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Sing a song of Samsung
According to a report in The Korea Times, Samsung is preparing to launch a competitor to Apple's Itunes music download service. The paper reports that Samsung president Choi Gee-sung said at a press conference last week:
"We are now in talks with our partners to debut a service program like iTunes of Apple. Our No. 1 priority is to help customers use our products with ease"
New firmware for Canon DSLRs
If you’re the proud owner of a Canon EOS 350D (featured in our DSLR Group Test in the current issue of PCW) or EOS 20D, you’ll be pleased to hear new firmware is now available to download for both cameras.
Both updates improve communication between camera and memory card, as well as fixing various other problems.
Download the EOS 350D firmware update (version 1.0.3)
Download the EOS 20D firmware update (version 2.0.3)
The Test Bed on air
Tune in to BBC Radio Wales on Sunday 6th November at 4pm to hear our very own Kelvyn Taylor pontificating on the problem of spyware in the UK. He's taking part in the Mousemat technology program hosted by Adam Walton - you can listen to it again on the web by clicking here.
Sky reveals plans for 2006
With plenty of smugness towards Microsoft (you barely hear a bad word about Sky+, whereas Media Center has no shortage of critics), Sky today gave a preview of what’s on the cards for 2006 at the Connected Home show (Olympia, London).
High Definition TV is obviously the main push for Sky next year, but it’s also improving its Sky+ service. With over 1million Sky+ subscribers, the easy-to-use PVR has been a huge success and the latest model, the Sky+ PVR3, has 80GB of the 160GB hard drive reserved. This will allow Sky to download premium content (movies etc.) direct to your Sky+ box and then provide it at instant access content – at a charge, of course.
Sky is also planning to introduce a book-by-mobile service for Sky+ early next year. Using this, you’ll be able to schedule recordings on your Sky+ box via your mobile. When asked about offering as much functionality as Media Center, Sky appeared in no rush and said it would only add more features if they were going to be 100% reliable.
In a further jibe, Gerry O’Sullivan from Sky (pictured here seated on the far left) mocked Microsoft’s decision to go with the dubious sounding Update Rollup 2 as the name for the latest version of Media Center. We can only conclude that Sky is unlikely to go with a Media Center operating system when it finally releases a portable media player for Sky+.
Transcend launches 4GB SD card
Just when we were getting over the shock of 2GB SD cards, along comes Transcend and announces a 4GB model. Costing €399, it boasts a 22.5MB/sec transfer rate, meaning you could fill it up in about 3 minutes. Perfect for downloading maps onto for your PDA's Sat Nav application or boosting your MP3 player's capacity - but make sure your device supports FAT32 SD cards.
Intel dumps FSB and delays Montecino
Intel is to ditch the front side bus in a new version of its Xeon processor in a change which is expected to extend to many of its other processors, according to US reports. It is also reported to be delaying the new Montecino version of its Itanium processor until the middle of next year and reduced its top speed from 2GHz to 1.6GHz.
Both moves are something of a climbdown for Intel. The front side bus is the major artery of Intel architecture, connecting the processor indirectly to the Ram via the northbridge chip, which contains the memory controller. It is seen as the main reason rival AMD has been able gain the edge with its processors which have an onboard memory controller and talk directly to Ram.
So by scrapping the FSB, Intel is ignominiously following AMD's lead - something it has already had to do with the transition to 64bit. It still massively outsells AMD, but the latter has been eating into its market share.
The high-end Itanium, cruelly nicknamed Itanic, has never had the market success Intel hoped for though the company repeatedly points out that it is not addressing a high-volume market. It does not use the classic x86 PC instruction set and faces compeition in many of its markets from AMD's Opteron and, iornically, Intel's own Xeons.
Information Week reports that the Montecino flavour is being delayed from early to mid-2006 to 'ensure that it hits quality expectations' and will not include Foxton technology to minimise power consupmton and heat by controlling clock speed.
Also it will come with a 400MHz or 533MHz FSB rather than a predicted 667MHz and will clock a maximum 1.6GHz rather than 2GHz.
Seagate announce world's first Perpendicular notebook drive
Seagate have announced details of the world's first notebook drive based on Perpendicular recording technology. The Momentus 5400.3 will have a 160GB capacity through two 80GB platters (discs) and an areal density of 130Gbit/in² and will feature Seagate's Full Disc Encryption technology. Seagate plan to have it available from early 2006.
