The PC Report

In a follow up to our previous post on HTML5 we now have a video showing a speed comparison between Firefox 3.7, Internet Explorer 9, Opera (unspecified version) and Chrome 6. The latest test preview of IE9 utilises hardware acceleration as well as a new JavaScript engine and better HTML5 support. The Firefox 3.7 Alpha also uses hardware acceleration that matches IE9′s in terms of performance, and Chrome 6 tries to use its engine but ultimately fails miserably.

Most notable from the video below is that Firefox 3.7 actually beats IE9, which recently has been shown to be a speed demon, by around 5%. Both IE9 and Firefox 3.7 used the least CPU power during the test as well. As these browsers are in testing phases one would hope that by a final version things would be even smoother and faster and hopefully with interface improvements (*cough* Firefox *cough*).

It’s quite surprising to see Chrome in last place when it comes to browser speed considering that it was the fastest browser around when it was released and consistently beats non-beta Firefox and Internet Explorer versions in the Sunspider JavaScript benchmark. This could be due to (as stated in the video) an early implementation of hardware acceleration or it could mean that Firefox and IE9′s devs are just better at coding these features into their browsers.

We wait in anticipation of the full releases of all these browsers

Fresh from the VLC team is VLC 1.1.0 with a few new worth additions for any media enthusiast. Big on the list of changes is GPU decoding of H.264, VC-1 and MPEG-2 for those with a Windows or Linux machine (Mac users luck out). Currently GPU decoding is limited to those with a Nvidia graphics card however due to ATI driver issues however ATI has stated that this feature will be working in a later build of Catalyst. Intel graphics support will also hopefully be included at a later stage. As for new codec support:

VLC 1.1.0 also includes DSP decoding using OpenMax IL, improved MKV HD support, and compatibility with Blu-ray subtitles, MPEG-4 lossless, VP8, and WebM. The latest build touts a better audio experience, with additions such as support for DVD-Audio files, AMR-NB, MPEG-4 ALS, Vorbis 6.1/7.1, FLAC 6.1/7.1, and WMAS, not to mention tweaked meta-data and album-art features.

VLC 1.1.0 also touts a decoding speed boost of up to 40% thanks to code optimizations including thousands of lines of code removed to make the player lighter and faster. VLC also aims to be more stable, as usual with new software builds, despite the added features. You can grab VLC 1.1.0 through the VideoLAN website as it appears as though the auto-updater is failing in the old VLC (or at least it was when we tried). Head below for our opinions on the player.

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Close to the release of the Nvidia drivers for this month, ATI has released an update to their drivers for the month of June. The update brings support for GPU acceleration in Flash Player 10.1, a few video playback enhancements and support for OpenGL 4.0 and 3.3. 2D acceleration has also been improved for Linux users. Full feature changelog is below as usual.

If you are an ATI graphics card user, take the time to download and update your drivers now. You can download the Catalyst 10.6 update from the usual location.

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Apple yesterday released an update to their Mac OS X 10.6 “Snow Leopard” operating system. 10.6.4 includes the new Safari 5 right out of the (virtual) box, fixes some unresponsive keyboard/trackpad issues, fixes a sleep issue with the 2010 MacBook, adds RAW image compatibility for additional digital cameras plus a whole load more improvements, fixes and security patches. Previous updates to Snow Leopard are also included with the 10.6.4 update.

As usual, we highly recommend that you keep your system up to date and for Mac users this means installing the 10.6.4 update. You can download the update through the Software Update on your machine, or via a manual download from Apple’s website. Note that by downloading it through Software Update you will get a reduced file size. Full release notes are below.

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It’s that driver time of the month at Nvidia HQ and today marks the release of the 257.21 WHQL drivers for those with an Nvidia GeForce/ION GPU in their system. While the update is mainly to improve performance of the GTX 400 series cards (and also adding OpenGL 4.0 support for the cards), there are also a few other upgrades for non-400 series users. Check out the full list of new features below, and download the drivers from the usual spot.

