It’s been a brisk and mostly enjoyable two weeks since the launch of Windows 8 and the start of this diary. Whereas my last entry was all about productivity, there’s now been ample opportunity to relax with the new OS, play a few titles in Steam, and run some general performance benchmarks. These not-so-onerous tasks were completed using an AMD FX-based triple-monitor gaming rig upgraded from Windows 7 Ultimate to Windows 8 Pro, with all games running at 5,760 x 1,080 and max detail settings, and all the hardware was kept constant to allow a before-and-after comparison. You’ll find the results after the break, along with a few broader impressions of what Windows 8 might mean for an early-adopting desktop gamer.
Velocity Micro, makers of custom pre-built desktop computers, announced a Vector “Holiday Edition” desktop computer, as well as a VMultra drive external peripheral. The computer isn’t dressed up in Christmas colors and strung with bells and ribbons — it’s a different kind of Holiday Edition, meaning the company is making it its main product over the holidays.
The Vector Holiday Edition was designed and built in the US, and it starts at a base price of $599, which will get you an AMD A6-5400K dual-core processor, 8GB of DDR3 RAM, AMD Radeon HD graphics, 1TB of hard drive storage, and the buyer’s choice of either Windows 7 or the new Windows 8. Plus, the purchase comes with a one-year warranty and lifetime phone support.
The VMultra Drive peripheral will be separate purchase, and it combines four different peripheral devices into one single hub. Features include an external DVD±RW drive, a USB 3.0 hub, a SD card slot, and a 500GB hard drive as a backup storage solution. The VMultra Drive will begin shipping November 12 for $199.
The Vector Holiday Edition is available now for configuring and ordering, and will ships as soon as possible. If you’re wanting to get that special someone a custom-built machine, but don’t want to risk building it yourself, the Vector Holiday Edition may be a good choice come this holiday season.
Google loves to tweak its search results whether or not it’s something we’d ever notice. Even the most casual of visitors might notice its latest change, though. The Mountain View crew has dropped the sidebar on the desktop in favor of moving everything to drop-down menus up above. It’s ostensibly a reflection of the company’s tweaks to its mobile page that should scale elegantly through different screen sizes, although a key goal is to fit in richer results: images, the Knowledge Graph and more all have extra room to breathe with the update. Americans tracking down election results will be the first to see the extra-wide view, and they should be followed by everyone else as soon as Google can flick the switch. We’ll be content enough knowing that the company isn’t spreading sidebars everywhere.
AMD’s advantage these days most often rests in datacenters that thrive on the chip designer’s love of many-core processors, so it was almost surprising that the company brought its Piledriver architecture to the mainstream before turning to the server room. It’s closing that gap now that the Opteron 6300 is here. The sequel to the 6200 fits into the same sockets and consumes the same energy as its ancestor, but speeds ahead through Piledriver’s newer layout and instructions — if you believe AMD, as much as 24 percent faster in one performance test, 40 percent in performance per watt and (naturally) a better deal for the money than Intel’s Xeon. Whether that’s true or just marketing bluster, there’s a wide spread of chips that range from a quad-core, 3.5GHz example to a 16-core, 2.8GHz beast for massively parallel tasks. Cray, Dell, HP and others plan to boost their servers before long, although the surest proof of the 6300’s success from our perspective may be that everything in the bacrkoom runs just as smoothly as it did yesterday.
Tune into the chatter around Windows 8 and it won’t be long before you start hearing about keyboard shortcuts. Instead of forcing us to replicate long swipe gestures using a mouse (which would be cruel to all concerned), Microsoft is putting forward these little key combos as the primary means of navigation on traditional desktop PCs that don’t have touchscreens. Right now, I’m in the middle of trying to adapt to this — and like our Windows 8 review concludes, the curve is steep. In my case, matters are complicated by the fact that I use a triple-monitor setup for work, which perhaps makes me more sensitive to UI issues. But regardless of how many displays are hooked up to it, there genuinely are some interface niggles in this OS. Despite having mastered the basic shortcuts, I’m still having to reach for my mouse way too often, and the arm ache is starting to dampen the good vibes left over from my last diary post. So, join me after the break and at the very least you’ll get to observe someone flailing around in search of answers.
