Posted 10/26/09 at 05:44:13 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Intel today announced the availability of a couple of new tools and a new firmware for its 34nm X25-M SATA SSDs. The Intel SSD Optimizer and the new firmware, both of which leverage the Windows* 7 ATA Data Set Management Command (known as Trim), are designed to preserve the out-of-box performance of Intel SSDs, while the Intel Solid-State Drive (SSD) Toolbox contains applications to better monitor the health of SSDs.

According to Intel, the Trim attribute of the ATA Data Set Management Command "synchs the operating system's view of deleted files with those that are deleted, but not erased on the drive."

Trim helps the SSD identify unused blocks of data, thereby lending stability to the health and performance of the SSD. Intel said in the press release that 34nm X25-M 160GB owners can expect an improvement of around 40 percent in sequenstial write speeds with the firmware update, which amounts to write speeds of up to 100MB per second.

"Not only will Windows 7 users receive the performance enhancements of the Trim command, but so will our Windows XP and Vista users," said Pete Hazen, director of marketing, Intel NAND Solutions Group.

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Posted 08/11/09 at 08:30:50 AM by Paul Lilly

With the recent focus on JavaScript performance, browser makers continue to claim huge performance gains with each new release, and that trend continues in the latest beta release of Google Chrome, version 3.0.195.6.

How much faster? According to Google, tweaks made to the engine have resulted in a 30 percent performance boost over the current stable version, at least when running the V8 and SunSpider benchmarks. But speed isn't the only improvement.

"We've also improved two of the most loved and most used features of Google Chrome: the New Tab page and the Omnibox. Plus, we decided to add a little bit of style by allowing you to deck out your browser with colors, patterns, and images," Google wrote in a blog entry.

Google also said it has started building HTML5 capabilities into the latest beta release, including video tag functionality and web workers. This is the first version of Chrome to do so.

Anyone interested in giving the beta a spin can start right here.

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Posted 07/01/09 at 12:45:58 PM by David Murphy

Happy day-after-Firefox-release day.  If you're one of the 3.2 million Americans to download the latest release of the browser as of this column's writing, congratulations.  You, like your peers, have recognized the value of upgrading to faster and better technology products!  If that sounds weird, that's the point.  It should.  According to Net Applications, around twenty percent of users (out of a survey sample of around 160 million people) still use an older version of a Web browser, be it Internet Explorer 6, Firefox 2, or either Safari 3.1 or 3.2.  You are not among them; I salute thee.

You've probably read a lot of marketing in the last 24 hours about how fast, awesome, and packed-full of features the new Firefox 3.5 release is.  Since you've had a chance to play with the release candidate of this latest upgrade starting in early June, this shouldn't come as much of a surprise.  But let's cut through the press release and examine the real facts: Just how much faster is Firefox 3.5 over its browser brethren?  Has Mozilla's newest TraceMonkey JavaScript engine delivered a princess or a barrel?

Click the jump to access the contents of this article 35 percent faster.

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Posted 06/30/09 at 05:29:53 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Jonathan Heiliger, vp of technical operations at Facebook, came down heavily on chip manufacturers Intel, AMD for making tall claims about server chips that eventually don’t live up to the hype. He was speaking at the Structure 09 conference in San Francisco.

 "The performance gains they are touting in the press, we are not seeing in our applications. We are literally in real-time trying to figure out why that is and if there are optimizations that we can do. Otherwise, we are kind of left with current-generation technology and current-generation scale," he said during a Q&A session involving GigaOM’s founder Om Malik.

He said companies like Facebook and Amazon require their servers to be both power-efficient and affordable. Heiliger also commended Google for its server-designing prowess.

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Posted 04/21/09 at 11:00:00 AM by David Murphy

You've tweaked everything else on your PC, so how about your mouse?  That's right.  The trusty input device that sits to the side of your keyboard needs some love too, but how many of you have thought to install applications that benefit the common features you use your mouse for?  Eh?  I must admit, I never considered much to tweak about the mouse's functionality.  You scroll the cursor to what you want to check out and give it a click.  It's a two-step process.  Rinse, wash, repeat.  What else could you possibly do with a mouse?

Spoiler: a lot.

I've found five amazing freeware and open-source applications that help you turbo-charge your ability to interact with your PC.  Give these a whirl, and you'll increase your productivity, reduce your stress, and be just that much cooler than your peers who are stuck in the Stone Age of mouse operations.  Take your final act as a generic mouse user: scroll the cursor over to "Read More," click the link, and prepare yourself for greatness.

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Posted 02/23/09 at 04:11:44 PM by Pulkit Chandna

Nvidia showcased its bantam Ion platform during CES 2009. The Ion platform basically combines Intel’s Atom CPU with the GeForce 9400M GPU. Ion-toting netbooks are expected to be head and shoulders above today’s netbooks - that make a meal of even the simplest graphical tasks - in terms of graphics.

Nvidia has reached an agreement with Via to develop a new version of the Ion platform, which will feature Via’s Nano processor instead of the Intel Atom. Jen-Hsun Huang, Nvidia’s president and CEO, told Taiwanese website Digitimes that development of the Nano-based Ion platform has already commenced.

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Posted 01/02/09 at 11:28:14 AM by Mark Edward Soper

TG Daily reports that Google's Gmail is now recommending that IE6 users switch to Chrome or Firefox 3. IE6 users logging into Gmail see a link that says "Get faster Gmail" that takes them to a "Get faster Google Mail with a faster browser" page that provides links to download IE7, Firefox 3, or Google Chrome.

Interestingly enough, if you use IE7, the page recommends upgrading to Firefox 3 or Google Chrome, as well as offering a link to the IE 8 beta.

So, what's up with Gmail and IE? Is IE6 no longer fully supported? For the answers, join us after the jump.

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Posted 08/09/08 at 05:01:53 PM by Justin Kerr

When Windows Vista launched back in January 2007, the 64-bit edition was clearly not ready for primetime. The driver and compatibility issues that mired the early days of the OS were even worse on the 64-bit side, and for most users Vista x64 was completely crippled or in some cases, wouldn’t install at all. Hardware manufacturers struggled to release stable device drivers but because 32-bit and 64-bit editions both required radically different drivers, Vista x64 just wasn’t a priority. Coming up on two years later, 32-bit Vista’s issues seem to have calmed down, but what about Vista x64? Well according to Microsoft, usage of the niche OS is on the rise, but is it finally ready for prime time?

Click the jump to learn all about Vista 64 and what you need to know before you consider switching.

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