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A new study conducted by Which? magazine has found that "the battery life claimed by laptop manufacturers rarely lives up to reality. "Although Apple's battery life claims were the closest to reality, in the case of some other manufacturers, their laptops lasted hours less than the stated time," reports Digital Trends. From the report: In its testing, Which looked at the battery life claims of 67 different laptop models from manufacturers as diverse as Asus, Apple, Acer, HP, Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba -- some of the world's most popular laptop makers. It found that while Apple's average claim of 10 hours was proven correct -- and was even slightly better in some cases -- Dell's claims were overstated by more than four hours, and HP, close to five. The times listed in the header image are the average claimed battery life for all of the laptops Which? has tested over the past year versus the times it recorded in its internal testing. That involved charging the laptops to full, then running them down to nothing three times, using online web browsing via Wi-Fi or watching local videos to do so. Out of all laptops tested, the only manufacturer to understate battery claims was Apple. In one case, it claimed that its MacBook Pro 13 could achieve 10 hours of usage, while tests suggested it could go for as long as 12 hours. At the other end of the spectrum though, there were some really egregious overstatements. The Lenovo Yoga 510 has a claimed battery life of five hours -- it only lasted two hours and seven minutes. The HP Pavilion 14-al115na is supposed to be able to run for nine hours, but was only capable of four hours and 25 minutes. The Acer E15 claimed six hours but ran for just under three hours.

Forbes writer Marco Chiappetta revisits Microsoft's Surface Pro 3 half a year after its U.S. debut, and finds the tablet-laptop hybrid has held up pretty well, but suffers some dings worth knowing about before jumping at holiday sale prices, pointing out a number of scenarios where a full-fledged notebook, even if it’s roughly the same size, will be the better choice. I’ve found that the Surface Pro 3 is ideal for users that will likely fire the machine up when sitting at a desk or when in a conference room-type environment that has a table. The Surface Pro 3’s performance is plenty good for everyday computing and office applications, and the screen is top notch. Using the Surface Pro 3 as a notepad with its stylus is also very useful. In fact, over the course of the device’s life, Microsoft has issued a number of firmware, driver, and OS updates that have improved the overall responsiveness and usefulness of the Surface Pro 3. For those who want a laptop, though for actual laptop use, the Surface is an awkward fit. However, a thin, tablet-convertible, touchscreen laptop may appear soon from LG, as well.

jones_supa writes: Eizo has introduced an interesting new PC monitor with a square aspect ratio: the Eizo FlexScan EV2730Q is a 26.5-inch screen with 1:1 aspect ratio and an IPS panel with resolution of 1920 x 1920 pixels. "The extended vertical space is convenient for displaying large amounts of information in long windows, reducing the need for excess scrolling and providing a more efficient view of data," the firm writes. The monitor also offers flicker-free (non-PWM) backlight and reduced blue light features to avoid scorching users' eyes. Would a square display be of any benefit to you?

MojoKid writes "AMD has a new set of drivers coming in a couple of days that are poised to resolve a number of longstanding issues and enable a handful of new features as well, most notably support for Mantle. AMD's new Catalyst 14.1 beta driver is going to be the first publicly available driver from AMD that will support Mantle, AMD's "close to the metal" API that will let developers wring additional performance from GCN-based GPUs. However, the new drivers will also add support for the HSA-related features introduced with the recently released Kaveri APU, and will reportedly fix the frame pacing issues associated with Radeon HD 7000 series CrossFire configurations. A patch for Battlefield 4 is due to arrive soon as well and AMD is claiming performance gains in excess of 40 percent in CPU limited scenarios but smaller gains in GPU-limited conditions, with average gains of 11 — 13 percent over all." First time accepted submitter Spottywot adds some details about the Battlefield 4 improvements, writing that Johan Andersson, one of the Technical Directors in the Frostbite team, says that the best performance gains are observed when a game is bottlenecked by the CPU, "which can be quite common even on high-end machines." "With an AMD A10-7850K 'Kaveri' APU Mantle provides a 14 per cent improvement, on a system with an AMD FX-8350 and Radeon 7970 Mantle provides a 25 per cent boost, while on an Intel Core i7-3970x Extreme system with 2x AMD Radeon R9 290x cards a huge 58 per cent performance increase was observed."

