Upcoming Toshiba's 13-inch Laptop Has Turbo-charged Battery

Toshiba’s latest up and coming 13-inch laptop might be the world’s lightest, but it’s got another trick up its sleeve to banish battery life woes permanently. How? By adding a special second battery. Read on to discover what’s so special about the Toshiba 13-inch super-slim laptop.

Toshiba looks set to create a stir in the ultraportable laptop market by launching not only the world’s slimmest 13-inch laptop but it’s claimed by VozExpress to also deliver turbo-charged battery options.

Toshiba has yet to announce a name and price for its ultra-thin 13-inch laptop. However we are longer privy to some of its specifications. One of the most interesting is its battery. The new Toshiba laptop relies on a standard-voltage Intel processor and will be offered with an Intel Core i3 and Intel Core i5 options. This usually has an impact on battery life.

To get around this, reports Engadget, Toshiba has also added a second battery that uses Super Charged ion Battery technology capable of recharging to 90 per cent in just 10 minutes. If true, we can imagine Toshiba’s latest laptop being great for working on the move – a quick ten minute recharge in the local café, and you’re set for the rest of the day.

Other specifications to consider include a 512GB solid state drive, 500GB hard drive and a choice of Intel Core i3, Intel Core i5 and Intel Core i7-620 processors with 4GB of memory. Hopefully it’ll include Intel Wireless Display too.

We’re hoping to get further details of the Toshiba ultra-slim laptop in the next couple of days.

Source:

http://www.my-laptop.co.uk/2010/05/10/toshiba-13-inch-laptop-has-turbo-charged-battery/

Intel EU+ Expansion Growth Award Won by Avnet Technology Solutions

Avnet Technology Solutions / Avnet Technology Solutions Wins Intel EU+ Expansion Growth Award processed and transmitted by Hugin AS. The issuer is solely responsible for the content of this announcement.

Avnet Technology Solutions (www.ts.avnet.com), the solutions distribution leader and an operating group of Avnet, Inc. (www.avnet.com) (NYSE: AVT | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating (www.ir.avnet.com)), was awarded the Intel EU+ Expansion Growth Award by Intel Corporation (NASDAQ: INTC | Quote | Chart | News | PowerRating?) at the recent Intel Distributor Enabling Conference in Barcelona, Spain. Avnet was recognized amongst more than 40 EMEA distributors for excelling and maximizing growth opportunities in 2009. The award was presented to Francesco Capizzi, European Intel product manager, Computer Components, Avnet Technology Solutions, EMEA.

Avnet Technology Solutions' Computing Components division is Europe's premier distributor of leading-edge PC components. The division has a focused line card that ensures a close relationship with each supplier and a sales force that is able to deliver in-depth knowledge on each product.

recognized Avnet with this prestigious award not only because of their ability to drive growth in Europe for Intel products, but also because of their expertise in channel management and solutions development," said Maan Ahmadie, EMEA Director of Distribution at Intel. "Our partnership with Avnet has enabled Intel to serve a broad set of geographies and customers in Europe. We appreciate their dedication to the Intel channel, and their ongoing commitment to generating profitable growth for their business partners."

Avnet Technology Solutions' Computer Components division distributes Intel's leading-edge products, including processors, motherboards, networking and servers, which are designed to work together to deliver a complete technology solution. With a centralised logistics facility, Avnet Technology Solutions' Computing Components is able to hold large stocks of products from leading manufacturers, such as Intel and other complementary suppliers, providing next day delivery in many cases across Europe.

For more information please visit:
http://www.tradingmarkets.com/news/press-release/avt_intc_tscc_avnet-technology-solutions-wins-intel-eu-expansion-growth-award-929579.html

Intel Core 2 Duo

New 32nm Westmere-based Xeon CPUs Launched by Intel

Intel today launched what it calls its "most secure data center processor" in the new Xeon 5600 series, which is a 32nm update over the previous Xeon 5500's 45nm process. As many of you can figure out, the new Xeon 5600 series is based on the new Intel Westmere core technology.

What sets the Xeon 5600 apart from the consumer-level Core i3, i5 and i7 chips are two new security features -- Intel AES-NI, and Intel TXT -- that enable faster encryption and decryption performance for more secure transactions and virtualized environments.

For more information please visit: http://www.tomshardware.com/news/intel-xeon-westmere-32nm-nehalem,9905.html

Desktop PC Buying Guide

Once you've determined the type of desktop system you want a compact PC, a budget system, a mainstream all-purpose model, or a performance crackerjack--you need to know what components to look for. The processor and graphics chip you choose will determine many of your machine's capabilities, as will the system's memory and hard drive. Understanding those components will help you get the performance you need, without paying for things you don't.

