Maximum PC all RSS Feed

Microsoft Denies Rumors of NSA Backdoor in Windows 7

Bart Salisbury — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:46:07 -0600

Someone was bound to connect the dots, even if the dots weren’t intended to make a pattern. With Microsoft working with the National Security Agency (NSA), the nation’s biggest, most top-secret spy agency, some suspicious were bound to be raised. But, not to worry, Microsoft assures us: It did not plant deep in Windows 7 code a backdoor for the NSA to spy on you.

Microsoft’s story is the NSA helped Microsoft with the “Security Compliance Management Toolkit.” The toolkit, which rolled out after Windows 7, allows enterprises, government agencies, and large-scale organizations the ability to manage levels of security risk beyond those of regular users. The NSA is a happy partner in such ventures because of its concerns for cybersecurity.

But there lurks behind the story the NSA’s need for gathering intelligence, which a backdoor into an OS would greatly aid. Cisco, for example, has built into it’s products, such as its Internetworking Operating system (ISO) and VoIP lines, lawful intercept capabilities. (Which require a court order.) It’s not a big leap to conclude that perhaps Microsoft might have done the same.

Some have questioned the wisdom of Microsoft’s working with the NSA, including Marc Rothenberg, the executive director of the Electronics Privacy Information Center (EPIC). Said Rothenberg: “The key problem is that NSA has a dual mission, COMPUSEC, computer security, now called cyber security, and SIGINT, signals intelligence, in other words surveillance.” He added that it might be tough for any company, even Microsoft, to turn down an NSA “suggestion” for a backdoor.

Roger Thompson, chief research officer of AVG, sides with Microsoft. “I can't imagine NSA and Microsoft would do anything deliberate, because the repercussions would be enormous if they got caught,” said Thompson.

For now, Microsoft says it isn’t there. Whether that curbs your paranoia or not is another matter entirely.

Image Credit: RussellReno/Flickr

SSDs with TRIM Support

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:30:29 -0600

I’m looking to get a new SSD for my laptop when Windows 7 comes out, and I just read a review on Newegg warning about a drive not supporting Win7’s TRIM feature. A Google search gave me the basics on TRIM, but how important is it, really? I’m having trouble finding which drives support it and am wondering if I should wait before pulling the trigger.

I use my laptop for home and work, so I’d really like to do a clean install on a new drive (for restoration purposes when I really screw something up) and it seems like a perfect time to make the switch. I’m also moving from 32-bit Vista to 64-bit Windows 7, so—as I understand it—I need to wipe regardless.

—Steve Wale

Think of TRIM as a garbage collector for your SSD. Normally, when you delete data on a disk, whether SSD or standard magnetic hard drive, the data isn’t immediately scrubbed. Instead, it’s marked as overwriteable, so when the disk runs out of fresh blocks to write to, it goes back and writes over deleted files. But given the way SSDs store data, this can decrease your drive’s performance once there are no more fresh blocks to write to. To write data to a block, an SSD first has to copy the entire block to cache, wipe it, delete the overwriteable sectors in cache, write in the new data (in cache), and rewrite the entire block to the disk. This can lead to slowdowns. Essentially, TRIM scrubs blocks of deleted data when it’s deleted, and makes sure the disk controller knows they’re blank, speeding up the whole process and making sure your drive’s performance doesn’t degrade over time.

At press time, only a few SSDs have TRIM support (including the OCZ Vertex and Patriot Torqx) but several ship with wiper.exe, a TRIM-like command that helps restore performance. We expect more SSD vendors to release TRIM in firmware upgrades as Windows 7 gets closer to release.

SUBMIT YOUR QUESTION Are flames shooting out of the back of your rig? First, grab a fire extinguisher and douse the flames. Once the pyrotechnic display has fizzled, email the doctor at doctor@maximumpc.com for advice on how to solve your technological woes.

Chrome OS Now Available as Download for VMWare

Bart Salisbury — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 15:06:30 -0600

You curiosity can now be slaked: Google’s Chrome OS is now ready for download and review. The bad news is you’ll need VMWare to run it. The good news is you can run it on OS X, Linux, or Windows.

But will it be worth the effort? If it’s something you really, really got to do, then yes, it will be worth the effort. For the rest of us, with episodes of The Colbert Report to catch up on, maybe not. Our colleagues over at Engadget have tried it out and report Chrome OS is “really a browser with an OS attached rather than vice versa.”

