Here's a news article worth mentioning: "Hotmail to offer 250MB of free storage"

It just makes me laugh...thanks to Google, both Yahoo and Microsoft have responded by adding significantly more space to normail mail accounts. Just imagine what things would be like without Google...inferior search engines, less innovation, incredibly small mail storage space, or in other words, less competition. Read more here.

Here are some articles I found that I wanted to mention a couple of days ago:

Sony XYZ 3D Car GPS System - Well, the title is self-explanatory...just take a look at these images.

It really does look like a PS2 game!

Here's how it looks on the dash. Check out the Wired article here

DualDisc - "It’s not a CD. It’s not a DVD. It’s both. It’s a DualDisc." Basically, you've got a CD on one side and a DVD on the other. Sounds like it's here to speed up the progression from CD to DVD audio while minimizing cost; hey, it works for me. I can still listen to the cd with a normal stereo and get better sound quality and 5.1 channels on a DVD player. Read more here.

Google Gmail: Spook Heaven - As a current user of gmail (newsletters only, for now), I don't mind the method that it presents advertisements to me; when I read emails, Google scans them and presents relevant ads according to certain words in the text. No harm in that; I mean, I get a nice, clean interface and tons of space. The problem arises when the legal system comes into play. Google's advertising system gets challenged and is proven legal, and then the government would have more of a reason to build in filters in routers and ISPs to scan for certain words and have a right to read emails. Yes, I'm sure this already happens, but the large-scale image is what we're afraid of.

"Simply put, if a computer programmed by people learns the contents of a communication, and takes action based on what it learns, it invades privacy...Fundamentally, we should treat automated searches of contents as what they are: tools used by humans to find out more about what humans are doing, and provide that information to other humans. At least until the computers take over."

Click here to read more.

There were a couple of other articles that I was going to write about, but I can't find them at the moment, so I may choose to edit this page at a future date. Of course, feel free to leave comments.

I've been looking at power supplies for several days now, and I have to say that it is a difficult and somewhat tedious task; searching for reviews that accurately measure the performance of PSUs that I find on newegg.com and sorting through many pointless customer reviews on their site isn't exactly fun. I will admit that I am looking for a power supply at a reasonable price (around $50); it would have been much easier to suck it up and pay $100+ for an Antec or Enermax, or just live with the crappy 350W PSU that is bundled with the case.

However, I think I have found a match: the Thermaltake Silent PurePower 420W TT420-APD PSU (with an Active PFC). It seems to be an improved version of the same PSU, with the main advertised difference being the Active PFC. This feature is supposed to increase the overall power efficiency of the power supply, which should reduce heat while providing the same amount of power. The actual terminology refers to power factor, which is used by electric companies to minimize cost in distributing power to businesses. Read more here. This PSU can be found for $50 at newegg.com.

You know, Wisconsin has one of the most democratic Senators in the nation (Feingold) and one of the most republican Congressional Representatives (Sensenbrenner). While Feingold openly critizes the Patriot Act and was the only senator to vote against it, the Patriot Act II, or the "Anti-Terrorism Intelligence Tools Improvement Act of 2003", is making its way through Congress, and was introduced by Sensenbrenner. This ammendum to the original Patriot Act allows the FBI to induce penalties for public revelations of FBI demands and expands the government's surveillance powers. Another piece of disturbing news is that they may try to slip this bill in with the Intelligence Authorization Act, skipping review and possible changes to the bill. For more information, check out this Wired news article for more information.

I can't help but create a post about this: Starz Movies has finally released their Movie-on-Demand service with Real! An announcement about this service came about a year or two ago, and I've been silently waiting for it to arrive. Basically, you pay the same price as you would to your Cable or Satellite provider ($12.95 per month) and get access to "over 100 movies" on your PC; you can download and watch as many as you want, and it sounds like you can keep them on your computer as long as you want (assuming you continue to pay the monthly fee). It is definately better than paying for the Cable/Satellite version, unless you already have Starz-on-Demand through the cable company or you like to watch movies as they appear on the channels.