You'll also want to consider details like the layout of the case, which can also make the difference between a pleasant workstation and a nightmare PC.

Graphics Cards

The GPU (graphics processing unit) is responsible for everything you see on your display, whether you play games, watch videos, or just stare at the Aero desktop baked into Windows 7.

If you aren't interested in gaming on your PC, integrated graphics built onto the motherboard--or in the CPU itself with Intel's new Core i3 and Core i5 Clarkdale chips--is the way to go. Integrated graphics help keep a system's cost low, and they deliver enough power to run simple games or high-definition Flash video. Intel's integrated graphics chips are widely used, but some PCs include an nVidia Ion graphics chip, which offers superior integrated video performance.

Processor

The CPU is one of your PC's most important components. The processor you choose is likely to determine your PC's shape and size, and will definitely determine its price. Generally, the higher the CPU clock speed, the faster the performance you may see--and the higher the price. A 3.46GHz Core i5-670 PC will trounce a 2.93GHz Core i3-530 system, but you'll pay nearly twice as much for the faster CPU. Another spec to watch is cache size: More is better, here: Core i3 and Core i5 parts have 4MB caches, while performance-geared Core i7 chips have 6MB or 8MB caches.

Desktop Case

A good case can make your everyday work easier and can simplify such tasks as upgrading and servicing components in a workplace. A well-designed case provides tool-less access to the interior, hard drives mounted on easy-to-slide-out trays, readily accessible USB ports and memory card slots, and color-coded cables for internal and external parts.

Operating System

It may be a decade old, but Windows XP remains a stalwart--even on some new systems. Nevertheless, most systems on the market today run Windows 7. Microsoft's latest operating system has received generally positive reviews, improving on many of Windows Vista's foibles.

For more information please visit: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/03/16/AR2010031600059.html

Review on Advent Vedona P

The Advent line of laptops is exclusive to PC World stores and the Advent Verona P is the latest ultra-slim machine on offer. It comes with 1 13.3-inch screen and entry-level CPU. It’s also a good looking with plenty of style. Find out how practical it is with our Advent Verona P review.

The Advent Verona P is an entry-level laptop based around a 13.3-inch screen and uses Intel’s new CULV processor, in this instance the Intel Pentium Processor SU2700, to deliver performance akin to that of a netbook.

Backed by 3072MB of memory and rounded out with a 250GB hard drive, the Advent Verona makes a decent secondary laptop, idea for using around the house, for example.

What’s more, it’s an incredibly slim laptop and compact laptop that weighs in at just 1.7kg, so is incredibly easy to take on the road with you. Sadly, the basic machine only comes with a 3-cell battery pack, which offers up to three hours of battery life at best.

For more information please visit: http://experts.thelink.co.uk/2010/03/08/advent-verona-p-review/

Intel will sell boxed Pentium CPUs as Core-based processors in Q1 2010

While it’s fun to target the latest Intel “Extreme” processor and hear about the performance tweaks that have been implemented over the previous iteration, the fact is that most buyers can’t afford to drop $1,000 on a CPU, or even $200-$300 for its still-powerful but more affordable siblings. Even Intel is aware that people are still satisfied with a Pentium dual-core processor instead of a Core i5; according to Fudzilla, Intel projects that Pentiums not only will outsell Core i3s, i5s, and i7s this first quarter of 2010, but also Core 2 Duos and Core 2 Quads. In other words, the company’s humbler assistance will outpace all of the other boxed Intel CPUs, including the few bargain-priced (and -powered) Celerons that will still be available.

While the latest games and certain applications like Adobe Photoshop or Premiere Pro can make use of some of that extra processing horsepower, most people are using Microsoft Office, surfing the Web, and maybe doing their taxes on their PCs. They can run multiple applications like these at the same time and use Windows 7 with a Pentium-based PC. Most users don’t need Hyper-Threading and Turbo Boost technologies, and certainly won’t pay for them with the economy still in flux.

In case you’re curious, here’s the approximate breakdown in terms of projected sales of Intel’s other boxed processors:

• Celeron (both single and dual core), 11%
• Core 2 Duo, 12%; Core 2 Quad, 7%
• Core i3, 5%; Core i5, 5%; Core i7, 2%
• Core i9, 4%.

