Sqaudron is de Naboo fighter nu beschikbaar. Voor de N64 is er een cheat code, voor de PC een update, die hier te downloaden is.

Owners of Star Wars: Rogue Squadron can now pilot Anakin Skywalker's powerful Naboo starfighter. Introduced in December 1998, Rogue Squadron provides an action-arcade experience that allows PC and Nintendo 64 players to join an elite group of starfighter pilots in ground-to-air and air-to-air battle scenarios. The highly agile Naboo starfighter, first seen in the motion picture Star Wars: Episode I The Phantom Menace, is armed with rapid-fire twin laser cannons, homing missiles, and other upgradable weaponry. Officials at LucasArts say its advanced hyperdrive engine and superior handling characteristics will allow players to rapidly out-maneuver their dreaded foes. Information about how to access the Naboo starfighter will be available to PC players through www.lucasarts.com/products/rogue, and a variety of interactive game web sites. Nintendo will simultaneously reveal the cheat code to Nintendo 64 owners through Nintendo Power magazine and online at www.nintendo.com.

Ik had donderdag al een berichtje gepost over mijn korte 3-daagse vakantie naar Engeland en dat ik daar SW: Phantom Menace zou gaan kijken. Ik had nog niet vermeld dat ik daar ook naar Sega MegaWorld zou gaan. Daar kun je binnenkort een korte van beschouwing verwachten.

Klik hier, als je eens wilt lachen om iets doms . Bill Gates die wordt aangevallen door Special Agent Kimble. Een leuke movie, werkt snel en kost niet veel tijd.

Een echte aanrader!

The Adrenaline Vault heeft een review van Need for Speed: High Stakes op hun site gegooid.

Natuurlijk kun je ook effe onze review van deze racegame lezen, die staat hier.

There are four racing modes, including career, single-player arcade, split-screen arcade and multiplayer. (I am thrilled the series has permanently dispensed with the silly arcade/simulation/wild choices, which some of you veterans may remember with a chuckle). In career mode, you may play tournament, Knockout and High Stakes racing circuits, while in the other three modes you have single race, Hot Pursuit, Knockout and tournament available. For multiplayer action, you may undertake two-player split screen racing on one computer, link two computers for modem and serial racing, or connect up to eight machines across a LAN. In the future, you should be able to race up to seven other players via the EA Racing Online Beta Program, a unique service that offers matchmaking and game servers to optimize racing over the Internet. The highly successful Hot Pursuit mode is continued and expanded in this latest release, with three options to play from either side of the law, includingh the original plus Getaway and Time Trap. Additionally, you may now command the entire police force or use a helicopter as a tracking aid.

Ars Technica heeft een review gebakken van "The Card Cooler", een handige fan die alles koelt wat je in je PCI, AGP, of ISA gleuf plant.

What is this little puppy good for? If you're running a Rage II+ and a Voodoo1, not much. However, if you have a TNT2 Ultra (overclocked) and a Voodoo2 in your computer, like yours truly, then it can make a world of difference. Heck, it would probably help you overclock any card, if your case is accommodating enough to let air flow through it well.

My system temperature pre-Card Cooler was usually averaged 35°C (95°F) with a light load, and around 40°C(104°F) after an hour or so of Q3Test or Half Life, as reported by Motherboard Monitor and my Abit BP6 depending on the temperature in the room. With the Card Cooler installed, and during the warmer summer months, my case temperature usually averages 33°C(90°F) in a light load and 35°C(95°F) after a good deathmatch session.

Bij Riva Extreme hebben ze ook wat resultaten ontvangen van Q3Test, draaiend op een BP6 met twee Celerons en een TNT2 Ultra. Check het artikel voor de benchmark plaatjes.

What does this tell us? The main argument that I can put forth is that Q3 is/will take your 3D accelerator to its limits. Since the TNT2 Ultra leaves the Transformation and Lighting burden to your system's CPU, you can see that in the lower resolutions (where the Ultra is waiting for more stuff to render) the extra CPU power DOES help. But, in the higher resolutions, the gfx card becomes the bottleneck, or perhaps more appropriately even, the bus. I'm willing to bet that with AGP4x and increased bus speed (133) virtually the same setup would see better scaling out of an Ultra card. Another thing is the RAM - Kobi thinks (and I agree) that probably 128 would be better, and I think (since I have it and it makes a HUGE difference) that 256 would be grand.

