Apple's iPhone Dissected: We did it, so you don't have to

We have only had the phone for a few hours but we needed to get inside its casing, what follows is our dissection of the Apple iPhone. Please note that we're doing this so you are not tempted to on your recent $500/$600 expenditure, while it is quite possible to take apart using easy to find tools we'd recommend against it as it will undoubtedly void your warranty and will most likely mar up the beautiful gadget's exterior. Do whatever you wish to your iPhone, but do so at your own risk :)

This is the iPhone that most of Apple's customers will be seeing:

Special thanks to Olivia Marsh and Manveer Wasson for help with the disassembly and photographs for this article

And this is one of ours, on the operating table:

Chances for survival? Slim

The first step to disassemble the device is to remove the lower black plastic piece; heating it up and squeezing a razorblade in there made it not only possible, but easy:

Then came the process of removing the brushed aluminum cover, which wasn't nearly as easy. After a lot of bending, pulling and other unfathomable things one would do to a brand new iPhone we were left with this:

Ignore the slightly bent iPhone casing, we swear it came this way

EVGA X58 SLI - First Look

EVGA formally introduced their first motherboard based on an Intel chipset today, the EVGA X58 SLI. For a long time launch partner of NVIDIA based chipsets, this event was somewhat of a surprise when the rumors started spreading a few months ago about the possibility of EVGA utilizing other chipsets. Considering EVGA’s continuing in-house development of boards based on their FTW moniker and a quickened pace away from the cookie cutter reference designs, this development really did not surprise us.

What did surprise us is their ability to take a completely new chipset, proceed with a crash development program, and offer a motherboard on the official launch date that is rock solid and very polished for a first time effort. Of course it helps that several engineers from the former EPoX group are on staff and two of the top overclockers around are hand-tuning the product. However, it’s not perfect as we mentioned in our early preview blog today, but several of the problems we discussed with EVGA this weekend have already been addressed today with a new BIOS.

The Intel X58/ICH10R combination has been a known commodity for several months and Intel has been providing significant engineering resources to the motherboard suppliers in terms of information and technical support. Of course this helps to speed along a development program from a hardware viewpoint but with everyone utilizing the same chipset and basic hardware components the ability to differentiate a board in a crowded market comes down to hardware/software features, support, compatibility, and BIOS design. Does EVGA meet this differentiation criterion? We think so.

Our experiences to date with the EVGA X58 SLI board indicate to us that EVGA has developed a very solid hardware platform with a nice mix of features, a nifty tuning utility, and a board that after the latest BIOS has offered excellent compatibility with a wide range of peripherals and software. EVGA is recognized for its excellent customer support and the BIOS design/tuning is being headed up by Peter Tan, better known as Shamino in the overclocking circles. Add in a limited lifetime warranty for most locations and a step-up program for the next LGA1366 product and you can see why this board might grab some market share away from other players in the X58 market.

Of course, none of this really matters unless the board performs well for users looking to cough up $329.99 for this product. We are still running a variety of benchmarks for the upcoming X58 roundup, but at this point the EVGA X58 SLI is at or near the top of the class. However, while we tend to get carried away at times with a frame per second improvement or a half second difference in a benchmark, the real test for these über enthusiast boards generally center on overclocking and stability. Neither of which the EVGA board has failed in up to this point and to be honest, has excelled at for the most part.

Although you would never know it from the advertising, the board does support both CrossFire X and SLI operation. That said, let’s take a look around the board and review its features today.

Foxconn Blood Rage - If Looks Could Kill (UPDATE)

We've received confirmation from Foxconn that a certain number of retail boards may be incompatible with some of the higher power PSU's such as the PCP 1200W, Cooler master and Silverstone 1200W units we used for this preview article. Foxconn have identified and rectified the issue with a board modification that has already been rolled out to retail. If your board is having symptoms such as those described at the top of page 3 in our article, please contact Foxconn customer support. They will be happy to replace your board with an updated version.

Things are at a fever pitch in the labs at present because we've got a plethora of products from the proverbial who's who of the motherboard industry all awaiting testing and final review. Some of these "superstars" have already received some airtime in our $300 motherboard roundup. Final report compilation is ongoing, with products from ASUS, Biostar, DFI, MSI, ECS, EVGA, and Gigabyte, each presenting its own set of merits and quirks depending on your needs.

