|  |  |  | | | | | Maximum PC - All Articles | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Whew! Is it getting hot in here, or is it just all the smoking new tech coming out of the Computex 2011 trade show? We've already spent some time looking at Gigabyte's AMD AM3+ CPU boards, but the company's Booktop M2432 notebook is looking mighty fine too. The successor to the Booktop M1405, the M2432 includes an Intel i5 processor, Intel's integrated HD 3000 GPU with HD graphics support, a USB 3.0 port, and a 14 inch backlit monitor with a 1366 x 768 resolution. But enough about the notebook – the cool thing about the M2432 is its docking station.
Slipping the M2432 into its docking station is kinda like feeding a Mogwai after midnight – it unleashes a whole new kind of bad-ass. The docking station turbocharges the M2432 with a built-in Nvidia GT 440 GPU with 1 GB of DDR5 RAM and support for dual external monitors. You want ports? The docking station has ports. In addition to hosting six additional USB 3.0 ports, it also features HDMI, DVI and standard D-sub connections, plus "other useful ports normally found on a desktop PC," whatever that means. The notebook itself comes with Intel's Turbo Boost 2.0 and THX audio, probably to help it keep up while you're getting your game on with the docking station's dual-screen goodness. The notebook itself weighs it at just under 4 lbs, but who cares? We're totally leaving the M2432 hooked up to the docking station once one ends up in our sweaty little hands. You can check out more details in Gigabyte's press release. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  The administrators of one of France's most popular file sharing sites, "Liberty Land" have been arrested, TorrentFreak is reporting. The French trio are facing charges of organised counterfeiting, which could net them up to 5 years in jail and $700,000 in fines. The site is, as you might expect, down.
Liberty Land was one of many sites hosted in Canada where copyright law is unusually friendly. The site did not host any content, but did provide links to pirated music, movies, and TV shows on sites like MegaUpload and RapidShare. Despite the questionable legality of simply linking to content, French content owner groups SACEM and ALPA filed complaints against the sites. After a long and complicated investigation, French authorities managed to identify the owners of Liberty Land and make the arrest. The severity of the charges stems from the fact that the site operators are alleged to have pulled in about $285,300 in advertising revenue. They have been released pending trial. Do you think sites like Liberty Land should be targeted? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  So what do you do if you're the leaders of the Glorious Iranian Revolution, and you see all sorts of un-glorious revolutions springing up in countries like Libya and Egypt? If you were rational, maybe you'd turn an eye inward and see what's making your citizens so unhappy in the first place. Or you could do what the current Iranian regime is planning: cut off the World Wide Web and put your own version of the Internet in place. Because, you know, that'll work.
Iran's Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei and other top Iranian officials view the influx of Western influences via the 'Net to be a new kind of war, a "soft war," according to an article on the Wall Street Journal's website. So they're working to cut the cord and replacing the Web we know and love with what Ali Aghamohammadi, the country's head of economic affairs, calls "a genuinely halal network, aimed at Muslims on an ethical and moral level." By the way, halal means "permissable with Islamic law." Iranian officials expect their version of the Internet to be rolled out within two years, and Aghamohammadi says the actual Internet may one day be entirely removed from the country. Apparently, no one's clued Iranian President Ahmadinejad that trying to cut off Internet access didn't work so well during Egypt's recent revolution... or during the bloody riots after Iran's own widely criticized 2009 "elections." The WSJ article also reports that Iran is possibly working on its own operating system designed to phase out the country's reliance on Microsoft's Windows. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Asus displayed more than just the Ultrathin UX21 during Computex's opening hours. Although it seems more minimum PC than Maximum PC, the company also unveiled its all new Eee PC X101. The diminutive notebooks will be just as thin as their UX21 cousins, measuring a slim 17.6mm thick and weighing only 2.1 lbs. And get this – the base model will only set you back about $200, or the cost of a few Xbox 360 games.