For more about Seagate's Full Disc Encryption technology click here
For more about Seagate's Perpendicular technology click here
New graphics cards from ASUS
Hot on the heels of ATI's recent launch of the X1000 family of graphics cards; X1800, X1600 and X1300, ASUS have launched two new cards based on the R515 (X1300) and R520 (X1800) cores.
The EAX1300PRO/TD/256M, aimed at the mainstremm market segment, is based around the Pro version of the R515 featuring a 600MHz core clock and 256MB of GDDR2 memory running at 400MHz (800MHz effective). The EAX1800XL/2DHDTV/256M uses the XL version of the R520 and features 256MB of GDDR3 clocked at 500MHz (1GHz effective) and a 500MHz core clock.
Two new boards from ASUS
ASUS has just announced two new SLI motherboards which provide dual true X16 PCI Express graphics support and use an 8-Phase power design to lower heat generation and fan-less cooling to provide quieter running and better overclocking stability.
The A8N32-SLI is the AMD based board supporting Athlon 64FX/Athlon 64 X2/Athlon 64 and Sempron CPUs, using the nVidia nForce 4 SLI X16 chipset and will be available in two models, the A8N32-SLI Deluxe and the A8N32-SLI Deluxe/WiFi. The P5N32-SLI is based around nVidia's Intel SLI solution chipset, the nForce4 SLI Intel Edition. It supports Intel's Pentium EE, Pentium D, Pentium 4 and Celeron CPUs and like the A8N32-SLI will come in two versions the Deluxe and WiFi.
A8N32-SLI
Evesham launch SilverSTOR XS
Evesham Technology has just announced their latest storage solution, the SilverSTOR XS. Based on Intel’s XScale processor architecture with Serial ATA Technology and RAID Level support it delivers up to 1.6 Terabytes of Network Attached Storage (NAS) using a maximum of 4 hard drives in each SilverSTOR XS Storage Server.
SilverSTOR XS is architected to act as a central data server. This means users with different operating systems such as UNIX, Linux, Apple OSX and Windows can read, write and execute the files saved on the SilverSTOR XS via their network. As data requirements increase the SilverSTOR XS can grow too, as it’s easy to add additional SilverSTOR XS devices to the network, giving businesses virtually unlimited scalability.
UK: The land of spyware?
According to a recent study by Webroot, the UK has one of the highest rates of computers infected with spyware. Webroot says almost 55% of consumer Windows PCs are infected. The data was released as MPs and computer experts met to discuss what can be done to fight the 'epidemic'.
We're not surprised the figure is this high, many users are still ignorant of the ways in which to protect their PCs, giving malicious programs an easy time in propagating.
AMD's roadmap: more cores, less power
At a briefing at the new Fab 36 site in Dresden, Germany, AMD today gave us an update about its CPU technology roadmap. Increasing the number of cores per chip and reducing total power consumption are two of its major goals.
By the end of 2005 we can expect to see a dual-core Turion 64 mobile chip, which should enable some very interesting laptops. A new 940-pin desktop processor socket, codenamed M2, will be introduced during 2006, for processors with DDR2 memory support.
AMD's aims are to increase the power per watt across its processor line, while minimising total power consumption. A partitioned version of the PowerNow! dynamic power management technology will allow individual cores or even parts of the core to be shut down when they're not needed.
As you can see from the slide above, other technologies in the near future include the Pacifica virtualisation architecture, which will allow virtual PCs to be run with much less software overhead.
Processors will also move from dual-core to multi-core (up to 8 cores were mentioned), initially in the Opteron server/workstation range, but eventually across all products. Server architectures will gradually move towards mainframe-like hardware partitioning of applications, preventing a crash of one application from affecting other mission-critical programs.
AMD's new fab opens for business
No, this isn't a picture of AMD's new Fab 36 in Dresden, Germany, nor is it the world's biggest bouncy castle. It's actually the location behind Fab 36 where today's official opening ceremony was held on a gloriously sunny day.
Present at the ceremony were AMD's president and CEO, Hector Ruiz, plus the Dresden site's general manager, Hans Deppe. German government luminaries were also there including Gerhard Schroeder, the outgoing German Chancellor (left picture) 
giving speeches that culminate
d in a bevy of bunny-suit clad people prancing around the stage while a symbolic 300mm silicon wafer rose from the floor (right picture).
