HI-TECH

With the launch of Windows Vista at the beginning of 2007, Microsoft forced a changing of the guards in the operating system world. While the company was gung-ho about their new version of Windows, millions of XP users were not ready to let go of their tried and true OS

Although the reviews have been scarce, it’s been a busy week for us behind the scenes. We’re very aware when we haven’t been hitting the mark in terms of content flow, so you can expect us to ramp it up in the following weeks ahead. One thing I’ve personally noted

The latest and semi greatest from Nvidia is on the way and should be in stores now. The follow up to the 8800GTX, little sibling of the 9800GX2, is being reviewed all over the net today. Check out some of our choice reviews as we haven’t had

While Intel’s enthusiast chipsets have garnered a fair amount of respect over the past few months, the price of motherboards based on these top-tier chipsets prevents a very large user base from making a purchase. For these potential customers, slightly nerfed versions of the enthusiast level chipsets are made less

Despite being faced with problems ramping up their 45nm production levels, Intel Corp. today announced the finalization of a business partnership with STMicroelectronics under which a new independent company will be based. The company, Numonyx B.V., will design, develop, and manufacture NOR and NAND flash memory products. Intel’s dealings with

Though advances by competitors have been made over the past couple of years, consumers looking for an alternative to enthusiast-grade sound cards from Creative Labs have had a pretty tough time. This search reached a fevered pitch when Microsoft released Windows Vista and Creative’s driver suite for the operating system

Adobe is not exactly the first company that comes to mind when you think of free software. Their photo manipulation and content creation programs have long been revered as second to none, and are frequently updated with additional features to increase their lead over the competition.

While NVIDIA has long been tolerant of their board partners tweaking reference designs and shipping overclocked graphics cards straight from the factory, AMD’s manufacturers have only had this luxury the better part of a year. Both companies have seen their board partners take existing products to a whole new level

Although Xbox 360 has been the bane of many gamers’ existence thanks to that pesky RROD problem, the console’s success in the worldwide market is undeniable. Thanks in no small part to several very good games and a lower price tag than its high-fidelity console competition, the Xbox 360

It seems like every month we are posting a new story that brings to light one more detail about Intel’s upcoming Nehalem processor. We already know that the processor will have an integrated memory controller capable of triple-channel DDR3 operation. We also know that old technologies like HyperThreading

When GDDR2 was released, not many people cared. The new technology offered only a slight increase in clock speeds over the existing GDDR, and typically cost quite a bit more. When GDDR3 came out, both NVIDIA and ATI were quick adopters due to the potentially tremendous clock speed increases it

When you have a bunch of products with fairly similar names, fairly similar performance, and nearly identical appearance, you tend to cause a fair amount of confusion. NVIDIA is probably learning this lesson the hard way, and consequently will be looking into simplifying their product lineup. NVIDIA’s VP of Content

On the going-on’s at FPSLabs: We’re all still here. We sympathize with those of you who have been missing the daily updates on the site, and we aim to get back in the rhythm here in the very near future. However, in our defense, news has been pretty damn slow

In the wake of the HD format wars we now have one conclusive victor standing tall a top the hillside. Blu-Ray may have beat out HD DVD but it has a long way to go to overthrow DVD and recent sales are showing just that. The NPD, (those same cats)

As AMD video card users awoke this morning and ran their freshly downloaded copies of Futuremark Vantage, they probably got a little pissed off that their graphics scores were significantly lower than anything from NVIDIA. They also probably got a little angry that the first GPU test, featuring Steve Nash’s

Although we are not the biggest fans of synthetic benchmarks like Futuremark’s 3DMark, we can only marvel in amazement at just how widespread such tests have become. With the DirectX 9 graphics API stretched to its limit with recent games like Crysis, the aging 3DMark06, which was really just a

Razer’s Lycosa is their second keyboard offering and seems to be an about-face in terms of approach. Gone is the idea of extra button-laden keyboards with jam-packed features that tend to lack practicality; enter a keyboard that is trying to bring something that’s slightly different to the gaming arena. Introduction Razer first

It has been more than a full year since Microsoft’s revolutionary operating system was available to the masses. Harsh reviews, astounding features, and a lot of troubles, it is still seen as the dark horse amongst most users. Even among power users, Vista is looked down upon. Dissecting the features

Although on the surface it would appear AMD has hit rock bottom in terms of its financial situation, the company has been making great strides lately with its product line. It is likely that the $358 Million dollar loss posted by AMD for Q1 was partly the result of dropping

Just over two short years ago, the race for processor superiority was one waged on the megahertz front. Intel was pushing higher clock frequencies on its Prescott-based Pentium D chips, releasing SKUs like the Pentium 4 672 at 3.8GHz and the Pentium D 960 at 3.6GHz. In fact, processors released

In what is brewing to be another one of the endless patent disputes we hear about in the tech world Seagate is planning on bringing SSD manufacturers to court, starting with STEC. Solid-state drives sales are slowly but surely picking up sales and before they reach a critical juncture.

