AMD Fusion Hits Retail: Zotac and Gigabyte E-350s

AMD Fusion Hits Retail: Zotac and Gigabyte E-350s


We have been hearing about AMD’s Fusion initiative for what seems like an eternity. In fact, some of the very first posts regarding Fusion hit this site of ours way back in 2006. Many things have happened within AMD since those early announcements and rumors began swirling, most notably AMD’s acquisition of ATI. However, it was only recently that AMD’s efforts with Fusion have actually beared fruit; at least fruit that’s ready for public consumption.

Over the last few months especially, AMD has once again begun aggressively talking up Fusion and showing off a number of Fusion-based products, targeted at various price points and market segments. It was back in November that we got our first official hands-on with one of AMD’s Fusion-based products, the low-power Zacate platform. That first look and follow-up performance preview made use of an AMD reference platform, however, and not a product that was ready for store shelves.

Recently, a smattering of products based on Zacate and its lower-power cousin, Ontario, have since begun trickling out to retail and we’ve gotten our hands on two of them for some in-house testing. Although they are based on the same AMD E-350 APU (Accelerated Processing Unit), the Gigabyte E350N-USB3 and Zotac Zbox Blu-Ray AD03 Plus are two very different products. The Gigabyte E350N-USB3 is a mini-ITX mobo featuring an E-350 APU targeting the DIY crowd, while the Zotac Zbox is a sleek, highly-integrated, full-featured HTPC. Let’s take a look at the new ZBox first and then we’ll evaluate performance to see how these retail-ready AMD E-350 APU-based products fare against some competing low-power platforms and AMD’s own reference system we checked out a few months back

Sony debuts 3D laptop

SONY  VAIO  F  SERIES

Sony has unveiled its attempt at a 3D computer with its latest Vaio F Series, a beefy laptop with a 16in stereoscopic screen.
Sony Vaio F Series

Announced at CES 2011, the Vaio VPCF21Z1E/BI is a heavy piece of kit, but packs a punch, including a quad-core second-gen Intel Core i7 processor, a 640GB HD, 1GB dedicated graphics card and the aforementioned 3D capabilities.

You will need specs to view the effect though, and the F Series comes with the same Joe 90s as the Sony Bravia 3D range. Unlike the Asus G51J, there's no need for a dongle, as the 3D sync transmitter is built-in to the top of the display. A push of a button will switch the 3D effect on and off and not only displays full 3D content, but converts 2D footage too, apparently.

Content is viewed on its 1080p LED-backlit 16in display with a 240fps frame rate. It has a built in blu-ray drive, HD webcam and two USB 3.0 ports.

The Sony Vaio F Series 3D will retail for £1800 when it goes on sale in March

Motorola 'Flagship' Honeycomb Tablet to Ship Sans Flash

Will Brits who choose to splash out on Motorola's 10in Android tablet, Xoom, be able to view Adobe Flash-encoded content? Americans won't.

According to US network operator Verizon, the Xoom's Flash support is "expected Spring 2011", and not when the tablet goes on sale on this coming Thursday, 24 February.

The omission would be of small consequence had not so many Android tablet makers chortled so loudly that their offerings deliver "the full web experience" - code for Flash support - because their chief rival, Apple's iPad, infamously does not.
Xoom Flash

Motorola will be selling the Xoom in the UK through Carphone Warehouse, but since the tablet isn't expected here until some time in Q2, it should have Flash on board at launch.

The sound you can hear is a host of CW and Motorola UK staffers touching wood all at the same time.

To be fair, Motorola is not the first tablet maker to face such a Flash fail.

Toshiba's first tablet, the Folio 100, was dropped by exclusive UK seller Dixons because it didn't do Flash. It has now gained Flash support - a feature manufacturers and retailers will tell you is essential for UK sales success - and will be relaunched next month.

Speaking of Dixons, a mole tells us that its Vega tablet has suffered from Flash playback woes, though again, this is expected to be sorted any moment now.

This is the problem with Flash. Every hardware and software combo needs to be certified by Adobe.

In the past, Intel often touted its Atom chip as superior to ARM because the standard platform it provides will run Windows and Linux Flash players out of the box. ARM-based devices need specially coded Flash players, because of the subtle differences in ARM chips, which are made by different vendors out of the technology templates ARM provides.

That's not a reason to abandon ARM - it has many advantages over Atom, not least its impressive power efficiency - but it shows how 'ARM plus Android' is not the standard platform you might assume it to be.

It also explains why so few other tablet makers are rushing to market with Android 3.0 Honeycomb devices.

Chip Maker Cocks Snook at Apple With IPAD Family

Chip maker cocks snook at Apple with IPAD family


You have to admire chip maker STMicroelectronics' cojones - or boggle at the company's seeming stupidity. It is promoting the word 'iPad' as both an acronym and a trademark.

You'll note that, in the sentence above, we use Apple's capitalisation, and that's the way World+Dog writes it too. Not STMicro, which capitalises the lot: 'IPAD'.

Presumably, it hopes we'll read and speak it letter by letter, as we would with, say, 'HDMI', 'USB' and 'CPU'. Apple, on the other hand, expects us to say the first letter then treat the remaining three as a word in its own right.

Incidentally, this is is how Reg Hardware treats capitalisation, borrowing the tradition established by the Oxford English Dictionary. If the abbreviation is read or spoken as a word, we only captalise the first character.

