Well, it's official. We already reported about this product back at Computex and hope to receive the first samples in two maybe three weeks.

OCZ Technology announced the release of the RevoDrive Hybrid PCI Express (PCIe) storage solution. Designed to dramatically accelerate applications and system responsiveness, the RevoDrive Hybrid's superior combination of SSD and hard disk drive (HDD) technology is a revolutionary step forward for high-performance, economical storage.

The RevoDrive Hybrid integrates the benefits of both SSD and HDD technology into a single solution to offer both enhanced responsiveness and ample storage capacity. The drive comes bundled with Dataplex

The vision of the MediaPortal project is to create a free open source media centre application, which supports all advanced media centre functions, and is accessible to all Windows users. In reaching this goal MediaPortal:

• Promotes open source ideology, building on and supporting other open source projects
• Promotes the sharing of knowledge and collaboration using information sharing tools and practices
• Understands development is a team effort and treats users as co-developers, which has proven to be the most effective option for rapid development
• Applies the 'Law of Diminishing Return' so the majority of effort is invested in implementing features which have the most benefit and widest general usage by the community.

MediaPortal 1.2.0 RC RELEASED!

With the release of 1.2.0 RC we have almost reached the end of the 1.2.0 development cycle. After the release of 1.2.0 Beta, we entered a 'feature freeze'. This means that in 1.2.0 RC you will find mainly bug fixes.

Notable changes since 1.2.0 Beta

With more than 150 bug fixes since the release of 1.2.0 Beta, it would be too much to list all changes here. So the following list focuses on a few highlights which we have done since the release of 1.2.0 Beta.

Download

The main idea with this product is to send the monitor signal wireless over WIFI in-between the two devices with support for FullHD aka 1080P resolutions. A daunting task, so it shall be, deep down in the dark caves of Mordor the molding and shaped what has become "StreamHD". A very simple to use wireless display solution that supports HDMI 1.3, 720P and 1080P, it has latency less then 1ms, comes with audio support for 7.1 channels PCM. DTS and Dolby Digital by utilizing the 5 GHz (802.11 a/n band .The solution even is HDCP 1.0 and 2.0 (Blu-Ray) compatible.

Check out the review right here.

Renesas Electronics Corporation, a premier provider of advanced semiconductor solutions, today announced the availability of its new SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB 3.0) SATA3 bridge system-on-chip ([SoC], part number,

Scythe is announcing a special edition of Ninja 3 CPU Cooler. Silent Version of Ninja 3 CPU Cooler is modified with the aim to create a specially silent operating CPU Cooler. While normal Ninja 3 version comes with a PWM controlled fan operating in a range from 470 to 1.900 rpm, new Ninja 3 Silent Version is equipped with a Slip Stream 120 mm fan (SY1225SL12L) which is spinning constantly at a fan speed of 800 rpm. Hence allows the CPU Cooler to operate at the impressively low noise level of only 10,70 dBA.

Thanks to this modification overall weight of Ninja 3 Silent Version could be reduced to 1040 Gramm (37.04 oz.). Main heatsink has not been modified and is furthermore equipped with total of 8 high-quality copper heatpipes which are connected to the nickel-plated copper base-plate. Ninja 3 Silent Version covers all current, and previous CPU Sockets such as Intel socket LGA775, LGA1155, LGA1156, LGA1366 as well as AMD socket 754, 939, AM2, AM2+, AM3, 940, including the new socket AM3+ and FM1. Scythe Flip Mount Super Backplate 2 (F.M.S.B.2) assures safe fit by using a backplate and screw mounting system which was introduced with the normal Version.

Silent Version of Ninja 3 (SCNJ-3000-SV) will be available on the market as of September 2nd 2011 for 37,90 EUR (MSRP, excl. VAT/Tax).

LG will show off a cool new robotic vacuum cleaner at IFA 2011 called the Roboking VR680VMNC. It remains me more than a little of the Toshiba robot vacuum that I talked about a few days ago. The LG offering has three cameras and a host of sensors that help it to navigate your home and clean things up. The coolest thing is that the LG Roboking vacuum can be controlled remotely.

The vacuum connects to the WiFi network in the hoe and can then be controlled from just about anywhere using your smartphone. The cameras will stream live images to allow you to check on your home or pets while you are away. The vacuum is also very quiet so it won

That is dirt cheap, for a pretty okay looking chassis.

Sharkoon delivers another budget mid-tower case; the new Tarea should be available at retailers for around 36.49EUR.
Sharkoon is expanding their collection of PC cases: The Sharkoon Tarea comes with nine 5.25" bays and a straightforward, simple mesh front design as a follow-up to the successful Sharkoon Rebel9 Economy.

