Last year, the computer industry saw solid state hard drives (SSDs) come into the mainstream. Since that point, the read and write speeds of such drives has been a hotly contested issue, with companies like Intel, OCZ, and A-Data constantly vying for the title of “world’s fastest SSD.”Enter Fusion-io. The company’s 80 GB ioDrive is able to produce read and write speeds of 700 MB/sec. and 550 MB/sec., respectively (our review confirms this level of performance). Those speeds combined with the ioDrive’s ability to reach 102,000 read IOPS and 92,000 write IOPS [...]

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Samsung latest 3.5-inch EcoGreen desktop hard disk does with three platters what its F3EG did with four: obtain a 2TB capacity. That’s 667GB per platter for what Samsung calls the world’s highest areal density, environmentally friendly hard disk drive on the market. Specifically, this 3.0Gbps SATA disk with a 32MB buffer brings a 19 percent improved standby performance and requires 23 percent less power in standby mode than its EcoGreen F3EG. Better yet, it does all this for $60 less (just $119.95) when it ships to the US and EU markets in early September.

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Someday humans and computers will meld together to create cyborgs. But instead of waiting for it, Martin Magnusson, a Swedish researcher and entrepreneur, has taken the first step and created a wearable computer that can be slung across the body. Magnusson has hacked a pair of head-mounted display glasses and combined it with a homebrewed machine based on a open source Beagleboard single computer. Packed into a CD case and slung across the shoulder messenger-bag style, he is ready to roll. A computer is a window to the virtual world, says Magnusson. “But as soon as I get up and about, [...]

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Microsoft has announced the arrival of the Wireless Mobile Mouse 3000v2 – billing it as the ‘perfect accessory to any notebook, laptop or PC’. Although not as headline drawing as Apple’s Magic TrackPad – announced yesterday – Microsoft hardware’s latest offering is somewhat cheaper at just under £20. Like up to 20 Mbps? The budget mouse has ‘up to’ 10 months of battery life (which technically of course could mean anything) and a range of ‘up to’ 30 feet. There are three buttons, a scroll wheel and the mouse offers 1,000dpi, and uses the [...]

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Tired of smacking your LCD around just to get the backlight to function for a few minutes? Acer feels your pain, and it’s offering up a new trio of monitors here in the US for those suffering the ancient panel blues. The new S1 series checks in between 13mm and 15mm thick, and the company is making ‘em available in 20-, 21.5- and 23-inch sizes. As you’d expect, the whole lot offers white LED backlighting, an Energy Star 5.0 sticker, 12,000,000:1 (dynamic) contrast ratio, 5ms response time, 250 nits of brightness and 16.7m colors. The bigger two offer a native 1,920 x 1,080 [...]

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If you’ve seen this bad boy there’s no way you can forget it: from the DeLorean-esque cover to the two-tone paint job, the Aspire Predator AG7750 is the gaming desktop you don’t want to leave alone with your children or small pets. Starting at $1999, you get Windows 7 Home Premium, an Intel Core i7-930 CPU, 12GB SDRAM, NVIDIA GTX 470 graphics card, all sorts of storage options, and more. Is it just us, or are these things getting progressively sillier as time goes on? Available now at “select retail outlets” (that would be “select” as in “selected,” [...]

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Choosing a graphics cards is a confusing endeavor. So Tom’s Hardware shared their buying results after testing pretty much every card on the planet. Whether you’ve got $50 to spend or $250 to spend, this list will come in handy: Some Notes About Our RecommendationsThis list is for gamers who want to get the most for their money. If you don’t play games, then the cards on this list are more expensive than what you really need. We’ve added a reference page at the end of the column covering integrated graphics processors, which is likely more apropos. The criteria [...]

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Sony’s joined the all-in-one touchscreen party, with a shiny Vaio J entrant that you can trick out pretty impressively: 21.5-inch 1920×1080 display, up to a Core i7 CPU and 8GB of RAM. But is it as affordable as they say? Well, compared to the $1,300 L Series AIO, sure! But the Vaio J’s starting price of $900 doesn’t put it in the most affordable class of touchscreen all-in-ones out there. And that’s okay: you’ve got premium guts and a nice style here that may justify the added cost. Just know that “entry-level,” in this case, is extremely relative. Sony [...]

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PC Specialist supplied us with what at first glance appear to be two identical PCs. They share the same accessories, the same system case and monitor and almost identical internal components. Identical, apart from the core processor architecture. The Vortex HD 750 is based on Intel’s Core i5 750 processor, whereas the Fusion HD 965 uses AMD’s Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition. The core specification for both PCs is the same: 4GB Corsair XMS3 1600MHz DDR3 provides system memory, with a 1TB Seagate ST3100333AS hard drive for storage. They also both include a 22x LG DVD burner. Graphics [...]

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To meet the ever increasing graphical demands of modern games AMD has introduced the ATI Radeon HD 4890 graphics card that boasts a staggering 1.36 TeraFLOPs of compute power, GDDR5 memory, and engine clock speeds capable of nearly 1GHz. The HD 4890 supports DirectX 10.1 for the latest game titles such as Ubisoft’s Tom Clancy’s H.A.W.X., Electronic Art’s BattleForge and SEGA’s Stormrise, as well as GSC Gameworld’s S.T.A.L.K.E.R: Clear Sky to deliver improved game and visual performance. The card is also designed to offer tuning potential for overclocking enthusiasts and those [...]

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