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Yesterday Apple announced an update to the Mac Mini, one of the most underused products from Apple’s Mac line-up. The new Mini is much slimmer and smaller than previous models, coming in at just a 19.5cm (7.7″) square and just 3.5cm (1.4″) thick. The whole unit comes in a nice aluminium unibody enclosure to fit with all other Macs of late, and the slot loading DVD drive (not Blu-ray, disappointingly) and Apple logo take up much of the visible space.

Internally the Mac Mini is nothing special. It comes with an Intel Core 2 Duo processor clocking in at 2.4 GHz, 2 GB of DDR3 memory expandable to 8 GB, a 320 GB 5400 RPM hard drive and Nvidia GeForce 320M integrated graphics. 802.11n wireless is available along with Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR. Apple claims that the whole system volume has been shrunk by 20% to allow for the GPU, along with an SD card slot and HDMI port on the back. Four USB ports are present on the back panel along with FireWire 800 and a mini DisplayPort.

The whole system will set you back US$699, and you will also have the satisfaction of knowing that you just bought “the world’s most energy efficient desktop.” Gallery of the new Mac Mini is below.

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HTML5 is currently being developed as the next major revision of HTML. The main feature? It will remove the need for using plug-ins such as flash in web browsers. HTML5  will use <audio> and <video> tags instead of relying on embedding flash into a web page.  This will generally provide a boost in performance and will make older plug-ins such as Flash or Silverlight obsolete. It won’t happen over night but eventually it will happen.

Here’s a video of Quake II being played in a browser.

After many, many months in the beta/RC stages, today Adobe has released Flash Player 10.1 to the general public. Flash Player 10.1 aims to be faster, securer and more stable than previous editions, and during our short period testing all of the above are certainly true of 10.1.

One of the biggest features present in 10.1 is the automatic hardware acceleration that shifts the weight of decoding H.264 Flash content from the CPU to the GPU, which certainly does work and you can immediately see a drop in CPU utilization after installing 10.1. This feature is fantastic for less powerful machines who previously couldn’t decode 1080p Flash content and now maybe can. H.264 hardware acceleration at this stage is only supported on Windows, with Mac and Linux support hopefully coming in the future. Not only is hardware acceleration present, but Adobe has made an effort to lower CPU utilization which again is obvious after installing 10.1.

Flash Player 10.1 also has battery life improvements for laptops, where when Flash ins running in a non-visible tab in your browser it will reduce the processor load of Flash, conserving both battery life and performance. When Flash Player 10.1 is using too much of the available memory, it will automatically shut down Flash making way for other tasks which may need that spare RAM. Multi-touch support is also new to Flash 10.1.

Hit up the source link for an extensive list of the new features, and you can upgrade to or download Flash Player 10.1 via the usual place. Note that if you installed the 10.1 beta/RC that you’ll need to uninstall Flash Player before installing the full 10.1.

Today, as announced via the Windows Team Blog, Microsoft has released their Office Web Apps which tie in with the release of Office 2010 next week. Available now via office.live.com you will be able to edit and create Word documents, PowerPoint presentations, Excel spreadsheets and OneNote notes for free and stored via Microsoft’s SkyDrive cloud service. Of course because the apps are free and on the web, there is limited functionality compared to the full Office 2010 software suite

The Office Web Apps are available around the world, but as of right now they are only available in English until Microsoft translates the suite. Using your SkyDrive, you are given a free 25 GB of online storage which is plenty for your online documents, as well as uploaded documents from the desktop version of Office 2010. Web Apps also allows collaboration between multiple people editing a single document simultaneously, which is a nice addition if you want a group Office project.

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Somewhat overshadowed by the release of the iPhone 4 today at Apple’s WWDC, Apple has announced and released Safari 5 for both Mac and Windows. The new browser aims to be more compatible with the latest web standards as well as faster overall and more secure for the users. On the improved speed, Apple claims that the new “Nitro” Javascript engine in Safari is 30% faster than Safari 4 – we’ve put that to the test below.

Also on the list of new features is support for signed extensions in the browser. As of today we haven’t been able to find any extensions to test but rest assured that over the next couple of months you should start to see a trickle of them come in. Safari 5 also brings a new “Safari Reader” feature that turns the website’s content into a well formatted and easy to read layout when the Reader button is pressed. More on these new features below.

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