You also have to remember that this is a TEST. The SMP code is probably far from perfected, and maybe we will get up to that 60% that John Carmack is hoping for! The guy is a genius, let him do his work.

Beyond 3D heeft een review in elkaar gedraaid van de TNT2 kaart van Gigabyte, de GA-660. Dit kaartje is een 'standaard' TNT2, die een hogere core speed heeft dan een normaal geklokte Ultra TNT, namelijk 156MHz. Toch blijft ie 100% stabiel:

I wanted to see how much heat this thing could really take, so I figured I'd really need to push the board and keep doing so for several hours. The best way to do this is with very intensive 3D rendering. So I thought I'd crank set all the rendering features to max (trilinear filtering, high quality rendering), set the resolution to 1280x1024 and loop 3D Mark 99 Max's demo mode for several hours. After letting it run, I returned to find everything running normally. This is a very good sign that Gigabyte was successful at stabilizing the TNT2 at such a high clock. On thing I did notice was that the heatsink found under the chip would get extremely hot. Not hot to the point where it couldn't be touched, but very close. I'd almost have liked to see a fan on that part as well, though this might have been a bit of overkill.

Bij Overclockers' Workbench heeft iemand een mail ontvangen dat er in Singapore nieuwe Celeron 300A's zijn (Celeron 300a SL36A) die in staat zijn om op 133 x 4.5 te lopen, 598MHz dus. Meer staat er niet over, dus of het echt waar is heeft niemand kunnen testen. Eerst zien, dan geloven....

Dit is wel leuk nieuws, Guillemot heeft het voor elkaar gekregen om de Ferrari naam en logo te gebruiken voor hun PC en console race accessoires. De eerste producten met deze feature komen deze herfst, aldus het nieuwsbericht van GA-Source.

Nou ben ik benieuwd of er straks ook een Guillemot stickertje op het stuur van mijn nieuwe Ferrari zit...

AGN Hardware heeft een review van de Abit BP6 online gezet. Hier is een stukje uit de review:

The BP6 offers great performance for a price that you can afford without having to go to the bank for a loan. The fact that you have to use NT to benefit from SMP is not a big shortcoming, because you can always Dual boot your computer. Plus with Windows 2000 around the corner, you can always upgrade your operating system and be able to play all games as well. On the feature side the BP6 has added quite a bit of them with ATA/66 support, temperature monitoring, excellent SoftMenu II setup and more. This combination of features, stability and performance make the BP6 one of the best Dual CPU motherboards on the planet with the exception of those Intel XEON supporting boards that will send your financial state into bankruptcy.

Union of Cracking Gods, een nieuwe russisch RC5 team dat instant de eerste plaats op de daily rankings voor zich opeisde, zegt gebruik te maken van de geheimzinnige Elbrus E2K processor. Erg waarschijnlijk klinkt dat natuurlijk niet, aangezien de Elbrus processor voor zover bekend alleen in simulatie bestaat. De Slashdot...

What they did was to crack the RC5 protocol and they are automatically generating bogus blocks that have been checked. It looks like it might queer the whole contest. [break]...en AnandTech teams zijn er niet blij mee:[/break] Hell yeah I want to alarm you guys!!!! I talked to one of the guys on that "union of Cracking Gods" team last night... He said that they WILL be able to maintain the numbers they have been throwing up the last few days!!! They have somehow managed to asimilate 20 huge networks (the city MAN) in and around Stavropol, Russia.

Guys, we have a new challenge to overcome...

We zoeken nog iemand die richting Rusland fietst om voor ons zo'n Elbrus gevalletje te halen (je kunt ook gewoon je Celeron aan het grazen zetten en de Dutch Power Cows joinen ).

Slashdot weet ons te vertellen dat er een nieuwe Linux kernel gereleased is. Zal wel leuk zijn voor de Linux freaks (zelf snap ik er niets van). Een lijstje met updates vind je hier.

A lot of updates here. I've not chased down the lockd bug reports yet, nor the umount nfsd bug that is trapped by the SLAB debugging. This mops up most of the stuff while I've been occupied elsewhere. Chances are given the number of updates there will be a few glitches in it. Have fun testing.

ftp://ftp.*.kernel.org/pub/linux/kernel/alan/...

