Windows 8 Coming in October?

Microsoft  aiming for October to release the commercial version of Windows 8, based on comments attributed to a Microsoft spokeswoman at CES.

 A demo of the new operating system, public relations director of the Windows Business Group Janelle Poole said, "Windows releases come round about every three years and this year will be three years in October since we launched Windows 7," according to a posting by Pocket-lint. "So I think that's a good guideline to consider."


Microsoft has been reluctant to say exactly when it will  Windows 8, but Poole seemed ready to offer a strong hint. "We haven't talked about the release date and we generally don't. We are talking milestone to milestone, so for us right now we're talking about the next milestone being the consumer preview happening in late February," she says.

Windows 8 will feature touchscreen navigation and commands as well as support for tablets. Not all apps that run on Windows 7 will be compatible with the touchscreen capabilities, but mouse and keyboard devices will enable all apps that ran on Windows 7.

The new operating system shoots for power efficiency, better security and compatibility with ARM-based chips (read tablets and next-generation PCs), all of which could make Windows 8 attractive to businesses.by tim greene

CES 2012 Tech Trends Failure?

2012 International CES--the Las Vegas-based tech mega-showcase formerly known as the Consumer Electronics Show--is winding down. So ends four days of demos, meetings, presentations, parties, and bluster.
For journalists and civilians alike, CES offers a great way to monitor the state of technology. An event with piles of product introductions, interesting ideas, and out-of-left-field innovations suggests a healthy tech ecosystem, with plenty for consumers to get jazzed about in the coming year. A lackluster CES foretells a dreary tech landscape.

Lenovo IdeaPad U410 laptopFortunately, CES 2012--which put roughly 20,000 new products on display--was chockablock with great new stuff. The big themes were smart HDTVs, Ultrabooks (supermodel-thin laptops built around Intel's latest chips), and--inevitably--Android tablets.

Which means that 2012 will be the year of brainy televisions, MacBook Air lookalikes, and tablets that don't start with a lowercase i, right?

Not so fast, pardner.

CES may be a terrific barometer for tech's health in aggregate, but its guidance on the specifics--on which products or product categories will be hits in the coming 12 months--can be shaky.

Consider the events of the past four years. CES 2009 was all about the netbook. These cheap mini-notebooks--generally running Windows XP--burst onto the scene in 2007 or so. Consumers loved them and opened their wallets in appreciation. In short order, PCWorld.com's Top 10 Netbooks chart became one of the most popular pages on our site.

The crash came hard, however. Because these machines were underpowered, uninspiring, and often indistinguishable from one another, sales soon tailed off. The 2010 introduction of the iPad, together with the ongoing development of highly functional new smartphones, helped make netbooks a far less attractive purchase--even though many are priced at well under $500.

Asus Eee Pad MeMo 370T tabletAnother OMG product at CES 2009 was an awesome three-button, 3G- and Bluetooth-enabled watch phone from LG. After seeing it, I wanted it. A lot. And I thought others would too. Chalk that one up to middle-age exuberance and a willful decision to disregard history. My having been a Dick Tracy fan as a kid may also have factored into it.

In 2010, you may recall, CES attendees were gaga over e-readers. They were deemed so promising that the show's promoters accorded them their own "Tech Zone" on the Las Vegas Convention Center floor. I remember attending product demos on at least ten of them and then struggling to decide which one I wanted for myself. Spring Design's top-notch Alex Reader? The Plastic Logic Que? The iRiver Story?

The correct answer turned out to be, "none of the above." The e-reader revolution didn't materialize (thanks, again, to tablets and smarter smartphones). Folks still buy e-readers, but not in the volume that most industry observers had anticipated.

LG Google TVCES 2011 shaped up as a coming-out party for 3D everywhere: HDTVs, camcorders, you name it. The industry oversold 3D; consumers as a whole didn't bite. At this point, most observers continue to believe that 3D TVs will eventually become commonplace, as 3D glasses improve and 3D content becomes more readily available. I'll give 3D a grade of Incomplete for now, and revisit it in a few years.

What about this year's CES standouts? TVs are back, and they're more capable and connected than ever, even if 3D isn't their main selling point. (see Patrick Miller's "Why 3D TV Isn't 'Cool' at CES This Year"). Meanwhile, Ultrabooks are out to prove that they're not this year's version of the netbook. And Android tablet makers are hoping to generate some noise in a market dominated by the iPad.

So let me go on record right here as saying that I believe all three will find great success in 2012. And I also have a fantastic watch phone that I'd like to sell you cheap.by steve fox pc world

Amd Radeon 7970 HD

The world’s first 28nm GPU. The revolutionary new GCN Architecture. Ready for DirectX® 11. PCI Express 3.0.¹ The AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 is your personal checklist for ground-breaking technology.

