AMD Fusion A-Series APUs For Desktop Are Now In The Market

When AMD first released its brand new Accelerated Processor Unit (APU) products which combines CPU and GPU into one single processor, the initial line-up – C-Series and E-Series – were focused on low-power PC and budget market. Only now, the more powerful and more capable APU have started to arrive into the market in the form of AMD Fusion A-Series APUs that was previously codenamed as “Llano”.

Following the release of AMD Fusion A-Series APUs for mobile last month, the first batch of the new AMD Fusion A-Series APUs for desktop has just arrived into the market in two different flavors: the A8-3850 and A6-3650. As both are quad-core processor with thermal design power of 100W, they can be differentiated through their CPU and GPU clock speed together with the type and amount of Radeon graphics cores within them; as listed below:

The new AMD Fusion A8-3850 and A6-3650 APUs are priced at around RM 407 and RM 346 respectively. Contact you favorite retailer to find out more about them or visit www.amd.com. 

Article From: Lowyat

Mac OS X Lion Coming On The 14th, MacBook Air Soon After.

According to the good people over at TUAW, their sources have received word that Apple is planning to pull all nighters on July 13th in their retail stores. Usually when Apple pulls this sort of thing, it could only mean one thing, a new product release the next day. If the timeline is to be believed, it looks like Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will be released to the general public on the 14th July via the Mac App Store. Why the overnighter then if it wont be available in store? Apparently Apple is upgrading the machines in store to make sure Lion runs smoothly on them.

It looks like soon after the launch of Lion, Apple is looking to refresh the MacBook Air shortly after, quite possibly within a week. According to Appleinsider, the hardware was ready to go but Apple held them back wanting to wait to ship them with Lion pre-installed.

OS X Lion will be available for US$29.99 from the Mac App Store, if you don't have fast internet, you're out of luck so far. Go bug someone with Unifi to let you leech off their connection for a few hours.

(Source: TUAW)

Article From: Lowyat

LG E2360 dual-monitor setup adventure

Desktop real estate space is becoming an increasingly difficult topic to understand. On one hand, you have disciples of the old school who believe in fully utilizing desktop space, and insist on filling up every inch of empty space with an icon. Then you have the newer generation of zen hippies who believe that minimalism is key to getting into heaven, and that more than three icons on a desktop is a punishable sin. You also have the social media / Wall Street archetypes that run applications which are so big they require a screen of their own just to run in the background.

Review: Alienware M14x Gaming Laptop

Well, hello there… looks like we have met again, Alienware. Previously, we have reviewed two Alienware – the M17x in 2009 and the M11x in 2010; so, now it is time for the new M14x to be under the spotlight.

As per any given Alienware-branded entity out there, the M14x is one serious mean machine which goes beyond its physical design. Being one of two new Alienware laptops – M18x being the other one, not locally available for now – that were released in April 2011, the laptop comes equipped with second generation Intel Core i7 processors together with an Optimus-enabled NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M GPU. It is also equipped with a couple of other fierce hardware such as the options of either 7200RPM hard drive or a solid state drive as well as 1600MHz DDR3 RAM options up to 8GB.

So, how does the combination of these high performance hardware fares under our tests? Jump in to find out.

Logitech launches big sounds with the Z906 500-watt monster

Creating a worthy successor is never an easy task, and when you have a gargantuan reputation to live up to, the job only gets tougher. Logitech launched the Z906 surround speaker system earlier today, the successor to the highly acclaimed Logitech Z-5500 digital 5.1 speaker system, and after cranking it up for a couple of demo tunes, we’re happy to report that the engineers behind it have done their heritage proud.

Offering a massive 500 watts (RMS) of kidney jiggling power, the Z906 is THX certified and jammed packed with audio bad assery. The press release says that it’s powerful enough to shake your house, which is a claim that isn’t too far-fetched thanks to a 165 watt ported side-firing subwoofer. But since you’re more likely to be using it in your living room or bed room rather than to power up a feng tao joint, the crystal clear mids and trebles from the five 67 watt satellites, the on-board DTS / Dolby Digital 5.1 decoder, and the six audio inputs help it blend in perfectly with your existing entertainment system and is well equipped to churn out some mind blowing aural pleasure.

Story continues after the jump.

Celebrate World IPv6 Day by monitoring web traffic with Akamai

Behind the façade of all fancy and witty URLs lie a string of numbers called an IP address. IP addresses are also used to tell your web surfing mobile phone apart from your desk bound work station, pint sized tablet, and cloud-connected inkjet printer. In essence, anything that is connected to the internet has an IP address, and at the rate that technology is moving forward, we’re going to run out of fresh IP addresses pretty soon.

Since the world will probably implode once we run out of IP addresses, a new revision of the Internet Protocol structure called IPv6 was created to facilitate the world’s seemingly insatiable hunger for new IP’s.

Today happens to be World IPv6 Day and internet big boys like Google, Facebook and Bing are giving IPv6 a day-long test run. From a user point of view, nothing much will change. Typing www.google.com will still bring you to Google, but if you’re REALLY interested to see how web traffic is served throughout this 24-hour period, then hop onto the Akamai site at www.akamai.com/ipv6 and you’ll be treated to a real-time chart of IPv6 statistics. 