Voor onze Apple vrienden kwam ik bij MacOS Rumors wat leuke info tegen over een 64-bit versie van MacOS, voor gebruik met de tevens 64-bit PPC G5, waarvan de release geplant staat in 2001:

Although OS X is being prepared for a smooth transition to the G5, due to the more than two years until Apple will have working prototypes to test on, it is difficult to make predictions as yet. One thing is certain: Apple, IBM, and Motorola have a close relationship on PowerPC development, and with Apple's continued comittment to the platform, there is no way that the latest version(s) of the Mac operating system won't be ready -- and optimized -- for the G5 when it ships.

It's important to remember that although many otherwise well-educated computer geeks take 32-bit processing vs. 64-bit processing to mean that the 64-bit processor can do twice as much work per clock cycle (by being "wider") is not at all accurate. In fact, many 64-bit processors are larger, hotter, more expensive, and may not perform dramatically better than their 32-bit counterparts in common desktop computing situations. The "bit length" of a processor is not the same thing as its "data width," and should not be taken as an indicator of overall performance without much more information.

[...] The first PowerPC to use a 64-bit Integer unit will be the G5, which will ship in 2001 at just over 1GHz with numerous architectural improvements, dramatically low power dissipation (easily used in portables!), and is expected to carry the PowerPC platform to 1.5GHz and above during its lifetime.

Check MacOS Rumors voor het complete verhaal.

EETimes heeft een artikeltje gepost over chipsets voor Intel's Merced processor. IBM heeft een SMP chipset in ontwikkeling met ondersteuning voor maximaal 32 processors (leuk voor in je servertje). Verder in het artikel een stukje over de McKinley, de opvolger van de Merced:

Intel said it remains on schedule to ship production volumes of Merced in mid-2000. McKinley is due to sample in late 2000 and ship in late 2001. Although industry pundits have anxiously awaited Merced, some engineers now appear more interested in its higher-performance successor.

"There are some good performance enhancements in McKinley, which will lend themselves to very robust systems," said Tom Bradicich, director of architecture and design for IBM's Netfinity server group (Research Triangle Park, N.C.).

According to Intel, McKinley will deliver double the performance of Merced and will run at clock speeds beyond 1 GHz.

Ik lees bij Betanews dat Entech weer eens een nieuwe versie van Powerstrip/GX gereleased heeft. Voor zover ik begrepen heb is Powerstrip/GX een gemankeerde versie van Powerstrip, waar alle onzinnige functies uit geript zijn. De nieuwe versie kun je hier downloaden en heeft ondersteuning voor de Matrox G400.

Het volk achter HardwareMasters.com heeft een review van de Promise UDMA/66 controller op hun site geparkeerd. De test werd uitgevoerd met een 5400rpm Western Digital drive en niet geheel onverwacht bleek de schijf nauwelijks sneller te zijn met de Promise controller:

Well, I saw very little to no increase in performance using ATA-66. Perhaps with a better hard drive, the results would be greatly improved. I don't see any reason to run out and get an ATA-66 controller at the current time unless you want to use up a PCI slot. Some motherboards, notably from Abit, are now shipping with ATA-66 support and Intel's 820 chipset will be coming out soon with built-in ATA-66. If you have a fast hard drive such as a 7200rpm or faster and have a free PCI slot, it may be worth getting the controller card, for everyone else, its probably not worth it.

Alsof we er nog niet genoeg van gehad hebben heeft Sysop Solutions ook nog maar ff een Viper V770 Ultra review in elkaar gezet. Sysop was in staat om de kaart tot 180/220Mhz over te klokken. Check de review hier.

The Register heeft een nieuwsposting geplaats over de nieuwe Amiga, die zal gaan draaien op Linux en voorzien zal worden van een 'very exciting Linux CPU'. The Register gokt maar meteen op de Transmeta chip...

The Amiga MCC, on the other hand, will be distributed as an integrated multimedia convergence computer as well as a standard ATX motherboard. Both will include the Amiga operating environment, an underlying OS and support for DVD, 3D graphics, and broadband and home networking features.

[...] Amiga will adopt OpenGL and it will use the latest Linux X Window windowing system. It will support Prixim's 2.4GHz digital wireless networking and will also adopt Sun's Jini technology.

Pentagram will do the industrial design for the Amiga MCC, said Collas.

Collas said that Amiga has adopted "a very exciting CPU" for the MCC platform, highly tuned for a Linux/Java software base. But he won't tell us what it is. In the past, he's said it won't be an x86 CPU. So is it a Transmeta chip?