So how'd Asus get the X101 so cheap? One way was by developing the notebook hand-in-hand with Intel's engineers and installing Intel's MeeGo Linux operating system on the base model. Hot Hardware reports that the Eee PC will include a 10.1 inch screen, Wi-Fi and the Intel N435 processor. Another version of the system, called the X101H, will include the option to replace MeeGo with Windows 7, but Asus says it'll (obviously) cost more. The guys at TweakTown got their hands on the X101 at Computex: they report the system includes 1GB of DDR3 memory, a widget-based homescreen and very quick start up and shut down times. Plus, while it may not appeal to the fervent build-your-own Maximum PC crowd, we think it looks cool. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  It's been a long time and a lot of variations in the making, but Linux is finally uprevving. Linus Torvalds introduced the very first Linux kernel 20 years ago, and his new release marks the 40th major change to said kernel. Combine that kind of numerical synchronicity with the Linux community's passionate pleas to upgrade and leave obsolete features behind, and you're left with the perfect mix for Linux 3.0 RC 1, which Linus posted to the kernel.org mailing list late Sunday evening.
"I decided to just bite the bullet, and call the next version 3.0. It will get released close enough to the 20-year mark, which is excuse enough for me, although honestly, the real reason is just that I can no longer comfortably count as high as 40," Linus posted. "So I'm just going all alpha-male, and just renumbering it." Despite the history-shattering numerical change, don't expect anything big from Linux 3.0 RC1. "So what are the big changes? NOTHING. Absolutely nothing... but the point is that 3.0 is *just* about renumbering, we are very much *not* doing a KDE-4 or a Gnome-3 here. No breakage, no special scary new features, nothing at all like that"," Linus said in the same post. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | Here at Maximum PC we take the "Maximum" part pretty seriously, covering the bleeding-edge, the next-on-the-horizon and the over-the-top. That's a tradition that goes back to before maximum was even part of our name, back to the days of boot. A fine example of this is boot's Speed Trap feature from May 1998. Penned by current Editorial Director Jon Phillips, this feature highlighted and reviewed three top systems from the year. Read on to see which systems were breaking the speed limit, and which were stuck in the slow lane. 
| | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Holiday weekends are dangerous. Even if we took nothing else away from the movie "Independence Day," we got that. But hey, we're human. All those peaceful weekends in the years since the movie came out lulled us into a false sense of security. Then BAM! The OMG h@x0rs struck while we were grilling weenies and celebrating Memorial Day. And for once, the OMG seems justified – apparently, hackers have breached the networks of several top US defense contractors, including Lockheed Martin.
"They breached security systems designed to keep out intruders by creating duplicates to SecurID electronic keys from EMC Corp's RSA security division," Reuters' Jim Finkle and Andrea Shalal-Esa reported late Friday evening, citing everybody's favorite anonymous "source with direct knowledge of the attacks." The defense companies declined to comment on the breaches, although Raytheon spokesman Jonathan Kasle told Reuters that the company took protective measures when the exploit was confirmed by RSA in March. The Department of Defense also uses SecurID on their networks. Nobody knows what, if any, data was compromised. Its not all doom and gloom, though; apparently, the really sensitive classified stuff sits on closed networks, meaning they wouldn't be vulnerable to Internet-based attacks. So at least the OMG h@x0rs don't have death rays. Yet. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  We love it when the trade shows roll around because that's when companies show off their upcoming products. Not all of them turn out to be winners, of course, but Asus's UX21 ultrathin notebook being shown off at Computex holds a lot of promise. From the pictures we've seen, it's sleek and sexy, and the Core i7 foundation is just icing on the cake.
