Category: Computers

  • Choosing a graphics card

    So, you don’t want to spend too much time checking benchmarks and prices before buying your next PC graphics card. Tom’s Hardware has a nice solution in an article that gives the solution: The Best Gaming Video Cards for the Money: October 2006. The selection may change in time (this market is a real ground…

  • Choosing an AMD AM2 motherboard

    Currently, the wonder kid of AMD microprocessor sockets is the AM2. But, up to now, it was a bit difficult to find comparaisons between the available motherboards. This is what Tom’s Hardware corrects nicely with its “Socket AM2 Motherboard Summer Slam“. There is no winner (only good motherboards), but with a lot of different feature…

  • Next comes the QuadCore

    For a few months already, we had dual-core CPUs. Try forecasting the next marketing step for Intel and AMD. Any idea? Right! They are rushing to prepare CPUs hosting four cores in the same package (usually dubbed QuadCore). AMD goes to a solution on its socket F: Three versions clocked at 2.6GHz, 2.8GHz and 3.0GHz.…

  • Sony batteries really blew it

    Lithium-Ion batteries from Sony are currently in the eye of a major communication tornado. Everything that could go wrong is going wrong. We had heard of the exploding DELL portable PCs; This was followed by a major recall of batteries. Then, we heard that the Apple iBooks were also subject to the same: explosions and…

  • I say NO to the leader

    We are all in a capitalistic society where commercial companies are guided by their financial interest. A company in a monopolistic position is able to freely set its prices (at least, very independently from the consumers/customers whishes and market interests). I can’t do anything about this kind of situation, but it still opens a few…

  • Native HDCP at nVidia and ATI

    Those hoping that the future graphic cards supporting HD-TV (High Definition TV) and being compliant with the HDCP encryption standard would stay easy-to-hack will have to forget about their dreams. Just one after the other, nVidia and ATI announced that they would not stay long with the graphic chipset + HDCP chipset solutions of today…

  • Perfect PC

    Ars Technica (one of my prefered web sites about PC computer technology) just published its perfect PC recommendation article. Obviously, perfection changes according to the price you are ready to pay for it. So, there are three different levels of PC perfection and each is described down to the finest details (what motherboard, what CPU,…

  • CPU: Performance/Cost ratio

    CPU: Performance/Cost ratio

    Thanks to TG daily (Tom’s Hardware) we have a clearer view of the performance/cost ratio of dual-core processors these days (after the arrival of the cost cuts both from AMD and Intel). Click on the thumbnailto open a larger graph. Things get clearer now. It becomes quite obvious that the old Pentium EE is completely…

  • Sony leaves LCD market

    After announcing its intention to leave the market of plasma screens, Sony would be about to do the same with the LCD monitors. Being only the 10th world manufacturer of such screens on a world market terribly competitive (margins are plumetting) and whose growth is decreasing rapidly after two good years, Sony would be preparing…