crookedvulture writes "The first reviews of AMD's Radeon R7 and R9 graphics cards have hit the web, revealing cards based on the same GPU technology used in the existing HD 7000 series. The R9 280X is basically a tweaked variant of the Radeon HD 7970 GHz priced at $300 instead of $400, while the R9 270X is a revised version of the Radeon HD 7870 for $200. Thanks largely to lower prices, the R9 models compare favorably to rival GeForce offerings, even if there's nothing exciting going on at the chip level. There's more intrigue with the Radeon R7 260X, which shares the same GPU silicon as the HD 7790 for only $140. Turns out that graphics chip has some secret functionality that's been exposed by the R7 260X, including advanced shaders, simplified multimonitor support, and a TrueAudio DSP block dedicated to audio processing. AMD's current drivers support the shaders and multimonitor mojo in the 7790 right now, and a future update promises to unlock the DSP. The R7 260X isn't nearly as appealing as the R9 cards, though. It's slower overall than not only GeForce 650 Ti Boost cards from Nvidia, but also AMD's own Radeon HD 7850 1GB. We're still waiting on the Radeon R9 290X, which will be the first graphics card based on AMD's next-gen Hawaii GPU." More reviews available from AnandTech, Hexus, Hot Hardware, and PC Perspective.

New submitter geekoid writes "According to media reports about leaked Windows 8.1 code, the next incarnation of Microsoft's flagship operating system will have an option to boot directly to the desktop. People have discovered 'references to a "CanSuppressStartScreen" option in early builds of the Windows 8.1 registry.' There is also speculation that Microsoft will be re-implementing the Start button, though the claims come from nebulous 'sources,' rather than the leaked code. In light of recent reporting about the general distaste and design flaws of Windows 8's user interface, will Microsoft's updates be dynamic enough to stop the current Windows exodus?"

unts writes "Taking DRM further than it's gone before, a group of designers have built a DRM'd chair that will melt its own joints and destroy itself after 8 uses. The chair uses an Arduino and sensors to monitor the number of uses, then triggers the melting of a set of joints that hold it together, making the product unusable without some carpentry skills. The video of device at work is both amusing and a little disconcerting."

unts writes "UK chip designer ARM [Note: check out this short history of ARM chips in mobile devices contributed by an anonymous reader] today released the first details of its latest project, codenamed 'Eagle.' It has branded the new design Cortex-A15, which ARM reckons demonstrates the jump in performance from its predecessors, the A8 and A9. ARM's new chip design can scale to 16 cores, clock up to 2.5GHz, and, the company claims, deliver a 5x performance increase over the A8: 'It's like taking a desktop and putting it in your pocket,' said [VP of processor marketing — Eric Schorn], and it was clear that he considers this new design to be a pretty major shot across the bows of Intel and AMD. In case we were in any doubt, he turned the knife further: 'The exciting place for software developer graduates to go and hunt for work is no longer the desktop.'"

Barence writes "British chip designer ARM is launching an outright attack on Intel with the launch of a 2GHz processor aimed at everything from netbooks to servers. ARM claims the 40nm Cortex A9 MPCore processor represents a shift in strategy for the company, which has until now concentrated on low-power processors for mobile devices. In the consumer market, ARM is pitching the Cortex A9 directly against Intel's Atom, claiming the processor offers five times the power while drawing comparable amounts of energy. 'It's head and shoulders above anything Intel can deliver today,' ARM VP of marketing Eric Schom claims. However, it has one major hurdle to overcome: it doesn't support Windows. 'We've had conversations with Microsoft and you can imagine what they entail,' says Schom."

Steve Kerrison writes "With the explosion of netbooks now available, the line between PC and mobile phone is becoming much less distinct. ARM, one of the biggest companies behind CPU architectures for mobile phones (and other embedded systems), sees now as an opportunity to break out of mobiles and give Intel a run for its money. HEXUS.channel quizzes Bob Morris, ARM's director of mobile computing, on how it plans to achieve such a herculean task. Right now, ARM's pushing Android as the OS that's synonymous with the mobile Internet. But it's not simply going to ignore Microsoft: 'What if Microsoft offered a full version of Windows (as opposed to Windows Mobile or Windows CE) that used the ARM, rather than X86 (Intel and AMD) instruction set? Then it would be a straight hardware fight with Intel, in which ARM hopes its low power, low price processors will have an advantage.'"

