23rd August 2006 Archive

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Samsung pitches 8GB HDD phone at... golfers

GPS-based, stroke-by-stroke shot guidance

Samsung yesterday unveiled its latest hard drive-equipped music and... er... golf phone. For MP3 fans, the SCH-B570 is fitted with 8GB of storage, and for golfers there's all the information you need to successfully play South Korea's most demanding courses. The handset incorporates a GPS receiver which is apparently used …

Gadgets and Gizmos 23 Aug 2006, 09:17
Apple axes Leopard-leaking workers

Five fired for filching unreleased OS

Apple has reportedly fired five retail workers for downloading unauthorised copies of Mac OS X 10.5 from the internet. Many more employees have been accused of the same transgression and face a similar sanction, it has been claimed. According to a Think Secret report citing an email it received from one of the allegedly …

Mac 23 Aug 2006, 09:40
Gigabyte readies silent HDMI, HDCP graphics card

Nvidia's GeForce 7600 GS on board

Gigabyte will next month ship an HDMI-equipped graphics card based on Nvidia's GeForce 7600 GS chip, the company said today. The card has HDCP anti-piracy technology on board and an internal digital audio pass-through port. It even appears to be SLI-capable. The GV-NX76G256HI-RH - to give the card its full name - is passively …

Bits 'n' Chips 23 Aug 2006, 10:04
PowerColor ATI Radeon X1950 XTX

Review (Another) world's fastest graphics card

Although today is only the paper launch of the long anticipated ATI Radeon X1950 XTX, it's worth waiting until 14 September when you can actually buy one. Not only is it ATI's fastest card, but it's also incredibly affordable and, thanks to a new cooler, it has put the noise problems the plagued past ATI cards behind it... …

Bits 'n' Chips 23 Aug 2006, 10:11
Griffin ships Mac 5.1-channel sound system

Gadget arrives 18 months after launch

Accessory maker Griffin Technology has finally begun shipping its Mac-oriented, FireWire-connected 5.1-channel surround sound system FireWave more than 18 months after it announced the product. Griffin first demo'd FireWave in public back in January 2005 at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas. The device connects to a …

Gadgets and Gizmos 23 Aug 2006, 10:33
UBiQUiO PRePs SLiMLinE qwerty KEyBoaRD SMaRT PhONe

Company's caps-lock key stuck?

Mobile device retailer Expansys has begun taking orders for the upcoming UBiQUiO 501 slimline Windows Mobile 5.0 smart phone. And no, that mix of capitals and lower-case characters isn't a byproduct of typing the vendor's name on its device's QWERTY micro-keyboard. The handset is based on a 200MHz Texas Instruments OMAP 750 …

Gadgets and Gizmos 23 Aug 2006, 10:58
ATI to ship Radeon X1300 XT, X1650 Pro on 14 September

Mulitple memory configurations

Details have emerged of ATI's upcoming Radeon X1300 XT and Radeon X1650 Pro GPUs, which the company announced today but provided relatively little in the way of detail. Graphics card supplier sources suggest each part will be offered in a range of memory and core clock configurations. The X1300 XT will be clocked to 500MHz, …

Bits 'n' Chips 23 Aug 2006, 11:25
AMD quad-core CPUs to become dualies to save power

Chips get extra, shared cache too

AMD's quad-core processor will become a dual-core processor if it decides the user isn't giving it enough work to do. The chip will also beef up the on-board cache with an extra level of memory shared between the four cores. So reveal company next-generation architecture slides posted by HardOCP. Dubbed "ideal for 65nm SOI …

Bits 'n' Chips 23 Aug 2006, 12:16
Sony officially launches pink PSP

Grrls only

It's official - Sony is indeed going to offer a pink PlayStation Portable in association, we're told, with the chart-topping pop chanteuse of the same name the better to attract "young women with freedom, confidence and attitude" to the platform. Unlike the upcoming pink PS2, the salmon-hued portable console doesn't ship with …

Consoles 23 Aug 2006, 14:40
Iomega ships slimline portable hard drives

Bus powered

Iomega this week this week expanded its external hard drive line-up with a pair of slimline dual-port products aimed at users on the move. The shock-resistant drives both incorporate USB 2.0 and Firewire interfaces and 2.5in, 5,400rpm hard disks with 8MB of cache memory and either 80GB or 120GB of storage capacity. Each unit …

Storage 23 Aug 2006, 15:00
BenQ pursues painted ladies with butterfly-branded handset

Symbol of evolving feminity

If you think BenQ Mobile's Hello Kitty handset is just too darn girly for you, you're probably not going to be impressed with its follow-up either. The company is to offer a second AL26 handset, this time boasting a butterfly logo to make it "the perfect fashion accessory for young, style-conscious women". Which is exactly …

Gadgets and Gizmos 23 Aug 2006, 15:51