TestFreaks screenshot

TestFreaks is a useful one-stop shop that aggregates expert & user reviews, forum posts, images and technical material about a huge range of computing and entertainment items.

As well as pulling all of this information together, the site also provides aggregated ‘scores’ such as the ’Freak’ score based on a combination of factors such as age of product, age of review, review source etc.

Usage

Product categories can be browsed, with various sort and filter options available to help narrow down product searches.

Selecting a product will pull together and present a wide range of information for you, including links to technical manuals and video reviews. Expert & User reviews and product related forum threads can be viewed all from the one place - with the handy option of showing local reviews only if required.

Products can be selected for comparison against each other, and the site also provides price information based on a number of price feeds.

The site also provides a handy ‘community’ type tool where people can submit and answer questions relating to various categoires.

Opinion

It has to be said that the Aussie version of TestFreaks currently has a fairly small range of categories, but you only have to take a look at the main TestFreaks site to see the huge range they have covered there – so we should expect to see steady growth in the range of products covered in the com.au site.
 
The site is currently in beta-mode and is undergoing regular improvements as a result of user feedback, but the interface is very friendly, clean and easy to use.

Well worth a bookmark for any gadget  and hardware freaks out there (both the com and com.au versions).

TestFreaks

review post by IT Resource

Listed below are a few of the most common Error messages that accompany a BSOD, together with explanations of what they may mean.

The error messages take the form of an 8-character hexidecimal code (the last eight characters in the ‘STOP’ message code).

 
STOP: 0×0000000A
IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
Indicates that a kernel-mode process or driver attempted to access a memory location it did not have permission to access, or a memory location that exists at a kernel interrupt request level (IRQL) that was too high (a kernel-mode process can only access other processes that have an IRQL that’s equal to or lower than its own).

 
STOP: 0×0000001E
KMODE_EXCEPTION_NOT_HANDLED
The Windows XP kernel detected an illegal or unknown processor instruction. The problems that cause this error can be either software or hardware related and result from invalid memory and access violations, which are intercepted by the Windows default error handler if error-handling routines are not present in the code  itself.

 
STOP: 0×00000024
NTFS_FILE_SYSTEM
Indicates that a problem occurred within Ntfs.sys, the driver file that allows the system to read and write to drives formatted with the NTFS file system. (A similar Stop message, 0×00000023, exists for the file allocation table [FAT16 or FAT32)] file systems).

 
STOP: 0×00000050
PAGE_FAULT_IN_NONPAGED_AREA
The requested data was not in memory. The system generates an exception error when using a reference to an invalid system memory address. Defective memory (including main memory, L2 RAM cache, video RAM) or incompatible software may cause this error.

 
STOP: 0×0000007B
INACCESSIBLE_BOOT_DEVICE
Windows XP has lost access to the system partition or boot volume during the startup process. Incorrect device drivers typically cause this error although it can also indicate a possible virus infection.

 
STOP: 0×0000007F
UNEXPECTED_KERNEL_MODE_TRAP
A hardware problem e.g. resulting from mismatched or defective memory, a malfunctioning CPU, or a fan failure that’s causing overheating.

 
STOP: 0×0000009F
DRIVER_POWER_STATE_FAILURE
Indicates that a driver is in an inconsistent or invalid power state. This error typically occurs during events that involve power state transitions, such as shutting down or moving in or out of standby or hibernate mode.

 
STOP: 0×000000D1
DRIVER_IRQL_NOT_LESS_OR_EQUAL
The system attempted to access pageable memory using a kernel process IRQL that was too high. Typical cause is a bad device driver (one that uses improper addresses) although it can also be caused by faulty or mismatched RAM or a damaged pagefile.

 
STOP: 0×000000EA
THREAD_STUCK_IN_DEVICE_DRIVER
A device driver problem is causing the system to pause indefinitely. Typically, this problem is caused by a display driver waiting for the video hardware to enter an idle state. This might point to a hardware problem with the video adapter or a faulty video driver.

 
STOP: 0xC0000218
UNKNOWN_HARD_ERROR
A required registry hive file could not be loaded. The file may be corrupt or missing. The registry file may have been corrupted due to hard disk corruption or some other hardware problem. A driver may have corrupted the registry data while loading into memory or the memory where the registry is loading may have a parity error.

 
STOP: 0xC0000221
STATUS_IMAGE_CHECKSUM_MISMATCH
Driver, system file, or disk corruption problems (such as a damaged paging file). Faulty memory hardware can also cause this message to appear.