The ATX case, to include the interior, maintains a completely black lacquer finish. The front presents itself with nine different mesh faceplates, while mesh inserts in the rounded, vertical frame edges complete the design. The nine 5.25 inch bays and seven card slots offer more than enough room for hard drives, optical drives, function panels and expansion cards of your choice. Six built-in drives are externally accessible, while the three lower bays are located behind the removable front fan bracket. Sharkoon includes decoupled mounting brackets for hard drives and 3.5 inch drives, as well as mesh faceplates with 3.5 inch openings. Optical drives and hard drives are secured using the practical quick-locking mechanisms; the main board tray provides a CPU cooler mount opening and feedthrough for orderly cable installation. The ATX power supply is fitted on the bottom of the case. The top I/O panel provides audio jacks, two USB2.0 ports and an eSATA interface. Two rubber-protected feedthroughs are provided on the backside for water cooling hoses.

The Sharkoon Tarea comes without any preinstalled fans. For an individual cooling design tailored to particular requirements the case offers mounting options for a 120 mm fan in the front, two 120 mm fans on the side panel and a 80 or 120 mm fan in the rear. The case measures 475 x 200 x 440 (L x W x H), the empty weight is 6.2 kg. The internal dimensions support the installation of graphic cards and power supply?s up to 30 cm in length, and CPU coolers up to 16 cm in height.

End customers will find the Sharkoon Tarea available immediately for the suggested retail price of 36.49 euros in authorized retailers.

Razer debuts the Blackwidow Stealth Edition, a new gaming keyboard series that focuses on silence.
Razer, the world

Microsoft has a new post up on its Building Windows 8 blog:

ISO files are used by vendors to distribute software. Backup applications also store content in the ISO format and many utilities allow creation of an ISO file from existing CDROM or DVD media. Once created, these files can be sent around, downloaded, and stored just like any other file - however, before you can access the photos, video, applications, documents, or other content contained within the ISO file, you either have to "burn" the ISO file to a writable optical disc or download and install software that allows you to "mount" and access the ISO file contents directly (i.e. without burning). With Windows 8, we have eliminated this last step � you can simply access the contents of the ISO file without needing either needing to burn a new disc or needing to find/download/install additional software just to logically access the ISO.

So how does this work in Windows 8? It's quite simple - just "mount" the ISO file (you can select mount from the enhanced Explorer ribbon or double-click or right-click on the file), and a new drive letter appears, indicating that the contents are now readily accessible. Underneath the covers, Windows seamlessly creates a "virtual" CDROM or DVD drive for you on-the-fly so you can access your data. Let's walk through the flow that will enable you to access such an ISO file.

As you see in the figure below, we have three ISO files in a local folder. The one we will work with contains the (legally obtained) Office application suite. To mount the ISO, you can either double click the file or click Mount on the Actions tab.

Samsung has unveiled a new version of the Galaxy S II including support for Long Term Evolution 4G. The Galaxy S II LTE runs on Android 2.3 Gingerbread with a 1.5GHz dual-core processor and support for 3D graphics and gaming. It has a 4.5-inch Super AMOLED Plus display, an 8-megapixel camera and HD video capture.

The device will ship with Samsung's various hubs, include the Social, Game, and Music hubs (Reader hub to be available after launch), which provide users with access to content, media, and other services. Samsung notes that the Galaxy S II will support the mobile hotspot feature and will allow up to eight other Wi-Fi devices to connect to the mobile network. Samsung didn't specify what bands the Galaxy S II LTE will support. AT&T and Verizon Wireless are deploying LTE on different slices of 700MHz spectrum in the U.S. European network operators are deploying LTE in a number of bands, including 800MHz, 1800MHz, and other frequencies. Samsung is expected to make a more formal announcement on September 1 in Berlin at the IFA event.

Corsair Announces Availability of High-Capacity Force Series GT SSDs - New 180GB and 240GB Solid-State Drives models take full addvantage of SATA 6Gb/s technology.

FREMONT, California

Lian Li Industrial introduced a new full-tower chassis, the PC-90. Available in striking black or silver hairline-brushed, anodized metal casing, the PC-90, also known as 'The Hammer', represents the best of Made-in-Taiwan ingenuity and quality, with the ease of tool-less design.

The Lian Li PC-90's unique internal layout allows large HPTX motherboards to be held in a standard, full-tower case with a weight of only 6.6kg. 'The Hammer' PC-90 is light and compact, and can easily fit under a desk like a standard PC chassis. This makes the chassis an excellent solution for systems/servers/workstations without needing a large, heavy steel case.