If you read the opening page of the first look round-up article, you'll already know what scintillating fun the past two months of BIOS testing has been for us. We'll sum this up by saying, "You can beat us up, but we're never down for long." Yes, we're still excited when we get something new, and the latest contender from Foxconn has certainly been at the center of enough internet-based ballyhoo to provoke our interests enough to march on into the unknown.

Much of the initial crowd "pop" reaction to Foxconn's Blood Rage is related to pictures of the motherboard that have been on the forum based cha-cha-cha circuit for several months now. We'll be the first to tell you, good looks do not necessarily a great motherboard make. But we have to admit, a passing glance at the Blood Rage is compelling enough to create the desire of at least taking a deeper look into what makes this thing tick.

Foxconn's last big foray into the enthusiast segment was with the Intel X48-based Black Ops motherboard. It was a market tester with the goal of establishing their brand name whilst simultaneously demanding accelerated learning from their newly employed Quantum Force BIOS programmers, support staff, and engineering team.

We reviewed the Black Ops back in July. Although the board threw us a few curve balls on occasion, it happened to possess enough substance to make it one of our favorites in what would now be cited as a product from Intel's last generation technology -- a technology that we still think is viable for most users. Those that had positive experiences with the Black Ops by using it in the intended manner have been imbibed with plenty of thought provoking fodder to wonder what's coming next from the Quantum Force development team.

Part of the Blood Rage development process was getting Foxconn personnel to work with the inquisitive consumers who frequent their support forum. The forum staff asked Quantum Force team members and support forum goers what they'd like to see on their upcoming boards, ranging from component choices to color schemes. Although this takes place in various forms at other companies, it's not often you get to provide direct feedback to those who are close to the engineers and design teams. Some of this public brainstorming filtered its way into the final rendition of the Blood Rage, possibly making it the birth-child of a thousand collaborative fathers -- and that could be a good thing. Think of it as a throwback to the Arnold Schwarzenegger/Danny Devito film called "Twins", only this time the outcome is focused solely on releasing the physically superior "Junior" to the public while successfully incinerating Danny Devito's inadequate character before birth. (At least, we think that's the plan Foxconn had in mind.)

Anyway, let's not dwell on those aspects for too long; what matters is whether the Blood Rage really delivers on the promise of its super-charged appearance. Although this first look will concentrate mainly on the overclocking side of things, we'll also be telling you what we like so far and what, if anything, makes us grit our teeth. By the way, the board has performed like any other X58 based product in application and game testing so no worries on that end. Read on if you like to overclock….

Intel X58 Motherboard Roundup - What does $300 Get You?

As of November 17th you can officially buy an Intel Core i7 processor - the new heavyweight champion of the world. When it comes to media encoding and 3D animation/rendering tasks, the Core i7 is not only without peer but also provides us the sort of generational performance gap that we've come to expect from Intel every two years. By now you've already decided whether or not you want to buy one, and if you're in a rush to spend money, the next question is what motherboard do you pick?

Current Core i7 CPUs work in Intel's new LGA-1366 socket, currently only found on motherboards based on the X58 chipset. While Intel did a great job of making sure the Core i7 was available at a wide range of price points ($284, $562, and $999), the X58 boards themselves are pretty pricey. We've got a consistent group of $300+ motherboards on the market, and honestly we're not expecting ~$100 Nehalem boards until the introduction of the mainstream Lynnfield/Havendale CPUs in 2H 2009. Boards using the P55 chipset should arrive early next year and at least bring in true sub-$200 options, but for now it's an X58 world.

These boards are very high end - with the exception of Intel's own X58, these motherboards all feature six DDR3 DIMM slots, easily enabling 12GB of memory on a desktop platform. Certification for 24GB and 48GB is coming, but that's absolutely ridiculous on a desktop motherboard. Combine that with the fact that all three Core i7 parts are capable of working on 8 threads at a time and you've got the makings of an extremely powerful system. A desktop Core i7 system has the potential to embarrass quite a few upper end workstations already on the market.