The UX21 measures 17mm at its thickest point and weighs just 2.4 pounds. It's what you can expect from Asus's UX Series of ultraportables, which Asus said "are made possible through the use of a strong but light aluminum alloy shell with a unique 'spun' finish on polished surfaces." Asus was short on specs in its press release, but did say that the UX21 is built around Intel's second generation Core processors (up to Core i7), SATA 6Gb/s SSD drives, an oversized keyboard, and smartphone-like touchpad. According to Engadget, the UX21 also sports USB 3.0 connectivity and has the ability to hibernate for up to a full week. Look for the UX21 to ship sometime in September. Image Credit: Asus via Engadget | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  There's never been a better time in the history of geekdom to give your cable or satellite television the slip. Over the past few years, consumers been spoiled for choice, with just about everything we once turned to our televisions for now available online. Add to this the countless steaming video sites that pumping out fresh content to the interwebz on a daily basis, and you've got the makings of a viewing solution that has cable companies and satellite providers running scared. To keep track of it all, many resort to software solutions like XBMC, MediaPortal or Windows Media Center. If you're a Chrome user, you've also got the option of rocking Clicker.TV, our Chrome web App of the Week.
Clicker.TV is a media center solution that resides in your browser window. Users of the web app are able to view content from a wide variety of streaming services such as Hulu, as well as videos from Amazon VOD and iTunes to enjoy high quality, on demand content from the comfort of their computer desk or camped out in front of their PC or Mac connected television. According to the folks at Clicker, 40 thousand movies, 90,000 music videos and over one million episodes from 12 thousands different television shows are available for streaming, via Clicker.TV's user-friendly interface. 
Add to this the ability to stream content from other awesome portals like Funny or Die, The Onion or even your Netflix On Demand account, and you'll see why we're excited about what Clicker.TV has to offer. Be sure to check back Next Monday for another Chrome Web App of the Week. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Hewlett Packard recently expanded a worldwide voluntary recall and replacement program for select HP and Compaq brand notebook batteries. Some 162,600 additional laptop batteries are affected, joining 54,000 that were already recalled back in May 2010.
According to DigiTimes, this current recall is because of an overheating issue that could potentially create cracks in the product and poses a fire hazard. HP says that approximately 5 percent of notebook PC products manufactured from July 2007 to May 2008 could be affected, a full list of which you can view here. What that means is your recently purchased Sandy Bridge system is in the clear, at least as it pertains to this specific recall. Since the recall only affects older models, HP isn't sweating the possibility that it could affect production of new notebook models, DigiTimes says. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Wearing a pair of 3D glasses is one thing, but would you be willing to keep yourself tethered to your PC? Nvidia is gambling that at least some of you will be fine with a wired set of specs, and so the graphics chip maker on Sunday announced a new addition to its 3D Vision product family, Nvidia 3D Vision wired glasses. Nvidia realizes that adding another wire to your desktop might be asking a lot, so these new glasses are priced at a buck shy of a C-note (MSRP).
"3D Vision provides gamers and enthusiasts with the world's largest ecosystem of 3D products and features," said Phil Eisler, general manager of 3D Vision at Nvidia. "3D fans have been waiting for more affordable glasses, and we're expecting our new 3D Vision wired glasses to hit the sweet spot for them." Other than the addition of a 10-foot USB 2.0 cable. these are essentially the same glasses as the wireless version with the same active-shutter technology that allows games and 3D movie buffs to play and watch 3D games and Blu-ray movies, streaming 3D video from YouTube, and so forth. The wired glasses support more than 65 different 3D Vision monitors, notebooks, and projectors, Nvidia says. Here's a quick history lesson in 3D Vision. Nvidia introduced 3D Vision back in 2009, launching its wireless 3D Vision glasses kit at $199. Two months ago, Nvidia dropped the price to $149 and promised longer battery life. With the introduction of a wired version priced at $99, this is as cheap as 3D Vision glasses have ever been. You'll be able to buy a pair of 3D Vision wired glasses in late June from the Nvidia Store and other e-tailers and retailers. Image Credit: Nvidia | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  There's a reason your mother was always telling you to clean your room as a kid and to keep your things organized. She was training you for times like this when, after waiting more than a decade for a game you preordered, you'd be able to waltz into your local GameStop with receipt in hand and get your copy before everyone else. Yes folks, GameStop is honoring those preorders from long ago, provided you held onto the necessary paperwork.
