Zune Pass monthly subscription service now available

Microsoft announced a new update for its Zune portable media player today that adds new software features and new content to the Zune online store. Microsoft hasn’t exactly been burning up the sales charts with its line of music players, but it hopes that steady software update will give the Zune a strong platform to work with.

The Zune video store is getting a boost with new downloads for TV shows like “South Park”, “Afro Samurai”, “Witchblade”, “The Office”, “The Hills”, “Heroes”, “Battlestar Galactica” and many more. In all, the updated store offers over 800 episodes that will each sell for 160 Microsoft Points per episode or about $1.99 at launch.

Microsoft says with the new update that its Zune Store now has more than 3.5 million tracks with two-thirds of them in MP3 format. The Zune Store still has a way to go to beat iTunes which is the largest music retailer around. Zune users have had access to a free customizable Zune Card in the past that is a sort of snapshot of their favorite tracks and other music played on their Zune.

The update makes the Zune Card more portable and allows subscribers with a Zune Pass to take a friend’s Zune Card and listen to what their friends and family like the most.

Chris Stephenson, general manager of Global Marketing for Zune at Microsoft said in a statement, “Consumers want more than the traditional transactional model of an online music store plus portable device. Zune is putting the strong combination of an online music community together with subscription to deliver a new experience centered on music discovery that’s good for consumers, artists and the industry. This approach exposes consumers to music they might not have otherwise tried, keeps them coming back, and gives them purchasing options that suit their preferences.”

Key updates to the Zune Community include the syncing of Zune Cards to a device, enhanced friends search, instant friends, album and artists reviews, reputation badges, and Windows Live connections. Key updates to the Zune device include auto playlists, browsing videos, editing album and track information, organizing collections, gapless playback, syncing groups, and Zune reminders.

Source from DailyTech

Super Talent goes on an SSD price-slashing spree.

Solid-state drives (SSDs) are seen as the next frontier in the area of storage technology for personal computers. SSDs are remarkably fast, generate less heat, make no noise, and are lighter than their HDD counterparts.

One factor that has kept SSDs from wide-spread adoption, however, has been the high price of entry. OCZ recently announced 32GB and 64GB SATA-II SSDs use single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash and are priced at $599 and $1,099 respectively. Likewise, Super Talent's new 256GB SATA is priced at a whopping $5,995.

Luckily for end-users, prices are starting to drop and Super Talent is looking to populate the lower-end of the market with a new lineup of SSDs. The company today announced new MasterDrive MX 30GB, 60GB, and 120GB SSDs -- incredibly, all are priced under $1,000. The drives retail for $299, $449, and $649 respectively.

All of the drives use a SATA-II interface and contain multi-level cell (MLC) NAND memory. The use of MLC memory means that these new "budget" drives can't hold a candle to SLC drives when it comes to write performance. However, all three drives manage to achieve read speeds of 120MB/sec and write speeds of 40MB/sec.

On a slightly higher performance plane -- and with a notable increase in pricing -- are the new MasterDrive DX 30GB and 60GB SSDs. Both use SLC memory and offer read speeds of 120MB/sec and write speeds of 70MB/sec -- they are priced at $699 and $1,299 respectively.

"These new SSDs are a rugged, lightning fast, low power storage alternative for mobile professionals and enthusiasts. With such overwhelming benefits, MasterDrive SSDs are sure to revolutionize mobile storage," said Joe James, Super Talent's Marketing Director.

The Super Talent MasterDrive MX SSDs are currently listed on Newegg's website and are in stock. The MasterDrive DX SSDs, however, are not currently available.

It remains to be seen if other SSD manufacturers will follow Super Talent’s lead with lower pricing across the board on their hardware, but it’s nice to see that the ball is finally rolling. Super Talent’s MasterDrive MX may leave a little to be desired in write performance, but the price tags should allow SSDs to reach a much larger audience.

Source from DailyTech

Lenovo aims to impress with the IdeaPad U110

Back in early January, DailyTech reported on Lenovo's IdeaPad U110 ultra-portable notebook. Details on the swanky notebook where scarce at that time, but Lenovo's latest offering is now available to order.
The IdeaPad U110 features a smallish 11.1" LED-backlit WXGA display coupled with Intel's X3100 integrated graphics adapter. A 1.6GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor provides motivation for the notebook and storage duties are handled by a 120GB HDD. Standard memory is a generous 2GB.

When it comes to ports and peripherals, the IdeaPad U110 is pretty much par for the course. It features a 1.3MP webcam, three USB 2.0 ports, a 6-in-1 media reader, ExpressCard slot, VeriFace face recognition, and a Dolby Home Theater audio system. Unlike some other “ultra-portable” manufacturers, Lenovo is also including an external dual-layer DVD burner as standard equipment with the notebook.

Lenovo wishes to make a design statement with the IdeaPad U110, so the screen is frameless and extends to the edges of the lid, the body is made of magnesium and aluminum, and the aluminum LCD lid is etched. The notebook is also available in either red or black.