What we've put together today is a roundup of the "midrange" X58 motherboards currently on the market, a sort of first look at the state of the X58 realm for early adopters who are lucky enough to be buying today. We've got motherboards ranging from $220 to $390 in the labs that we will go through over the next couple of weeks; if you're building a Core i7 system before the end of this year, we'll help you pick a motherboard in each category.

BIOS Ridiculousness: Everyone Say, "Thank You Gary"

Hey guys, Anand here. I'm writing this sub-section, not at Gary's request, but because I felt it was necessary. Over the past year I've watched the number of motherboards Gary gets to review go down, and the amount of time spent per motherboard go up tremendously. This year was especially bad as Gary spent more time helping manufacturers fix their BIOSes and compatibility problems than actually writing motherboard reviews.

I wanted to help bring some of what Gary does to light in this section, just so you know the sad state in which many of these motherboards are being brought to market and the work that goes into getting them ready so that we can actually write about it, much less recommend one.

With that said, let's take a look at a particular sequence of events we encountered with the motherboards in today's review. We are not going to name names today as all of the manufacturers are guilty, some worse than others. The point being is that we feel the lack of quality assurance before a product hits the market has now reached an all time high.

Testing Ridiculousness:

It is true, too true unfortunately, about the amount of time it takes to thoroughly test a motherboard, report problems, and then regression test a possible fix. I am anal retentive when it comes to this process as others are also. While the benefits of doing it eventually payoff for manufacturers and users alike, it is a disservice to our readership to delay reviews of new products based on this seemingly never ending cycle of test, report, test, report.

So we are refocusing our efforts in generating quick and to the point reviews in the motherboard section. The manufacturers are going to receive two rounds of the test and report process before we publish our reviews. After this, we will provide short updates about the product over its lifespan in the market. We are also instituting a new process where we will purchase select products at retail and review them as is. This means no conversations with the manufacturers or access to the designers and engineers that we currently enjoy. We will utilize the latest drivers, BIOS, and utilities on the website in the same way you do when purchasing a product.

Our plan is to cycle through each manufacturer so we are not singling out any one supplier but we are going to be brutally honest in our assessments in these particular focus reviews. Our hope is that it will spur the manufacturers to improve their internal QA processes and focus on product usability at launch instead of setting a world record in SuperPI.

That said, let's take a quick look at the number of problems we encountered up until this week with our four boards in today's review.

1. Of the course of the past 30 days we communicated problems, suggestions, and resolution status on our test products via email 896 times and over a 100 phone conversations.

2. We have received 31+ different BIOS releases in the last thirty days to address problems and/or improve performance.

3. Our change log of problems and fixes reads like a bad novel. While we will not ding the manufacturers for performance improvements that we or others suggest, the simple fact that auxiliary storage controllers, power management features, memory and voltage settings, and other basic features on these boards failed to even work or resulted in a non-POST situation just floored us.

We are talking about $300 plus motherboards designed and released to be the crown jewel in the manufacturers product lineup. Of course, there is no excuse for this regardless of price, but one would truly think that the QA process would have noticed simple items like S3 not working, drives attached to certain storage ports not recognized, 12GB memory configurations causing non-POST situations, various BIOS settings not working or auto settings generating out of bounds voltages at stock speeds, power management features that when enabled actually increased power consumption, various overclock bugs, and USB and network controllers operating at half speed. The list just goes on and on. To us, these were simple items that we found just booting the board and trying to use it in a manner that 99% of buyers would, not randomly generated bugs due to weird settings, bad drivers, or a collection of old peripherals.

Even more depressing was the fact that several of our technical contacts did not have the necessary components to recreate our problems in a timely manner. The biggest item was memory, specifically 12GB of memory. All of the boards had some type of problem with a 12GB installation, ranging from overclock performance to non-POST situations. Granted, 98% of the 12GB problems have been addressed now, but it took close to a month, dozens of phone calls, hundreds of messages, and constant pressure for this to happen.

We spoke with several personnel at various companies and they asked why we were so adamant about 12GB compatibility and performance (6GB operation was not much better at first) as one example. The typical response was not that many people will actually use 12GB and we tuned our board for high overclocks with 3GB, this is what the enthusiast wants. Our simple answer was and continues to be, "If you advertise the feature, we expect it to work correctly." This particular problem highlighted one area that seems to drive the current high-end market.

