The PC Report

IBM recently opened up a bandgap for graphene-based field-effect transistors and now there here to show us what this means for all of us. IBM has demonstrated a 100GHz (that’s right, 100 gigahertz) graphene transistor that IBM hopes will eventually reach commercialisation and then replace the standard silicon chips we use today completely. Of course, the technology is in it’s early stages, but it does look promising for future processors.

Even though actual commercial chips are far off, IBM says that “the breakthrough we are announcing demonstrates clearly that graphene can be utilized to produce high performance devices and integrated circuits.” Look into the future guys and you may see these chips in widespread use…

Like Linux and also want a small desktop PC? Try out the Open-PC Atom powered nettop designed specifically for those of you who use and love Linux. It comes with hardware that requires only completely free drivers and no proprietary software at all – an Atom N330 dual-core CPU at 1.6GHz, an ASrock motherboard, 3GB of RAM, Intel GMA950 graphics, a 160GB hard drive all in a mini-ITX case with 250W PSU. It also comes preloaded with a KDE-based Linux distro configured for the computer’s hardware.

The Open-PC will be available at the end of February for €359.

The new HP G62t is a fairly nice looking laptop, comparable to the Envy 15, and comes with a fairly nice price tag too of only US$599 for the base model. For that price, you get a new Intel Core i3 processor at 2.13GHz (although you can pay more and get an i5 or i7 instead), 3GB of DDR3 RAM, a 160GB hard drive that’s upgradeable to 500GB, a 15.6-inch LED display, Intel HD graphics (not so great), DVD burner, Wireless N and a multitude of connectivity options.

If you want to get this Macbook-Pro-esque laptop it should be available now in stores as well as via the HP website.

AMD has been on fire recently releasing card after card into their DirectX 11 HD 5000 series. Now they are catering to those who want to build a HTPC with the newest card – the ATI Radeon HD 5450. The HD 5450 has much the same features as the bigger and more powerful brothers, including DirectX 11 support and ATI’s Eyefinity multi-display technology. The card is very power friendly (~20W when in use) and is half height and passively cooled making it perfect for your HTPC.

The HD 5450 performs well for what you need it to, namely all types of media playback including Blu-ray/1080p – which is perfect with low CPU utilisation. However, if you’re planning to buy this card for gaming, thing again. It consistently performed well under the it’s nearest brother, the HD 5670, in many games so don’t even bother gaming on this card. This card starts at US$49 and should be perfect for HTPC that needs to be silent, low powered and small.

Note: This card underperforms all 25 cards on our graphics card rankings list, so it has not been added.

Today sees the release of the highly anticipated update to the most popular bittorrent client: uTorrent 2.0. One of the major changes to uTorrent in 2.0 is the addition of the Micro Transport Protocol (uTP). The uTP aims to reduce network congestion and interference between uTorrent and other network-using applications – this is one of the reasons ISPs throttle torrent traffic and uTP aims to solve that issue.

For the end-user the benefits of uTP are faster downloads thanks to less network congestion, and faster web browsing while uTorrent is running. For ISPs, less congestion means that the torrent protocol is gentler on their network, which should benefit them as well as other users using the network. And for those wondering if the interface has changed, it has, but only slightly (see the screenshot below).

You can download/upgrade to uTorrent 2.0 by downloading it from here. If you need to downgrade to 1.8.5 for whatever reason, you can grab it from us here

Read the rest of this entry »

According to the latest report from Fudzilla, there is going to be a two new Intel Atom processors, both with support for DDR3 memory, coming later this year. The two CPUs will be the Atom N475, which is clocked at 1.83GHz and has a TDP of 6.5W, and the Atom N455, which like the N450 has a clock speed of 1.6GHz and a TDP of 5.5W will also have support for DDR3. New netbooks with the Atom DDR3 processors should be coming in the second half of the year.

A post made on Twitter today by NVIDIAGeForce has given away the names of the new graphics cards soon to be released by Nvidia based on the GF100 chip. Apparently the naming scheme is going to skip a whole number and go from the GTX 200 series to the GTX 400 series, with the first two cards being named the GeForce GTX 480 and GeForce GTX 470.

Is Nvidia trying to give a twice as powerful card a twice as grand name? We’ll have to see when the cards are properly released, which should be soon.

If you feel like being an early adopter to 3D display technology then the Acer GD235HZ might interest you. It’s a 23.6-inch 16:9 120Hz display that is fully compatible with Nvidia’s 3D Vision shutter glasses, and is therefore perfect for 3D gaming, if you have a compatible Nvidia graphics card that is. It’s also got a 1920×1080 resolution so it’ll be perfect for Blu-ray 3D movies when they start being released.

The monitor will set you back US$399, so it’s more than your standard 24″ display, and the Nvidia 3D Vision kit will set you back a further US$199. If you really want 3D right now though, go ahead because the monitor is available now.

I find myself using this really simple add-on for Firefox all the time. Basically what it does is when you highlight text in a passage/title/link/whatever, then drag and drop it anywhere, it will search Google in a new tab for the highlighted text. It also works with unlinked URLs – just highlight an unlinked URL such as google.com, drag & drop it and it will automatically go to the URL – and photos – just drag & drop to download the image (you can disable that if you like).

You’ll find yourself using it a lot if you’re a Firefox user, so head over to the QuickDrag add-on page now to download it.

Intel-Micron Flash Technologies (IMFT; a joint venture between Intel and Micron), responsible for a huge chunk of advances in SSDs and flash technology, has announced that they are sampling 2-bits-per-cell 25nm MLC NAND (pictured above). What this basically means is that solid state drives will be able to be bigger in capacity as well as cheaper for the consumers – both great pieces of news for the SSD market. Mass production of this new 25nm NAND should begin in Q2 of this year with products such as Intel’s 3rd-gen X-25M drives arriving in Q4.