Sony Vaio CW Series - Fiery Red

Sony’s renowned Vaio range of laptops deliver good performance but come with outrageous price tags. However, back in November the company put to fore its CW Series of power-packed multimedia notebooks. The CW series is where the company really worked on lowering the price points yet offering an efficient performance. The device emerged as a powerful multimedia device at an affordable price, bringing in some competition to manufacturers like Dell. Well, the CW series wasn’t just about performance as Sony maintains its love for style and elegance. The device is splashed with several colors. As the Sony Vaio CW Series Red notebook hops onto their desks, here’s an exclusive review of the Sony machine that runs on Windows 7.

Well, the impressively designed Fiery Red Vaio caught their attention from the moment the device was unboxed. It oozes super-stylish looks with a bright Red color to woo the ladies. All tech-savvy style icons with a budget can opt for the Sony Vaio CW notebook and if Red is not your color then Sony lets you pick among the hues of Black, Pink, Blue and White.

Talking about its design, the eye-catching device is dipped in glossy Red hue. The stylish 14-inch notebook’s lustrous outer body (lid) and the palm rest reflect style and sophistication. But one cannot escape the smudged finger prints on the lid and palm rest. As each time we used the notebook, our fingerprints settled on its glossy textured body. The other parts of the notebook sport a matte black finish.

Notebooks usually come with a small locking system to securely fold back the notebook. However, the Sony Vaio CW does not follow the usual game and features a slightly smaller lid (breadth-wise). This leaves a narrow horizontal space which houses LED indicators for power, battery and Wireless mode. The front part also equips memory slots for Standard SD cards and proprietary Memory Stick Duo cards. Well, we wonder if Sony wanted to add to the style (didn’t look like) with the distinctly designed lid. However, it leaves the device with smooth, rounded edges for additional comfort.

For more information: http://www.techgadgets.in/reviews/2010/28/fiery-red-sony-vaio-cw-notebook-reviewed/

Intel Corporation -PC chipset stores

Intel AMT enhances the security and central remote management of business PCs by providing a firmware-based out-of band communication channel through which a management console can reach the PC even when it is powered off or the operating system (OS) is non-functional or missing. A management engine within the PC chipset stores authentication information in non-volatile memory that it uses to pass information across the same physical network interface used by the host OS, but with its own logical identity and IP address.

This mechanism allows system administrators to dramatically extend their management reach, including the ability to remotely discover hardware and software, power machines up and down, and deploy security patches and other software, regardless of system state. Using Intel AMT, support organizations can also isolate PCs from the rest of the network if they become compromised by malware.

Industry Challenges that Inspired Intel Trusted Execution Technology

Where the traditional focus of network protection has been. Coupled with the fact that a compromised PC may offer the means to obtain access to servers and other network assets, these characteristics have created an incentive for hackers to focus their efforts on client computing platforms.

Attack tools are widely available on the Internet, and IT organizations too often find themselves in a reactive mode in trying to fend off malicious intruders. The diversity and flexibility of intrusion attempts has largely outpaced the ability of today's protection models to cope with them.

As vulnerabilities in popular operating systems and application software are publicized, exploits are generated, often before security patches can be created to guard against them.

Financial incentives associated with the theft of data will continue to grow and encourage attempts to breach system defenses. Because of the increasing significance of the business PC in overall security, it has become necessary for IT organizations to look beyond perimeter defenses in protecting their networks.

Memory-chip company - Folsom

When it’s not operating as the largest privately held, global technology company in the Sacramento region, Numonyx B.V. could serve as a marketing extension of the Folsom Chamber of Commerce, the city council and the mayor’s office.

Headquartered in Switzerland, the privately held company, which claims to be the world’s third-largest supplier of memory technology and the number one provider of memory chips for mobile phones, is a major booster of doing business in Folsom.

Numonyx picked the city as its North American headquarters and opened nearly 100,000 square feet of office and laboratory space at 2235 Iron Point Road in December. The site is staffed by nearly 450 employees working in or supporting strictly research and development. There’s no manufacturing.

Folsom won the nod partly because of the nearness of the Numonyx facility to the Intel Corporation campus. Numonyx was formed in 2008 when Intel and STMicroelectronics joined their flash memory businesses to create the independent company focused solely on memory technologies. Until the move into its new building, Numonyx employees temporarily worked at the Intel site.

For more information, please refer this page: http://folsomtelegraph.com/detail/142054.html

BMO Capital Markets Maintain Nokia (NOK) and Intel (INTC) Ratings

Analyst Tim Long from BMO Capital Markets met with Nokia Corp. Executive Vice President Tero Ojanpera at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona and discussed the company's Meego operating system that was developed in partnership with Intel Corporation.

Long maintained his Market Perform rating for Nokia Corp. He said he believes that the focus on Meego will cause a slower than expected recovery for Nokia's smartphone business.