Steve Kerrison writes "Taiwanese technology firm Abit will be pulling out of the mainboard market at the end of this year. HEXUS.channel, citing sources close to South East Asian distributors, reports that the company will continue to deliver mainboard products until the end of 2008 and will still honour all warranties in subsequent years. Rumours of this decision circulated in May but were dismissed. Apparently the decision was made in the last couple of weeks. Abit is a popular brand amongst PC hardware enthusiasts, many of whom will be disappointed to see it leave the market."

Steve Kerrison writes "Taiwanese technology firm Abit will be pulling out of the mainboard market at the end of this year. HEXUS.channel, citing sources close to South East Asian distributors, reports that the company will continue to deliver mainboard products until the end of 2008 and will still honour all warranties in subsequent years. Rumours of this decision circulated in May but were dismissed. Apparently the decision was made in the last couple of weeks. Abit is a popular brand amongst PC hardware enthusiasts, many of whom will be disappointed to see it leave the market."

Steve Kerrison writes "With the power of CPUs ever-increasing and the number of cores in a system increasing too, having a supercomputer sit under your desk is no longer a pipe dream. But generally speaking, the extreme high end of modern computing consists of a big ugly box housing that generates a lot of noise. A UK system integrator has developed a concept PC that blows that all away. The eXtreme Concept PC (XCP) has quite a romantic design story, with inspiration coming from concept cars and the sarcophagus-like Cray T90. The end result is a system that resembles a Cylon — computing power never looked so ominous. Although just a concept, the company behind the design reckons there could be a (small) market for the systems, with varying levels of compute power accompanied by appropriate (say, LN2) cooling."

Steve Kerrison writes "With the power of CPUs ever-increasing and the number of cores in a system increasing too, having a supercomputer sit under your desk is no longer a pipe dream. But generally speaking, the extreme high end of modern computing consists of a big ugly box housing that generates a lot of noise. A UK system integrator has developed a concept PC that blows that all away. The eXtreme Concept PC (XCP) has quite a romantic design story, with inspiration coming from concept cars and the sarcophagus-like Cray T90. The end result is a system that resembles a Cylon — computing power never looked so ominous. Although just a concept, the company behind the design reckons there could be a (small) market for the systems, with varying levels of compute power accompanied by appropriate (say, LN2) cooling."

Steve Kerrison writes "With the power of CPUs ever-increasing and the number of cores in a system increasing too, having a supercomputer sit under your desk is no longer a pipe dream. But generally speaking, the extreme high end of modern computing consists of a big ugly box housing that generates a lot of noise. A UK system integrator has developed a concept PC that blows that all away. The eXtreme Concept PC (XCP) has quite a romantic design story, with inspiration coming from concept cars and the sarcophagus-like Cray T90. The end result is a system that resembles a Cylon — computing power never looked so ominous. Although just a concept, the company behind the design reckons there could be a (small) market for the systems, with varying levels of compute power accompanied by appropriate (say, LN2) cooling."

An anonymous reader writes "AMD is set to launch what is considered its most important product against Intel's Core 2 Duo processors next week. TG Daily reports that the triple-core Phenoms — quad-core CPUs with one disabled core — will be launching on February 19. Oddly enough, the first company expected to announce systems with triple-core Phenoms will be Dell. Yes, that is the same company that was rumored to be dropping AMD just a few weeks ago. Now we are waiting for the hardware review sites to tell us whether three cores are actually better than two in real world applications and not just in marketing."

unts writes "The Intel Developer Forum is currently running in San Francisco, and Intel is showing off the up-coming Harpertown processors based on the Penryn core. HEXUS got hands on with a test system and ran some performance tests: 'Harpertown is a better quad-core processor than Clovertown: it's as simple as that. More L2 cache will gobble-up larger application data-sets and a higher FSB, on select models, will ensure that per-CPU bandwidth is less of a concern.'"

An anonymous reader writes "As AMD's Barcelona approaches, the price war between AMD and Intel continues. To spice things up a bit this week, Intel is throwing into the ring a number of new processors, refreshing the Core2 line-up. HEXUS reviews the high-end QX6850 and mid-range E6750: 'Now is a golden time for anyone looking to buy a new CPU, whether Intel or AMD. The latest round of price cuts means you can now get an incredible level of processing performance for little more than £100. But if your need to buy is not urgent, remember that Intel and its big rival are each promising new processors before the end of the year — AMD with K10 quad-core and Intel with 45nm Penryn-derived CPUs.'"

