|  |  |  | | | | | Maximum PC - All Articles | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  T-Mobile has confirmed pricing and release details for the much awaited G2x Android smart phone. The LG-built device will be available online on April 15, and in stores on April 20. Customers will need to plunk down $199.99 after $50 mail in rebate and 2-year agreement. This is an interesting phone considering the hardware and the impending sale of T-Mobile to AT&T.
The G2x is expected to be running a mostly stock version of Android 2.2 Froyo. The screen is a 4-inch LCD, and an 8MP image sensor lurks around the back. Inside, the device packs an Nvidia Tegra 2 SoC and has support for T-Mobile's HSPA+ "4G" network. The radio is an interesting point, actually. According to the T-Mobile specs page, the G2x has a quad-band HSPA radio supporting T-Mobile's AWS frequency, 2100MHz, 850MHz, and 1900MHz. The 850/1900 bands are AT&T's 3G frequency. This would be a fairly unusual radio set up, but useful in the US market. Any T-Mobile users looking at this device? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | 
Slow-roasted and just posted, it's Episode 171! Gordon, Nathan and Andy are joined by tech journalist extraordinaire, raconteur, and video card expert Loyd Case to discuss the future of tablets, multipurpose devices, Windows 8 sneak peeks, the mysteries of cell phone triangulation, and the wisdom of calling in bomb drops via Twitter. Plus, GameStop acquires Impulse, we discuss AMD and Nvidia's dual-GPU video cards, and more! Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are not standing by. Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337    
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | When all you need is stereo With all the focus on surround-sound home-theater systems these days, good ol' fashioned stereo is all too often forgotten. Boston Acoustics aims to refocus your attention with the compact, affordable, and innovative SoundWare XS 2.1. The system consists of a pair of very small, cube-shaped passive satellites and a compact powered subwoofer. The satellites, which measure about 4.5 inches on each side and weigh just one pound each, are magnetically shielded and can rest on a shelf or tabletop or be mounted on the wall—even in the corners of your ceiling. An included set of articulated brackets enable you to direct the satellites' output in almost any direction. When mounted on a flat wall, the speakers can be tilted up or down on a 40-degree arc or pivoted 20 degrees left or right. 
Boston Acoustics' SoundWare XS 2.1 demonstrates that small doesn't necessarily mean weak. Despite their diminutive nature, the satellites are true two-way speakers, with .5-inch dome tweeters and 2.5-inch mid-ranges. They present eight ohms of impedance to the amp, and can handle anywhere from 10 to 100 watts of power. The system is available in your choice of a black or white finish, but either can be painted to disappear into your room's décor. Most modern receivers have at least one pre-amp output for a self-powered subwoofer, and you can connect the SoundWare XS 2.1's sub this way. But if your receiver doesn't have that feature, Boston Acoustics integrated speaker-in and speaker-out binding posts into the sub, so you can connect the sub to the receiver's speaker outputs, and connect the satellites to the subwoofer. Boston Acoustics claims frequency response of 150Hz to 20kHz for the satellites and 40- to 150Hz for the sub. A variable crossover (40- to 180Hz) enables you to find the right blend between the sub and satellites, depending on where you've placed them in the room. The subwoofer's tuned-port cabinet is stoutly constructed from thick slabs of MDF—it weighs 20 pounds—but is nonetheless compact and easy to tuck under a table or into a corner, measuring roughly 12 by 11 by 15 inches. It houses a 100-watt amplifier driving an 8-inch graphite-injected polymer woofer. The SoundWare XS delivers a remarkably good performance considering the size of its satellites. It's no competition for full-size tower speakers, of course, but it delivered plenty of volume for our 247-square-foot home theater. The system would also be a good choice for a multi-room audio system, connected to something like an amplified Sonos Zone Player. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  No matter whether working far from home or cozied up to your desktop PC, the ubiquitous nature of services like AOL Mail, GMX or Hotmail means that so long as you've got an internet connection, you'll never be out of touch with everyone you care about. Of the many webmail services available today, few are more popular than Google's Gmail. Easy to use and boasting integration with Google's full range of online offerings, Gmail is nothing but win. To harvest more of that winning Gmail feeling, we recommend taking a look at Send From My Gmail, our Extension of the Week.
Designed for use with Google Chrome (If you're a Firefox user, we'll show you how to rock similar features with Mozilla next week), Send to My Gmail is an extension designed to streamline the use of your Gmail account. After installing the extension, you'll note that a Gmail logo has been added to the top right corner of your browser window. 
Click the logo and the address of the page you're currently viewing will automatically be inserted into a new message from your Gmail account; ready to share with your friends and family. The extension also sets Gmail as your default mail application when clicking mail links from inside of Chrome. For those of us who prefer to use Gmail's browser interface over a dedicated mail client, this is a real time and sanity saver. Be sure to check back every Thursday for another edition of Browser extension of the week. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Greetings. And welcome to. The Old PC Yard. There are. Bzzzzt. Numerous. Failures in PC history. We've isolated the. Worst 16. Around. We are certain that a smart human such as yourself. Will. Have strong opinions on this list. If TRUE, then replay in. Comments. If FALSE, have a. Nice day. Initiating countdown module in 5…4…3…2… | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  If you've always wanted to own a Lamborghini but could never quite afford one, here's your chance to get one without having to sell that cottage in the Hamptons. It's the new Asus Automobili Lamborghini VX7 gaming laptop available in orange, black, and carbon fiber colors. Pop open the hood and you'll find one of Intel's second generation quad-core Core i7 processors ready to rev, along with Nvidia's GeForce GTX 460M graphics.