It's the best legal movie download solution I've heard of; you don't have to pay a fee for each movie you want to watch, and you can watch them as much as you want. It also works on up to 3 computers. The only limitation is the movie catalog, but Starz usually picks up some of the best movies (next to HBO) including Disney/Pixar, Sony Pictures, etc. I may have to try it out during my August trip to Egypt/Jordan, since we won't be paying for Satellite that month anyways.

I let time fly a little too quickly sometimes...if only I had the Dagger of Time. Anyways, I was browsing PC cases today and found a couple that struck my eye. Keep in mind that I am avoiding anything bland, too flashy (like all of those "gaming" cases), and huge. I only got as far as the $60 cases at ewiz.com, so I apologize if I miseed any of the expensive beauties out there.

Evercase ECE1290 Slim Case - This case has one of the coolest form factors and most slick look I've seen for a PC. This mid-size tower is so slim it could pose as a desktop PC. If the power supply maximum wasn't so low (240 W) and space weren't so limiting (1 - 5.25 drive, 1 - hidden 3.25 drive bay) this case would definately be an option. Maybe one day this will make a great auxilary LAN PC when power consumption is lower and I have money to spend on slim components. This case is available at ewiz.com for around $45.

Evercase ECE4292 ATX Tower - Here is an Evercase tower I would seriously consider purchasing. I found this while looking at the other cases Evercase had to offer. It has plenty of space for my devices, a detachable cage for the hard drives, has an easy to remove side door, and is designed to provide proper ventilation for the latest computers. The webpage also includes an extensive list of options for the case, including a side-window and FPIO board for USB/audio ports. For black, this case costs around $50 at ewiz.com.

Codegen 6065/6066 ATX Mid Tower - This case struck my attention because it was one of the best looking cases for its price (around $30 at ewiz.com). The primary features I like about this case is that it has a nice looking side-window and I love the fact that the "front" usb ports were placed at the side of the front panel; it makes for even easier access than the normal bottom-of-the-front-panel configuration. It is a nice and roomy case, but even the manufacturer's site doesn't give too many details concerning the design, and it doesn't seem as optimized for thermal situations as it could be.

There were another few Codegen cases that seemed pretty cool; in particular, take a look at these 3 cases.

The third case, even with only one 5.25 drive bay, has a cool style, fitting that drive bay vertically and having an LCD read-out display on the other side.

Chenbro PC61319 Mid Tower Case - Finally, this was one of the first cases that really caught my attention and brought me to visiting the manufacturer's site. (Although at this point, after having seen the other Codegen and Evercase cases, I'm not sure what I'll go with yet.) I really like the style of the front panel, and the case itself looks pretty cool. There isn't a side-window, but I've already emailed the company asking if such an option exists. It has a detachable drive cage and seems to have a good thermal management system; it also seems to have plenty of room for expandability. This case was priced around $40 at ewiz.com.

Considering I would like to purchase the parts for my computer within the next two weeks, deciding on a case, although not nearly as important as internal components, will take me quite a while. I was impressed with the options Evercase provided me, but Codegen and Chenbro have some good looking cases that I will have to consider. Feel free to provide comments below on any of these cases or links to cases that may fit my tastes.

Well, here's my first post about an upcoming Intel-based motherboard, but I couldn't help it. The DFI LANParty 925X-T2 enthusiast board has all the goodies, including PCI-Express, DDR2, and even 2 Gigabit ethernet ports...take a look.

It's going to be a couple of months before we see PCI-Express solutions with AMD systems, since the new chipsets are still under development. If only I could wait till the end of the summer to build my new PC, but each day I'm realizing more and more that a new computer is necessary for my survival :)

I must say that I may have to upgrade my PC next year to include these new technologies. We'll see how it all unfolds the second-half of 2004.

Oh man, check out this Quad Opteron motherboard with PCI-X:

That's just beautiful, ain't it?!

Well, it's been a long time since I've updated this post. I was out of town and touch with my computer for the week after exams, and then I got caught up into work and setting up my FreeBSD machine (more on that in another post).