Given the displays rather small 11.1" diagonal measurement, it's easy to understand that the rest of the notebook's dimensions are equally minimalist. The IdeaPad U110 weighs in at just 2.4 pounds with the standard 4-cell battery and is only 0.7 inches thick -- a 7-cell battery is also included with shipping IdeaPad U110 notebooks.

The Lenovo IdeaPad U110 is currently available for purchase from Lenovo's website at a starting price of $1,899. The price includes the aforementioned 4-cell/7-cell batteries and the external DVD burner. The notebook also comes pre-installed with Windows Vista Home Premium.

Source from DailyTech

45nm? 32nm? Stop playing around Intel, AMD! 1nm is where it's at.

Transistors, transistors, transistors -- the building block of every processor core we know and love. The more transistors engineers can pack into a processor, the more performance they can squeeze out of it. Rather than making processors larger, incurring all sorts of evil problems, the lithography process for etching silicon wafers to create processor cores with has been refined a hundred, maybe even a thousand-fold since its inception.

Current generation mainstream processors are floating at around 45nm transistors with Intel's Penryn chips. Penryn holds about 205 million transistors per core in its die structure, with all four cores in a quad-core chip able to fit inside the area of a dime. Intel and Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing even boasted about 32nm cores in design as long ago as 2006.

Thus far, chip engineers have been able to keep a tenuous grasp on Moore's law, which states that the number of transistors on a microchip will double every two years. Gorden Moore, who coined the idea in 1965, feels that time is running out for his now-famous prognostication with the limits of silicon lithography rapidly approaching. Many scientists and engineers feel that 10nm will be the death knell for silicon transistors.

Worry not, readers, carbon has your back. Back in March of 2007, DailyTech reported on graphene transistors. Professor Andre Geim and Dr. Kostya Novoselov at the University of Manchester's School of Physics and Astronomy announced a transistor made of graphene that measured just one atom thick and less than 50 wide. Now, they say, they've done even better, having improved their process and created a transistor one atom thick and a mere ten atoms wide. The pair claims to have a working 1nm graphene transistor.

Obviously such a ludicrously small transistor would, possibly not revolutionize, but allow the current semiconductor industry to delve even further into chip shrinkage, packing tens or hundreds of millions more transistors into a single core, or allowing many more cores to be used in the same area as current quad-core microchips.

Combined with graphene circuitry, these new ultra-small transistors could, in fact, produce microdevices of all kinds that are much more micro than in their current lives.

All the latest research pretty much agrees, silicon is out, carbon is in. Between buckyballs, carbon nanotubes, graphene, and whatever else scientists manage to cook up from the abundant element, there isn't much that carbon can't beat silicon on. The next step in computing seems to be The C; past that, get ready for yes-no-maybe quantum computing

Source From DailyTech

Western Digital takes the fight to SSDs with next generation VelociRaptor

With all of the talk these days in the storage industry swirling around solid-state drives (SSDs), it's easy to forget that advances are being made in the hard disk drive (HDD) market as well for consumers. That fact is even more pertinent today with the announcement of the long-awaited update to Western Digital's line of 10,000 RPM Raptor HDDs: the 300 GB VelociRaptor.

The new VelociRaptor takes an untraditional approach for a desktop HDD with its 2.5" drive design. The 2.5" form factor allows the drive to be smaller, lighter, and more power efficient than its 3.5" rivals.

But what good is a 2.5" HDD in a desktop system which typically accommodates 3.5" HDDs? Western Digital addressed that issue by affixing the VelociRaptor to an "IcePack" heatsink which allows the drive to fit into a standard 3.5" drive bay.

"Demand for ever-higher PC performance continues to increase and WD is the leader in this category with the WD Raptor. We created WD VelociRaptor hard drives to lead PC enthusiasts into the next era of PC and Mac storage performance and satisfy their insatiable thirst for computing speed," said Western Digital's Tom McDorman. "The new WD VelociRaptor delivers the greatest performance and reliability of all SATA hard drives currently on the market."

When it comes to performance, Western Digital promises a 30% increase in performance through its SATA 3Gb/sec interface, 1.4 million MTBF, and Rotary Acceleration Feed Forward (RAFF) to improve performance in vibration-heavy environments.

The 300 GB VelociRaptor will be available in Alienware's high-performance ALX desktop system later this month, while end-users can purchase the drive in mid-May for $299.99.

Source from DailyTech

ASUS touts the discrete graphics in its tiny desktop PC

Will all the buzz surrounding ASUS' Eee PC notebooks, it's easy to overlook other members of the family. The Eee PC range has gained attention in recent weeks thanks to the addition of the 4G-X model sporting Windows XP Home and the upcoming 8.9" Eee PC 900 model which is due in the coming months.

Today, however, it's time for a new ASUS family member to shine. ASUS is now touting its Essentio CS5110 desktop which is claims is "The world’s smallest Desktop PC equipped with a fully embedded discrete graphic card."

The CS5110 measures just 7.9" x 11.4" x 3.1" and weighs just 7.5 pounds. The CS5110 is also relatively quiet and only emits 23.9dB of noise at idle.

