Since blu-ray has officially been declared the winner of the HD disc format war, I have been looking into purchasing a blu-ray reader/writer drive for my Home Theater PC (HTPC) so that I might be able to enjoy 1080p movies at home without paying the premium for a standalone blu-ray player. If you already have an HTPC, the cost difference is actually quite worth looking into, as the combination of drive plus software will only run approximately $250 at the time of this writing.

In the end, will this deter blu-ray from becoming the next optical drive of choice? I doubt it. There's always a market for higher capacity optical drives that can be used to easily transfer large amounts of data, and DVDs have already reached their capacity. Mass delivery of HD, and indeed all television, does look to be going the way of on-demand, and the "format war" may have just made that transition that much easier.

750 megs on a single strand. This stuff just blows my mind. Bam. See, there it went.

"Since we only need three percent of DNA there is plenty of room to encode information in a genome, allowing the information to be preserved and replicated in perpetuity."

Luke's right: I skipped through to the ~2/3 mark. Her " announcement's" at 2:50, though, if you really wanna just watch that part over & over again (I'm not saying I didn't).

"Well, we haven't heard squat from Doug, but hey, your word's just as good!"

My first thought after just reading the headline for this article was a simple, "yes." Convince me otherwise.

"StopBadware.org, a non-profit group funded by Google, Sun Microsystems and Lenovo and managed by Harvard Law School's Berkman Center for Internet & Society and Oxford University's Oxford Internet Institute, takes exception to the Message Center feature in RealPlayer 10.5 and the installation routine when RealPlayer 11 is loaded on a computer."

Now that the 9600GT reviews have us satisfied that the GeForce8 series is very near to relegation, the question is, what about the rest of the 9-series? Well, DigiTimes are reporting that there will be six more GeForce 9 SKUs, launching beginning next month all the way through the summer. But how will the 9800-series cards perform? My guess? Faster. You heard it here first, folks.

"At the top-end of the 9-series cards will sit the dual-GPU GeForce 9800 GX2 which will launch on March 11 this year. This will be followed by the GeForce 9800 GTX and 9800 GT between the end of March and beginning of April. For the mid-range Nvidia will offer the GeForce 9600 GS in May, according the sources. In June, the company will launch the value-level GeForce 9500 GT based on the G96 graphics core with a reduced 128-bit memory interface. To complete the series, the GeForce 9500 GS will launch in July."

Video Cards

ZOTAC GeForce 9600 GT AMP! Edition @ Hexus

RAM

Kingston HyperX DDR3-1375 2GB @ ThinkComputers

Cellphones

Backup-Pal Cell Phone Contacts Backup Device @ TechwareLabs

Samsung Juke @ DigitalTrends

Storage

QNAP TS-109 Pro SATA Gigabit NAS @ BenchmarkReviews

A-DATA Classic C701 2 GB USB Flash Drive @ techPowerUp

Software

ATI Catalyst 8.2 Analysis - XP & Vista @ TweakTown

Call of Duty 4: Modern Warfare @ BonaFideReviews

Cases

Silverstone Kublai KL03 Tower @ Pro-Clockers

Gigabyte Poseidon 310 @ 3DGameMan   Cooler Master Cosmos S @ OCIA

Thermaltake Mozart TX Cube Tower @ HardwareLogic

Cooling

Noctua NH-U12P CPU Cooler @ APHNetworks

Noctua NT-H1 heat paste @ XtremeComputing

Etc.

Rosewill RX81-MP 3.5" e-SATA Enclosure @Virtual-Hideout

TRENDnet TEW-633GR Wireless N Gigabit Router @ TechGage

It's GeForce 9 time already? Well, mid-range GeForce 9, anyhow. nVidia has officially taken the wraps off of the 9600GT, & the reviews are starting to hit the web. I'll post 'em as I find 'em.