Instead of standard HDD cages that obstruct internal air-flow, the PC-90's HDD drives are mounted vertically on two trays inside the left side panel. This way, the entire back of the case can be used to hold the motherboard, even enabling a larger HPTX or server motherboard to fit into the standard, full-tower chassis.

The Lian Li PC-90 offers the advantage of two 140mm front fans blowing cool air directly and unrestricted over the motherboard and VGA card to the rear 120mm fan. Its sturdy HDD trays on the side of the case lock firmly into place in order to avoid vibration. Nonetheless, the trays can be easily removed via thumbscrew, allowing for easy installation of three 3.5

ASUS introduced the O!Play Mini Plus Smart TV set-top box, a HD media player with integrated Acetrax and Facebook support.
Bringing internet based entertainment to the living room, ASUS has launched the O!Play Mini Plus. It offers access to a multitude of online services for endless entertainment from both video and social media websites, while featuring Gigabit LAN and Wireless N to ensure that content is fast and smooth. The O!Play Mini Plus is also versatile, able to play content from a connected PC, smartphone or tablet, and even automatically playing files straight from a connected USB drive.

Popular online entertainment
This set-top box provides limitless online entertainment, including access to Mediafly, Dailymotion*, Facebook*, YouTube, Picasa, Flickr, thousands of internet TV and radio stations, and much more. It

Quite handy, Gigabyte issued a small utility that allows you to change the mode of the chipset SATA controller between IDE, AHCI, and RAID (if available), from within Windows itself.

Once you apply changed you will need to reboot obviously as the new interface needs to be detected

Gigabyte's Disk Mode Switch utility works on Gigabyte motherboards based on Intel 6-series chipset (H61, H67, P67, and Z68).

Personally I'd just switch from the BIOS, but if interested you can download the tool right here.

ASUS's Wireless-N Gigabit Router RT-N56U contains a vulnerability which may allow a remote unauthenticated attacker to recover the device's administrator password. An attacker with network access to the device can navigate to the web page http://RouterIPAddress/QIS_wizard.htm?flag=detect. The attacker will be presented with a web page containing the device's configuration without entering any login credentials. This web page will display the device's administrator password. The default configuration for this device is to only allow clients connected to the Local Area Network (LAN) to access the system web interface.

This vulnerability has been reported in ASUS's Wireless-N Gigabit Router RT-N56U firmware version 1.0.1.4.

Download firmwareversie 1.0.1.4

Gigabyte has been on a winning streak lately to produce some of the nicest motherboards targeted at games. The Initial Killer/Sniper series has shown a completely new style from Gigabyte, a series that steps away from that baby blue color, towards a matte black PCB, a 'gun' theme, quality components and nifty extra's like a high-end Ethernet controller and even an integrated SoundBlaster X-Fi soundcard.

Check out the review right here.

KINGMAX, a renowned leading memory and flash drive manufacturer, has recently unveiled 128GB huge capacity USB 3.0 flash drive, the ED-01. With huge capacity, the ED-01 flash drive not only meets the market

Valve shows off a trailer of Counter-Strike: Global Offensive.

ZD Net reports AMD's Bulldozer may finally arrive this week, we personally very much doubt that, but hope they are right though !

At the annual Hot Chips semiconductor conference last week, AMD provided some new details on the innovative Bulldozer architecture behind both the FX Series for desktops and new Opteron server processors.

The new processor includes four Bulldozer modules, each of which contains eight AMD64 cores, and an integrated memory controller. What makes the Family 15h design different, though, is that each module shares several components including a front-end (fetch and decode), floating-point unit, data prefetch unit, and 2MB of L2 cache. AMD

Notch has today revealed via his blog The Word of Notch why he is not going to be releasing Minecraft on Steam or other digital distribution platforms:

Steam is the best digital distribution platform I

ViewSonic issued two 27-inch monitors, the VG2732m-LED and VP2765-LED.

The screens are part of the gamer-oriented VG series, the VG2732m-LED has low response time of 3 ms. The VP2765-LED, on the other hand, is fine-tuned for graphics professionals, making use of an Advanced MVA (AMVA) panel, with a response time of 5 ms, and packs 2W stereo speakers.

Both displays make use of a slim bezel design, use LED-backlit illumination, full-HD (1920 x 1080 pixels) resolution, 300 cd/m

Crucial released a new firmware update by Crucial for its M4 series SATA 6 Gb/s SSDs

The update is build 0009 for the models CT064M4SSD2 (64 GB), CT0128M4SSD2 (128 GB), CT0256M4SSD2 (256 GB), and CT0512M4SSD2 (512 GB)

The update is said to increase sequential read speeds by 20%. PCMark Vantage Disk performance is also increased.