The windshield on this Lamborghini measures 15.6 inches and gives drivers a view of the world in Full HD (1920x1080) with LED backlighting. There's up to 16GB of DDR3-1333 of system memory; several storage options, including a solid-state hybrid HDD (up to 1.25TB in capacity); optional Blu-ray writer; 8-in-1 memory card reader; 2MP webcam; Azalia-compliant audio chip with 3D effects complimented by 2 speakers and digital array microphone; USP 3.0 ports; and Windows 7. What really sets the Lamborghini VX7 apart from other Sandy Bridge notebooks is the styling. Building on Asus' aggressive gaming notebook design, the VX7 kicks things up a notch with subtle curvatures and eye-catching colors. Look for pricing to start at around $2,800, which is high for a 15.6-inch laptop, but might be the cheapest Lamborghini you'll ever own. VX7 Homepage Image Credit: Asus | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Does searching through Twitter suddenly feel faster to you? It should. According to Twitter, the microblogging site's integrated search engine is now 3x faster than it used to be. Twitter has actually been working to improve search performance since the spring of 2010 and launched a real-time search engine in October of last year. Last week, Twitter says it launched a replacement for its Ruby-on-Rails front-end, a Java server it's calling "Blender," and that's the reason for the performance gain.
"Twitter search is one of the most heavily-trafficked search engines in the world, serving over one billion queries per day," Twitter stated in a blog post. "The week before we deployed Blender, the #tsunami in Japan contributed to a significant increase in query load and a related spike in search latencies. Following the launch of Blender, our 95th percentile latencies were reduced by 3x from 800ms to 250ms and CPU load on our front-end servers was cut in half. We now have the capacity to serve 10x the number of requests per machine. This means we can support the same number of requests with fewer servers, reducing our front-end service costs by an order-of-magnitude." Twitter goes on to explain its improved search architecture in great detail, while pointing out the inefficiencies of its former Ruby-on-Rails front-end servers. If that's the stuff that floats your boat, you can get all the geeky details right here. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  In a blog post this week, Google announced plans to add a new layer of security to its Chrome browser by having it warn surfers of potentially malicious downloads. This is in addition to Chrome's "Safe Browsing" technology, which Google says "has done a lot of good for the Web," though admits that "the Internet remains rife with deceptive and harmful content." This is where malicious download warnings will come in.
"It's easy to find sites hosting free downloads that promise one thing but actually behave quite differently. These downloads may even perform actions without the user's consent, such as displaying spam ads, performing click fraud, or stealing other users' passwords," Google said. "Such sites usually don't attempt to exploit vulnerabilities on the user's computer system. Instead, they use social engineering to entice users to download and run the malicious content. "Today we're pleased to announce a new feature that aims to protect users against these kinds of downloads, starting with malicious Windows executables. The new feature will be integrated with Google Chrome and will display a warning if a user attempts to download a suspected malicious executable file." Google says the warning will be displayed for any download URL that matches the latest list of malicious websites published by the Safe Browsing API. That means it's a definitions-based warning and not one that relies on heuristic scanning, so don't go ditching your antivirus or Internet security suite. For those concerned about privacy, Google pinkie promises that this new features follows the same privacy policy already in use by the Safe Browsing feature and does not enable Google to determine the URLs you are visiting. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Some analysts believe Google paid too much for YouTube when the search giant acquired the video sharing portal in 2006 for $1.65 billion. Whether or not Google overvalued the site ultimately remains to be seen, but in the meantime, the sultan of search is dipping into its treasure chest and will pour another $100 million into YouTube to fund low-cost original content designed exclusively for the Web.
The Wall Street Journal reports that Google is working to overhaul YouTube in preparation for a new generation of televisions that let couch potatoes surf the Web from their recliner in their living rooms. Ultimately, Google hopes YouTube will be able to compete with broadcast and cable television, an ambitious goal that also involves selling advertisers on the idea. As part of this plan, you'll see certain changes to YouTube's homepage, most notably the highlighting of "channels" based on certain categories, like sports. Some 20 of those channels will include hours of professionally produced programming each week, while other channels will consist of content already uploaded to YouTube. YouTube isn't quite ready to talk about Google's $100 million gamble, with a spokesman only saying, "YouTube saw incredible growth in 2010 and we're excited about the future." | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  AMD today quietly launched a trio of new graphics cards specifically intended for OEM builders, including an entry-level card that you could save up for with nothing more than a paper route. It's the Radeon HD 6450, a budget card priced at about $55 and built around AMD's lower-end Caicos chip with 160 stream processors, a 64-bit memory interface, and support for both GDDR5 and DDR3 memory.
Other specs include an engine clock of 625-750MHz, 512MB-1GB of memory (GDDR5 clocked at 800-900MHz and DDR3 clocked at 533-800MHz), 200-240 GFLOPS single precision compute power, 8 texture units, 16 Z/Stencil ROP units, and of course DirectX 11 support. AMD's intention here is to provide OEMs with an affordable alternative to slower onboard graphics. Also new from AMD are the Radeon HD 6570 and 6670 cards. Both of these are based on AMD's Turks chip and come with 480 stream processors and 512MB-1GB of GDDR5 memory on a 128-bit memory bus. The slower-clocked 6570 runs at 650MHz (GPU), while the 6670 runs at 800MHz. You can find more information on all of AMD's new OEM cards here. Image Credit: AMD | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