Steve Kerrison writes "The Radeon 'R600' HD 2900 XT was late coming, and so by extension are the lower cost parts derived from it. The Radeon HD 2400 and 2600s are now available, just the same, with pricing aimed at knocking mid-range GeForce 8 series cards off people's shopping lists. There's more to a graphics card than price; performance and driver functionality are key too. HEXUS had some fun and games testing the new Radeons: 'The hardware designers may now be sitting back, content that their DX10-supporting midrange SKUs are at least as compelling as the competition's. But, and it's a big, big but, the current drivers aren't realizing the kind of performance we'd expect from a knowledge of the Radeon HD 2600 XT's setup.'" A very useful article ... unfortunately spread across a dozen pages with no 'print view' available.

Steve Kerrison writes "The Radeon 'R600' HD 2900 XT was late coming, and so by extension are the lower cost parts derived from it. The Radeon HD 2400 and 2600s are now available, just the same, with pricing aimed at knocking mid-range GeForce 8 series cards off people's shopping lists. There's more to a graphics card than price; performance and driver functionality are key too. HEXUS had some fun and games testing the new Radeons: 'The hardware designers may now be sitting back, content that their DX10-supporting midrange SKUs are at least as compelling as the competition's. But, and it's a big, big but, the current drivers aren't realizing the kind of performance we'd expect from a knowledge of the Radeon HD 2600 XT's setup.'" A very useful article ... unfortunately spread across a dozen pages with no 'print view' available.

Kez writes "Over recent years coolers have grown increasingly exotic in design, striving for good cooling performance and low noise even with the most power hungry of CPUs. But sometimes that comes at a price, be it straining the motherboard's socket to its limit, or the wallets of PC enthusiasts. Investigating which coolers do their job well without snapping your motherboard in two, HEXUS.net reviews 25 LGA775 coolers."

An anonymous reader writes "If you want to listen to your iPod or other audio player in your car, but you don't have a cassette deck or a swanky I.C.E. system, then the answer is to transmit the music over FM to the car's radio. HEXUS.lifestyle reviews five FM transmitters for the iPod and friends, investigating how well these devices cope with broadcasting music over a 2 meter-or-so radius. Some readers will be aware that it's been less than a year since these became legal in the UK, so the majority of iPodding Brits have only recently discovered that they can tune into their MP3 collection on the road."

claudia martinez writes "The Guitar Hero franchise is spreading its wings today with the announcement of Guitar Hero III, due to released across four platforms. This time around the title will feature boss battles and a new online multiplayer mode with world-wide leaderboards. Wireless controllers based on the Gibson guitar should be available for all platforms, and some of the titles already slated for the game have been announced. Tracks will include: "Paint It Black" (by The Rolling Stones), "Cherub Rock" (by Smashing Pumpkins), "The Metal" (by Tenacious D), "My Name is Jonas" (by Weezer), "Rock And Roll All Nite" (as made famous by Kiss), "School's Out" (as made famous by Alice Cooper), "Slow Ride" (as made famous by Fog Hat), and "Cult of Personality" (by Living Colour). More tracks from the 80s version of the title have also been announced with Poison, Skid Row, and Billy Squier rounding out the already impressive set list."

Steve Kerrison writes "Intel's keen to show off its up-coming 45nm Penryn Core 2 CPU. HEXUS had some hands on time with the new processor to get an idea of how well it will perform once its released: 'Intel's new 45nm Penryn core adds more than just a clock and FSB hike, so much so that even a dual-core Penryn is able to beat out a quad-core QX6800 under certain circumstances.'"

Steve Kerrison writes "Intel's keen to show off its up-coming 45nm Penryn Core 2 CPU. HEXUS had some hands on time with the new processor to get an idea of how well it will perform once its released: 'Intel's new 45nm Penryn core adds more than just a clock and FSB hike, so much so that even a dual-core Penryn is able to beat out a quad-core QX6800 under certain circumstances.'"

