For all of you CS4 power users out there–I just built the Ultimate CS4 PC over at PCMag.com.
You ever try to open 10 high-res pictures in Photoshop at once and have your PC grinds to halt? For about 4 grand, I can make sure that never happens to you again. The secret is in the RAM. With 32-bit Windows, your machine can’t use more than 4GB of RAM, no matter how many sticks you’ve got in there. If you bulk up your OS to 64-bit Windows, though, you can pretty much use all the RAM you can cram into your motherboard.
I’ve got a few more tricks up my sleeve that you can use to build your own crack CS4 system or just to upgrade your PC. I’ll also suggest some pretty cool peripherals, like the Wacom Intuous 4 graphics tablet, that let you do away with the keyboard altogether when using Photoshop.
Given Fusion-io‘s dominance in the SSD-on-a-PCIe-card arena, we aren’t at all shocked to hear that it just landed a nice fat check in its Series B funding efforts. $47.5 million, to be precise. According to the firm, it’ll use the dough to buy bottled unicorns, a kilo of fairy dust and “increase production capabilities” in order to pump out more wares (and hopefully at lower prices). One of those products, we’re told, will be the summer-bound ioSAN, which is explained as a “PCI Express-based product that extends the raw power of Fusion-io’s solid-state technology across the network.” In related news, the company also selected David Bradford to be its CEO, instantly making him one of the most fortunate bigwigs in the world right now.
Yeah, we’re not sure what the title of our show means today, but it’s what happens when you let the chat room run the show. We think they want us to take off our clothes. Anyway, we’re back to our old antics today: Bittr, Wii, Wolverine, iPhone, and pedometers.
As you can see, Slate.com already stole our idea for a skit mocking Twitter. We were going to shoot a video about a one-character status update. Some times, “F” is the only character that describes exactly how we’re feeling at the moment.
On today’s show, we talk a bit about how Nintendo is almost literally printing money with its Wii console. Apparently, it costs Nintendo 45 percent less to make a Wii than when it first came out. Nintendo is also trying to make more bank by releasing a pedometer, a device that measures foot steps–not an alarm for child predators. Also, we’ve got some info on a new iPhone app called Bad Decision Blocker that blocks your ability to make drunk phone calls. Seriously, though, if you need an iPhone app to stop you from making drunk calls, you need to 1) stop drinking 2) leave your phone at home, and 3) go see a therapist about your lingering girlfriend issues.
Finally, we get to our favorite “It came from Fox News!” segment. This time around, a Fox News commentator was fired for reviewing a pirated copy of the new “X-Men Origins: Wolverine” movie. Yeah, smart one. Fortunately, Jeff stopped selling DVDs of “Two and a Half Men” a few months ago. And a reminder, please call in with your most death-defying story to win your copy of “To the End of the Death: Our Epic Journey to the North Pole and the Legend of Peary and Henson” by our guest, Tom Avery. Yeah, long, long title.
You may be asking yourself, "what business does WIRED have reviewing a wetsuit? Those guys can’t even swim!" Actually, it turns out this neoprene infused wonder is built with eco-concious geeks in mind. From reviewer Steven Leckart:
The B9’s internal/external fabrics — which are constructed from 90% recycled polyester, 10% spandex and eco-friendly Japanese limestone-based neoprene — didn’t inhibit its effectiveness whatsoever. Compared to a full O’Neil wetsuit of the same thickness (3/2), the B9 Platinum was just as warm, even in the wintery waters of Northern California. Better yet, it allowed for a superior range of motion in the arms, shoulders and knees. The kneecap design is especially good: Modeled after orthopedic braces, it not only provides added support (we sure felt it), but also aids in "proprioception" — the brain and nervous system’s aptitude for sensing movement and the orientation of your joints.
This is all starting to sound semi-official, but still a little vague. Huawei’s mysterious Android device — first spotted at MWC — is apparently headed out on T-Mobile in late 2009, as reportedly confirmed by a Huawei spokesperson. The same details we’ve previously heard, including the 5 megapixel camera, 3.5mm headphone jack and WiFi — are still on the list, though nothing new is emerging thus far. It also seems to be called the G3, but again, it’s hard to say if that name is official or not. We’ll let you know when we hear something more concrete, but until then… just keep marvelling at the buttonless wonder you see above.
Maybe it’s just me, but my feeling has always been that the fewer syringes I have to encounter in day to day life, the better. If, however, you can’t get enough of the spiky, bloodsucking things, Brando has the product for you: The new USB Syringe Flash Drive combines the aesthetics of a syringe with the flash-driveyness of a flash drive.
You can order the 8GB model for $29.99 from Brando. And here I was under the impression that the first one was always free.
The new Nintendo DSi may look like a cosmetic upgrade (two cameras, downloadable games), but under the hood, it’s been seriously turbocharged. The DSi’s processor is twice as powerful as the old model and the device packs four times as much RAM as the earlier models.
Wired.com’s Chris Kohler will be weighing in on what all this power means later today, over in the Game|Life blog. In the meantime, here’s some pretty DSi teardown porn from iFixit.com, which stripped a brand-new DSi down to its components.
Highlights of the teardown:
Battery capacity is diminished: there’s an 840 mAh battery in the DSi compared to the DS Lite’s 1000 mAh battery.
No Game Boy Advance port
Two integrated cameras, each with a paltry 0.3 megapixels
256MB of Samsung MoviNAND flash memory
Custom ARM CPU + GPU
iFixit reports that the Wi-Fi chip, shown here, is held in with a single connector, and that "a quick wedge-and-twist action of the spudger releases it from the main board." Any idea what a "spudger" is?
The dissected DSi. Chips of interest, according to iFixit, include, from left to right:
Samsung 1st generation MoviNAND KMAPF0000M: 256 MB NAND Flash and MMC controller. The integrated MMC controller allows the CPU to offload the complex work of directly talking to the flash memory.
I don’t care how much you love the ’80s, no one wants to listen to cassette tapes anymore. The wretched things are noisy, they wear out, and unless you’ve got one of those super-duper cassette decks, skipping tracks means riding the fast-forward button until you feel lucky.
The last two Viewsonic LCD monitors I reviewed, the VLED221wm and FuHzion VX2265wm, didn’t exactly set my world afire when it came to features.
Both monitors were virtually devoid of ergonomic options and while the FuHzion VX2265wm does include compatibility with the Nvidia GeForce 3D Vision Kit, …
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