The analyst also said that while Nokia is expanding its services businesses, that prices are falling and that he doesn't think the businesses will be very profitable.

BMO Capital Markets also maintained their Outperform rating for Intel Corporation.

OpenBSD

OpenBSD is a Unix-like computer operating system descended from Berkeley Software Distribution (BSD), a Unix derivative developed at the University of California, Berkeley. It was forked from NetBSD by project leader Theo de Raadt in late 1995. The project is widely known for the developers' insistence on open source code and quality documentation, uncompromising position on software licensing, and focus on security and code correctness. The project is coordinated from de Raadt's home in Calgary, Alberta, Canada. Its logo and mascot is a pufferfish named Puffy.

OpenBSD includes a number of security features absent or optional in other operating systems and has a tradition of developers auditing the source code for software bugs and security problems. The project maintains strict policies on licensing and prefers the open source BSD licence and its variants—in the past this has led to a comprehensive licence audit and moves to remove or replace code under licences found less acceptable.

As with most other BSD-based operating systems, the OpenBSD kernel and userland programs, such as the shell and common tools like cat and ps, are developed together in a single source repository. Third-party software is available as binary packages or may be built from source using the ports tree.

The OpenBSD project maintains ports for 17 different hardware platforms, including the DEC Alpha, Intel i386, Hewlett-Packard PA-RISC, AMD AMD64 and Motorola 68000 processors, Apple's PowerPC machines, Sun SPARC and SPARC64-based computers, the VAX and the Sharp Zaurus

Processor architectures

ARM

ARM is designing and licensing high-performance chips requiring a relatively low power envelope, which would constitute an ideal basis for netbooks, and has touted these as an alternative platform. Despite this, ARM has had very little success in establishing a market for their chips in netbooks, likely because of incompatibilities of their ARM architecture to the established x86 software ecosystem (primarily the dominant Microsoft Windows operating system, Linux is fully compatible). Freescale, a manufacturer of ARM chips, has projected that by 2012 half of all netbooks will run on ARM and there has been much speculation as to a version of the upcoming Windows 7 compatible with ARM. In June 2009 nVidia announced a dozen mobile Internet devices running Tegra, some of which will be netbooks.

MIPS

Some Ultra-Low Cost netbooks feature a MIPS CPU. The 64-bit Loongson MIPS microprocessor is also used for higher-end applications.

x86

One report at the end of 2008 suggested the typical netbook featured a 3-lb (1.4 kg) weight, a 9-inch (23 cm) screen, wireless Internet connectivity, Linux or Windows XP, an Intel chip, and a cost of less than US$ 400. The x86-compatible VIA Technologies C7 processor is powering netbooks from HP and Samsung. VIA has also designed the Nano, a new x86-64-compatible architecture targeting lower priced, mobile applications like netbooks.

Net Work Cards

What is a network card?

A network card (also called a Network Adapter or Network Interface Card, or NIC for short) acts as the interface between a computer and a network cable. The purpose of the network card is to prepare, send, and control data on the network.

A network card usually has two indicator lights (LED's):


* The green LED shows that the card is receiving electricity;

* The orange (10 Mb/s) or red (100 Mb/s) LED indicates network activity (sending or receiving data).

To prepare data to be sent the network card uses a transceiver, which transforms parallel data into serial data. Each cart has a unique address, called a MAC address, assigned by the card's manufacturer, which lets it be uniquely identified among all the network cards in the world.

Network cards have settings which can be configured. Among them are hardware interrupts (IRQ), the I/O address and the memory address (DMA).

To ensure that the computer and network are compatible, the card must be suitable for the computer's data bus architecture, and have the appropriate type of socket for the cable. Each card is designed to work with a certain kind of cable. Some cards include multiple interface connectors (which can be configured using jumpers, DIP switches, or software). The most commonly used are RJ-45 connectors.
Note: Certain proprietary network topologies which use twisted pair cables employ RJ-11 connectors. These topologies are sometimes called "pre-10BaseT ".

Finally, to ensure that the computer and network are compatible, the card must by compatible with the computer's internal structure (data bus architecture) and have a connector suitable for the kind of cabling used.

Video Feature Connector Pinouts.

Pinout details

Pin	Name	Function
1	PD0	Dac Pixel data bit 0
2	PD1	bit 1
3	PD2	bit 2
4	PD3	bit 3
5	PD4	bit 4
6	PD5	bit 5
7	PD6	bit 6
8	PD7	bit 7
9	-	Dac Clock
10	-	Dac Blanking
11	-	Horizontal Sync
12	-	Vertical Sync
13	-	Ground
14	-	Ground
15	-	Ground
16	-	Ground
17	-	Select Internal Video
18	-	Select Internal Sync
19	-	Select Internal Dot Clock
20	-	Not Used
21	-	Ground
22	-	Ground
23	-	Ground
24	-	Ground
25	-	Not Used
26	-	Not Used

And I assume that pins 1 - 12 are outputs, and 17 - 19 are inputs. Is this correct?