The “multi-core” processor technology, codenamed “Larrabee” will be showcased at an upcoming industry conference in Los Angeles.

By dividing tasks between cores, these multi-core chips will be able to cut energy use and heat while speeding performance, using a type of  parallel processing.

Intel and AMD currently sell chips with two or four “cores,” but the new Intel chips (pencilled for release in 2009 or 2010) will have 16 to 48 cores and will be tailored for handling computer game graphics. The chips will also accomomodate the increasingly complex, ‘multi-tasking’ type approach that see users running many desktop apps at once.

Intel say that the major task for software developers now will be to make full use of the available processing power and multi-threading capabilities. Predicted research breakthroughs include voice recognition software so accurate it could be used to record witness testimony in courtroom proceedings.

Intel expects Larrabee “to kick start an industry-wide effort to create and optimise software for the dozens, hundreds and thousands of cores expected to power future computers.”

Larrabee’s initial foray into the multi-billion dollar computer graphics market will put it in an arena dominated by Nvidia and AMD, which both reportedly plan to market chips with hundreds of cores.

See more at:
http://www.intel.com/pressroom/archive/releases/20080804fact.htm?iid=pr1_releasepri_20080804fact

Aspire One features an 8.9″ CrystalBrite LED backlit display (resolution of 1024×600 pixels), CrystalEye webcam and 802.11b/g WiFi built-in as standard for access to available wireless networks.

Aspire One will be available with Linpus Linux Lite or Windows XP Home, and comes with 512MB or 1GB of memory respectively. There are two alternatives for data storage: a NAND flash module of 8GB or an 80GB internal HDD. In addition the Aspire One reads 5 different types of memory card.

The bundled OneMail application integrates up to five email accounts into one central inbox. Similarly, users can have multiple instant messenger accounts via a single point of access.

Available in a range of colours, the Aspire One has a RRP of $599AUD (linux version).

• Linux version weighs less than 1kg
• Windows XP version weighs 1.1kg
• Up to 3 hours battery life with standard 3-cell battery
• Up to 7 hours battery life with optional 6-cell battery

The Sydney University based Centre for Ultra-high bandwidth Devices for Optical Systems (CUDOS) team, led by Ben Eggleton, has created a switch embedded in a silicon chip. The chip uses scratches on a glass surface to direct optical traffic at speeds of up to 640 gigabits per second.

Traditionally, switching network traffic means converting it from light into electrical signals and then back again. However, with the massive speeds now used in backbone networks, such an approach is becoming a bottleneck. The new switch opens up the prospect of multi terabit-per-second speeds.

Eggleton says “The switch chip essentially uses one beam of light to control another. The scratches create a photonic circuit that does the job traditionally done by electronics”. The circuit will guide data in much the same way as trains are guided from one track to another.

Just as potentially impressive as the operating speed is the simplicity and potential cheapness of the design. This should eventually allow it to be incorporated into a wide variety of equipment.

The CUDOS team has worked with other researchers at the Australian National University and the Technical University of Denmark on the project. A proof of concept chip is currently under evaluation in Europe.

Find CUDOS here

Customers can leverage AMD’s latest FireStream offering to run critical workloads such as financial analysis or seismic processing dramatically faster than with CPU alone, helping them to address more complex problems and achieve faster results. For example, developers are reporting up to a 55x performance increase on financial analysis codes as compared to processing on the CPU alone, which supports their efforts to make better and faster decisions. Additionally, the use of flexible GPU technology rather than custom accelerators assists those creating application-specific systems to enhance and maintain their solutions easily.

The AMD FireStream 9250 stream processor includes a second-generation double-precision floating point hardware implementation delivering more than 200 gigaflops, building on the capabilities of the earlier AMD FireStream 9170, the industry’s first GP-GPU with double-precision floating point support. The AMD FireStream 9250′s compact size makes it ideal for small 1U servers as well as most desktop systems, workstations, and larger servers and it features 1GB of GDDR3 memory, enabling developers to handle large, complex problems.

Driving broad consumer adoption with open systems
AMD enables development of the FireStream family of processors with its AMD Stream SDK, designed to help developers create accelerated applications for AMD FireStream, ATI FireGL and ATI Radeon GPUs. AMD takes an open-systems approach to its stream computing development environment to ensure that developers can access and build on the tools at any level. AMD offers published interfaces for its high-level language API, intermediate language, and instruction set architecture; and the AMD Stream SDK’s Brook+ front-end is available as open source code.