Catering or focusing exclusively to the extreme overclocking community has resulted in initial product launches that are focused on getting the highest possible results from a product at the expense of usability, compatibility, and stability. The quest to release quickly and have the top motherboard in the forums, or HWBot/FutureMark rankings has blinded some of the product teams to the more important issue of ensuring their product actually works as advertised. We enjoy seeing these records as much as anyone else and I am guilty of scouring the Internet everyday to see what record has been broken and more importantly, how it was done.

Overclocking is interesting to most of us and its importance in improving the quality of electrical components and design aspects on the motherboards cannot be overstated. However, we need balance in this area again. Simply, we need to get the basic features and options working right at product launch and then the BIOS engineers can have free reign in tuning the boards to reach their limits.

One of the technical marketing personnel at a particular board supplier kept pressing me on how well does the board overclock. They also wanted to know about 3GB memory performance at DDR3-2000+ and my SuperPI scores. I kept responding with a laundry list of items that needed to be fixed before I would even worry about overclocking. His responses continued to be, those problems are minor and we will get to them, what we need to know is if our board overclocks and performs better than the competition.

I thought the fact that 12GB would not POST correctly at DDR3-1333 or higher, storage controllers were on the fritz, and power management was not even working was more than minor, but it just accentuated the thought processes that we encounter on a daily basis now. The current situation is not acceptable in our book but we would like to hear your opinions on this subject. After receiving three new BIOS releases this morning to address performance improvements and not usability concerns, I just have to repeat Serenity Now, Serenity Now....

That said, let's take a look at the EVGA X58 SLI, Gigabyte GA-EX58-UD5, MSI Eclipse, and ASUS P6T-Deluxe motherboards today.

Canon 50D: 15.1 Megapixels, ISO 12800, & 6.3 fps

CANON U.S.A. HAS ANNOUNCED THE INTRODUCTION OF THE CANON 50D. The replacement for the prosumer 40D, with a 15.1 Megapixel APS-C size sensor and a 1.6x lens multiplier, will begin shipping in October at a street price of $1399. Below is the Canon Press Announcement with details of the new 50D. We will be posting a review of the 50D when we can get our hands on a production sample, most likely in October.

Canon’s New DIGIC 4 Image Processor Fuels the 15.1 Megapixel Resolution, Expanded ISO Range and Enhanced Noise Reduction of the New EOS 50D Digital SLR

LAKE SUCCESS, N.Y., August 26, 2008 – With the demand for digital SLR cameras reaching unprecedented levels, Canon U.S.A., Inc., a leader in digital imaging, is answering the call with the announcement of the next evolution in advanced amateur digital SLR photography, the EOS 50D Digital SLR Camera with 15.1 megapixel resolution and Canon’s new DIGIC 4 image processor. Designed to offer extraordinary quality and image control for the advanced photographer with a passion for the art, the Canon EOS 50D Digital SLR camera includes an expanded ISO range, improved noise reduction, and in-camera photo editing features. Canon has loaded the EOS 50D camera with a number of enhancements and some trickle-down technology from Canon’s professional Digital SLR cameras, as well as a new Creative Auto Mode (CA) that gives users more creative flexibility to make image setting adjustments conveniently without the need to be a photo expert.

Canon has built upon the success of the popular EOS 40D model – which will remain in Canon’s line – with the EOS 50D Digital SLR camera. Expected to be the camera body of choice for advanced amateur photographers this holiday season, the Canon EOS 50D Digital SLR camera carries over the EOS 40D’s 14-bit Analog-to-Digital conversion process for smooth tones, and also includes enhanced noise reduction, especially at higher ISO ranges which will help bring those romantic nighttime shots into greater focus and clarity. Capable of shooting 6.3 frames per second (fps), the EOS 50D Digital SLR camera is ideal for shooting everything from beautiful night landscapes to fast-action sports.