EVGA has a new toy on the way for you overclockers. Their Precision overclocking utility was shown on their forums yesterday with minimal details. It has been in development for quite some time, and it should work on almost all NVIDA cards. ( hurray! ) One of the big issues

I know quite a few of you die hards are still using Windows XP and may be curious as to the schedule for Service Pack 3, when it will be out, etc. Microsoft has seemingly continued to delay this release for testing purposes, much like they did with Vista’s

When I look at the classic Nintendo Zapper I think of my younger days as a screaming, hot-headed 8-bit gamer, but not Fluffypants. No siree. The enterprising DIY lamp artist looked at the orange and gray plastic and saw a lamp. A few hours and one fabricated cardboard NES cartridge stand later, that laughing dog was back in action, ready to haunt my dreams once again. If this model played the level intro music I’d be tempted to break out the glue gun, but for now I’ll just marvel at its brilliance from afar.

an an “All Giz Wants” about a real universal remote—one that wouldn’t just change your channels but change your life. (Marketers, feel free to use that). This concept holds a kinship to our humble dream of turning on our oven with the touch of a button…errr…remotely. Make no mistake, it’s just an artist’s rendering with ergonomics that are questionable at best. But it’s something to keep us trudging through life (hopefully from our couches).

The latest Wii knock-off is the MiWi. Following in the Vii’s footsteps, this one, by Number One Electronics Company in the World Evah, No, Really, Eittek, looks like something you might find on sale in the oral hygiene department of your local shop. It’s got utterly craptastic plastic clubs and paddles, as well as an N64-esque joystick. And some idea of the quality of the console is given when you see what the games look like.

sus Eee fandom has no bounds, and while replacing the case on most laptops seems preposterous, for the Eee it’s just another day of tiny typing and eye strain at the office. This Crystal Case by Proporta is constructed of scratch/shock resistant polycarbonate, but maybe more impressively, features a double hinge that adds 360 degrees of screen rotation to the Eee (perfect for the touchscreen-modded system). Personally, I could use about another 15 degrees of tilt on my Macbook Pro—not for my own use, but for every time a friend checks their email and attempts to push the screen beyond its natural bounds. Ooh, I get shivers just thinking about it.

A British man who had his car clamped outside his home used an angle-grinder to cut it in two. Ian Taylor’s car, which he had bought for $100 for his stepson to use (guess he doesn’t like his stepson much) and had yet to tax, was parked on his front drive, but was protruding by two inches onto the pavement. Although Taylor had legally registered it to be off the road, the clampers didn’t care, and stuck a Denver Boot on it. Taylor’s revenge was to play “Will it Angle-Grind?” on the vehicle.

Perhaps knowing that a Death Star wedding cake was starting marriage asking for trouble, reader and chef Charlene made an R2-D2 one, bringing balance back to the Force, and restoring dorkiness through the Galaxy. There have been others, but her nine-layer version of everyone’s favorite astromech is far more realistic and complex, thanks to some DIY tech hacks.

The final project of a team from Cornell University, this electronic hogu, modelled above by a lantern-jawed mannequin called Bob, uses piezoelectric sensors and a microcontroller to measure the kicks and punches between contestants in a Tae Kwan Do bout. Piezoelectric sensors and a microcontroller are implanted in the transmitter side, while the receiver side has wireless receiver circuitry, another microcontroller, and a monitor to display the score. As that great black belt of martial arts would say, “Haiiiii-YAAAAAAA!” Yes, I’m talking Miss Piggy.

mally, I would get excited about these pants with a daisy that changes color when next to your hot hot skin. But it’s Monday today, and Monday’s the day I do the washing and the ironing. Tuesday is J.’s day for LEGO—he’s currently attempting to do the Kama Sutra out of bricks, Wednesday we’re watching all Flight of the Conchords episodes back-to-back, Thursday I’m teaching the dog how to mow the lawn, Friday is National Morris Dancers Day, Saturday I’m learning how to make a lava lamp using a paperclip, boogers, an old milk bottle and our bedside lamp. So, it’ll have to be Sunday. Hang on, I’ve just seen the price. Thirty bucks? I feel a headache coming on.