(Source: Akamai) 

 Article From: Lowyat

AMD at Computex 2011

Computex is always a great yearly event to look forward to as hardware manufacturers come out with new stuffs to get you excited for the year ahead. At the recent Taiwan Computex 2011, AMD launched its 9-series chipset lineup that allows PC manufacturers to build next generation high performance desktop platforms. Additionally, as the tablet market is growing rapidly, the company also unveiled its 2011 HD Tablet Platform that is based on the AMD Z-Series Accelerated Processing Unit (APU) that brings exciting entertainment features like a vivid media display and content creation capabilities to Microsoft Windows-based tablets.

“As consumer appetites for more compelling, lifelike visual experiences increase, there is a greater need for high performance, smooth, vibrant graphics as well as unparalleled computing power. From tablets to desktops, AMD is making powerful computing accessible to everyone.” – John Taylor, Product Marketing Director, AMD.

While the AMD 9-series chipset is the foundation for unlocking the highest-octane AMD desktop experience, providing an immersive HD entertainment and gaming experiences, extreme multitasking, tweaking, and overclocking, it is the first to support the AMD AM3+ socket processors (while being backward-compatible with the AM3 socket), enabling blazing fast performance. Additionally, they support clock rate management through AMD OverDrive Software. Other features includes up to 6 SATA 3.0 6Gbps hard drive interface ports, Gigabit Ethernet, HyperTransport 3.0 technology, and PCI Express Generation 2.0. The 9-series line of chipsets will be available on manufactures including Asus, Biostar, Foxconn Technology, Gigabyte Technology, Jetway and MSI.

There’s no denying that the tablet market is growing rapidly. With the availability of tablet devices from various manufacturers, Gartner research shows that by 2014, the tablet market is expected to exceed USD$200 million. The new AMD 2011 HD Tablet Platform will offer support for HTML 5, Adobe Flash 10.2 and external monitors, enabling crisp graphics for entertainments such as gaming, streaming of videos. All play and no work is not good either, it will also offer enterprise-level security, allowing IT policy makers to offer the convenience of tablets to an increasingly mobile workforce.

Hit the break for more information and pictures.

Don't Worry, Leave It All To Kaspersky

It doesn’t matter where you go and where you are, protection is important and protection; as long as you have a computer, you’re going to need something to protect you from the dangers of the Internet, but merely getting good protection is not enough especially if you have a family of several young users or run a small company full of employees. Kaspersky recently introduced a No Worries Plan aimed at providing its award-winning security solutions with added services not only to home users, but also SME and SMBs.

The No Worries Plan comes in a choice of Kaspersky PURE or Kaspersky Small Office Security (KSOS) solutions that not only comes with security software, but also support service that includes installation and setup of the security network plus training for those who are new to network security. Imagine going home after a tiring day only to discover all your computers are infected with virus, or imagine rushing for meetings and your server suddenly crashes, causing your company to lose money; the service will take away your worries by solving all these problems for you by trained technicians.

On top from the privileged services that will be provided by Kaspersky, the No Worries Plan will give subscribers an added bonus as it will come with technical support to semi-urban and rural users as well through free monthly visitation to selected outskirt areas.

“Many computer users in rural areas are facing difficulties in obtaining technical support for their security software products as there are few software professional around to assist. As a brand that champions cyber security awareness, we saw a need that could be filled for an important segment of Malaysian society and stepped in with a solution that meets that need more effectively.” – Ms. Gun Suk Ling, Corporate Sales Director, APAC, Kaspersky Lab.

No Worries Home Plan subscribers will only need to pay RM30 a month to enjoy better protection and worry-free technical services with Kaspersky Pure premium protection for 3 users. As for SMBs, companies will have to pay only RM200 per month for up to 10 licenses through its Small Office Plan 1, and as for companies with up to 20 employees, they can opt for Small Office Plan 2 at a price of RM500 per month.

Of course, along with the launch which featured Kaspersky Lab’s Malaysian Brand Ambassador, World No. 1 Badminton Men’s Singles Champion Dato’ Lee Chong Wei, Kaspersky will be having a special promotion that offers a more affordable price. Hit the break to find out more.

MSI Array of Tablets and Notebook At Computex 2011

As you can see from coverage that we have featured from Computex Taipei 2011, there is no doubt that this year is the year of tablets. You can see them at almost every inch of the event show floor, from manufacturers to developers and heck, even giants like Microsoft – who themselves has just unveiled the new tablet-centric Windows 8 yesterday - are not spared the hottest form factor in the market at the moment.

Obviously, MSI is also part of the bandwagon as well and have showcased quite a number of WindPad tablets at Computex this week - including the one above that is draped with designs by world-renowned fashion designer Jeremy Scott - alongside couple of new additions to their G, F, C and X notebook series. Find out more about them right after the jump.

ASUS Eee Pad Transformer Plays Nice With PS3 Controller

If you needed another reason that the Asus Eee Pad Transformer is probably the best Android tablet out there, let it be this one. Last week at Computex, the Best Choice in Computex Award Winner got an update in the form of Android 3.1 which gave it USB host support. This update opens the floodgates to many possibilities and one of them is plugging a PS3 (or theoretically an Xbox 360 or any USB gamepad) into the USB port and controlling the tablet from there. Obviously there will be no bluetooth support so you're going to have to be fully wired, but hey, its better than nothing! Now all we need are some PS emulated games on the Android platform and we'll be all set, I don't think abduction would work very well with the PS3 controller.

(Source: Engadget)

Article From: Lowyat