Martyn Williams, IDG News Service Tue Dec 5, 11:00 AM ET

Higher capacity music players and laptop computers could be on the way thanks to a new hard drive from Toshiba that manages a 25 percent jump in storage space over current models.

The new 1.8-inch hard drive can store 100GB of data whereas current models hold a maximum of 80GB. The drives are about the same size as a PC Card and are commonly used in music players, like Apple's iPod, and compact laptop computers.

Toshiba plans to start mass producing the drives in January next year. The company doesn't sell them direct to end-users but to other companies for integration into their products. In the past device makers have typically incorporated higher capacity drives quickly into their products.

The drive will be on show at the Consumer Electronic Show, which takes place in Las Vegas from January 8 to 11.

Toshiba first developed a 1.8-inch drive in 2000. The device, which was at the time the highest capacity such drive available, could hold up to 2GB of data and cost around $740 at the time. Today the drives have not only risen in capacity but also fallen in price to the point where an Apple iPod, which includes an 80GB drive and color screen, costs $349.

Microsoft today released what it believes will be the last test version of Windows Vista before the product goes to manufacturing.

The company made Vista Release Candidate 2 (RC2), or build No. 5744, available to participants in its Customer Preview Program, as well as to TechBeta, TechNet, Technology Adoption Program, and MSDN members.

The previous test release of Vista, RC1, received "excellent feedback" from the estimated 3 million people who tested it, according to Microsoft. The company is using that feedback to put the finishing touches on the overall quality and performance of the operating system, it said.

Microsoft said that it is still on target to release Vista to business customers next month and to consumers in January 2007, though the company continues to give itself an out to miss those dates by saying that the quality of the product is its highest priority. The release of Vista has already been delayed several times.

Still, leading financial analyst Rick Sherlund of Goldman Sachs Group said in a research note this week that he believes all indicators point to a timely release for Vista.

"We had been skeptical of the launch schedule after Beta 2 shipped with problems in May, but the team seems to be making great progress in addressing issues of performance, reliability and compatibility," he wrote in his note.

Sherlund also said in his report that he expects Microsoft will soon be releasing discount coupons for Vista to customers who purchase PCs that are capable of running Vista before the OS is available. Microsoft has confirmed it has plans to do this, but has officially remained mum on the time frame.

In his report Sherlund wrote that Goldman Sachs has recently updated its financial outlook for Microsoft based upon both a timely release date for Vista and the imminent release of upgrade coupons.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/pcworld/20061006/tc_pcworld/127428

By JENNIFER TALHELM, Associated Press Writer Wed Oct 4, 5:25 PM ET

WASHINGTON - Interior Department employees aren't just using their computers to oversee parks and wildlife, an investigation found. They're spending thousands of hours a week visiting shopping, sex and gambling Web sites.

A report made public Wednesday on an internal investigation examining a week of computer use found more than more than 1 million log entries in which 7,700 employees visited game and auction sites.

More than 4,700 log entries were to sexually explicit and gambling Web sites.

The findings are "egregious" and "alarming," the department's inspector general, Earl Devaney, wrote in the report.

"Computer users at the department have continued to access sexually explicit and gambling Web sites due to the lack of consistency in department controls over Internet use," he wrote.

Devaney titled his report, "Excessive Indulgences." Its cover illustration is a photo montage of the types of Web sites employees have visited. One picture includes a shot of a woman's bare stomach.

Department officials say they are taking action to cut back on abuses by the agency's almost 80,000 employees with Internet access.

Devaney said in his report that he wanted to test the effectiveness of the department's rules on Internet usage. He looked primarily for visits to sexually explicit, gambling, gaming and auction sites because they are time-consuming and obviously not work-related, he said.

The investigation also found:

_A number of computers accessed sexually explicit Web sites for 30 minutes to an hour.

_One computer had 2,369 log entries at two game sites for about 12 hours.

_At least one computer accessed an Internet auction for almost eight hours.

Despite the findings, Devaney noted that since 1999, the department has taken just 177 disciplinary actions, 112 of which were for accessing pornographic or sexually explicit Web sites.

"Without strong and effective controls, we believe that this activity will continue and possibly increase," Devaney wrote.

In response, department officials issued a memo to all employees on Sept. 27 reminding them that some of the activities Devaney found "have significant legal and administrative consequences" and that violators could be fired or turned over to the police.

The department is working on blocking inappropriate Internet sites, the memo said. But it reminded employees that "just because an inappropriate site is not blocked does not mean that it is authorized for access."

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20061004/ap_on_go_ot/interior_indulgences

AMD 4X4 Enthusiast Systems AMD is pushing a new design for machines aimed at gamers and other speed freaks: Its 4X4 design allows for two Athlon processors on one motherboard--for a total of four CPU cores with existing dual-core processors, and a total of eight with the quad-core chips the company will be releasing next year. 4X4 motherboards will be available later this year.

AMD's Torrenza AMD is working on a new technology (code-named Torrenza) to connect its processors to coprocessor devices that handle tasks such as processing video, or modeling physics for more realistic games. The new coprocessors will be able to talk directly to the processor at high speed. The technology will appear on high-end systems (such as servers) first, but it could work its way down to desktops.

and a little piece on factory overclocking:

More Factory Overclocking An increasing number of desktop PCs that come to us for testing are overclocked, where the processor is set to run faster than the manufacturer's speed rating. This used to be a tweak that only hard-core geeks would make, but vendors such as ABS and Velocity Micro are using the technique to squeeze more performance out of processors.

PC world.com

But this simply cannot stand! Get the led out and catch up! get moving!

Intel hits AMD with quad-core 70% performance boost

By Stan Beer    Thursday, 28 September 2006

Intel is pulling out all stops to turn up the heat on its smaller but more nimble rival AMD. The latest salvo comes with the announcement that the new quad-core Core 2 Extreme chips for the high performance games market will be available in November sporting a whopping 70% performance hike.

AMD has tried to gain a lot of political capital from the fact that Intel's new quad-core package is not really a quad-core chip but in fact two dual-core chips "stitched together". However, Intel CEO Paul Otellini has a point when he says that consumers don't care whether they're getting four cores on a single die or four cores spread across two chips. What they care about is performance.

And performance is what Intel has been focussing on and delivering in spades for the past six months.

The dual-core Core 2 Extreme blew its AMD Athlon counterparts out of the water in benchmark tests and the Core 2 Duo has proven to be a winner in both the notebook and desktop space.

With its new quad-core offering, Intel has turned the spiggot up a notch or two. The November release for the gamer market is one thing, but the real pressure on AMD will be applied with the release of the Core 2 Quad for the mainstream desktop and notebook markets in Q1 2007.

http://www.itwire.com.au/content/view/5856/106/