Exploding PowerBook Surprisingly Not Sony's Fault

Most consumers unassumingly trust the technicians that a cable company or any other kind of service provider sends to their door, but this incident is a flametastic reminder that just because they're wearing a badge doesn't mean they know what they're doing. A tech for Comcast showed up at this woman's house to install her cable modem, but wound up detonating her Powerbook after plugging the coaxial cable from the modem into a "similar-appearing" electrical cable while the Powerbook was still connected to it. Results?

Everything on the desk was blackened with soot and burned either partially or completely. Three external hard drives, a digital camera, videotapes, papers, CD's, etc. The floor, wall, and radiator cover were burned, along with the tabletop.

Every cable that was connected to the laptop, Ethernet, Firewire, Power, and USB, was forcibly shot out of each portal, and each portal covered with the black soot. Metal bits and electronic debris from the power cable hub and other cables was scattered around the room and some wires had split apart into copper shreds. Molten silver metal flecks are still lodged in the windowsill.

Ouch. While Comcast took responsibility and paid for the damages as well as data recovery services for the hard drive, it's a harsh way to learn that techs don't know everything

IBM eServer xSeries 335

The IBM eServer xSeries 335 has a solid combination of features and top-notch management tools, though its performance was not at full steam. The performance degradation was due, in part, to its inclusion of the 3.06-GHz Xeon processor with 512K of L2 cache instead of the more recent, more popular Xeon with 1MB of L3 cache. Yet the eServer is still a competent system.

The server is an object lesson in doing things IBM's way—which is not a drawback. For example, there are no video port or PS/2 connectors, which all the other servers have, and which are important for accessing servers locally. But IBM offers C2T (Cable Chaining Technology), which connects each pair of IBM servers in a daisy chain with a single cable, eliminating the need for separate keyboard, video, and mouse cables; thus there is no need for the additional ports.

Unfortunately—and surprisingly— the eServer's power supply is not redundant, as on the Dell and HP servers; the eServer has only one power supply. It does have five user-replaceable fans, which (as on the Dell unit) will compensate if one should fail.

First Overclocked GeForce 8800 Cards From XFX: X-Rated Speeds

As if Nvidia's GeForce 8800 cards weren't already fast enough, XFX is taking it upon themselves to be the first company to overclock them, sending them into hyperspeed territory. At the head of the pack is the 8800 GTX XXX Edition which is overclocked from 575MHz to 630MHz. Meanwhile the core clock on the 8800 GTS XXX Edition gets a kick up from 500 MHz to 550MHz. Pricing on the cards isn't out yet, but you can expect to pay a nice premium for them when they do come out.

World's First 300 GB 2.5" SATA Hard Disk Drive

Fujitsu Limited recently announced the development of the world's first 2.5" hard disk drive that offers storage capacity of 300 gigabytes (GB) with a Serial ATA interface. The new hard disk drive "MHX2300BT" will be available in late February 2007. Featuring the highest storage capacity in the 2.5" class, it will be available on a global basis for use primarily in multifunctional mobile PCs and digital TVs.

Fujitsu began selling hard disk drives with perpendicular magnetic recording in October of this year. It has been an industrial leader in introducing high-capacity 2.5" hard disk drives, launching products with 160 GB in September 2005 and 200 GB in May 2006 that garnered high praise from many customers.

MHX2300BT marks the commercial introduction of second generation of perpendicular magnetic recording technology. The new hard disk drive will be offered in 300 GB, the highest storage capacity available in 2.5" hard disk drives, and 250 GB versions, offering the capacity needed to store terrestrial broadcasting digital TV videos. This level of capacity makes these hard disk drives suitable alternatives to the 3.5"drives typically found in desktop PCs, and their small size makes them especially well-suited to flat-panel TVs with built-in recorders.

The new hard disk drives are the RoHS compliant and have read/write power consumption requirements of just 1.6 W, among the lowest in the world, making them environmentally-friendly products. They are also exceptionally quiet, emitting just 2.1 bels of noise at idle.

Source: Fujitsu

Organic Display - LG Electronics Environmental Friendly Laptop

LG Electronics develop a laptop called “ebook”, as a replacement for the existing LCD (liquid crystal display) panels, it uses OLED (organic light-emitting diode) panels which are more proficient in terms of energy consumption and manufacturing processes (like the one used in LG’s Chocolate Phone) and a transparent cylindrical hinge as storage for clean fuels. South Korea’s second largest electronics maker said Thursday that it was selected as one of the 12 “best of the best” design concept winners by Red Dot Award, for its futuristic laptop PC design, which has a wide screen and operates on eco-friendly alcohol power.

Source : times.hankooki.com