The new firmware also works to increase throughput performance, lower write latency, wider compatibility with latest chipsets (AHCI modes), and fixes various kinds of cold-boot failures. The firmware lowers SATA speed negotiation time with host controllers, resulting in faster boot.

Depending on the model, the 0009 firmware update for Crucial M4 series SSDs can be downloaded from here.

The S2 definitely stands apart by virtue of its dual-display construction, reliant on two 5.5-inch displays, one of which occupies what would otherwise be dedicated to a keyboard, were this a netbook. According to Engadget, there is now a name to go with the codename, Sony Table P in fact, its availability being scheduled for next month (September 2011).

The Tegra 2 SoC (system-on-chip) is the platform chosen to power it, while 4 GB of built-in flash storage exist as well.  The obligatory card slot exists, of course, and there is even a 2 GB SD card bundled with the product, or so the report says.

Furthermore, Sony threw in 512 MB of RAM (the processor and video parts would not work without it after all), as well as a 0.2 megapixel webcam. All in all, the dual-display Tablet P has a weight of 370 grams, quite a bit less than the Tablet S (600 grams), which has 16 GB or 32 GB of storage and 1 GB of RAM.

Intel is working hard on a new generation of Atom chips, but not without some problems alright.

Intel is getting closer to the time when it updates its product portfolio, even if it might not do it all at once. Among other things, there will be new E5-2600 CPUs, Poulson Itanium Server Processors, better Core series models, etc.

On that list, the Cedar Trail line has secured a spot, even though the last time anyone heard about it was when the DirectX-related issues were discovered as sofpedia reports:

Now, a new report has appeared, one that finally provides some benchmarking results, even if they aren't all that up to date as far as the program used to record them goes.

To be more specific, the Atom N2800 and N2600 ended up being analyzed by 3DMark 06 and compared to the Atom N570.

The N2600 only keeps up with the N570 in the 3DMark 06 CPU test, which is odd given the identical 1.66 GHz frequency.

Meanwhile, the N2800 is quite a bit ahead of the current-generation unit, in both CPU and GPU tests, though this does not say as much as it would have if the benchmarking suite was a more recent and demanding one, capable of really taxing the graphics.

Then again, this might all just be Intel's way of showing that it does not intend to actually bet on the graphics performance, although N2800 (aided by the PowerVR engine) still gets thrice the result of the N570.

Then again, seeing as how the GPU's clock is about three times faster, this was only to be expected.

Meanwhile, the N2600 succeeds in almost doubling the performance (the clock speed of the GPU is twice as fast as that of the previous-generation one).

Click the thumbnail.

Germany based Caseking announced the availability of four DDR3 memory lines from Avexir; Green, Budget, Standard and Blitz.

Avexir may be an unknown brand in these areas of the world, but is already present in the market since 2006. The products of the memory specialist are available immediately at Caseking. The assortment currently consists of four series - the

Steve Conway, a vice president of research with the analyst firm IDC who specializes in high-performance computing (HPC), says IBM's repository is significantly bigger than previous storage systems. "A 120-petabye storage array would easily be the largest I've encountered," he says. The largest arrays available today are about 15 petabytes in size. Supercomputing problems that could benefit from more data storage include weather forecasts, seismic processing in the petroleum industry, and molecular studies of genomes or proteins, says Conway.

IBM's engineers developed a series of new hardware and software techniques to enable such a large hike in data-storage capacity. Finding a way to efficiently combine the thousands of hard drives that the system is built from was one challenge. As in most data centers, the drives sit in horizontal drawers stacked inside tall racks. Yet IBM's researchers had to make those significantly wider than usual to fit more disks into a smaller area. The disks must be cooled with circulating water rather than standard fans.

The inevitable failures that occur regularly in such a large collection of disks present another major challenge, says Hillsberg. IBM uses the standard tactic of storing multiple copies of data on different disks, but it employs new refinements that allow a supercomputer to keep working at almost full speed even when a drive breaks down.

When a lone disk dies, the system pulls data from other drives and writes it to the disk's replacement slowly, so the supercomputer can continue working. If more failures occur among nearby drives, the rebuilding process speeds up to avoid the possibility that yet another failure occurs and wipes out some data permanently. Hillsberg says that the result is a system that should not lose any data for a million years without making any compromises on performance.

The new system also benefits from a file system known as GPFS that was developed at IBM Almaden to enable supercomputers faster data access. It spreads individual files across multiple disks so that many parts of a file can be read or written at the same time. GPFS also enables a large system to keep track of its many files without laboriously scanning through every one. Last month a team from IBM used GPFS to index 10 billion files in 43 minutes, effortlessly breaking the previous record of one billion files scanned in three hours.

It will hold 24 million HD movies !