“Advanced amateur photographers blur the line between the hobbyist and the professional, looking for professional features and capabilities in their equipment that will allow them to capture that awe-inspiring image. Canon is constantly striving to provide these shooters with the most advanced imaging technology, like the new EOS 50D Digital SLR camera, to fuel their passion for photography, and help them achieve their creative potential,” stated Yuichi Ishizuka, senior vice president and general manager, Consumer Imaging Group, Canon U.S.A.

Improved Image Quality

The EOS 50D Digital SLR camera’s 15.1-megapixel CMOS APS-C size image sensor has been improved thanks to the use of newly designed gapless microlenses over each pixel to reduce noise and expand sensitivity up to ISO 12800. The faster processing speed of the camera’s DIGIC 4 image processor contributes to the fast 6.3 frame-per-second (fps) continuous shooting capability (for bursts of up to 90 Large/Fine JPEGs or 16 RAW images on a UDMA CF card), to give shooters the tools they need to capture that perfect moment in perfect clarity.

The Canon EOS 50D camera provides ISO speeds from ISO 100 up to ISO 3200 in 1/3-stop increments, along with two high-speed settings – H1 and H2 – of ISO 6400 and ISO 12800, respectively. Along with a wide ISO range, Canon gives shooters more tools to help maximize clarity and color. The EOS 50D Digital SLR camera offers multiple levels of noise reduction during high-speed shooting. Users can choose from one of four settings– Standard/Weak/Strong/None – to help reduce digital noise that can result from poor lighting conditions.

As part of the camera’s internal image processing, the Canon EOS 50D Digital SLR camera conducts peripheral illumination correction, which automatically evens brightness across the image field, making an image of a blue sky even toned throughout, a function previously accomplished through post-processing software on a personal computer. Thanks largely to the DIGIC 4 processor, this automatic adjustment can be made in-camera during shooting with JPEG images or corrected in post-photoshoot processing with RAW images through Canon’s Digital Photo Professional (DPP) software, which is supplied at no extra charge.

Helping to ensure each picture’s subject is clearly visible, Canon’s enhanced Auto Lighting Optimizer analyzes the brightness of subjects and automatically adjusts dark images so that they appear brighter, perfect for subjects in shade or in backlit situations. The Auto Lighting Optimizer on the EOS 50D Digital SLR camera has been updated not only to optimize images while they are being taken, but can also optimize images post-capture, during playback, to help ensure the subject of each image does not appear too dark. This is especially helpful when an amateur photographer uses the camera, because post-capture enhancement can help maximize image quality without the need of a computer.

A significant upgrade to the Canon EOS 50D camera is its large, clear 3.0-inch Clear View LCD screen which features 920,000 dot/VGA resolution, four times the pixel count of the EOS 40D camera’s screen, for better clarity and color. To help show off those fantastic shots, the EOS 50D camera includes an HDMI (High-Definition Multimedia Interface) output to display crisp, clear images on a High-Definition TV. The EOS 50D recognizes the needs of today’s photographers, and the faster processing speed of the DIGIC 4 processor helps support UDMA cards for faster writing of image files.

The camera is also equipped with a high-performance viewfinder featuring 0.95x magnification and the same high-performance Autofocus (AF) system as the EOS 40D camera with nine cross-type sensors for accurate target subject acquisition with lenses possessing maximum apertures of f/5.6 or faster and a high-precision diagonal center cross-type AF point that’s effective with f/2.8 and faster lenses, helping photographers ensure better focus of their targets. The AF Microadjustment feature, originally introduced last year with the Canon EOS-1D Mark III professional digital SLR camera, has also been added to the EOS 50D for maximum control over focusing precision.

Canon Gets Creative For Advancing Amateurs

Canon is taking steps to give advanced amateurs more flexibility with a new “CA” Creative Full Auto setting on the EOS 50D Digital SLR camera’s mode dial. This new setting goes a step beyond Full Auto, by allowing users to make adjustments before shooting while still in an Automatic mode, without needing to know the meaning of technical terms such as aperture, shutter speed, etc. In this mode, the camera menu on the back screen spells out options in common language for average photo enthusiasts, allowing them to “blur the background” or “lighten or darken the image.” These easy-to-comprehend image options will help amateur photographers improve the shots they are capable of taking, while helping them learn new techniques. When in the new CA mode, users will be able to adjust flash settings, brighten or darken images, blur the background, set the camera’s drive mode, and select a picture style directly on the camera’s LCD screen.

