Somebody must trust DFI's reliability & performance record thus far... enough to use their boards in industrial applications... Check out this DigiTimes interview with their CEO & president.

"Second-tier motherboard maker DFI anticipates its industrial-use ACP (applied computing platform) motherboards will drive its overall shipments for 2005. DigiTimes recently interviewed the company’s chairman, YC Lu and his brother Lu Yen-chi, president of DFI, to talk about the company’s new focus on ACP motherboards and other high-end motherboard segments."

Nero's where my money's at as far as any disc writing software's concerned. The fact that they've already got the Blu-Ray stuff nailed down certainly doesn't surprise me.

"Nero, leaders in digital media technology, will demonstrate their award-winning optical recording software’s CD/DVD/blue laser burning capabilities at the Blu-ray Disc (BD) Association member Seminar April 26 & 27 in San Jose. Members of the Blu-Ray Disc Association and Contributors will display and demonstrate BD and BD-related products and technology at the seminar."

I'll most definitely be reading this article later. I'm in the market for an upgrade, & I'm pretty sure I know which mobo I want, but more background info can't hurt...

"NVIDIA's nForce4 platform was the first PCI Express chipset to be widely available for the Athlon 64, but VIA's K8T890 and ATI's Radeon Xpress 200 weren't far behind. SiS recently joined the fray with the SiS756, and even ULi managed to work its way into the mix with its M1573 south bridge companion for ATI's Radeon Xpress 200 north bridge."

The DT crew's got coverage of Mitsubishi's 2005 product line show, from sunny Orlando, Florida. I certainly wouldn't mind a new Mitsubishi HDTV...

"Mitsubishi held their annual line show in Orlando, Florida this year on April 8, 2005, introducing thirteen all-new Digital Cable Ready (DCR) HDTV models. Mitsubishi has always been 'The Big TV Company,' and it now has a new logo this year, signaling that the company and its products are 'A Cut Above' other brands."

Apple's beefing up their G5 line. Certainly something that they needed to do, but it remains to be seen whether it'll make their hardware competitive with similarly priced PC hardware... These new offerings will come loaded with Apples new Tiger OS.

"The new Power Mac G5 systems have a 128-bit memory architecture, up to 8GB of 400MHz DDR SDRAM and graphics card support of up to 256MB of video memory, the company said. The G5 line has featured 64-bit processors for about two years."

Power

Antec Phantom 350 Watt Silent Fanless @ 3DGameMan

COOLMAX PS-101 ATX Power Supply Tester @ ExtensionTech

Etc.

X-Ray Technology X-Ray (Mouse) Pads @ BigBruin

Funny stuff over at the Inq-well. Great laugh to start the morning.

"In a survey of 1,000 adults, it concluded that workers distracted by phone calls, emails and text messages suffer a greater loss of IQ than that of the puff brigade."

LinuxPlanet has posted a preview of FC4 based on a look at what FC4 Test 2 is bringing to the table. My favorite quote:

"Frankly, the thing that torques me off most about this is the fact that I was a Red Hat user and advocate for years, holding up a dented little shield labeled "end-user support" and "winning over the desktop" whenever I was verbally abused by my Debian, Slackware, and other Linux friends who preferred to build their own Linux distributions and kill their own food."

Sassy Sander Sassen has written up a quick look at the decision of whether or not to go for WinXP64, & the upgrade program that MS has setup to facilitate the process.

"Microsoft is about to release Windows XP 64-bit and has put into place an upgrade program for current Windows XP users, should you take the plunge or not? We weigh he pros and the cons and evaluate the upgrade program."

Nobody wants to buy 'em? Let's give 'em away! Heh. All you've got to do is answer three multiple choice questions about the product.

"1st prize - XGI 128MB Volari V3XT AGP Card, Mug, & Laser Pen 2nd prize - XGI Mug & Laser Pen 3rd prize - XGI Laser Pen"

Secunia's found an exploit in Netscape that doesn't currently have a fix yet.

" The vulnerability is 'highly critical,' according to an advisory released by the Danish company late Tuesday. Version 6.2.3 and 7.2 of Netscape are affected and other versions may also be susceptible, the company said."

Motherboards

ABIT AX8 VIA K8T890 @ Hexus

Power

FSP ZEN (Fanless) 300W @ Techniz

Rexus SPX500 500W @ BigBruin

Antec TruePower 2.0 480W Blue

Seems that using bacteria instead of the usual fermentation process in current fuel cells yields more hydrogen...

"The MFC (Microbial Fuel Cell) can produce more hydrogen than normal because byproducts of the fermentation reaction can yield additional hydrogen. Typically in fermentation, bacteria consume carbohydrates and release hydrogen and "dead end" fermentation products like acetic acid that the bacteria can't break down."

The CoolTechZone crew philosophizes on the current state of game developer / graphics card manufacturer relationships.

"To break down my buying decision, I would probably consider the card’s features, the novel (and pointless in certain cases) concept of future proofing, price and performance in games that I want to play. Everything sounds so clear-cut, doesn’t it? I hate to be the one to break the news to you, but picking a graphics card is not an easy task these days. I can probably list a few reasons as to why my thinking runs that way, but chances are you are already aware of them."

I can't believe the guy's actually doing it... Wonder if he'll make it to the end, or if he'll be cheating....? Swimming a few miles, then climbing onto a boat to warm up & eat, etc, isn't what most people have in mind when thinking about "swimming across the Atlantic." Either way, I'm sure there'll be some weak docu-drama produced eventually... ugh.