Steve Kerrison writes "From the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing comes news of the successor to the Napa notebook platform. Santa Rosa, which will head up Intel's notebook technology line-up until 2H 2008, beefs up almost everything seen in Napa, from graphics to WiFi. 'Santa Rosa carries Robson Technology, now known as Intel Turbo Memory, the flash-based disc-caching system that speeds up loading times of frequently-used data. Santa Rosa is an obvious continuation of the Centrino series. There will also be another Santa Rosa Centrino variant — Pro — that covers the business features found on Intel's Q-series chipsets, namely vPro.' Intel's Core2 mobile processors remain a key part of the platform, as you'd expect, with 45nm 'Penryn' CPUs making their way into the Santa Rosa refresh in 2008."

Steve Kerrison writes "From the Intel Developer Forum in Beijing comes news of the successor to the Napa notebook platform. Santa Rosa, which will head up Intel's notebook technology line-up until 2H 2008, beefs up almost everything seen in Napa, from graphics to WiFi. 'Santa Rosa carries Robson Technology, now known as Intel Turbo Memory, the flash-based disc-caching system that speeds up loading times of frequently-used data. Santa Rosa is an obvious continuation of the Centrino series. There will also be another Santa Rosa Centrino variant — Pro — that covers the business features found on Intel's Q-series chipsets, namely vPro.' Intel's Core2 mobile processors remain a key part of the platform, as you'd expect, with 45nm 'Penryn' CPUs making their way into the Santa Rosa refresh in 2008."

The Non-Disclosure Agreement for the Lord of the Rings Online (LOTRO) beta test has been lifted, and with the game set for release soon it may be useful to you to peruse some hands-on previews of the title. Hexus.net offers A Day in the Life of a Hobbit, and Tobold's MMORPG blog has similar hobbit-related impressions. Tobold also has a comparison between LORTRO and World of Warcraft for those who might be thinking about making the jump. More hands-on info is available from Warcry, Kill Ten Rats, and Gamers With Jobs. Van Hemlock offers up a high level overview of the title, mentioning recent releases and pointing out the realities of Massive gaming: "How the Great Fantasy Epic Saga will stand the ravages thousands of petty powerlevelling smacktalkers all loitering about Rivendell bank, level one hobbit girls - dancing as naked as the game will allow, shouting ridiculous three-letter-acronyms and generally not getting into the spirit of the thing, remains to be seen. I expect Our People can crush even The Lord of the Rings beneath our metagaming heel without feeling too guilty."

Steve Kerrison writes "'There's little point in worrying about ID cards, RFID tags and spyware when more and more people are throwing away their privacy anyway. And the potential consequences are dire.' I've written an article on the dangers of social networks and how many users seem to forget just how public the information they post can be. This follows a warning sent out by the CS department of Bristol University, advising students that they risk lost job opportunities, getting in trouble with their parents and more, if they don't take care. The warning, however, really applies to all social network users, be they college students or over-zealous blog posters."

Steve Kerrison writes "'There's little point in worrying about ID cards, RFID tags and spyware when more and more people are throwing away their privacy anyway. And the potential consequences are dire.' I've written an article on the dangers of social networks and how many users seem to forget just how public the information they post can be. This follows a warning sent out by the CS department of Bristol University, advising students that they risk lost job opportunities, getting in trouble with their parents and more, if they don't take care. The warning, however, really applies to all social network users, be they college students or over-zealous blog posters."

An anonymous reader writes "Alienware seem to have admitted threatening review sites with no future hardware unless positive reviews are written about their products. Hexus.net attempted to obtain a recent Alienware system and were rebuffed in an email claiming that their last review had scuppered the chances of them getting any hardware to review in the future. Follow-up emails confirmed this was part of Alienware's global marketing strategy. " I've read through the whole article and it would appear that the above is what the rep said. Now, granted, one would hope that's one person in that company, but still bad form.

Steve Kerrison writes "Despite a woeful inability to provide some of its most loyal customers with stock, and a range of CPUs that, currently, loses out to Intel's Core 2 processors in both price and performance (and who would I be not to mention the diminishing AMD fanboy numbers?), AMD's still got enough tricks up its sleeve to retaliate against Intel in due course. HEXUS.net has an opinion piece on why AMD isn't up the creek. From the article: AMD has been showing off its 65nm wafers for a few months now, which means the Rev G core is on its way. Even if the DDR2 memory controller which arrived with the Rev F only had a small performance benefit, Rev G has a few more improvements than just the die shrink. The latter will enable higher clock speeds and a lower price, plus allow AMD to compete on an equal playing field to Intel, which has been manufacturing 65nm processors since the Pentium XE 955 at the end of 2005."