Examples include 'Ram' and 'Rom'. 'CD' is capitalised because, like the earlier examples, you say it out loud - or in your head - as discrete letters. 'CD-Rom' neatly mixes the two notion.
STMicro IPAD

There are exceptions: 'RIM', for 'Research in Motion', is a case in point. We tend to write this as 'Rim', because that's how we all say it - only a few, odd souls say are-eye-emm. But a number of readers don't like this approach, preferring 'RIM', even though it is still spoken and read as a word, because they are either used to seeing it that way in print, or because they feel it mocks their favoured smartphone platform.

But we digress. Back to STMicro, which defines IPAD, as opposed to iPad - but not 'Ipad', which looks ugly in sans serif text, and is ambiguous: is that a capital 'i' or a lower-case 'l'? - as an "Integrated Passive and Active Device".

Trademark law in most nations that have one allows multiple use of protected words, provided each case can't be mistaken for the other. No one is (hopefully) going to misunderstand a reference to a Ford Focus as a pointer to Focus magazine, for instance.

The devices STMicro is referring to are chips, but that may prove too close a relationship for Apple's aggressively protective trademark lawyers, especially when STMicro accompanies its discussion of the IPAD with a picture of a gadget, as you can see above, that looks a lot like an iPhone with some PhotoShopped additions.

The chips "reduce parts count and simplify the design of reliable, high-speed data circuits commonly used in smartphones, tablets and mobile computers", STMicro claims.

Apple, of course, had to deal with the fact that another company, Fujitsu, held the name 'iPad' among its roster of trademarks for a gadget released in 2002. Apple eventually acquired the trademark from Fujitsu, for an undisclosed sum.

Will it strike a similar deal with STMicro? Or is a 'cease and desist' letter in the post even as we speak?

Incidentally, the US Patents and Trademarks Office lists STMicro as the owner of two IPAD trademarks, but marked as "abandoned". It has also trademarked - as of 2001 - 'IPAD' in Europe

New high-speed connection tech due from Apple

New high-speed connection tech due from Apple

Intel Corp: An announcement from Apple is expected soon about a new high-speed connection technology, a source told


An update to the Apple MacBook Pro is also expected soon.


Whether the new connector tech will be part of the upcoming MacBook Pro update (rumored to happen February 24) or announced in another context is not clear. Intel has been working on a technology called Light Peak for years and recently said the initial version would be based on copper, as practical realities dictate more convent.


Whether the new connector tech will be part of the upcoming MacBook Pro update (rumored to happen February 24) or announced in another context is not clear. Intel has been working on a technology called Light Peak for years and recently said the initial version would be based on copper, as practical realities dictate more conventional technology.

Apple is expected to adopt this technology in the near future--but likely use a name other than Light Peak, a source familiar with this aspect of Apple's plans said. Intel has said in the past that the first products using Light Peak should appear in the first half of 2011.

When Intel initially demonstrated Light Peak at its developer conference in 2009 it used a machine running Apple's Mac OS X.

Light Peak was originally touted by Intel as the holy grail of connector technology: a single replacement for the myriad cables that connect to monitors, external drives, scanners, printers, and anything else that plugs into a computer. But Intel--and Apple--may be targeting more specific connection protocols, at least initially.

As originally proposed, the fiber-optic technology connects many devices to PCs with fiber-optic lines. But, as mentioned, the initial version of Light Peak will use copper instead of light-based technologies, Intel has said.

Light Peak is significantly faster than even USB 3.0, carrying data at 10 gigabits per second in both directions simultaneously. Connection speeds will not be affected by the transition to copper, according to Intel.

Sony is also expected to be an early adopter of the technology.

More on Light Peak can be found here, from an interview with Jason Ziller, an Intel manager heading up the chipmaker's work on the technology

Read more: http://news.cnet.com/8301-13924_3-20033940-64.html#ixzz1EVUJPtGl

Prosesor AMD Persenjatai Notebook Advan Terbaru dan Harga 3 juta-an

Meski belum marak, munculnya perangkat PC baru seperti tablet dipercaya akan menggerus pasar notebook. Oleh karena itu vendor PC pun mengantisipasinya dengan mengintegrasikan fitur dan layanan yang lebih inovatif.

Hal tersebut pulalah yang dilakukan oleh Advan, yang pada kuartal kedua dan ketiga 2010 lalu sempat menjadi brand notebook lokal nomor satu di Indonesia. Baru-baru ini Advan menjalin kerjasama dengan AMD untuk menghasilkan produk notebook berkualitas yang mampu menjawab keinginan konsumen Indonesia.

Kerja sama perusahaan lokal Advan dengan AMD menghasilkan notebook dengan spesifikasi tinggi, namun harga yang terjangkau. Produk terbaru tipe Soulmate M4-33125 yang akan diluncurkan Februari 2011 ini akan dibanderol seharga Rp 3 jutaan saja.

Prosesor yang digunakan adalah AMD Atlhon 2 Danube N330, 2.3Ghz yang dilengkapi graphic card ATI Radeon HD 250, 256MB share untuk menghasilkan kualitas grafis dan multimedia yang baik untuk setiap penggunanya.

"Kelebihan Advan Notebook adalah terus hadir dengan teknologi terkini, didukung dengan produk yang baik, dan jaminan purna jual (service center) di seluruh Indonesia, serta harga yang nyaman untuk dikonsumsi masyarakat di seluruh Indonesia," kata Tjandra Lianto, selaku Division Manager Advan Notebook dalam rilis persnya.

Advan Soulmate M4-33125 menggunakan layar 14 inci dan didukung memori RAM 1 GB, media penyimpan 250 GB SATA, DVDRW, dan card reader. Namun, untuk paket penjualannya hanya dilengkapi platform DOS. Pengguna bebas menggunakan sistem operasinya sendiri. Produk tersebut hadir dalam warna-warna pilihan yang menarik yakni hitam, merah, biru, serta warna silver