Pinnacle have announced their smallest ever USB HDTV tuners, the PCTV HD mini Stick and the TV for Mac HD mini Stick. Both feature a retracting USB plug and support digital over-the-air TV (ATSC) and unencrypted digital cable TV (ClearQAM) for SDTV and HDTV with resolutions of up to 1080i.
Creative is expected to be showing off their new Creative X-Fi Go! Mobile sound card this week at IFA. The card is an update to the companies Soundblaster Play! and offers users a sound card that they can port between computers and take with them on the go.
OWC have updated their Mercury Elite-AL Pro dual-drive external hard-drive with a powered USB 2.0 hub, still keeping the Mac-style design while boosting capacity up to 2TB. There are now two USB 2.0 ports on the back and a third on the front, handy for plugging in USB memory sticks, with a high-performance USB bridge to ensure maximum speed to all of the ports and the internal drives themselves.
When Apple sued OS X clone-maker Psystar earlier this month, some commenters suggested that multiple other cloners could spring up depending on the outcome of the case. Open Tech Inc. don’t appear to have the patience to wait, however; the company will apparently be selling two new computers that, while not coming with OS X pre-installed, will nonetheless be able to run the Apple OS should the buyer choose so.
AMD has announced an update for one of its ATI Radeon dual-head graphics cards, especially optimizing it for use with Apple’s Mac Pro system. The HD 3870 Mac & PC Edition has a 56-bit 512MB GDDR4 frame buffer memory and 320 stream processors, together with two DVI outputs for plugging in some large-scale Cinema HD monitors.
Owners of computer components that use the PCI Express 2.0 standard will be pleased to hear that their existing hardware will still work once motherboards switch to the PCI Express 3.0 standard. At a recent press conference discussing the interface, SIG chairman Al Yanes disclosed more details about the upcoming connector, which has previously been quoted as managing 8.0 gigatransfers per second.
Dell is taking the unexpected step of culling its XPS Gaming Desktops range in order to give its Alienware acquisition room to breathe. According to the Wall Street Journal, the move is intended to reinvigorate Alienware’s focus as well as streamline the company’s offerings as a whole. A “combined gaming design and development unit” will tackle the seven current Alienware models and attempt to claw back sales that had been lost thanks to the XPS overlap.
Data backup falls resolutely at the dreary end of the tech-task scale; periodically market researchers release stats showing how few people take the time to safely copy their accumulated files, usually prompting a guilty DVD burning session which never gets repeated. Apple’s Time Capsule, then, was welcomed with excited upon its announcement; with the slick, careful design Apple are renowned for, could they manage to make even backup sexy? To be fair, it’s a pretty huge challenge. You’ll be hard-pressed to find a nicer looking network hard-drive, or one so straightforward to set up, but Time Capsule undoubtedly has its caveats.
Tech reviews are very much a snapshot process, making a decision after a relatively short period of time and of a single incarnation of the product. Useful, yes, but not an exact facsimile of living with something day in, day out that you’ve bought yourself. If you’re lucky – and assuming that no manufacturer ever pushes out a product so perfect there are no possible improvements – you get a company that’s constantly tweaking and augmenting; if you’re really lucky, you get an opportunity to revisit their product and ring the changes. Back in May I spent some time with Linutop’s fanless, Xubuntu-based micro-PC, framing my review from the perspective of a Linux-naive home user, to see if the compact device would make a decent alternative to a low-end Windows PC. At the time I criticised how tricky, for a fledgling user, it was to add functionality beyond what was preinstalled; since then, Linutop have released v1.2 of their software package, and asked if we’d like to check out the changes.
Back when I reviewed Linutop’s fanless Linux PC one of my final thoughts was how it might compare to Zonbu’s similarly Linux-based Zonbox. Both have cut-down specs and no hard-drive, but while the Linutop relies on a thumbdrive for storage, the Zonbox uses an online subscription service with a subsidised starting price ($99) and monthly fees of $12.95 upward. Over at ArsGeek they picked up a Zonbox and gave it a good going over with their review-stick.
JP
