Speed Test: Windows 7 May Not Be Much Faster Than Vista

Though Windows 7 edged out Vista in our lab tests, you may not notice much of a difference.
Improving performance is one of Microsoft's design goals with Windows 7, and many early reviewers (including ours) have said that the new OS seems peppier than Vista. But tests of the Windows 7 Release Candidate in our PC World Test Center found that while Windows 7 was slightly faster on our WorldBench 6 suite, the differences may be barely noticeable to users.
We loaded the Windows 7 Release Candidate on three systems (two desktops and a laptop) and then ran our WorldBench 6 suite. Afterward we compared the results with the WorldBench 6 numbers from the same three systems running Windows Vista. Each PC was slightly faster when running Windows 7, but in no case was the overall improvement greater than 5 percent, our threshold for when a performance change is noticeable to the average user.

The largest difference was 4 points--102 for Vista versus 106 for Windows 7 on an HP Pavillion a6710t desktop. Our other two test machines showed similarly minor performance improvements: A Maingear M4A79T Deluxe desktop improved by 1 point (from 138 on Vista to 139 on Windows 7), and a Dell Studio XPS 16 laptop improved by 2 points, from 97 on Vista to 99 on Windows 7.

DVD Rip Challenge: 12 Popular Drives Put to the Test

Whether you’re copying your movie discs to your hard drive for archival purposes or queuing them up in HandBrake for a batch trans code, your optical drive’s performance can make a big difference in time spent on this menial chore. The trouble is, there’s no obvious way of knowing which optical drive will do the job fastest.

The optical drive spec that gets the most attention is the DVD+/-R write speed. It’s the spec that’s prominently featured on the packaging and often even integrated into the drive’s name. But if you assume that the newest drive with the fastest-rated write speed will also kick butt at copying the contents of your movie discs to your hard drive, you’re mistaken.

For this task, read speed is what matters. But even knowing that, you can’t judge a drive’s real-world performance at copying video files simply by looking at its read specs. Not only do the specs indicate maximum capability as opposed to average speed, but a drive’s read time with video files can differ from its read time with data files. To find out which is the fastest drive for DVD copiers, we grabbed a bunch of DVD drives, a copy of Batman Begins, and got ripping.

Electronic Arts Sees PC Growing into World's Largest Gaming Platform

What a refreshing change of pace to have a major videogame publisher step forward and not only refrain from ringing the death knell for PC gaming, but to annoint the PC as the platform for games moving forward. That's what Electronic Arts (EA) has done, almost in as many words.

"In terms of distribution, the way we look at a lot of what's happening in the future is, we've got probably a billion PCs out there in the world," said Eric Brown, CFO for EA. "Very rapidly the PC is becoming the largest gaming platform in the world, just not in a packaged-good product."

The comments came during a quarterly earnings call in which EA talked about the digital download market. According to Brown, the online portion of EA's business model is seeing growth by as much as 60 percent year over year.

In a time when it's become vogue to diss on the PC as a gaming platform, EA's comments to the contrary almost makes you forget about the whole SecuROM/Spore debacle. We said 'almost.'

Longest Laptop Battery Life

From Dell’s webcast that took place last month, and Digital Nomads who provided us some answers on Twitter, we learned about a new laptop model that reaches 19 hours of battery life, which is quite impressive, taking into account the fact that average battery life of a laptop is of around 5 hours. It’s the Dell Latitude E6400, a notebook integrating a Solid State Drive, and the Mobile Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics chip, while the power comes from a 9-cell primary battery and a 12-cell slice battery. To help reaching this level, Dell notebook come with a special power management software called ControlPoint with the All Day Battery mode, the latter in charge with cutting the power for specific features and hardware parts, to maintain battery power.

Which laptop has the longest battery life? HP is another company focused on bringing the latest technologies to its customers and on satisfying their needs, including operating life of notebooks. Yesterday, the company announced breaking the 24-hour battery life with the new HP EliteBook 6930p model that uses a ultra-high capacity battery model to keep your system up all day long.

“All-day computing has been the holy grail of notebook computing,” said Ted Clark, senior vice president and general manager, Notebook Global Business Unit, HP. “With the HP EliteBook 6930p, customers no longer have to worry about their notebook battery running out before their work day is over.”