Chrome OS is browser-like in its construction, and Internet oriented. There are minimal app launcher options. And the more interesting apps, says Engadget, required a Google.com account to access. Without one you will be stuck playing with Gmail and Calendar (which Engadget reports suffer from “significant lag and choppiness”).

Still, with a Thanksgiving weekend to kill, Chrome OS might give you an option other than family, food, or football. You’ll find a download link for Chrome OS at gdgt.com.

Image Credit: Engadget, Google

Microsoft Details Features of IE9

Bart Salisbury — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 14:24:59 -0600

Attendees at Microsoft’s Professional Developer Conference in Los Angeles got a sneak preview of IE9 yesterday. From what was presented it’s not really clear what type of personality IE9 will take on.

Ray Ozzie, chief software architect, stated Microsoft want’s IE9 to be “a good balance between things we know and have to do and moving the whole notion of browsing forward.” The task of delivering the “most world class browsing experience we can develop,” he added, has to be done “in the most responsible way.” Which suggests IE9 will be brought into line with existing browser potential, but won’t be pushing any cutting-edge technology.

Changes and improvements are plenty. First off, IE9 will use the Trident rendering engine, running on DirectX instead of GDI. DirectX will shift graphic processing from software to hardware, which will boost the display of graphics and text, and provide smoother rendering of animation and video.

While DirectX adds advantages, apparently it also tosses up some roadblocks. Dean Hachamovitch, the general manager of the Internet Explorer team, says DirectX is hard to get right: “there's a huge benefit but it takes a lot of work to get all of the details right – like how do controls like Flash work and what about printing?” Being best positioned to “get all the details right”, DirectX helps Microsoft, but may not help out cross-platform browsers, which may not want to make the commitment.

Sunspider JavaScript benchmarks put IE9 about five times faster than IE8. And IE9 scores 32 out of 100 on the ACID 3 test. That’s faster than IE6, but still seems a bit pokey. I’m using my PC-inferior Mac to write this, and Firefox 3.5 scores 92, while Safari 4 hits 100. Steven Sinofsky, Windows senior vice president, concedes: “that’s a test we need to do a better job on.”

IE9 will better support standards, such as CSS, including CSS3. IE9 scores 574 out of 578 on the CSS3 selectors test--much better than the 330 out of 578 scored by IE8. (Again, Safari and Firefox on my Mac both score perfect 578s.)

IE9 is at best a work in progress. Right now there is no canvas or SVG support, and no real commitment to HTML 5 standards. But, with no release date yet announced, and a technical preview not available until sometime next year, it’s a good bet IE9 will evolve into something a bit different than what we’re seeing today.

Image Credit: Microsoft

Barnes and Noble's Nook already Sold Out for the Holidays

Paul Lilly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:52:07 -0600

Get ready for a blue Christmas if the only thing you asked for this holiday season was a Nook e-book reader. The device's popularity apparently caught Barnes and Noble off guard, who has sold out of the its initial supply and said preorders have exceeded expectations.

And if you listed Sony's Digital Edition Reader as your backup gift request, then it's a double dose of 'bah, humbug' coming your way. It too is in short supply, and Sony said it could not guarantee it would have enough to fulfill demand in time for Christmas.

The situation isn't dissimilar from what Amazon went through last year with its Kindle e-book reader, although the current king of the hill has managed to get its distribution channel squared away since then. So why are Sony and Barnes and Noble struggling?

"Even without specific problems in the supply chain, the manufacturing process takes time for new products -- it could be 3 months from the time they place the orders with their factories until they actually ship," Sarah Epss, an analyst at Forrester Research, said in an email. "Sony and B&N wanted to show the market they could compete with Amazon for the holiday season. Consumers responded enthusiastically, but unfortunately, these companies are struggling to deliver on their promise. Now they have to face disappointed consumers with empty packages under the tree."

According to Epps, both companies jumped the gun on their products announcements because neither was truly ready for the holiday shopping season.

Other items you're not likely to find in your stocking this year: HD 5970 videocard, handheld tablet.

No BS Podcast #125: Did You Hear About the Apple Tablet, Made by Apple?