Better Live View

For photographers who prefer to frame their shots using the camera’s 3.0-inch Clear View LCD screen, Canon has improved the Live View function of the EOS 50D Digital SLR camera to include “Quick Mode AF,” “Live Mode AF,” and “Face Detection Live Mode AF” that detects up to 35 individual forward-looking faces for better focus and clarity when taking group or portrait shots. The camera’s Quick Mode AF setting flips the mirror down and carries out regular phase-detection autofocus, while the Live Mode AF and Face Detection Live Mode AF use the camera’s CMOS image sensor for contrast detection autofocus. Two detailed grid displays have also been added to Live View shooting as optional settings for easier composition.

Two Small RAW Formats

In addition to the RAW and JPEG image capture modes that photographers are accustomed to, the EOS 50D Digital SLR camera now offers more manageable resolution settings and file sizes with two sRAW recording formats, sRAW1 and sRAW2. At the sRAW1 setting, resolution is 7.1 megapixels with a file size that is approximately 25 percent smaller than a standard 15.1 megapixel RAW image. With the sRAW2 setting, resolution is 3.8 megapixels at less than half the file size of a standard RAW image, retaining all of the flexibility and creative possibilities associated with full-size, conventional RAW images. The EOS 50D is the first Canon Digital SLR that allows the use of RAW and sRAW settings in Basic Zone as well as Creative Zone shooting modes, even further improving the camera’s flexibility.

EOS Integrated Cleaning System

The Self-Cleaning Sensor Unit for the Canon EOS 50D has also been upgraded and now includes a fluorine coating on the low-pass filter for better dust resistance. The Self-Cleaning Sensor Unit uses ultrasonic vibrations to shake dust particles off of the low-pass filter in front of the sensor each time the camera is powered up or shut down. The second part of the system includes a software component where sensor spots are mapped and saved as Dust Delete Data that is attached to the image file for removal during post processing using Canon’s DPP software.

Pricing and Availability

The EOS 50D is compatible with the full lineup of Canon EF lenses as well as the Company’s ever-growing line of affordable EF-S lenses created specifically for Canon Digital SLRs with APS-C size image sensors. The Canon EOS 50D Digital SLR camera is scheduled for October delivery and will be sold in a body-only configuration at an estimated selling price of $1,399.00*. It will additionally be offered in a kit version with Canon’s EF 28-135mm f/3.5-5.6 IS USM zoom lens at an estimated selling price of $1,599.00*.

New EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS Lens

Canon has answered the call from advanced amateur photographers looking for a solid all-around lens with the introduction of the new EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS zoom lens. With an incredible focal length range equivalent to 29-320mm in the 35mm format, the new EF-S 18-200mm lens will make an excellent addition to any camera bag, and it gives shooters a great lens to capture both standard as well as telephoto images. The new lens features Canon’s built in Optical Image Stabilization system which gives the equivalent effect of a shutter speed roughly 4 steps faster, for better image clarity, even in shaky shooting conditions. With a minimum focusing distance of 0.45m/1.5 ft. at all zoom settings, this new lens should prove to be ideal for those situations where swapping lenses isn’t an option. An ideal complement to the EOS 50D SLR camera and all other EF-S compatible EOS SLR cameras, the EF-S 18-200mm f/3.5-5.6 IS lens is scheduled to be in stores this October at an estimated selling price of $699.00.

A Month with a Mac: A Die-Hard PC User's Perspective

This is, quite possibly, one of the most difficult articles to write; for starters, it's not a review of hardware, and it's not actually a review of anything concrete - it is a review of an experience. We all go about using our computers knowing that if we don't like something about them, if they are too slow or too unreliable or don't do something we need them to do, then we can upgrade them, or we can swap out the faulty part and put in a new one. Now, it costs us money (sometimes lots of it), but it is possible. But much like the U.S. election system, although there may be the illusion of multiple options for your OS, in reality, there is really only one. If you want any sort of software compatibility, driver support and don't want to be made fun of, Windows is the way to go. There have been righteous attempts by smaller OSes to gain traction, and some of them have (e.g. Linux), but for the most part, we're dealing with a one-party OS system. Now that's not necessarily a bad thing; quite contrary, in fact. I believe that Windows XP is the best thing to ever come out of Redmond and I have very few issues with the OS. I actually liked the XP theme when it first came out and I've been happier with Windows XP than any previous Microsoft OS (except maybe the good ol' DOS days). When installed on the right hardware with the right drivers (and with an eye to be wary of poorly written apps), I found that Windows XP was just as stable as any other OS that I'd ever encountered. My personal machine would go months between reboots without a single problem. It's not that there is anything wrong with Windows; it's that if you want the option, if there's any particular thing that you don't like about the way Windows works, you're straight out of luck.