Despite the small dimensions, the CS5110 packs quite a punch. The desktop features an Intel G35-based motherboard and supports Core 2 Duo, Pentium Dual Core and Celeron D processors. Up to 4GB of DDR2 memory (via two SO-DIMM slots) is supported and the chassis can accommodate a single 3.5" SATA II HDD, and either a slot-loading DVD SuperMulti or Blu-ray drive.

Since ASUS touts the discrete graphics capabilities of the CS5110, it should be pointed out that the PC includes an NVIDIA GeForce 8600M GT graphics card with 256MB of memory.

Other features of the CS5110 include 802.11b/g/n, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR, GbE, six USB 2.0 ports, Firewire, an HDMI port, a VGA port and a 10-in-1 media reader.

ASUS gave no table for launch or a price for its new desktop PC, so stay tuned for more details.

Source from DailyTech

A crude layout of the cell phone's power systems from Samsung. (Source: Samsung)
Samsung reveals that water powered cell phones may be just years away

Samsung is a major player in the cell phone industry. Two major issues with today’s cell phones are battery life and charge times, an inconvenience to users the company is well aware of. Samsung's plans for a water powered cell phone were recently leaked; no, not that kind of water power -- the modified cell phone design does not use hydroelectricity, but rather breaks apart water and uses the hydrogen obtained for power.

The news follows in line with many advances in the small fuel cell industry. MTI Micro, a small methanol fuel cell maker, recently announced that they will be rolling out fuel cells for cameras, phone chargers, and more next year. Samsung has been among the companies investigating fuel cell stacks as battery replacements for laptops.

Samsung's new plans for water-powered cell phones utilize a metal catalyst that becomes a metal hydroxide in a reversible process, yielding hydrogen. Details on the metal and exact process are scant, so it is hard to ascertain where exactly the process is at in terms of development or exactly how it works. Likely it operates similarly to Purdue's recently discovered method of high-efficiency hydrogen production using metal, perhaps even using the same method.

While keeping tight lipped on the details, Samsung is making the bold prediction that our cell phones will be running on water by 2010. Their engineers claim that a working prototype currently provides 10 hours of use. This, according to Samsung, equates to about 5 days of life in a normal use scenario. The engineers say that they are modifying the phone to make it easy to be able to top up on the go (drinking fountain anyone?).

The idea of fast free power for your cell phone is certainly an exciting one. If Samsung can beat its competitors to market with a cell phone "battery" that in theory never dies, it certainly will be in an advantageous position. Now if they can only work on making sure you always get a signal.

Source from DailyTech

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Fly to Asia.

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You can continue your journey to Singapore, small country that amaze. For you that like go shopping Orchard Road is correct place. You also can visit esplanade theatre, a centre for performing arts. Find more information about it, see Singapore Hotels.

don't forget to visit petronas twin towers in kuala lumpur, malaysia. You Also can visit Berjaya Times Square (the world’s largest building ever built in a single phase), and 66 shopping malls in Kuala lumpur. for more information, see Kuala Lumpur hotels.

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HP's Mini-Note to get much faster with a mid-cycle refresh.

When HP announced its swanky new 2133 Mini-Note PC a few days ago, many people were impressed with the design and features of the device. The Mini-Note makes use of an aluminum body, includes a nearly full-size keyboard, has a generous 8.9" 1280x768 display screen, and is available with Windows Vista Home Basic, Windows Vista Business or Novell Suse Linux.

The one peculiarity of the device that had people scratching their heads, however, was the decision to use VIA's old, slow C-7M processors. The Mini-Note is available with C-7M processors ranging in speed from 1.0GHz to 1.6GHz and even the fastest speed bin has trouble keeping up with lower-clocked Intel Mobile Celeron-M processors.

According to HP notebook product marketing manager Robert Baker, VIA offered HP just what it needed in a notebook processing platform. "VIA gave us that right mix of performance and price for the type of environment that this product is going into--content consumption," said Baker to Crave.

Baker also went on to add that timing played a big key in the decision to use VIA's C7-M rather than the new kid on the block: Intel's Atom. "The other key thing was we were designing for education. We had to bring the product to the market now. A slip of a month kills you," Baker added. Baker noted that the Mini-Note is aimed at educational purchases and timing was important, "so they [could] make decisions for purchases they'll roll out during the summer when they're doing the vast majority of their purchases."

Relief for performance concerns may come with a mid-cycle refresh though according to Baker. "There will be an interim refresh about six months in. If the Atom is the right processor, that's what we'll go with. We'll look at everything in the market at that time.”

HP will also consider VIA's mysterious Isaiah processor if it becomes available in time for the refreshed Mini-Note. Although performance numbers are hard to come by, UMPCPortal yesterday gained access to a few CrystalMark benchmarks of a 1.0GHz ultra-low voltage (ULV) Isaiah compared to a 1.2GHz C7-M. Arithmetic logic unit (ALU) and floating point unit (FPU) scores were 280% and 190% higher respectively for the Isaiah processor compared to the C7-M.

Whether HP chooses Intel's Atom or VIA's Isaiah processors for its mid-cycle update to the Mini-Note, it appears that customers will get a much better-performing platform that what will be available in the coming weeks.

Source from DailyTech