At a press conference prior to the ceremony, Ruiz (pictured below) said that Fab 36 had created an extra 1,000 jobs at the Dresden site, bringing the total workforce to around 3,000. He also said that the state-of-the-art 300mm fab will start shipping processors built using the 90nm process in the first quarter of 2006, migrating to the new 65nm process by the end of 2006. AMD's aim over the coming years, he said, was to grow its share of the CPU market from its current 20% to 30% or more.
Responding to a question about whether the new production capacity might saturate the market, he responded that the chip market is growing at around 10-15% per year, so oversupply was unlikely to be a problem.
The Dresden site makes 100% of all AMD processors. The older Fab 30 was opened in 2000, and Ruiz said that by 2008 the site's capacity will ramp up to 100m processors per year, double the current capacity. Fab 30's eventual future has not been decided but Ruiz said various options were available.
And finally, here's a shot of the rather groovy combo providing the lunchtime background music in the tents. Their rendition of 'Light my Fire' didn't seem to be a particularly appropriate choice considering the fabric-covered location..
The new Ipod - Music, photos and now movies
More details on Steve Jobs new baby:
In an interesting move Apple has linked up with ABC - the US network that brings you shows such as Desperate Housewives and Lost. Through its online Itunes store, Apple aims to provide latest episodes of hit shows ready for download to the Ipod.
We’re sure Apple’s latest creation will have no problem selling, but we do have our reservations. Although the Ipod caters for both Mpeg4 and Apple’s very own H.264 codec, there’s no word of Divx support. Divx is a massively popular codec and the majority of portable media players will handle such files. Furthermore, with the Ipod’s screen measuring just 2.5in, it’s unlikely you’re going to want to sit squinting at a movie for two hours.
Get the tech spec for the new Ipod here and you can expect to see a full review in PCW soon.
Apple launches iPod video
It was the worst kept secret, but then Apple has become master manipulators of news about their products.
As expected, tonight's announcement, which had been all over the press (and how many other companies could generate so much coverage about a launch that no one 'officially' knew about) is for the latest generation iPod, and now it plays video as well.
This is a good move by Apple because we're seeing more and more portable multimedia players on the market. It's also a good two fingers at Microsoft, which is struggling to get its Media Center operating system widely accepted on these portable players. It can be connected to your TV, either directly or via the optional dock, and can be operated via a remote.
It's thinner than current iPods, comes with a 30GB or 60GB hard drive and will cost £219 or £299 respectively. Like previous iPods, it also plays music and photos.
Apple claims it can hold up to 150 hours of video, which you can watch on a 2.5in display. The company is still smarting from recent revelations about cracked screens on its iPod nano, so it needs to ensure the quality of these. We've not heard any complaints about screen problems on full-sized iPods, but we'll check anyway.
Another problem with many early generation portable multimedia players was that the screen picture quality wasn't that good, so again, this is something to check out.
UPDATE: Our review is now online.
Q-Be or not Q-Be?
We've just got our hands on the amazing Q-Be MP3/WMA player from SupportPlus. This cube-shaped marvel is allegedly the smallest audio player in the world, and we're inclined to agree. It measures just 2.4cm x 2.4cm x 2.4cm, and weighs 18g.
These figures don't really do justice to how small it is. When it first arrived, we opened the box and actually thought the Q-Be was missing. It had fallen out of the packet and onto the floor.
It's available in pink, red, black, silver, and blue, and comes in 512MB and 1GB guises. Unusually for a unit of this size, it has an excellent (if small) OLED display, and a 17-hour battery life.
We haven't used it for very long, but most of us in the PCW office already want one. We'll review it in our next issue, so watch this space.
NEC set to launch Lightscribe rival
Lightscribe, the CD labelling technology developed by HP, will soon have a competitor in the form of Labelflash from NEC. Full details are yet to be released, but NEC tells us its new technology involves cheaper media and, more importantly, will be far quicker that Lightscribe. Although we’re yet to test it for ourselves, rumours suggest it will take just five minutes to burn a CD label - Lightscribe can take up to 30 minutes.