I think that a bit of me was feeling, after being a strictly Windows user ever since version 2.0 (with the requisite mix of DOS back then), that there were a couple of things that had started to annoy me about Windows, which I would rather do without.

For starters, heavy multi-tasking management under Windows had caused me a lot of grief. Maybe it's just because of the nature of my work, but I tend to have a lot of windows open at any given time. I like quick access to the information that I need when I'm working and much like a messy desk, there is a method to my window-madness that only I know. When writing an article (especially big NDA launches), I'd have around 20 IE windows open, Outlook with another 5 - 15 emails, Power Point with NDA presentations, Word with my article, maybe Dreamweaver if I was starting to put it into HTML, not to mention Acrobat, some sort of MP3 player, Trillian and a bunch of explorer windows as well. After a certain point, the cramped taskbar became difficult to use as a locator tool, and while I could ALT+TAB forever, I just felt like I was idle for too long. I knew what it was that I needed to get to, and I knew I had it open, but the process of getting to it was a pain.

The other issue was with the way Windows handled having so many windows opened; after a certain number of windows were opened, stability and performance both went down the drain. Sometimes applications could no longer spawn additional windows or dialog boxes, requiring me to close a handful before I could continue doing anything, and other times, applications would simply crash.

It's not that I was dissatisfied with Windows and the PC experience in general, but I thought it might be time for something new - to see what else was out there.

I've always been a fan of trying alternate Oses - I was even an OS/2 user (both 2.0 and Warp) for a little while in my early years. So, a while back, I conjured up this idea to try using a Mac for a month. At first, it started as just a personal experiment, but it later developed into the foundation for the article that you're reading now. After doing the necessary research to make sure that I could actually get work done on a Mac, I whipped out the trusty credit card and decided to give the experiment a try.

What you are about to read are my impressions, as a devout PC user, of the Apple way of life.

Intel Announces Intent to Manufacture Atom SoCs at TSMC

Every now and then I get one of those emails that makes time stop for a moment or two. The earth-stopping gasp happened on Friday when I got an email from Intel inviting me to a briefing hosted jointly by Intel and TSMC.

For those of you who don’t know TSMC (Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company Ltd.), it’s the manufacturing and design house out of Taiwan that is used most famously in our industry by AMD and NVIDIA for the manufacturing of everything from GPUs to chipsets.

And now Intel is making a collaboration announcement between itself and TSMC.

The first thing that came to mind was Larrabee, Intel’s upcoming GPU, since that’s what we usually talk about being made at TSMC. Such thoughts are a bit ill conceived as one of Larrabee’s strengths is that it will be made at Intel’s fabs; any collaboration with TSMC would have to be about a very low cost, low performance device. In other words: Atom.

Today Intel announced that it and TSMC have agreed to a “memorandum of understanding (MOU) to collaborate on addressing technology platform, intellectual property (IP) infrastructure, and System-on-Chip (SoC) solutions.” We’re clearly early on in the process, Intel isn’t announcing any products or mentioning any shipping time frames; it’s just saying that in the future, some Intel products may be manufactured at TSMC.

The next line of the press release specifies which products: “Under the MOU, Intel would port its Atom processor CPU cores to the TSMC technology platform including processes, IP, libraries, and design flows. The collaboration is intended to expand Intel’s Atom SoCs availability for Intel customers for a wider range of applications through integration with TSMC’s diverse IP infrastructure.”

