Maximum PC firmware update RSS Feed

Nook Firmware 1.1 Released, Doesn't Fix Page-Turn Woes

Bart Salisbury — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 15:30:13 -0600

There’s two ways to consider the firmware update for Barnes & Noble’s Nook. It’s either a step in the right direction. Or it’s a step in no direction at all.

Wired is reporting that the much needed update improves on some of the Nook’s less desirable features. According to Wired, the update “...attempts to fix some of these problems. The update improves the start-up time for features such as ‘My Library’ on the device. It also ensures that the device displays the correct time on its status bar, has better page numbering for books and removes some formatting-related issues.”

The keyword in Wired’s assessment might be “attempts.” Mark Wilson, at Gizmodo, says he doesn’t see any changes from the update. He reports that loading a new book and turning pages is still slow. And a bug in the highlights-and-notes feature appears unrepaired.

If you are a Nook owner, you’ll soon get to see for yourself. Barnes & Noble has started the process of updating Nooks from 1.0.0 to 1.1.0, so expect to see it soon.

Image Credit: Barnes & Noble

Firmware Update Bricks Some WD TV Live Boxes

Bart Salisbury — Mon, 07 Dec 2009 15:57:18 -0600

Not only do you have to protect yourself from any number of nefarious online threats, you also have to watch your back as well. You never know when a friend may be readying to ‘accidentally’ plunge in a knife.

Such is the sad fate for some of Western Digital’s WD TV Live boxes. Seems a firmware update for the device, V1.102.12, has ‘bricked’ some units--leaving only a blank screen for frustrated owners to view. Western Digital is aware of the problem and has pulled the update from its web site.

Western Digital claims that only a small percentage of WD Box Live users have been affected. Those with incapacitated units are advised to contact Western Digital’s customer service. (Affected commenters at Engadget suggest taking the unit to Best Buy and making an exchange rather than hassle with an RMA.)

Image Credit: Western Digital

Zune HD Gets a Bevy of Free 3D Games

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 11 Nov 2009 17:30:04 -0600

Microsoft enabled 3-D gaming on the Zune HD through a firmware refresh over the weekend. It hasn’t taken too long for the first batch of 3D games to arrive. The Zune Marketplace is now host to 6 new games for the device: PGR: Ferrari Edition, Lucky Lane Bowling, Vans Sk8: Pool Service, Piano, Checkers, and Audiosurf: Tilt.

All the games are available for free but Zune HD users will have to sit through a small ad before getting into the thick of the action. The game’s are designed to leverage much more than just the latest firmware update, namely the Zune HD’s accelerometer, multi-touch OLED screen and the NVIDIA Tegra chip.

Image Credit: HelloFromEurope

Zune HD v4.3 Firmware Update Brings Several New Improvements

Justin Kerr — Sat, 07 Nov 2009 21:03:12 -0600

Okay, so it’s not like Zune HDs were dropping dead right left and center, but more than a few users were irked that play count issues have plagued the device since day one, and many were wondering if it would ever get fixed. Specifically, the Zune HD wouldn’t register a song as “played” unless you skipped to another track manually after about 20 seconds or so. If you were one of the many who were annoyed by this bug, the end is nigh.

The just released v4.3 firmware update addresses not only this issue, but offers up a myriad of “minor improvements”, not the least of which is a snappier browser.

In addition to speed enhancements, it offers up “support for upcoming 3d games and applications, as well as an auto-suggest feature for better text input”. Its great to see Microsoft continuing to make improvements to the device, but who are we kidding, this thing pretty much kicked ass to begin with right?

Zune HD 4.3 firmware brings:

Support for the upcoming 3D games and applications.
Auto Suggest feature for text input.
Faster web browsing experience.
Landscape keyboard
Keyboard option has been added in the settings section.
New toggle between seek and presets under Radio.
Under the Internet in settings, you can now toggle to default mobile or desktop webpage layout.
Artists bios are updated; embedded links to other artists in text.
Other bug fixes.

Netgear WGR614L Embraces Open Source Firmware

Chris Moody — Tue, 01 Jul 2008 07:50:11 -0500

Netgear may have found a winner with it’s newly announced WGR614L wireless-G router that provides open source developers with an appliance platform that can be customized. Linksys has been enjoying a certain amount of popularity from the open source community since it released its original Linux based WRT54G router back in 2003. Since then a number of projects to change the firmware on the WRT line have come about like Tomato and OpenWRT. Of course flashing the firmware to anything other than the Linksys designed firmware voids your warranty. Netgear has chosen to embrace this community with their new WGR614L, rather than fight it.

Som Pal Choudhury, senior product manager for wireless at Netgear is quoted as saying:

“The launch of the WGR614L is significant to the open source community as there has been a growing demand for more powerful platforms to support a rapidly growing segment of open source enthusiasts that are seeking to create more robust, commercial-grade applications for their wireless routers.”