In the meantime, I wasn't able to exchange my DI-514 router at Best Buy (I don't want to RMA!!) and AMD finally released the new Socket 939 chips (A64 3500+, 3800+, FX-53, etc.)! I spent a some time reading about them yesterday, but nothing much has changed; after all, the only differences between the 939 and the 754 chips are a double instead of a single channel memory controller and the 200 MHz HyperTransport upgrade, which brings the bus speeds to 1 GHz. In the Intel or Athlon XP world, this would be a big change, but with the integrated memory controller in A64 it accounts for a slight change, depending on the type of benchmark (see the FX-51 939 and 754 in action). Since the FX chips were previously limited to the 940 workstation and server socket architecture, the FX-53's move from buffered to unbuffered memory produced a larger difference.

In addition, the same chipsets are being used; the Nvidia nForce3-250 and the Via K8T800Pro. Both of these are second-generation chips, but the Nvidia chipset has a working PCI/AGP lock, which accounts for a much better overclocking experience.

Anyways, considering how soon I would like to be able to purchase and put together my computer, I won't be waiting around and paying premium prices for the 939 Athlon64s; besides, it doesn't seem like PCI Express will be supported until August or later.

Now, to unveal the candidate for Chief's Next Generation Computing Initiative (NGCI):

MSI K8N Neo Platinum Motherboard (read review)
- This mb features the latest and greatest Nvidia nForce3-250Gb chipset, supporting gigabit ethernet and an on-chip firewall.
- The motherboard's features include 8-channel audio, 4 usb 2.0 ports (with support for up to 8) and 1 firewire port, Serial-ATA and RAID support, and 3 DDR-400 slots for up to 2 GB of RAM.
- There are a plethora of overclocking options with this motherboard, as seen on the second page of the review.
- The only real limitation I've noticed is the support for only 2 GB of RAM (yes, only). There exist other Socket 754 Athlon64 motherboards that can support up to 3 GB, but usually with sacrifice to DDR speed. The only way I can jump into the realm of 4 GB of RAM would be to buy into the latest 939 socket motherboards (see above for why that won't be an option).
- Finally, this review of the latest nForce250 chipset motherboard demonstrates the power of the MSI motherboard. In the benchmarks, the MSI mb can be seen about average to near the top, and at the top for many near the end of the review.

Athlon 64 3200+
- 1 MB L2 Cache, 2.0 GHz with 800 MHz HyperTransport (i.e. bus)
- Isn't it amazing that a 2 GHz Athlon with the AMD64 architecture is rated a 3200+ while an Athlon XP with the same clock speed is rated a 2400+ :p

2 - 512 MB PC3200 DDR RAM
- I won't be getting HyperX or OCZ memory for my computer. In fact, I've already purchased some ValueRAM for a really good deal (around $80 per stick) from Kingston.com. The timings for these sticks are CL3 or 3-4-4, which is slow compared to the 2-2-3 I can get with a premium stick. However, looking at benchmark results found here for a similar 3200+ system with CL2, 2.5, and 3 timings, I decided that there would be no reason for me to spend the extra $140* total for the premium sticks, as the performance difference on an Athlon64 system is close to none.
- "We were duly impressed by the Athlon 64 FX-51's scores, which maintained its ranking no matter what kind of memory it was given. This steadfastness is largely due to the integrated memory controller." Tom's Hardware Guide

* This price was calculated using current Kingston prices for HyperX and ValueRAM.

This is where my computer plans get a little hazy.

ATI Radeon 9800 Pro 128?
- This is a very good graphics card, and it will largely depend on the cost whether I will opt for this one or go higher/lower. I may also choose a similar All in Wonder counterpart.
- It is not my intention to consider NVidia at the moment; although they are catching up with the latest generation of graphics cards, I do not plan on spending $400+ for one.

Nu-Tech DDW-082 8X DVD +/-RW
- I already have this drive, but I plan on moving it to my new PC so I might as well mention it. It achieved Anandtech's Editor's choice in the following review and I've only run into an incompatibility issue with my cheap DVD-R media, which I hope will be fixed in the next firmware update.

New hard drive?
- I may also choose to buy a 120/160 GB hard drive as I can find Western Digital and Maxtor drives at these sizes for around $100 with manufacturer warranty.

Some Kind of Case and Power Supply...
- I have begun looking, but still have a lot more surfing to do before I can make a decision.

Wow, you actually made it to the end of my post. I'm tired and you must be thorougly tired and bored by now as well, but if you would like to leave a comment in response to the newest AMD chips or my current PC plans please feel free. I'm out.