The next generation of AMD Eyefinity technology is here, featuring all-new support for stereo 3D, universal bezel compensation and brand new display configurations. Face it: the best just got better.^2,3

Armed with the new PCI Express 3.0 standard, multi-GPU configurations with AMD CrossFire™ technology are just another way to obliterate the competition with the revolutionary AMD Radeon™ HD 7970.^4,5

Leave no performance behind. Get higher clocks and faster gaming with AMD PowerTune technology on AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 Graphics.⁶

Fold and mine faster than ever with AMD App Acceleration powered by the unprecedented 28nm GCN Architecture.⁷

The market isn’t ready for 4k video, but Radeon™ is. With full support for 3GHz HDMI 1.4a and DisplayPort 1.2 HBR2, the AMD Radeon™ HD 7970 is set for quad HD.source AMD site

Nvidia New Gpu's Coming Soon?

Nvidia won't release its first graphics cards based on the 28nm Kepler architecture until the start of 2012 although mass production will start in the last part of this year, said a company representative in a recent interview.

This information was provided by Nvidia PR representative Ken Brown, which had a talk with Fudzilla about the state of the company's next-generation graphics chips.

A definitive release date wasn't announced, but it seems like Kepler will arrive in the first quarter of 2012.

What's interesting to note is that, according to the latest rumors cited by VR-Zone, Nvidia has opted to release the 28nm die shrink of Fermi for notebook computers before its first Kepler GPUs.

Nvidia has reached this decision since the first chip based on the Kepler architecture will be a replacement for the current GF110 (used in the GTX 580 and GTX 570), such a part being much to power hungry for a notebook GPU.

Kepler is the code name used by Nvidia to refer to its next-generation graphics processing unit architecture, which, just like AMD's Southern Islands GPUs, will be manufactured using TSMC's 28nm fabrication process.

The new graphics core is expected to be more flexible in terms of programmability than the current Fermi architecture.

In the second half of 2010, Nvidia promised that Kepler, and its successor Maxwell, will include virtual memory space (allowing both the CPU and the CPU to use a unified virtual memory) and pre-emption support, as well as a series of other technologies meant to improve the GPU's ability to process data without the help of the system's processor.

According to previous Nvidia estimates, these changes, combined with the new manufacturing process, should deliver 3 to 4 times the performance per Watt of the Fermi architecture in double-precision 64-bit floating point operations.

In the consumer market, Kepler-based graphics cards will most likely carry the GeForce 600 designation.by Sorin Nita

HP Pavilion g4-1226nr Specs ~ Laptop Specs

HP Pavilion g4-1226nr Specs ~ Laptop Specs

Intel Eliminating Popular CPU'S

Intel has notified its partners to prepare for a significant change in desktop processor supply in 2012, which clears the  portfolio to accommodate the Sandy Bridge-E processors as well as the upcoming 22 nm product generation.
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Intel is set to phase out the Core i7-930, i7-950, i7-960, i7-980 and i7-990X on the LGA 1366 platform to its end-of-life cycle. The LGA 1366 platform was first introduced in November of 2008. It represented Intel's high-end desktop platform. To this day, this platform continues to hold its own in performance against to today's top processors (Bulldozer, Sandy Bridge and Sandy Bridge-E). The LGA 1366 was replaced by the LGA 2011 (Sandy Bridge-E) on November 14, 2011.
Intel is set to send the Core i3-540, i5-650, i5-660, i5-670, i5-680, i7-860 and i7-870, along with the Pentium G6950 and G6960 on the LGA 1156 platform to its end-of-life cycle. LGA 1156 was first introduced in September of 2009. It represented Intel's mainstream desktop platform. The LGA 1156 platform was short-lived with its replacement by the LGA 1155 (Sandy Bridge) in January of 2011.
The LGA 1366 and LGA 1156 boxed parts will be available for order until June 29, 2012. Tray SKUs will be available until December 7, 2012 or until supplies are depleted.by doug crothers

Benchmarks Results Battlefield 3 Nvidia Cards

 Nvidia-based charts, including 11 different cards at three resolutions. Note that the GeForce GTX 400- and 500-series cards are DirectX 11-capable, and the 200-series boards are limited to DirectX 10. This is an important distinction because, even though the 200s throw up some reasonable performance numbers (especially the GTX 295), they’re not doing as much work. The game automatically dials Terrain Quality down from High to Low, yielding some pretty nasty artifacts as shadows interact with the environment.
Those triangles should be smooth shadows.
Hopefully Nvidia can fix this in its drivers. For now, those older Nvidia cards don't do Battlefield 3 any favors; stick to the newer stuff (or go the AMD route—incidentally, AMD’s DX 10 cards don’t have this problem).
Update: Nvidia let us know that the issue we encountered is caused by a shadow corruption bug in its driver, which should be fixed in the next release. The company says it hopes to have that build available within a couple of weeks.



Mentally filtering out the 200-series boards, the rest of Nvidia’s armada scales down fairly evenly. At 1680x1050 (sticking to High quality settings), I’d want at least a GeForce GTX 560 Ti.
The same card would probably suffice at 1920x1080 too, though a GTX 570 would be even better.
Owners of 30” displays already threw down some big bucks for 2560x1600; a GeForce GTX 590 is the right two-slot solution there. If you’re willing to go SLI, two GeForce GTX 570s perform better (and cost less), as we’ll see in a few pages.by chris angelini