This isn’t about Larrabee, Core i7, Core 2 or anything else. Certain Atom based SoCs will be made at TSMC at some point in the future. This is huge simply because Intel is, first and foremost, a manufacturing company - the biggest in its industry. Its fabs have been a tremendous leg up on the competition; products made at TSMC would effectively lose that advantage. But does the move make sense?

The Specifics of the Announcement

Before we get to the why, let’s understand the what. Currently the Atom processor is no different than any other Intel CPU, it’s just a lot smaller and a lot cheaper. By the end of this year Intel should release Moorestown, a System-on-Chip (SoC) version that uses the Atom processor core and surrounds it with graphics, memory controller and video encode/decode engines:

Future versions of Atom will also continue to be SoC solutions. These are the processors that fall under the umbrella of today’s announcement.

Some, but not all, of these Atom based SoCs will be manufactured at TSMC. It’s important to note that Intel will continue to make Atom and Atom SoCs at its own fabs. However, to target specific markets, Intel will manufacture some designs at TSMC.

Intel was careful to stress that this move would extend the reach of Atom and not simply shift manufacturing capacity from Intel to TSMC. In Intel’s eyes, by leveraging TSMC’s capacity and IP (more on that later) Atom SoCs can be used in more designs by more OEMs

CES 2007 Part I: Convergence Happened and the Most Impressive Demo of CES

For years companies like Intel and Microsoft have been talking of this impending convergence of PC and Consumer Electronics (CE) devices. In the past couple of years we have finally seen this convergence come to fruition, through a slew of devices that basically let you move or display content stored on your PC, on CE appliances. While most manufacturers have tried, very few have “gotten it right” when it comes to convergence devices. The end goal is simple: access to everything, everywhere on any device. Making it happen however is far more difficult, as creating the devices that will facilitate this goal is like one giant game of process of elimination.

Most of this year’s CES has been about poor attempts at convergence, with a handful of things that were worth while. Despite very high expected attendance, the show wasn’t nearly as crowded as last year. It still ends up taking 30 - 40 minutes to get a cab during the day, but we had no problems navigating the show floor and surrounding hotels. Whereas in previous years we’d waste a significant amount of time wading through hordes of people, there’s actually breathing room this year.

Whether it’s that the show is simply far more spread out this year, among two convention centers and many hotel suites, or attendance is simply down due to a lack of interest, we were here in full force in search of something interesting. This year’s CES marked the end of an era of talking about convergence, and the beginning of the introduction of many convergence products. While we’ve yet to see anyone with the vision to bring us the convergence world’s iPod (although Apple’s iPhone announced at Macworld looks like it may redefine another sector), that didn’t stop us from finding individual technologies that were worth a look.

As with most trade shows, the vast majority of what we saw on the floor was poorly designed and/or executed. What follows are some of our answers to the question we always get: “what was the most exciting thing you saw at the show?”

The DualHead2Go: External Multi-Display Upgrade from Matrox.

Intro

The name, Matrox, conjures up some memories of older times in computer graphics, and we haven't heard from them in quite a long time. Matrox was a pioneer of PC gaming technology and they were known for the quality of their parts. One of the things that they were first to achieve in PC gaming was support for multiple monitors. They developed dual and triple head support on their graphics parts, and due to its success, other companies at the time also incorporated multi-head support on their hardware as well, making it a standard.

Recently though, Matrox has released a piece of equipment that is made only for running multiple displays as a stand-alone peripheral. While Matrox seems confident that there is a place on the market for a device like this, we have to wonder who might truly benefit from this. Dual monitor support is essentially a standard feature on any desktop graphics card at present, but admittedly, it is lacking for laptops and some older desktop hardware. Matrox's answer to this dilemma is the DualHead2Go, an "External Multi-Display Upgrade for Laptop and PC".

The DualHead2Go is targeted at laptops and older desktop systems that only have a single analog video output. Because most desktop graphics parts newer than a few years ago already have dual monitor support, it seems that those who stand to benefit most from this device are laptop users. This is especially true for business people who do a lot of presentations or work with many windows open at once and need extra desktop space.

We will look more closely at the DualHead2Go in the next section, and we'll talk a bit more about the hardware and software of this peripheral as well. The suggested retail price of the DualHead2Go is listed at $169, and that seems a little high to us, but before we pass judgment, let’s see what it can actually do.