Hot on the heels of the BlackBerry Bold comes the news that the company behind it is to start up its own venture capital firm. And if it’s a way of besting Apple’s iFund, then the Canadians win, by fifty million buckeroonies. The BlackBerry Partners Fund is a bunk up between RIM and Thomson Reuters, and has earmarked $150 million for mobile applications and services for mobile platforms including BlackBerry. Full press release after the jump.

They said RIM’s BlackBerry 9000 would be formally announced on the 12th. They said it would be called the Bold. Photos suggested that it would be the sexiest thing to come out of Canada since Sarah McLachlan’s Fumbling Towards Ecstasy. And they wuz right. Boy Genius says it’ll be available this summer on AT&T 3G, with a T-Mobile 3G edition in the wings—the handset can handle 850/1900/2100Mhz for HSDPA/UMTS, plus T-Mo’s 1700MHz band. Sascha at PC Mag is reporting a CDMA/EV-DO version as well. Jump for more details—and giddy tittering—from sources all around the web, plus the official press release.

t so long ago we reviewed the Eye-Fi, a 2GB SD card that adds Wi-Fi to any digital camera. Now the company is expanding their product line with the Eye-Fi Explore ($129), Eye-Fi Share ($99) and the Eye-Fi Home ($79). The big news? Eye-Fi is now supporting hotspots and geotagging with the Explore.

nario has happened countless times before. A pesky fly interrupts a dinner party. Brad, the club’s resident tennis pro and notorious alcoholic, takes to his feet, Prince racket in hand, and smites the beast violently into a wall with a few tottering swings. OK, so it doesn’t happen exactly like that, but you get the idea. Fly swatter, tennis racket or bare hands, the end result is the same. Boring. Enter the misnamed, but nevertheless brilliant, Bug Bat.

Our friend Robert Woodhead (of slow-mo Mentos-n-Coke fame) has kindly shared another of his Casio Exilim EX-F1 masterpieces, this time water balloons and china slowly shattering (and occasionally not shattering) to the tune of Tchaikovsky’s 1812 Overture. They’re a mixture of 300, 600 and 1200 frame-per-second shots, set up in an uncomfortably vertical version of widescreen (tallscreen?), but they sure are fun. When will the slow-mo clips cease? you ask. Never, that’s when.

ne fun rumor bopping around the phone sites is that MWg, the smartphone maker previously known as O2 Asia, will be rolling out a Windows Mobile 7 phone in the fourth quarter of 2008, specifically the Flame II shown above. That’s about a year earlier than we last heard. Everyone sounds skeptical, but you never know, the timeline could have been Boy Genius, or to see the whole MWg presentation, have a accelerated because WM6 isn’t exactly a crowd pleaser. If you want a more complete roadmap, check out Boy Genius; for the original video presentation from MWg, look at MoDaCo. Either way, take it with a grain or two of salt. [MoDaCo via BGR]

Usually camping and showering are either/or activities, but for those of you who absolutely have to cart the body wash and loofah into the wild, the Pocket Shower from Sea to Summit could be for you.

Last time I was in a store, I was like, “Why is there no creepy animatronic sea captain here to tell me today’s specials?” Apparently that’s what the founders of Characters Unlimited thought too, because they’ve come up with a vast array of Hall of Presidents-style robotic people—and a few animals, too, like the ever-popular dog in overalls, or the smoking buffalo—aimed specifically at retailers who want to jazz up their stores, maybe after striking out with Wacky Waving Inflatable Arm Flailing Tube Men. The things can move and talk, their lips synched to either live or pre-recorded messages. (Was that a tape recorder I saw?) The company president told Aving they’ll do custom jobs, can even clone you if you want, but from the look of their lineup, it helps if you’re old and/or disfigured. There’s a video after the jump if you’re not already properly skeeved out.

Remember when it was cool to joke about how the vibrating Wii remote looked, felt and behaved pretty much like a vibrator? No? Well, too bad, because it turns out that the two were more similar than the light-hearted humor suggested. In fact, both tools of pleasure employ technology built from a patent from the same company, Immersion.