Labelflash technology was actually introduced by Yamaha way back in 2002. Called DISCT@2, it allowed you to burn a label to the unused portion of a CD’s data side. Labelflash looks set to make use of DISCT@2 and will therefore be able to burn images to both sides of a compatible disc. Read more about the original DISCT@2 technology here.
As for pricing, we’re led to believe Labelflash drives will be slightly more expensive than Lightscribe models, but NEC hopes the cheaper media and faster speeds will more than compensate for this. We’ll post full details when NEC makes a public announcement in a couple of weeks.
Digital camera CCD failures
Slashdot has just picked up on some customer service announcements made by digital camera manufacturers Canon, Konica Minolta, Fujifilm and Sony that describe premature failures of the CCD sensor in a wide range of popular digital cameras and camcorders. Some of the releases say that the problem is exacerbated by high temperatures and humidity. In all cases the companies are offering free repairs.
The links above go to the corresponding customer notices on the UK sites where available - Canon UK and Fujifilm UK have not yet posted the notice so we've included the Asia-Pacific links.
Many models appear to be affected, mostly produced between 2002 and 2004. There's no indication of the total number of products affected, but given the timescale it could easily reach very large numbers.
The problem can affect both the live and recorded images, and symptoms of failure include colour distortion or complete loss of image in the electronic viewfinder or LCD panel.
Given that all the notices refer to cameras produced between the same time period, this problem appears to be related to a manufacturing flaw in the CCDs themselves.
Nintendo's Status
Nintendo has been under stiff pressure from Sony and Microsoft in recent years, so it's no surprise that some industry analysts are questioning its financial situation. In a somewhat humorous move, Nintendo has created a new web page designed to update visitors on its current status in the games industry. Check it out at www.nintendo.com/status.
HD-DVDs to be region-free
CDRInfo reports from the DVD Forum Japan Conference 2005 that HD-DVD Videos may have no regional restrictions, unlike current DVD Videos.
It also reports on a new format unveiled at the conference, HD-DVD-RR (Re-Recordable), that could be the successor to DVD-RW.
The HD-DVD format recently received a boost when Intel and Microsoft announced their support for it.
Epson inks 'print near photo-quality on plain paper'
Epson has been showing off its new Durabrite Ultra ink, which it says prints photos on ordinary paper better than any other current product.
The secret lies in a couple of resins within the ink. One has an affinity with 'size', the chemicals used to fill holes in paper to create a better surface for ink. The ink resin binds with the size to produce a surface something like that of glossy photo paper.
The other resin solidifies into a protective film above the pigment, Epson says. This, and the fact that Epson inks uses pigments rather than a water-based dyes like many of its rivals, is said to give the print an appearance closer to that of a glossy print and has the added advantage of being resistant to water and smudging.
To prove the point the company immersed prints in water during demonstrations at its UK cartridge factory at Telford and they did seem to be unaffected, though of course the inks do not prevent the wet paper wrinkling.
The print quality certainly looked good compared with what my little Canon i250 could do on plain paper. You can, of course, print on glossy paper too to get full photo quality. Epson says its colours can last up to 120 years in an album, where they are protected from the light.
Durabright Ultra cartridges are used in Epson's latest range of printers, which include three neat little all-in-ones, the DX4200, the DX3800, and the DX4800, ranging in price from £61 to £102 inc Vat. Cartridges are sold in individual colours at £ 6.80 each. These prices are translated from Euros and so may change slightly. For more details see Epson's site.
Qtek-9100 PDA/phone available 14th October
Smart Devices says it will have the Qtek-9100 Windows Mobile 5 PDA/phone available from 14th October. With built-in 802.11b Wifi and Bluetooth, plus a neat slide-out keyboard, the quad-band device will retail for £379 ex. VAT. It also features a 1.3Megapixel camera with video/flash light.
The Qtek 9100 is also known by the names I-Mate K-JAM and HTC Wizard.
AMD Lanced at Tour de France
Ever wondered how AMD came up with the name Turion for its mobile processor?
Lance Armstrong, king of the yellow jerseys, was being sponsored by AMD at the Tour de France. Meanwhile, in the US, company execs were looking for a name for their new CPU that would create an image of mobility in the minds of consumers. And some bright spark suggested that, as AMD sponsored Armstrong at the TOUR de France, and he was on the go - and therefore mobile - then it should be called 'tour - i - on'. And so the AMD Turion was born....