Steve Kerrison writes "Despite a woeful inability to provide some of its most loyal customers with stock, and a range of CPUs that, currently, loses out to Intel's Core 2 processors in both price and performance (and who would I be not to mention the diminishing AMD fanboy numbers?), AMD's still got enough tricks up its sleeve to retaliate against Intel in due course. HEXUS.net has an opinion piece on why AMD isn't up the creek. From the article: AMD has been showing off its 65nm wafers for a few months now, which means the Rev G core is on its way. Even if the DDR2 memory controller which arrived with the Rev F only had a small performance benefit, Rev G has a few more improvements than just the die shrink. The latter will enable higher clock speeds and a lower price, plus allow AMD to compete on an equal playing field to Intel, which has been manufacturing 65nm processors since the Pentium XE 955 at the end of 2005."

Steve Kerrison writes "Despite a woeful inability to provide some of its most loyal customers with stock, and a range of CPUs that, currently, loses out to Intel's Core 2 processors in both price and performance (and who would I be not to mention the diminishing AMD fanboy numbers?), AMD's still got enough tricks up its sleeve to retaliate against Intel in due course. HEXUS.net has an opinion piece on why AMD isn't up the creek. From the article: AMD has been showing off its 65nm wafers for a few months now, which means the Rev G core is on its way. Even if the DDR2 memory controller which arrived with the Rev F only had a small performance benefit, Rev G has a few more improvements than just the die shrink. The latter will enable higher clock speeds and a lower price, plus allow AMD to compete on an equal playing field to Intel, which has been manufacturing 65nm processors since the Pentium XE 955 at the end of 2005."

An anonymous reader writes "Sony has finally admitted that the November release date for the release of the PS3 is unfeasible. Specifically, it will not be available in any PAL territories until March 2007. Sony cites '(a) delay in the mass production schedule of the blue laser diode', forming a critical part of the much-maligned Blu-Ray drive. With the Xbox 360 having been released for almost 6 months in overseas markets, and the Wii looming large, can Sony afford a delay like this?" Update: 09/06 17:58 GMT by Z : Just to make sure you caught it, the announcement includes the word that the U.S. will only be getting 400,000 units at launch in November, with Japan at 100,000 units. Go Sony.

Steve Kerrison writes "Alienware has jumped on board the Core 2 bandwagon and rightfully so, but their new Area-51 7500 loses out to cheaper and faster solutions from other companies. From HEXUS.net's review 'No matter which way we dress up the Alienware's performance and feature-set, it's relatively poor in comparison to SKUs that we've reviewed recently. Value for money may not be the greatest concern in this sector of the pre-built market but when you can get substantially more for less, it becomes impossible to recommend this particular Area-51 7500.' "

Steve Kerrison writes "Alienware has jumped on board the Core 2 bandwagon and rightfully so, but their new Area-51 7500 loses out to cheaper and faster solutions from other companies. From HEXUS.net's review 'No matter which way we dress up the Alienware's performance and feature-set, it's relatively poor in comparison to SKUs that we've reviewed recently. Value for money may not be the greatest concern in this sector of the pre-built market but when you can get substantially more for less, it becomes impossible to recommend this particular Area-51 7500.' "

Steven Williamson writes "HEXUS.gaming's resident wood elf, Steven W, jumped at the chance to take the eye-opening trip to the Games Workshop HQ in Nottingham, home to the unique venue that is Warhammer World. What started out as a run-of-the-mill press event to see the latest real-time tactics videogame set in the Warhammer universe ended up capturing my imagination and quashing any previous hang-ups I almost certainly had about the people who played Warhammer and indeed the tabletop game that has spawned this latest PC game, Warhammer: MOC."

Steven Williamson writes "HEXUS.gaming's resident wood elf, Steven W, jumped at the chance to take the eye-opening trip to the Games Workshop HQ in Nottingham, home to the unique venue that is Warhammer World. What started out as a run-of-the-mill press event to see the latest real-time tactics videogame set in the Warhammer universe ended up capturing my imagination and quashing any previous hang-ups I almost certainly had about the people who played Warhammer and indeed the tabletop game that has spawned this latest PC game, Warhammer: MOC."