The reason is this - I have a Rombo Media Pro+ video digitising card. It chroma keys its output into the vga monitor signal. However, although it is supposed to work with an ET-4000 with Hi-colour RAMDAC, the colours on screen behave as if the top 2 bits of colour information are missing, and red, green, blue signals are swapped around. Rombo has suggested that this may be due to insufficient buffering on the feature connector outputs, and is happy to sell me a buffer device for 50 pounds. I would rather save about 45 pounds, and build my own. I assume it would require (for example) a 74F244 buffer IC(or two).

KVM switch problems

There are two problems with VGA and KVM switches: the pin-9 problem and the pin-12 problem.



The pin 9 problem

Some monitors wait for a valid +5V level (TTL) on pin 9, using this signal to detect the computer. If the KVM switch doesn't provide +5V (pin 9 is floating) or pin 9 is missing on the connector of the cable, the monitor will not startup properly (sometimes the I/O light will flash slowly). The solution is to hardwire the console-side pin 9 of the KVM switch to +5V and ensure that the cable between the KVM switch and console has a wired pin 9.

The pin 12 problem

As mentioned under 'Disabling DDC', a machine connected to a KVM switch, but during startup not connected throughout the KVM switch to the console, will fall back to the default (lower) resolution. The solution is to remove the pin from one end of the VGA cable and to disable any plug and play for the monitor. Systems which use X11 to control the display (such as GNU/Linux or *BSD) will need to edit /etc/X11/xorg.conf so that:

Random Access Memory

Random access memory (usually known by its acronym, RAM) is a form of computer data storage. Today it takes the form of integrated circuits that allows the stored data to be accessed in any order (i.e., at random). The word random thus refers to the fact that any piece of data can be returned in a constant time, regardless of its physical location and whether or not it is related to the previous piece of data.

This contrasts with storage mechanisms such as tapes, magnetic discs and optical discs, which rely on the physical movement of the recording medium or a reading head. In these devices, the movement takes longer than the data transfer, and the retrieval time varies depending on the physical location of the next item.

The word RAM is mostly associated with volatile types of memory (such as DRAM memory modules), where the information is lost after the power is switched off. However, many other types of memory are RAM as well (i.e., Random Access Memory), including most types of ROM and a kind of flash memory called NOR-Flash.

Intel integrated circuits

Among the most advanced integrated circuits are the microprocessors or "cores", which control everything from computers to cellular phones to digital microwave ovens. Digital memory chips and ASICs are examples of other families of integrated circuits that are important to the modern information society. While cost of designing and developing a complex integrated circuit is quite high, when spread across typically millions of production units the individual IC cost is minimized. The performance of ICs is high because the small size allows short traces which in turn allows low power logic (such as CMOS) to be used at fast switching speeds.

Intel dual-core x86 CPUs

The Core brand refers to Intel's 32-bit mobile dual-core x86 CPUs that derived from the Pentium M branded processors. The processor family used a more advanced version of the Intel P6 microarchitecture. It emerged in parallel with the NetBurst (Intel P68) microarchitecture of the Pentium 4 brand, and was a precursor of the 64-bit Core microarchitecture of Core 2 branded CPUs.

The Core brand comprised two branches:

1.The Duo (dual-core)
2.Solo (Duo with one disabled core, which replaced the Pentium M brand of single-core mobile processor).

Read-only memory (ROM)

Read-only memory (usually known by its acronym, ROM) is a class of storage media used in computers and other electronic devices. Because data stored in ROM cannot be modified (at least not very quickly or easily), it is mainly used to distribute firmware (software that is very closely tied to specific hardware, and unlikely to require frequent updates).

In its strictest sense, ROM refers only to mask ROM (the oldest type of solid state ROM), which is fabricated with the desired data permanently stored in it, and thus can never be modified. However, more modern types such as EPROM and flash EEPROM can be erased and re-programmed multiple times; they are still described as "read-only memory"(ROM) because the reprogramming process is generally infrequent, comparatively slow, and often does not permit random access writes to individual memory locations. Despite the simplicity of mask ROM, economies of scale and field-programmability often make reprogrammable technologies more flexible and inexpensive, so mask ROM is rarely used in new products as of 2007.