TweakTown (Zotac)
techPowerUp (Zotac)
HotHardware (ASUS, eVGA, Palit)
ChileHardware (Palit - Spanish)
LegitReviews (eVGA, Palit, XFX)
the [H] (BFG)
Guru3D (BFG, ECS, eVGA, Galaxy, nVidia reference, Point of View)
PCPerspective (BFG)
Anandtech (eVGA)

THG's posting a CPU cooler roundup so big that they've broken it into three different parts. They test 80 different coolers from 30 different companies on a QX6850, so your potential choice for cooling is most likely covered in this one. Part one has been posted today.

"Keep cool! That's what CPU coolers are there for. 45% of our candidates fail our test. We uncover weaknesses and expose false promises."

Motherboards

ECS A770M-A (V1.0) AMD 770 @ Bigbruin

Foxconn Mars @ InsideHW

RAM

Corsair Dominator TWIN3X2048-1800C7DFIN G Kit @ HotHardware

Aeneon XTUNE DDR3-1333 2GB @ OCIA

Audio

eDimensional AudioFX Pro 5+1 Headset @ OverclockersOnline

TRITTON AX51 5.1 Headphones @ Motherboards.org

Super Talent Vidego28 MP4 Player @ hi-techreviews

Storage

Buffalo LinkStation EZ 500GB Network-Attached Storage Device @ ThinkComputers

A-DATA Sport S702 2 GB USB Flash Drive @ techPowerUp

Seagate 750GB Recertified Hard Drive @ Madshrimps

Power

SilverStone 400 watt ST40EF @ HardwareLogic

Sigma Shark 635W @ ThinkComputers

Cooling

Zalman ZM-NC2000 Notebook Cooler @ techPowerUp

Gigabyte Cyclops @ XSReviews

Noctua NH-U12P CPU Heatsink @ Madshrimps

Etc.

Soyo Topaz S 24" LCD Monitor @ ASE Labs

Canon EOS 40D @ DigitalTrends  NBA Realtime Fantasy @ Gamepyre

The rumor mill is back to churning at full speed again. EETimes is going with the old standby of nVidia acquiring AMD, placing Jen-Hsun Huang at the helm. They're basing the story around AMD's shareholders getting antsy & demanding a change in leadership. They don't leave IBM out of the story, though, either.

eWeek is covering the same analyst report, but they're speculating whether AMD is actually for sale at all. They raise the question of possible issues with AMD's upcoming Puma platform, & also get in on a lil' nVidia/IBM acquistion action.

Both of these rumors have been going around for months now, & I believe the only reason they're being brought up again is because of the new rumor that AMD's Puma may also be in trouble. However, as is covered in the eWeek article, AMD is doing the reassurance song-and-dance. Hopefully it'll bear out...

Notebooks

ASUS U6S Ultraportable @ HotHardware

CPUs

AMD Phenom 9600 Black Edition @ TechwareLabs

Video Cards

Sapphire HD 3850 1024 MB @ techPowerUp

Motherboards

Foxconn G33M-S Micro-ATX @ Virtual-Hideout

HIS HD 3450 & 3650 @ 3DGameMan

Power

SilverStone Decathlon DA800 800W @ ThinkComputers

Corsair TX750W 750W @ TweakTown

Cases

Lian Li Lancool Metal Boned K10 @ HardwareSecrets

Apevia G-Junior Type X-Telstar @ XSReviews  ThermalTake SopranoRS 101 @ ASE Labs

Etc.

Kingston DataTraveler HyperX 8GB USB Flash Drive @ LegitReviews

TRENDnet TEW-631BRP Wireless N Router @ TechGage

Klipsch Image Earbuds @ DigitalTrends  Super Talent Vidego28 @ OCIA

AMD Catalyst 8.02 Linux Driver @ Phoronix

Now the only question is whether or not Will Wright will stick to the announced date. I could see Spore garnishing a shiny GotY award...

"Finally revealed through a special trailer on the official Spore website is official release date of Maxis’ latest innovation."