ZDnet has a showdown between AMD and Intel dual core processors. It looks as though AMD has won in every comparison. This is not the only good news for AMD lately as summarized here. Intel’s overwhelming dominance is not what it used to be.
Category: Hardware
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Linksys changing WRT54G wireless router
Linux devices has a story on the Linksys WRT54G wireless routers. The WRT54G has been known for quite a while to be running linux and a community has sprouted up with customized software to add many neat features to the access points. However, Linksys is moving to VxWorks as the operating system for the routers in a move that will cut memory and flash sizes installed. (VxWorks is more of an embedded OS and many other network hardware makers have made the move.)
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Home Linux terrabyte backup system
This is something I’ve wanted to build for some time. I hadn’t actually thought about a terrabyte of storage, but… linux journal has the article on making your own home network backup storage solution using an old pc, linux and relatively cheap discs. The concept of any backup system is redundancy so that a single failure doesn’t take out your data.
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Your own astromech – R2-D2
If you’ve always wanted your own astromech, it won’t be too much longer to wait. A voice activated R2-D2 will be available next year from Hammacher Schlemmer. It runs on 4 AA and 4 D cell batteries and will sell for ~$120. According to the article it responds to voice commands, can run in “sentry mode” to guard a room (alert if movement), etc…
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Xubuntu for older systems
I can’t recall trying Ubuntu (maybe a livecd), but I’ve heard quite a bit about various variations on it lately. I’ve seen articles on business desktop use, certification by IBM (?) for running one of their applications and other various positive articles. I’m going to have to give it a try soon. Anyway, with all that this article caught my attention.
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iPod nano sales “staggering”
Reuters has a story about how big the sales of the Apple iPod Nano
such as the Apple 2 GB iPod Nano White
, Apple 2 GB iPod Nano White
are exceeding expectations this holiday season. Amazon reported that the Apple 2 GB iPod Nano Black
was the 6th biggest selling item in Electronic gadgets, while the White version above of the 2GB was 10th. There is, of course, also the Apple 4 GB iPod Nano White
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Old hardware has new legs with linux
This isn’t actually news in the “new” sense, but to many people this is newsworthy. From slashdot… aselabs is running a bit on DSL linux on an older laptop (Pentium 266MMX with 64 MB RAM). Most people would agree that is old/slow hardware by current standards and this is something that can be useful still with linux as the base operating system (fluxbox as the Window manager – I think that’s what dsl uses?)
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Worldnic DNS server outage teaches lesson…
Incidents.org has a post on a DNS server outage for Worldnic. Which effects a number of Network Solutions customers. Apparently they’re aware of the problem and are working on a fix. It doesn’t affect EVERY Network Solutions customer, there are some specifics…
To clarify the impact to the casual reader:
Not all customers of Network Solutions are affected.
No root or TLD servers are known to reside on these machines.
It’s “just” individual domains that are affected, but it might be a lot of them.
Only domains that have all their namervers on these machines will have significant impact.
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200GB optical storage not enough – try 300GB
InPhase Technologies (lucent spinoff) is readying an optical storage drive that can hold 300GB per disc. It’s expected to read and write 10 times faster than current DVD drives and uses “Tapestry holographic memory technology”. The discs are expected to be a bit thicker than DVD’s and about 13cm (~5.11 inches)
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200GB of optical storage anyone?
For those of you feeling somewhat cramped by the 4.5-9GB capacity of current single/dual layer dvds…. The inquirer has a story on what is coming…. Ricoh believes that by 2008 they can produce a 200GB optical drive that will be compatible with the Blu-Ray and HD DVD formats. The discs would have 8 layers (compared to Blu-ray/HD’s 2 layers).