“In addition to adding a more powerful processor and additional memory to the proven Broadcom platform, the most popular open source firmware, Tomato and DD-WRT, are available on WGR614L making it easier for users to develop a wide variety of applications. An important feature of our offering is the dedicated and responsive open source community which enables users to easily exchange ideas and troubleshoot issues. New applications currently being developed by this community include traffic shaping applications, redirections to captive portals for hotspots, guest access via a separate SSID, upstream and downstream QOS, and intelligent bandwidth monitoring.”

The WGR614L features a 240 MHz MIPS32® CPU core (overclockable) with 16 KB of instruction cache, 16 KB of data cache, 1 KB of pre-fetch cache, and incorporates 4 MB of flash memory and 16 MB of RAM. It also includes an external 2 dBi antenna and a second internal diversity antenna. On the network side it has a 10/100 Internet WAN port and a four-port 10/100 LAN switch, incorporates an 802.11g access point to support wireless connectivity at speeds of up to 54 Mbps. The WGR614L also supports static and dynamic routing with TCP/IP, VPN pass-through (IPSec, L2TP), NAT, PPTP, PPPoE, DHCP (client and server), and Bigpond. A Stateful Packet Inspection (SPI) firewall protects the network from intruders, and the wireless connection is secured with support for 40-, 128- and 152-bit WEP encryption, Wi-Fi Protected Access (WPA), WPA2-PSK, and Wi-Fi Protected Setup (WPS). Additional security features include: Exposed Host (DMZ), MAC address authentication, URL content filtering, logs and e-mail alerts of Internet activity. It will list for $69.00

Netgear has also launched myopenrouter.com to form a community around writing firmware for the WGR614L. This is a brilliant move on Netgear’s part. Rather than fight the open source community on fiddling with the firmware, choosing to embrace it will only result in a better product, without Netgear needing to engineer the software. I believe this will prove to be a very popular system for home based routers for enthusiasts who want to be hands on with their hardware, and seek to get the most performance possible.

Web News, Mid-June Edition (Updated with the Latest FF3 News)

Mark Edward Soper — Tue, 17 Jun 2008 09:56:57 -0500

Help Firefox 3 Set a New World's Record - Download It Today!

Today (June 17) is the official Firefox 3 Download Day, and you can help set a new world's record for the most software downloaded in a single day by pledging to download it (and then downloading it when it's available). As of posting time, the US was in the lead, but Poland was in second place.

Firefox is pulling out all the stops to spread the word, including social network sites, website buttons, and much more. Here's how to get involved. Signing up for Download Day is also the best way to find out when FF3 actually launches, as the official Firefox download page was still listing Firefox 2 this morning. Mozilla will email pledgers when FF3 is ready to rumble.

Update: 11:17AM PDT

The Firefox Download Day website (spreadfirefox.com) seems to be a victim of its own success - it's been down much of the time since FF3 launched (10:00AM PDT). If you want your download of FF3 to count towards the world record, keep checking the website if it's down. However, if you don't want to wait, you have two options:

- Download it from the Firefox FTP site.
- If you installed RC3, keep using it. According to ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes, "it seems that the RC3 and the final build are identical - the MD5 hashes match up exactly "

Update 2: 11:45AM PDT

If you're lucky enough to connect to the download page through the Firefox Download Day website (spreadfirefox.com), make sure you're being offered Firefox 3. For some reason, I was offered Firefox 2.0.0.14 the first time I got as far as the actual Download Day page (direct link here). However, the second time worked, and I'm now downloading FF3 (and helping Mozilla to a new world's record)!

Note to Firefox: Next time, make sure you have enough infrastructure for the job!

New AVG Malware Scanner Distorts Website Traffic Measurements

Malware scanners are supposed to be good for the web - or are they? Our friends at The Register report that the new AVG LinkScanner malware scanner (a part of AVG version 8 antivirus), which checks search engine results before a user clicks on them, is making a hash of website traffic stats. Some websites are reporting traffic increases of 80%, but unlike actual clicks, no human eyeballs are seeing the pages - and, to make matters worse, website owners must pay for the extra traffic, even though they're not getting actual page views, ad clicks, or anything else. Web site administrators will want to read on to page 2 for more technical discussions of how LinkScanner works and why it's a pain.

To learn how to disable LinkScanner, and for some suggested replacements, see this LockerGnome posting.

Find PSP Strategy Guides Without Touching a PC

The Inquirer.net reports that the PSP (PlayStation Portable) is about to get Google-enabled. The forthcoming v4.00 firmware update adds Google to the XMB interface. Another bonus in the v4.00 update is the ability to use the up or down directional buttons to change viewing speeds of videos being played back from a Memory Stick PRO Duo inserted in the PSP.