GameStop is currently accepting preorders for Duke Nukem Forever on the major platforms, and GamePro asked what would happen to all those poor souls who reserved their copy back when it was first announced. "With a long-anticipated release like Duke Nukem Forever, we encourage customers who preordered more than a year ago to verify their reservation with their local store prior to launch," GameStop said. "Provided the customer has a receipt, we will honor even those preorders taken long ago. At this time, we expect that all preorder customers will receive Duke's Big Package at time of purchase, regardless of when the reservation was made." You did hold onto your receipt, right? | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Gigabyte has no intention of being caught short handed once AMD's Bulldozer platform rolls into town. Getting a jump on the new CPUs, Gigabyte just added three more AM3+ boards to its lineup, all of which sport AMD's AM3+ socket. These include the rather plain-named GA-990FXA-UD3, GA-990FXA-D3, and GA-990XA-UD3.
That brings the total number of 990FX boards in Gigabyte's stable to five, and you can bet there will be more. Gigabyte's M.O. is to release several boards for any given chipset, followed by second and sometimes third revisions of any particular model. It gets a little dizzying and isn't always easy to tell what separates board A from boards B and C. In this case, all three support AM3 and AM3+, come with the SB950 southbridge, sport four DDR3-2000 memory slots, SLI and CrossFire support, GbE, 7.1 channel audio, six SATA 6Gbps ports, and Gigabyte's DualBIOS technology. The GA-990FXA-D3 has three USB 3.0 ports, while the other two models have four. In addition, GA-990FXA-UD3 and GA-990XA-UD3 boast an "Ultra Durable 3" design and include two eSATA 6Gpbs ports. Image Credit: Gigabyte | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Sorry Tupac Shakur fans, the former rapper is, to the best of everyone's knowledge, still dead. Tupac was gunned down nearly 15 years ago in the Las Vegas metropolitan area of Nevada and later died of respiratory failure and cardiac arrest. Conspiracy theorists believed that, like Elvis Presley, Tupac never actually died but took himself out of the public spotlight. A recent story on PBS's website appeared to substantiate these claims, except that it was all a hoax.
According to NYDailyNews.com, hackers took over PBS's website to post the phony Tupac story because they weren't happy with how Wikileaks was portrayed in a recent Frontline documentary called WikiSecrets. The group responsible identified themselves as LulzSec. "We just finished watching WikiSecrets and were less than impressed. We decided to sail our Lulz Boat over to the PBS servers for further... perusing," the statement said. LulzSec also posted email addresses of PBS staff members and passwords to its Twitter page. The story has since been pulled, but you can read a cached version here. | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | | |  Duke Nukem Forever is actually going to ship despite the absence of an apocalypse, and Nvidia wants to make sure you'll be able to play the long awaited follow-up on gaming notebooks. That's where Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 560M graphics chip comes in, one of two mobile GPUs Nvidia unwrapped at the Computex convention in Taiwan. As the more powerful of the two, Nvidia says "the GeForce GTX 560M and Nvidia Optimus mean gamers get 50 frames per second in Duke Nukem Forever and five hours of battery life in Microsoft Office," which translates into "real power and real portability."
Nvidia packed 192 CUDA cores into the GTX 560M. It has a core clockspeed of 775MHz, shaders clocked at 1559MHz, and GDDR5 memory clocked at 1250MHz on up to a 192-bit memory bus. Peak bandwidth is rated at up to 60GB/s. But what's really impressive here is that, for the first time, Nvidia is pairing its aforementioned Optimus technology with a GTX-level graphics chip. The less powerful GeForce GT 520MX is aimed at thin-and-light notebooks and comes with 48 CUDA cores, 900MHz GPU clock, 1800MHz shader clock, and 900MHz memory clock on a 64-bit bus. Peak bandwidth is rated at up to 14.4GB/s. Image Credit: Nvidia | | | | | | | | | |  | |  | |  |