Earlier this year we happened upon a group that had a completely wild idea for protective skins for smart devices of all kinds: customizable 3D graphics that literally change the way you feel your day-to-day technology. Now Nexgen Skins is ready to launch for real, bringing on a “spare no cost” mentality for the next generation of gadget users. The folks at Nexgen Skins are now happy to announce that they’re officially ready to take orders and make custom-designed 3D skins for a massive amount of devices: everything from your MacBook to your HTC smartphone and back out to your massive desktop machine.
At the moment, Nexgen Skins is working with mostly Apple products outside of the smartphone world, this including iMac, Thunderbolt displays, and even the Apple TrackPad. They are however bringing on skins for the Barnes & Noble NOOK, Amazon Kindle, Samsung tablets, and the iButton by Daulphinz too! Inside the smartphone universe, all bets are off – they’re even making skins for Palm devices.
These skins are able to provide you with a tactile feel to your devices not available in any other protective solution, and aid in shock absorption with thicker material than most other “skin” protective groups – especially if you get one of the really thick designs. You can customize your order or you can select from one of the many pre-made designs they’ve got ready in the lab. Utterly odd they are: Gothic Heiress, Alligator, La Blue Girl, as well as some really fine looking bits like Carbon Fibre and Hardwood.
Have a peek at our talk with Nexgen from CTIA earlier this year:
You can pick your own skin up right this minute over at Nexgen Skins and/or create your own customized skin with their lovely customizer. If you’ve got a device they don’t have, be sure to let them know as well, and get pumped up about the possibility of putting a giant 3D gopher face on the back of your Android device. It’s going to be fabulous!
Nothing’s nicer than a happy ending. Except maybe a happy beginning, which is precisely what you’re looking at above — Microsoft’s new OS captured in all its glory within minutes of completing the installation. What’s more, if you saw the first part of this upgrade diary, then you’ll know I was aiming for a trickier-than-average setup, with Windows 8 Pro running on a brand new and untouched SSD, alongside Windows 7 Ultimate running in dual-boot mode on my old HDD. As it turned out, this configuration was a breeze — so long as I totally ignored the Getting Started instructions that came in the box. Read on if you’d like to know more.
There were balloons. There were streamers. There were brand new Ultrabooks, members of staff unfurling banners, and — once other customers started to arrive — there was even a vibe of genuine excitement for today’s official launch of Windows 8 in the UK. But whichever aisle I scanned, nowhere was to be found what I had come to buy: a Windows 8 disc for desktop upgraders. It was a faltering start, but it was also strangely symbolic of my mission — namely, to explore what Microsoft’s latest operating system can do for regular desktop folk. People who, in other words, aren’t yet looking to invest in touch-enabled monitors or laptops or all-in-ones; who rarely get the chance to lean back with a media-consumption tablet; and who simply want to upgrade their traditional tower PC before getting on with their lives. Read on past the break and you can begin this potentially short, hopefully sweet journey with me, starting with a quick rundown of my test rig (which also happens to be my mission critical work computer) and an anti-climactic revelation about whether, in the end, I ever found the software box I was looking for.
iFixit’s been on something of an Apple tear lately — just a day after ripping into the barely-repairable new 13-inch MacBook Pro (not to mention the new nano and touch), the site has gotten its hands on — and into — the new Mac Mini. Unlike like the shiny new notebook, however, the diminutive desktop was apparently a pleasure to open up and put back together again, scoring an eight out of 10 on the repairability front and altogether forgoing the site’s use of adorable kittens. The Mini gets good marks for upgradable RAM and drives and a general lack of glue and proprietary screws. Click on through the source link below to see the Intel 2.5 GHz dual-core i5 in all its glory.
MCJ or Mouse Computer Japan outs today a new 21.5 AIO (All In One) desktop similar to the Vaio Tap 20 with the Lm-One T series. Here as well the Lm-One comes with a 21.5″ 10 finger touchscreen, Windows 8, USB 3.0, Bluetooth 4.0 + LE and WiFi. Available in three different flavors, the Lm-One will features either a Core i3-3310, i5-3210M or i7-3632QM CPU, with 4, 8 or 16GB of RAM, 500GB of 1TB of HDD and the choice between a DVD or BD Recorder. The Lm-One T Series in available for purchase …
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