In keeping with its open systems philosophy, AMD has also joined the Khronos Compute Working Group. This working group’s goals include developing industry standards for data parallel programming and working with proposed specifications like OpenCL. The OpenCL specification can help provide developers with an easy path to development across multiple platforms.

“An open industry standard programming specification will help drive broad-based support for stream computing technology in mainstream applications,” said Rick Bergman, senior vice president and general manager, Graphics Product Group, AMD. “We believe that OpenCL is a step in the right direction and we fully support this effort. AMD intends to ensure that the AMD Stream SDK rapidly evolves to comply with open industry standards as they emerge.”

Accelerating industry adoption
The growth of the stream computing market has accelerated over the past few years with Fortune 1000 companies, leading software developers and academic institutions utilizing stream technology to achieve tremendous performance gains across a variety of applications.

“Stream computing is increasingly important for mainstream and consumer applications and is no longer limited to just the academic or engineering industries. Today we are truly seeing a fundamental shift in emerging system architectures,” said Jon Peddie, president, Jon Peddie Research. “As the industry’s only provider of both high-performance discrete GPUs and x86-compatible CPUs, AMD is uniquely well-suited to developing these architectures.”

AMD customers, including ACCIT, Centre de Physique de Particules de Marseille, Neurala and Telanetix are using the AMD Stream SDK and current AMD FireStream, ATI FireGL or ATI Radeon boards to achieve dramatic performance gains on critical algorithms in HPC, workstation and consumer applications. Currently, Neurala reports that it is achieving 10-200x speedups over the CPU alone on biologically inspired neural models, applicable to finance, image processing and other applications.

AMD is also working closely with world class application and solution providers to ensure customers can achieve optimum performance results. Stream computing application and solution providers include CAPS entreprise, Mercury Computer Systems, RapidMind, RogueWave and VizExperts. Mercury Computer Systems provides high-performance computing systems and software designed for complex image, sensor, and signal processing applications. Its algorithm team reports that it has achieved 174 GFLOPS performance for large 1D complex single-precision floating point FFTs on the AMD FireStream 9250.

Pricing and availability
AMD plans to deliver the FireStream 9250 and the supporting SDK in Q3 2008 at an MSRP of $999 USD. AMD FireStream 9170, the industry’s first double-precision floating point stream processor, is currently available for purchase and is competitively priced at $1,999 USD. For more information about AMD FireStream 9250 or AMD FireStream 9170 or AMD’s complete line of stream computing solutions, please visit http://www.amd.com/stream.

Source: AMD

The Flatron W2252TE boasts a power draw of just 22W, around 45 per cent lower than the average 40W of similarly sized monitors.

“With the ever increasing time spent by consumers on computers these days, there is a need for products that are more energy efficient,” said Fiona Landsberg, marketing manager for LG.

“We are committed to expanding our ‘green’ monitor portfolio with products that either equal or better the energy saving provided by the W2252TE.”

The screen offers a 1,680 x 1,050 resolution, 170-degree viewing angle, 250 cd brightness and a 2ms response time.

The W2252TE is expected to hit the shelves in August, but pricing details are yet not available.

The firm said that the products offer improved processing power and maintainability and are designed to simplify server consolidation by supporting virtual operating systems for the first time.

NEC’s fault-tolerant servers feature dual modular hardware redundancy. The main hardware components, including CPU and memory, are replicated to run in ‘lockstep’ in which the two redundant modules process the same instructions at the same time.

If any hardware component fails in one module, the faulty component is isolated automatically and processing continues uninterrupted through the other module without downtime or data loss.

The Express5800/320Fd-MR and Express5800/320Fd-LR feature quad-core Intel Xeon processors, achieving a 20 per cent performance gain over the existing 320Fc-MR model by utilising the Intel 5400 Series Xeon processors.

Other enhancements include support for additional operating system capabilities, such as Microsoft Windows Server 2003 R2 Enterprise x64 Edition, allowing higher levels of main memory to be fully utilised.

NEC said that a significant capability is the additional support for virtual operating systems. This allows multiple guest operating systems to run in a single physical server, simplifying server consolidation and migration from old operating systems.

When running virtual operating systems with multiple applications, it is especially important to utilise fault tolerant servers that can significantly reduce the risk of hardware failure, NEC said.

Running multiple applications on a standard server means a single hardware failure could bring down multiple applications affecting more users and having greater impact than if those applications were spread across multiple physical servers.

One feature that addresses these expectations is Active Upgrade support of the 320Fd-MR and 320Fd-LR, designed to reduce the planned downtime necessary to install security patches and software upgrades without system reboot.