As an additional help, HP integrated also Intel Solid State Drive technology for 7% more power, and mercury-free LED displays, such as the Illumi-Lite screen, capable to increase the battery life up to 4 hours more.

Starting at a price of just $1,199, 14.1-inch HP EliteBook 6930p with the longest laptop battery life comes in a lightweight form factor at 2.1Kg, with durable encasing, Windows Vista operating system, optional ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3450 graphics with 128 or 256 MB dedicated memory, Mobile Intel GMA 4500MHD graphics, HP un2400 EV-DO/ HSDPA Mobile Broadband Module, 802.11 a/b/g/n draft 2.0 or a/b/g wireless LAN module, Bluetooth 2.0, Intel Centrino 2 with vPro technology, Smart Card Reader, HP Fingerprint Sensor, TPM 1.2, a built-in 2 MP Webcam with Business Card Reader Software and HP Night Light, up to 8GB DDR2 SDRAM memory, optional 160 GB 7200 rpm or 250 GB 5400 rpm hard drive, Intel Gigabit Network Connection, touchpad with scroll zone and pointstick, and ExpressCard/54 slot.

iPod Nano 4th Generation Technology

Each tuneband consists of a comfortable and flexible armband strap that can accommodate both large and small arms, a durable silicone skin that allows access to all ports on the iPod nano, and a low-tack, cut-and-peel screen protector that helps guard against smudges, moisture, and daily wear-and-tear. The silicone skin of the tuneband was specifically designed for runners and walkers fully covering the bottom corners of the iPod, securely holding it in place, yet allowing access to the USB port and headphone jack. The silicone skin also does not cover the click wheel to allow it to be used without interference.

"By using the best design features of our previous tuneband products," states Michael Banks, co-founder and CEO of Grantwood Technology, LLC, "we made this the best iPod armband for the 4th generation iPod available at a very competitive price," states Michael Banks, CEO of Grantwood Technology.

The tuneband is fully compatible with the Nike+iPod Sport Kit, allowing runners and walkers to enjoy this workout companion.

The tuneband is available in nine colour: black, clear, gray, navy blue, neon green, pink, purple, red, and teal blue. The colors (except clear) match those of the Shoe Pouch, another product from Grantwood Technology that allows runners and walkers to attach the sensor from the Nike+iPod Sport Kit to the outside of their favorite shoe.

The tuneband retails for $12.99 (USD) is available at their website. A special bundle comprised of the tuneband and Shoe Pouch is also available.

New ARM processors to arrive in the end of 2009

It appears that the arms race in the mobile world should not learn to stop, with manufacturers that equip more powerful processor and dedicated graphics chip. A product manager at ARM, in fact, would have declared the arrival of Mali and Mali-200-400, two graphics chips for the medium-low, but can flaunt graphics capabilities enviable.

In terms of performance should be outstanding: 16 million triangles per second and 275 million pixels per second, which results in performance worthy dell'Xbox360!

Valid if we consider the projection in figure which shows the evolution of the mobile market in the coming years, the quad-core Mali-400 can serve to achieve the resolution of 1920 × 1080.

Yet there is no information about which models equipped these chips, we should await the developments of these projects.

Google to Challenge Microsoft OS Dominance

95% PC's of the world runs on Vista and XP still. Google is developing Android as a OS to compete with Microsoft's windows. More so Google is making a Linux based OS which will have many advantages over Windows like modularity ( Windows is monolithic OS), more secure ( As it is Linux based).

So will Microsoft loose its dominance in a few years or a year. Only time can tell us.
Meanwhile its good to see an open source attempt at OS. I am sure Google has a good brand equity and any product that Google creates will surely be up to the mark and best in the market.

Samsung Sells 5 million TouchWiz F480

Now we can confirm the success, as Samsung, from sales of TouchWiz F480, has collected success after success, to reach 5 million units shipped. A growth that was, considering that the launch took place in May 2008, at a rate of 500,000 units sold each month.

The success has also led to the emergence of some special editions, like the one dedicated to Hugo Boss, artist P! Nk and Le Fleur Valentines.