NerdMaster writes "NDA for Intel Core 2 CPUs was lifted on the night from yesterday to today and all major hardware reviewing websites are posting Core 2 Duo E6700 and Core 2 Xtreme X6800 reviews. Here is a collection of several reviews so you can check for yourself whether Core 2 Duo is faster or not than Athlon 64 X2. Reviews posted at Tom's Hardware Guide, AnandTech, HEXUS, Hardware Secrets, OCAU, TweakTown, HotHardware, The Tech Report, Trusted Reviews, Legion Hardware, bit-tech, ExtremeTech, Legit Reviews, Sharky Extreme, HardOCP, PC Perspective, GotFrag Hardware, Gamepyre, X-bit Labs - Part 1, tbreak, neoseeker and Byte Sector." We've already touched on this technology, but there has been (obviously) a lot of discussion about it since it was announced.

Steve Kerrison writes "Thecus' new N5200 NAS can hold five SATA drives, which with currently available drives means up to 3.5TB (or 2.75TB in RAID-5) of storage before formatting. From the review: '£600. That's roughly what this will set you back, minus hard drives. Add in five 750GB drives and you'll be forking out a number closer to two thousand. However, act a bit more modestly and you can still have a terabyte (even in RAID-5) for under a grand.'"

Steve Kerrison writes "Thecus' new N5200 NAS can hold five SATA drives, which with currently available drives means up to 3.5TB (or 2.75TB in RAID-5) of storage before formatting. From the review: '£600. That's roughly what this will set you back, minus hard drives. Add in five 750GB drives and you'll be forking out a number closer to two thousand. However, act a bit more modestly and you can still have a terabyte (even in RAID-5) for under a grand.'"

Steve Kerrison writes "It's early morning here in the UK, but that doesn't stop us from being around to see the launch of Conroe and friends, Intel's newest desktop chips. Even a $180 Intel CPU can beat an Athlon FX-62 in a number of tests. Now that's bound to get the fanboy blood pumping, right? We've also taken a look at a pre-built system that's powered by the Extreme X6800 CPU, along with an nForce 4 SLI chipset. As you'd expect, it's quick."

Steve Kerrison writes "It's early morning here in the UK, but that doesn't stop us from being around to see the launch of Conroe and friends, Intel's newest desktop chips. Even a $180 Intel CPU can beat an Athlon FX-62 in a number of tests. Now that's bound to get the fanboy blood pumping, right? We've also taken a look at a pre-built system that's powered by the Extreme X6800 CPU, along with an nForce 4 SLI chipset. As you'd expect, it's quick."

Steve Kerrison writes "It's early morning here in the UK, but that doesn't stop us from being around to see the launch of Conroe and friends, Intel's newest desktop chips. Even a $180 Intel CPU can beat an Athlon FX-62 in a number of tests. Now that's bound to get the fanboy blood pumping, right? We've also taken a look at a pre-built system that's powered by the Extreme X6800 CPU, along with an nForce 4 SLI chipset. As you'd expect, it's quick."

Steve Kerrison writes "Desperate times call for desperate measures, but I'd like to think of this as more of an exercise in cunning. It's hot, but I'm not, thanks to an Icy-Box and a Panaflo. This was nearly categorised as hardware hacking, but then the only 'hacking' required was the removal of four thumb-screws."

Steve Kerrison writes "Desperate times call for desperate measures, but I'd like to think of this as more of an exercise in cunning. It's hot, but I'm not, thanks to an Icy-Box and a Panaflo. This was nearly categorised as hardware hacking, but then the only 'hacking' required was the removal of four thumb-screws."

NerdMaster writes "Hardware Secrets has just posted an Athlon 64 X2 5000+ review, one of the first AMD CPUs to support the new socket AM2. It runs at 2.4 GHz, has two 512 KB L2 memory caches (one for each core) and supports DDR2 memories." However, many are still predicting an end to AMD's dominance in the market thanks to Intel's Conroe.

Steve from HEXUS writes "How does the battle between ATI and nVidia look from the inside? In his first press interview in four years, CEO of graphics card manufacturing giant Sapphire - add-in-board partner of ATI - talks about what it's like being in the thick of it and how things may pan out for Sapphire in the future."

Steve from HEXUS writes "How does the battle between ATI and nVidia look from the inside? In his first press interview in four years, CEO of graphics card manufacturing giant Sapphire - add-in-board partner of ATI - talks about what it's like being in the thick of it and how things may pan out for Sapphire in the future."