CPUs

Intel QX9650 Core 2 Extreme @ HardwareLogic

Video Cards

Diamond Radeon HD 3850 512MB Ruby Edition @ Legit Reviews

Motherobards

MSI X48 Platinum @ TweakTown

RAM

Super Talent Project X 2x1GB PC3-14400 @ OverclockersOnline

SimpleTech PC3-10600 DDR3 1333MHz S1024R5NP2QA @ BenchmarkReviews

Storage

Seagate FreeAgent Pro 160GB @ DigitalTrends

Lexar 8GB ExpressCard SSD @ XtremeComputing

Games

Dance Dance Revolution - Wii @ Futurelooks

I SPY Fun House - Nintendo DS @ Hexus

Power

B-Gear/B-Tarantula 550W @ hi-techreviews

PC Power & Cooling Silencer Quad 750W @ OCIA

Thermaltake Toughpower Q-Fan W0163RU 650W @ Tweaknews

Sanyo Denki A11H Online UPS @ techPowerUp

Cases

BGear b-Envi SFF with Touch Sensitive Controls @ Pro-Clockers

Thermaltake Xaser VI VG4000BNS @ HardwareXL

Etc.

Westone UM1 Earphones @ techPowerUp

Thermaltake BigWater 760i @ TechGage

Speedlink Styx @ XSReviews

It seems that HTC's not including driver support for some of its models using AMD Imageon chips, & owners aren't too pleased about it. Seems like it should be a simple enough fix, so hopefully this won't go all the way to legal action...

"The website states that the MSM7200 chipset has an integrated video core based on an AMD Imageon video chip but that the graphics acceleration this provides hasn't been enabled on HTC's handsets. According to the site, that's because HTC isn't including appropriate driver software."

Yikes. This one certainly sounds scary. It apparently doesn't affect Excel 2007, so it pays to be an early adopter in this case. Just rely on the old adage: never open attachments from email addresses you don't know.

"If a rigged .xls document is launched, the exploit happens silently in the background, infecting the machine with a Trojan downloader that opens a backdoor and waits for instructions from a server controlled by the attacker."

The techARP gang are picking apart the new Crysis 1.1 patch, & put together a few benchmarks on varying resolutions from pre- & post-patch to illustrate the utter lack of differences.

"They should take a leaf out of 2K Games' book. Look at how well they did BioShock. It had amazing graphics, as beautiful as Crysis, we dare say; and yet, BioShock didn't require the kind of crazy hardware that Crysis needed just to run at all."

What happens when you isolate one of Phenom's cores, & one of Athlon's cores, then overclock each of 'em? THG asked this very question, in order to see how the Agena core scaled in comparison to the venerable Windsor core. Keep in mind that situations like this will likely never happen in real-life, but it's an interesting comparison; and one in which the Windsor came out on top more often than not...

"In other words: Will clock speed increases translate into higher performance gains than just similar clock speed increases with an Athlon 64 X2?"

The LegitReviews crew have published a look at three of the current 8800GTS 512MB offerings available. Albatron, eVGA, & XFX each have a card in this showdown.

"The core and shader clocks were just shy of what the EVGA card could do, but the memory IC's saved the day and was able to go 77MHz higher than the EVGA card. Our Lightsmark 2007 score went from 308.5 FPS to 352.0 FPS, which is a 14% improvement as a result of the great overclock."

Motherboards

Intel D201GLY2 ITX @ ASE Labs

Foxconn X38A @ LegitReviews

Cooling

Noctua NT-H1 Thermal Compound @ techPowerUp

Noctua NF-P12 120mm Fan @ OverclockersOnline

Etc.

GMC Noblesse AVC-S7 Slimline HTPC Case @ OCModShop

Air Touch Flexible Keyboard @ OCIA

My only question is: will expansion to 5.12Tbps really be enough? Who's to say...

"The cable is being laid by a consortium of telecommunications companies that includes Verizon Business, China Telecom, China Netcom, Korea Telecom and Chunghwa Telecom. The first section of cable was placed on the sea floor near the Korean coast on September 21, 2007 and 55 kilometers of TPE cable were laid off the US West Coast in late November."

I find the last bit of this article the most interesting. If Oracle finds this many flaws per quarter, & actually delays the releases so that they can get all of the updates out in four packages per year, is it really all that much to ask for customers to keep their systems updated? Downtime, sure, but think of the alternative...

"A survey of 305 DBAs, consultants and others by database security company Sentrigo found that just 31 people, or roughly 10 percent of those surveyed, had deployed the most recent set of CPUs (critical patch updates) from Oracle. About two-thirds said they had never applied a critical update from Oracle."

I guess there's no need for Intel to rush the 9770 out the door when AMD's faltering as badly as it is right now.

"The QX9770 will be Intel's last high-end desktop CPU to support FSB technology before Intel's first Nehalem-microarchitecture CPU, Bloomfield, based on QPI (quick path interconnect) technology is launched in the fourth quarter, the sources noted."

It's a rumor, but an interesting one. I've personally used Plaxo for years to sync all my calendar & address book info, & aside from a few glitches, it's been a very useful tool. I'm not quite sure how a deal like this would work out. I guess I'm cautiously curious for now.

"Some have said Plaxo is looking for a price of $100 million and others that it has received an unsolicited offer of $200 million. Facebook, meanwhile could stand to gain a lot through Plaxo, as separate, inside sources have pointed out to me."

Motherboards

ASRock 4Core1600P35-WiFi+ @ Phoronix

Foxconn X38A Digital Life @ TweakTown

Audio

Westone UM2 Earphones @ techPowerUp

Paradigm Monitor 7 and UltraCube 10 @ DigitalTrends

Cases

Thermaltake Xaser VI @ 3DGameMan

Aerocool M-40 Small Form Factor @ Pro-Clockers

Sigma Luna Type-W @ HardwareLogic

Etc.

Thermalright HR-05/IFX @ XSReviews

XGene Trackball Keyboard @ Motherboards.org

Razer Destructor: Gaming Mouse Pad @ TechwareLabs

Hiper HPU-5K880 and HPU-5B680 Type R Mk II PSU's @ BenchmarkReviews

Patriot X-Porter XT Boost 32GB USB Pen Drive @ XtremeComputing

Kingwin Z1 Series External Enclosure @ 3DGameMan

ESPN's going to expand their gaming coverage. Great, but where are the PC games? It looks like GameBattles has a respectable handful of PC games in their coverage, and GameBattles is technically under the MLG umbrella, right? I just hope some of the PC games actually make it to the ESPN coverage...

"With ESPN's marketing muscle and proven sports coverage formula, maybe MLG has a chance to appeal to a larger audience and, in turn, reel those advertisers in."

The gang at TR have been hard at work down in the Damage Labs to test a couple of the non-Creative-made high-end sound cards under Windows Vista.

"The Xonar and Prelude both target the high end of the desktop sound card spectrum, so it's only fitting that we face them off against each other in Windows Vista. Read on to see how they fare in a range of gaming, signal quality, and subjective listening tests."