Op de newspage van BXBoards kwam ik een interessante posting tegen over de nieuwe LU BIOS update voor de Abit BX6-II:

Hi Toby, I just wanted to drop you a note on this LU update from Abit.I've heard rumors here and there that the new bios allows you (if you are currently using a voltage higher than default for the cpu) to drop it down a notch and still maintain stability. Just for the heck of it, I decided to try it out on two BX6 R2's laying around.

On each board I had a SL2TV PII 333 running 103x5=515 @ 2.2 volt. I could drop the voltage down to 2.1 on both machines, and they would still boot into windows but would become a little unstable when running Prime 95 for a long time or playing Q3 test or Midtown Madness. I installed the LU update, and dropped the voltage down to 2.1...... and lo and behold, the system is exactly as stable as it was at 2.2 volt. No crashes or other weird symptoms. A little skeptical, I tried the same on the other board, and again, same result. I have no clue what the technical reason for this is, or if Abit even changed *anything* related to stability with this bios build. For all I know it could have been positive karma or the mating habits of the ducks in the Galapagos Islands.... I dunno... but it does seem to hold true.

I'd love to know what, if anything, Abit changed to upgrade this stability....... [break] En de reactie van Toby (BXBoards):[/break] I decided to try it out for myself, and sure enough, my P3-450 that only ran stable @2.2 volts (@581Mhz) runs perfectly stable at 2.1 volts now. Because I was still a bit skeptical, I verified with Motherboard Monitor that the voltage was actually at 2.1. I'm going to look into this a bit further and post what I find. If anyone else has had similar experiences, please E-Mail me.

Sharky Extreme heeft een review van de 2,2Gb dikke Castlewood Orb drive gepost. De prijs van Orb valt mee: de EIDE drive kost ca. $150 en voor de schijven wordt een prijs van rond de 30 dollar verwacht (en in capaciteit vergelijkbare Jaz drive kost tweemaal zo veel). Hier een stukje over de performance:

The performance of the ORB drive still is rather low compared to a modern hard drive. In fact, the drive is rather similar in speed levels to the 1 - 2 gigabyte drives we all used to use in the mid 90s. While these numbers certainly don't portray the ORB drive in an exceptional light, we never experienced unsatisfactory performance that made us grind our teeth while waiting for a job to finish on the ORB. Both MPEG-1 and AVI movie files played back flawlessly without any noticeable frame dropping from the ORB, and we witnessed transfer rates close to 8M/sec - slightly lower than the advertised 12M/sec, but still extremely fast in the removable media realm. .

AMD heeft de lijst met 3DNow! geoptimaliseerde software van een update voorzien. In het lijstje zie ik o.a. top titels zoals Black & White, Daikatana, Deus Ex, Diablo 2, Driver, Duke Nukem Forever, Rally Championship '99.

Anand heeft een review gepost van de langverwachte 3DLabs Permedia3. Zoals reeds uit eerdere reviews is gebleken, is de game performance van de Permedia ronduit teleurstellend: zelfs een oude TNT is in veel gevallen sneller dan de Permedia3:

In summary, the Permedia 3 is an overpriced upgrade that will satisfy those users that are happy with their Permedia 2s. If you are happy with your Permedia 2 and aren't looking for faster gaming performance, by all means, stick with your card. If you want faster gaming performance, the affordable route is the TNT (which is now available for under $100, and very appetizing at that) and the faster option would be a TNT2 (not necessarily an Ultra, remember, graphics clock isn't as important when dealing with polygons).

While the TNT/TNT2 and Rage 128 aren't high-end solutions, they do a much better job at giving the user a pleasant high-end/gaming experience than 3Dlabs' Permedia 3. Should the Permedia 3 drop in price to a much, much more affordable level (< $150 would be reasonable), things may turn around for 3Dlabs, but until then, we'll add the Permedia 3 to the list of products that are just too little, too late.

Ik kreeg van Dennis Feiken een mailtje over een alarmerend nieuwsbericht van MaximumPC: de totale waarde van Microsoft is inmiddels groter dan het bruto nationaal produkt van onze polderstaat! Niets aan Bill doorvertellen, want je weet maar nooit wat-ie vandaag wil opkopen :

As its stock spiked up to $98 Friday, Microsoft became the first company to top $500 billion in market value.

Microsoft CEO, Bill Gates, himself came closer to being worth $100 billion when the stick hit $98 on Friday. Gate's won't hit that mark until Microsoft's reaches $100.84. Microsoft's market value now outstrips the gross domestic product of The Netherlands, which is about $378 billion.