The Maximum PC Staff — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 13:00:00 -0600

Google's Chrome OS press conference gave us plenty to discuss on this week's No BS Podcast. We give you a recap of what juicy nuggets were revealed, and explain why Windows won't be replaced by Chrome any time soon. We also talk about benchmarking a dual-Radeon 5970 system, comparing it to a tri-SLI GTX 285 machine that we reviewed a few months ago. Finally, we answer some listener questionsand Gordon breaks not one, but four NDAs to tell us about a super secret product.

Do you have a tech question? A comment? A tale of technological triumph? Just need to get something off your chest? A secret to share? Email us at maximumpcpodcast@gmail.com or call our 24-hour No BS Podcast hotline at 877.404.1337 x1337--operators are standing by.

Subscribe: http://feeds.feedburner.com/maximumpc/1337

Trillian Now Available for iPhone, iPod Touch

Paul Lilly — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 12:40:01 -0600

Better late than never, and while it took a long time, iPhone and iPod touch users can now download Trillian, the multiprotocol IM client, through Apple's App Store.

The $4.99 app comes with many of the same features as its desktop counterpart, including grouped and sorted contacts. Tabbed chat windows also find their way onto the iPhone and iPod touch version, and so does the ability to copy and paste, which is more a credit to Apple than Cerulean Studios, the company responsible for Trillian.

Users can also synchronize content across multiple IM clients, so that changes made on the iPhone version will appear in real-time on the Windows client.

In a nod towards cloud computing, Cerulean Studios says that all chats are stored on the company's server, which means they won't be lost if you suffer a dropped connection. The app can also be set up to send IM alerts when Trillian is shut down.

Image Credit: Cerulean Studios

Scythe Mugen 2

Nathan Edwards — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 11:30:24 -0600

Bulky, but it gets the job done

They just keep getting bigger and bigger. Now that CPU air-cooling manufacturers have seemingly settled on the skyscraper school of heatsink design, there seems to be a competition over who can cram the most cooling fins into the largest area. Scythe’s Mugen 2 air cooler, the follow-up to its popular Mugen series, is one of the largest coolers of this type that we’ve ever tested. But can it match the cooling power of its slightly smaller cousins, such as Thermalright’s U-120 eXtreme?

The Mugen 2 is a hefty hunk of a cooler, at 5.1 inches wide, 5 inches deep (with the included 12cm fan), and 6.2 inches high; it weighs nearly two pounds. It’s not the heaviest cooler we’ve ever tested, nor the most unwieldy, but its girth could certainly prevent you from installing it in all orientations on all motherboards. We had trouble fitting it in some orientations on our EVGA 680i SLI board—our usual preference being to install the cooler fan parallel with the rear exhaust fan. On our board, though, there wasn’t room; we resorted to attaching the cooler fan perpendicular to the rear exhaust fan. Thankfully, this didn’t seem to impact performance, as the Mugen 2 performed slightly better in our tests than the Thermalright U120-eXtreme—about 2.25 C cooler at both idle and full CPU burn.

The Mugen 2 pushes the upper limit on air-cooler size, but we'll allow it. This time.

The Mugen 2 ships with mounting brackets for LGA1366, 775, and AMD boards; the first two use the same bracket and backplate but different screw holes. Support for the new LGA1156 socket wasn’t available at the time of this review, but the company states it is in the works. Installation requires motherboard removal or a motherboard tray with a backplane cutout. Each of its five copper heat pipes rises into its own separate stack of cooling fins, allowing airflow between the stacks.

If you opt to use the included 12cm fan, you might have to tweak your motherboard fan control settings due to its four-pin PWM connector. We manually set the fan control to 100 percent for testing, after the motherboard’s fan control resulted in significantly higher temperatures.

You can attach up to four 12cm fans to the Mugen 2—one to each face of the fin array—using the familiar thin wire clips found on similar coolers. Whether this actually helps, of course, is up for debate. We didn’t see any performance gains when we experimented with multiple fans on the Noctua NH-U12P and Thermalright U-120 eXtreme.

For laudable performance, a relatively easy install compared to its peers, and a lower price point, we’re awarding the Scythe Mugen 2 our Kick Ass Award. However, this is clearly the upper limit of how big a cooler can be and still earn a high recommendation. Hear that, vendors? Scale ‘em down a bit.