inCOM

Apple's sleek and stylish MacBook powered by latest Mac OS X 10.5 has been one of the most attractive laptop out there. In a recent update to their MacBook series, Apple has quietly updated processor, graphics and hard disk.

1. Its Core 2 Duo processor to Santa Rosa platform so that the Front-Side Bus speed gets increased to 800MHz from 667MHz. The MacBook will now feature a 2.0Ghz and 2.2GHz processor as compared to previous 2.0GHz and 2.16GHz.
2. Another major addition is replacing Intel GMA950 graphics processor with Intel X3100 graphics giving MacBook buyers another reason to smile.
3. Last but not the least, MacBook will now feature maximum 250GB with 5400rpm hard disk in replace of previous 200GB with 4200RPM hard disk

Despite of the above three updates, Apple has managed to keep the prices where they were before. The three versions of MacBook are still priced at $1,099, $1,299 and $1,499.

Posted by saurabh at 11/01/2007 08:23:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Following the release of Toshiba's 320GB high density Serial ATA hard disk, Western Digital now unveiled a similar specifications hard disk. The Western Digital named this hard disk as Scorpio and has a capacity of 320GB featured with a speed of 5400rpm, 8MB cache and 300MB/s maximum data transfer rate. The scorpio has a data seek time of 12ms same as Toshiba's MK3252GSX. The Scorpio looks as a carbon copy of Toshiba if we look at the features of both the hard disks. However, Western Digital seems to be simply unaware of the Toshiba's MK3252GX as they told that this is the World's Highest Density 2.5" Serial ATA hard disk although Toshiba was the one who won the race. So, moving on to the pricing of Western Digital 320GB Scorpio hard disk. The hard disk is little on the high side but that is obviously expected as this is just the start of it and is priced at $199.99.

Posted by saurabh at 11/01/2007 07:47:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

AMD's Quad Core processor Phenom has already created a lot of buzz in the market and today there have been a number of rumors came up related to Phenom.

1. Phenom's Clocking Speed: Phenom's clocking speed which was previously rumored to be 2.6GHz for Phenom 9700 expected to be released somewhere in December and 2.4GHz for Phenom 9600 has been reported to be changed to a lower value. According to the new reports AMD's Phenom 9500 will run at 2.2GHz as before, Phenom 9600 will run at 2.3Ghz and Phenom 9700 will run at 2.4GHz.
2. Phenom's Release Date: Phenom was previously expected to be released on November 20 but now it is expected to be released on November 19.

Although Phenom's have been clocked a bit lower than expected yet I don't think that is going to do anything with Phenom's popularity which is expected to be released combined with new RV670 graphics card and new Spider platform.

Posted by saurabh at 10/31/2007 07:19:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

GIMP, the open source image editing software for Linux has announced the release of its 2.4 version. GIMP have been a popular alternative to the Adobe Photoshop which costs around $600 for a single license which is used for editing images. The development team has added a number of new features to the 2.4 version of GIMP. First of all, they have given an all new looks to the menus so that they GIMP can work on any platform. In an important step and reacting to the suggestion of a number of designers, the development team of GIMP has now added the brush resize facility to the GIMP brushes. Other tool additions to GIMP includes Align tool for one click aligning of images and Foreground Selectivity Tool. The release notes also mention that they have re-written the code for selectivity tool which will enable designers to resize the existing selections. Moreover, there have been an improved zooming in and zooming out facility resulting in the removal of the pixel omission problem in the previous versions of GIMP. Last but not the least, they have added support for additional file formats such as 16/32 bits bmp format, photoshop ABR brush format etc.

Posted by saurabh at 10/27/2007 06:40:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Recently, AMD announced that they are going to start the fabrication of their 45nm CPUs by the mid-2008 but Intel has already on the verge of finishing the 45nm race this November. Intel today announced that they have fully set up the 45nm fabrication factory named as Fabs 32 in Arizona and have already started to produce 45nm processors. This is Intel's 6th Fabrication factory for producting 300mm wafers and Intel has told that with the 45nm technology they are going to use a special transistor types which are much smaller, much faster and prevents energy leakage to a much greater extent. Intel said that a single period of English grammar can accommodate more than 2 million transistors of such types. Moreover, the new transistors will be more free from any halogens and hence leading to clean environment. Clearly, these new transistors are highly energy efficient and holds the key to Intel's plan to UMPCs. Well, AMD tried to convince their clients that it will start up with 45nm but now it seems that AMD will be quite a long way behind Intel which might make impossible for it to come closer to Intel anytime sooner when it actually start producing the 45nm processors.

Posted by saurabh at 10/26/2007 05:36:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

In a financial conference, AMD disclosed a series of its plans that it is looking to follow till the mid-2008. The company in the very first plan reconfirmed its dedication to launch the new Spider platform coming November featuring the all new quad core processor Phenom combined with RV670 graphic processors and RD790 chipsets. Moving on to AMD's plans on 45nm technology, AMD officials clearly stated that they will start manufacturing CPUs based on the 45nm technology somewhere in the mid-2008 or earlier. AMD also said that they have shutdown the Dresden based Fabs-30 so as to upgrade it to Fabs-38 which will be capable of manufacturing 300mm wafers. Finally, moving on to their third quarter financial results AMD said that they were able to keep their desktop market share away from Intel and have clinched some market share in the mobile world. The meeting was more bent towards to the upcoming plans of AMD rather to be a financial meeting, clearly to keep the media away from the $394 million loss they had suffered this quarter.

Posted by saurabh at 10/23/2007 05:17:00 AM | Permalink | Comments

Finally, due to the tough competition given by Xbox, Sony has finally decided to bring out 40 GB Play-station 3 in the United States which is going to hit the bazaar on November 2 still $50 costlier than the Xbox 360 premium’s price i.e. $399.99 and decided to lower the price of its 80GB console from $599.99to $499.99.

In-spite of the high price, the 40 GB PS3 will be excels on Xbox on two fronts. The first big one is the double capacity of this 40 GB PS3 as compared to Microsoft’s Xbox 360 premium. The other important fact about this new product from Sony will be its blue-ray drive which will make your PS work as a blue-ray player.

On the negative side of it, this new 40GB PS3 will not be able to play with playstation 2 games.

Sony has also announced that they will lower the price for 80 GB PS3. Currently the cost of 80 GB model is $599.99, but Sony is thinking of cutting the price down to $499.99.

Posted by saurabh at 10/18/2007 07:32:00 PM | Permalink | Comments

Western digital broke the industry record in density when it announced that it could achieve about 520 gigabits per square inch using continuous media. They say that with the help of conventional tunneling, magneto-resistive head and perpendicular recording technology, they will be able to achieve 520 gigabits per square inch density. Western Digital also said that 520Gb/in² will be so dense that it can produce a 3TB hard drive in just a 3.5 inch desktop hard drive, which can be regarded as another record. 3TB hard drives are expected to hit in the market till 2010 but it also depends on the industry’s current growth rate of the storage density. Currently the aerial density is 200 gigabits per square inch for a modern hard drive.

Well, this seems to be real retraction in response to what Hitachi’s Global Storage Technologies which have claimed to build a 4TB hard disk by 2011.

Posted by saurabh at 10/13/2007 06:52:00 PM | Permalink | Comments