No, it was way too clever for us as well....
The ultimate handheld GPS?
Trimble has just announced a handheld GPS, the GeoXH, that can give positioning information accurate to within 30cm. The unit is ruggedised and based on a Pocket PC platform using a 416MHz CPU. Pricing hasn't been announced, but the product will appear at the end of October.
Aimed at professionals who need quick, highly accurate data collection, the Pocket PC-based GeoXH achieves its accuracy using Trimble's H-Star system, a combination of a highly accurate GPS receiver and post-processing software. The sub-30cm accuracy is achieved in the office after processing the location data collected on the handheld. In the field you can see an immediate estimate of the accuracy that the post-processing will achieve.
It's definitely not a consumer device, but it caught our eye as this level of accuracy has in the past only been available using complicated and time-consuming techniques with full-blown surveying equipment. And it's an indication of where consumer GPS devices might be in a few years' time.
New ATI Family moves closer
ATI has announced a new family of graphics cards known as the Radeon X1000 series. Three main configurations are available, including the high-end X1800 XT, mid-range X1600 XT and entry-level X1300 XT.
The X1800 XT and X1300 XT are available from today, while the X1600 XT will ship 30 November.
All three are based on a new 90 nanometre fabrication process, allowing them to run at higher clock speeds than their 130nm Nvidia counterparts.
Interestingly, ATI has abandoned the mantra that more pixel shader pipelines equates to better performance. Instead, it touts a new memory-efficient architecture as the key to the X1000 series' strong performance.
We tested the X1800 XT recently and were generally quite impressed. It achieved better scores in 3Dmark 2005 and Far Cry than the high-end Nvidia Geforce 7800 GTX, particularly at high resolutions and with full-screen anti aliasing (FSAA) and anisotropic filtering (AF) enabled.
As expected, the X1800 XT doesn't quite match its Nvidia rival in OpenGL games such as Doom 3, but it isn't far off. Where the card excels is in its ability to render games using High Dynamic Range (extreme light contrast) techniques whilst applying AA - something the Nvidia cards can't do.
All X1000 cards are HD-ready (via support for the Blu-Ray and HD-DVD H.264 compression standard), but you'll need to buy a special Crossfire version on all but the X1300 to enable dual-card setups. Check the next issue of PCW for more information.
Wifi quality standard agreed
The IEEE has approved the publication of the 802.11e standard for quality-of-service (QoS) on Wifi links, according to the US company Spectralink. The move should lead to improved media streaming and VoIP over Wifi.
Wifi, orginally intended for communication with portable devices in places like warehouses and hospitals, was never designed for multimedia use. The new standard should be able to guarantee bandwidth to time-sensitive traffic such as streaming media.
It is unclear at this stage whether devices will be firmware upgradable but the standard will cover all three transmission modes: 11a, b and g. Spectralink developed SpectraLink Voice Priority, which it describes as the de facto QoS standard for VoIP on wireless lands
Microsoft adopts PDF shock
Microsoft is to support Adobe's portable document format, better known as .pdf. in the next version of its office suite. Senior vice president Steven Sinovsky said it was the second most requested feature from users worldwide. The move was announced in an interview posted on the company's website
It makes no mention of Metro, a technology flagged by some as a rival to the format. PDF is an open standard pioeered by Adobe Acrobat product amd offering the same richly formatted views on a variety of platforms. Companies like Scansoft have offered utilities to pdf-enable Office.
The snag of the format is that it is difficult to extract text from pdf documents. This is a bonus if you don't want to give readers access to the text but the format is too often used where this is not the case. (Okay... that is a journalist's gripe. Press releases in pdf are a bane of my life).
NTL and Telewest - married after all these years.
After a long and much publicised courtship, Britain's two cable giants have finally decided to do the honourable thing and tie the knot.
NTL is buying Telewest to create the country's second largest telecoms company covering more than 50 per cent of households with more than 5 million users. It will be the largest home broadband provider with 2.5 million subscribers, the second largest pay TV provider with 3.3 million subscribers, and second largest fixed telephony provider with 4.3 million subscribers, according to a company statement.
The company's networks do not overlap and ADSL is providing ample competition so the merger could be good news for users. Both companies have been cash strapped and services should benefit from economies of scale.