With Active Upgrade, hot-fix patches and application updates can be applied to one module while the other module continues normal operation.

WD was the first company to introduce a hard drive, optimized for low power consumption, using GreenPower technology, and is raising the bar for the high performance desktop market with WD Caviar Black. “WD Caviar Black hard drives offer the highest capacity and performance in a desktop class drive available on the market today enabling users to maximize the features and functionality of power computing applications such as multimedia, video and photo editing,” said Don Bennett, WD vice president and general manager of desktop storage. “Selection of a WD Caviar Black drive ensures WD customers receive the best WD has to offer in terms of features, performance and reliability.”

In keeping with WD’s leadership in hard drive performance, WD Caviar Black drives combine 7200 RPM spin speed with the SATA 3 Gb/s interface and 32 MB cache to deliver ultimate performance in a maximum-capacity drive. The WD Caviar Black series of hard drives are designed for use in high-end OEM desktop systems, as well as by users who want to upgrade the speed and capacity of their system. WD Caviar Black hard drives feature the following:

High Performance Electronics Architecture

• Dual processor – Twice the processing power to maximize performance.
• 32MB cache – Bigger, faster cache means faster performance.

Rock Solid Mechanical Architecture

• StableTrac – The motor shaft is secured at both ends to reduce system-induced vibration and stabilize platters for accurate tracking, during read and write operations.
• NoTouch ramp load technology – The recording head never touches the disk media ensuring significantly less wear to the recording head and media as well as better drive protection in transit.

WD Caviar Blue, Green, Black
WD’s new ‘blue, green, black’ product system enables customers to choose the right drive for them. WD Caviar Blue represents the performance and reliability that WD has been building for over 20 years, the WD Caviar Green employs WD’s GreenPower technology for cool, quiet and eco-friendly operation, while the WD Caviar Black family of hard drives delivers maximum performance for today’s discriminating technology enthusiasts.

Price and Availability
WD Caviar Black 750 GB (model WD7501AALS) and 1 TB (model WD1001FALS) hard drives will be available next week through select distributors and resellers. Manufacturer’s Suggested Retail Price (MSRP) for the WD Caviar Black 750 GB is $199 and the 1 TB is $249 USD. Both drives are covered by a five-year limited warranty. More information about WD Caviar Black 1 TB desktop drives may be found on the company’s Web site at http://www.wdc.com/en/products/Products.asp?DriveID=488.

Source: WesternDigital

Easy and Fast Expansion with EzLink Technology
Traditionally, to utilize multi-monitor computing would mean to rely on the support of extra graphic cards, detailed installation knowledge and extra time – making it too complicated for general users to fulfill their multi-tasking needs. ASUS’ EzLink Technology makes innovative use of existing USB interfaces to easily spread out the vision and screenspace of multiple monitors for a better viewing experience compared to just VGA; and also helps businesses defray their overheads. After only installing the EzLink driver once, users can expand almost any PC with ASUS EzLink Displays. Content can then be automatically moved back to the main screen or notebook display when the USB cable is disconnected. Monitors also return to previous configurations after reconnections – lowering the complexity of adding more monitors.

Moreover, the ASUS EzLink Technology enables up to six VW223B or VW202B monitors to be daisy chained over one standard USB 2.0 cable connected to a single PC or NB – greatly increasing screenspace for enhanced work efficiency. This is perfect for users who require a large amount of screen and desktop space like banking and finance executives, SOHO workers, professional bloggers, information seekers, etc. The VW223B is also embedded with a 3 port USB hub – which allows convenient connections to not just more EzLink Displays, but also other USB devices.

Enhanced Video Features for Better Viewing
The ASUS VW223B and VW202B embedded EzLink technology also offer exceptional image quality with rich video features. ASCR (ASUS Smart Contrast Ratio) Technology automatically adjusts the luminance of the backlight for better displays according to the image contents, and improves the contrast ratio to 3000:1. The “Aspect Control” function allows users to select a preferred display mode between Full and 4:3 modes without image distortion. Splendid Video Intelligence Technology, which delivers optimized video performance with intelligent colour, brightness, contrast and sharpness corrections, as well as 5 video preset modes and 3 skin-tone selections to suit the users’ preferences.

The ASUS EzLink Display is simply an easy and cost-effective solution that increases productivity by adding additional displays without an extra graphics card, much deployment cost, and additional technical training. They are ideal for use in a wide range of commercial applications, and will provide an unparalleled user experience.

Specifications

Source: Asus