The PC Report

Medion is a brand you don’t often hear about (but I do often see down at the local Aldi supermarket); they produce cheap computers and electronics. It seems like they’ve released a pretty nice multitouch suppporting X9613 all-in-one PC.

It comes with a nice and large 24″ touchscreen panel along with another small SlideShow screen in amongst the media buttons along the bottom and the large volume knob. The internals are packing a Core 2 Quad Q9000 mobile CPU at 2.0 GHz and a GT240M GPU which should easily be able to play any sort of media you want. The prices for the X9613 range from €1,499 to €1,900 – I doubt I’ll be seeing this one at my local Aldi.

Generally when something computer-wise is “green” it uses less power or emits less CO2 or something along those lines. However Super Talent’s new “green” line of DDR3 RAM just takes up less space, less packaging and saves shipping costs for the company.

The green DIMMs, available in 1066 and 1333 MHz, use 38% less PCB material and 47% less packaging material, leading to less industrial waste and less fuel for shipping as each package weighs 35% less. If you are environmental cautious, you will be able to grab this “green” RAM next month.

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I was flicking back through our Windows 7 review that we posted last week and I noticed the lack of negatives we mentioned in our review. Maybe it was because we were so focused on all the great new things and features available in the operating system that we completely overlooked some of the things we found annoying or bad in the new OS.

So, I decided to compile a list of things I find dodgy, annoying or missing in Microsoft’s upcoming operating system:

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NordicHardware has been digging deep into rumours and news surrounding the upcoming DX11 ATI Radeon 5800 series cards (the 5850 and 5870). While no actual specifications have been released as of yet, we do know, thanks to AMD releasing the information to its partners, that the cards shall be sporting 1GB of GDDR5 and a new technology called “Eyefinity” that should allow three displays at the same time.

They have also found that the cards should be able to push 2 teraFLOPS in the “most demanding games,” almost twice that of the HD 4850 and HD 4870. It has been speculated that the cards shall be announced properly next month, with retail availability around the Windows 7 launch. Rumoured prices are US$249 for the HD 5850 and $299 for the HD 5870.

Ever wanted a 10.1cm x 11.4cm device that can play your favourite Blu-ray rips? Look no further than the HDMI supporting Portwell WEBS-1010 mini PC. Designed to be used as a HTPC, this device claims it can playback 1080p content through the use of its 1.6 GHz Atom processor and Intel SCH US15W chipset (we’ll see about that).

For the relatively low price of US$460, you also get 1GB of RAM, WiFi, MicroSD slot along with 2.5″ drive bay, Mini PCIe, 6 USB ports and an IR port for your remote. The device is also fanless, so it will run in complete silence, and will be packing Windows XP as its OS (easily changed if you don’t want to use XP). The device should be available now, or so says Portwell

If you looked in our forums a while back you would have noticed the announcement of the Asus MARS GTX 295 graphics card (now known as the Asus Republic of Gamers (ROG) MARS GPU). This card is set to be packing two GTX 285s in the one graphics card, along with 4GB of onboard memory, making it 23% faster than the standard GTX 295.

HotHardware has stated that the card is on it’s way to shelves, but of course you’ll need to be quick to get one, as only 1000 units are being manufactured, each with a custom number on them. Asus has stated that the time and place where you can get these shall be announced via the Asus Official Twitter page. Get your wallets ready though, as it’s going to cost a small fortune.

Looks like Windows 7 wont be the only good thing coming this October. MSI has told Giz that they, along with other laptop manufacturers, will be releasing new laptops around the Windows 7 launch that will contain some new Intel mobile CPUs and chipsets.

The new Nehalem mobile CPUs and chipsets are getting released really soon; just in time to release some new laptops packing good specs and Windows 7 on them. New Core i7 mobile CPUs are expected to go in these laptops, with i5s and i3s going in models next year.

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Last month Corsair released its brand new Extreme series SSDs in the sizes of 32GB, 64GB and 128GB, and yesterday they announced that a new SSD would be joining their line-up.

The X256 will be, obviously, 256GB and should carry the same read/write speeds as the previous drives, namely 240 MB/s read and 170 MB/s write. The speeds lag slightly behind other SSDs we’ve seen being released in the past, but are still blazingly fast compared to hard drives. While there is no official word on price, it is expected to market for around US$700.

I’m not a fan of the Opera browser myself, and after testing it in our Windows 7 review we found it to be not as fast as some of the other main browsers. However for those who use Opera on a regular basis, the browser has hit Release Candidate status with a full version release expected for September 1st.

Some new features in version 10 of the browser include resizeable thumbnail tabs, improved Opera Speed Dial which personalizes your favourite websites and start pages, improved Opera Mail as well as speed improvements over Opera 9.6. You can grab a copy of the RC via Opera’s website

I downloaded a copy of the RC to test out the new speed improvements and found that it performed better than the version we tested in our Windows 7 review, scoring 2031ms in the SunSpider JavaScript Benchmark, which is still far behind other browsers such as FireFox, Chrome and Safari.

Well well, it looks like one of the biggest phone manufacturers in the world has decided to have a go in the ever expanding realm of netbooks, by announcing its new Booklet 3G “mini laptop” (aka netbook). And of course, coming from Nokia and having 3G in the name, this netbook will have a SIM card slot.

While proper specifications are running a bit thin at the moment, Nokia has told us that the machine will be running Windows (probably Windows 7), will have a 10.2″ HD display with HDMI out, A-GPS plus a copy of Ovi Maps and of course WiFi and 3G/HSPA support. The battery is also expected to last 12 hours from “normal daily use.” More details should be heading our way at Nokia World 09 on Sept. 2.

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