News

Gigabyte Attaches Cooling Guarantee to Tri-Fan GeForce GTX 780 OC Edition

Paul Lilly — Fri, 24 May 2013 15:40:26 +0000

High end graphics card keeps its cool.

It's only been a day since Nvidia announced its GeForce GTX 780 graphics card and as expected, the GPU maker's hardware partners are coming out of the woodwork with custom cooling solutions. We saw it with EVGA and its ACX Cooler, and today Gigabyte is giving us a glimpse of its GeForce GTX 780 OC Edition (GV-N780OC-3GD) graphics card with the latest Windforce 3X dual-slot cooling design.

Gigabyte "guarantees gamers an insanely fast, smooth, and whisper-quiet gaming experience," adding that its card is further guaranteed capable of dissipating over 450W of heat.

The Windforce 3X chills the GeForce card using three ultra quiet PWM fans, two 8mm copper heat pipes, four 6mm copper heat pipes, and a RAM heatsink. According to Gigabyte, it's 25 percent better than a stock cooling solution. It also looks pretty gnarly, so there's that.

Cooling aside, Gigabyte's OC Edition card bests Nvidia's reference design with faster clockspeeds. The GPU runs at 954MHz base and 1,006MHz boost, versus 863MHz and 900MHz, respectively. Memory is untouched at 6,008MHz effective (1,502MHz).

No word yet on price or availability.

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Windows 8 Causes Dip in Microsoft Customer Satisfaction Rating

Pulkit Chandna — Fri, 24 May 2013 03:06:07 +0000

Bad, but not quite Vista

Given its subjective nature, satisfaction isn’t something that readily lends itself to quantification, but that hasn’t stopped the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI) from measuring the satisfaction of U.S. customers for more than 19 years now. The latest ACSI update is of particular interest to us because it sheds some light on Windows 8’s impact on Microsoft’s customer satisfaction rating.

Windows 8 hasn’t exactly been able to charm PC users off their feet and Microsoft’s latest ACSI rating seems to confirm as much, with the company’s customer satisfaction rating falling one point from last year’s score of 75 and as many as four points from the company’s best of 78, which it achieved in 2011.

Things, however, don’t appear to be as bad as they were following the launch of Windows Vista. Back then, Redmond shed three rating points. If we go back another year to 2006, the first time Microsoft appeared on ACSI’s radar, it is clear that the company’s customers are more satisfied with its products now than they were back then.

“It seems clear that the release of Windows 8 did not give Microsoft a significant bump, as the release of Windows 7 did, nor did it dramatically lower customer satisfaction in a rather short time frame, as the release of Vista did," David VanAmburg, director of ACSI, told Computerworld.com, adding that if Microsoft’s rating does take a more serious pounding next year then Windows 8 will surely be the one to blame.

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Windows Button Hitches a Ride on New Mice Models From Microsoft

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 May 2013 19:08:21 +0000

A pair of mice made for Windows 8.

Windows 8 is a game changer in more ways than one. Along with a new look and feel, Windows 8 has influenced design changes across the board, even when it comes to peripherals. Witness Microsoft explains. "You don’t have to worry about a tiny USB transceiver since the Sculpt Comfort Mouse uses Bluetooth to connect to your Windows PC or tablet. It also has a comfortable ergonomic design and our BlueTrack technology to be used on pretty much any surface."

The Sculpt Mobile Mouse is essentially a Wireless Mobile Mouse 3500 with a Windows touch tab. It has a compact design, a wireless USB transceiver, and BlueTrack technology.

Microsoft says the Sculpt Comfort Mouse will be available in June for $40 and the Sculpt Mobile Mouse in May for $30.

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Psst Microsoft, Windows 8 Users are Barely Touching Metro Apps

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 May 2013 17:48:16 +0000

Study reveals surprising stats about Windows 8 app usage.

When Microsoft "re-imagined" its Windows platform with a heavy focus on touch computing, its Metro interface was deemed a critical component to the user experience. Ideally, Windows 8 users would find themselves relying less and less on the traditional desktop and start taking advantage of the tiled UI, downloading apps from the Windows Store in the process. However, a new study by Soluto reveals that Windows 8 users rarely touch apps on their Windows 8-based desktops and tablet PCs.

Soluto analyzed 10,848 Windows 8 machines and examined more than 313,000 Metro app launches across 9,634 unique Metro apps. The result? On average, a Windows 8 user will launch a Metro app 1.52 times per day.

Predictably desktop users are the least active Metro app users with an average of 1.41 launches per day. Just as predictable, tablet users launch the most Metro apps at an average clip of 2.71 per day, besting touch laptop users (2.22 apps) and regular laptop users (1.51 apps).

"To put this number into context, we looked at the percent of people who launch a Metro app less than once a day (i.e. less than 7 Metro app launches per week). We found that among desktop and laptop users, 60 percent of users launch a Metro app less than once a day," Soluto said. "This number significantly improves with tablets, but still 44 percent of Windows 8 tablet users launch a Metro app less than once a day."

Interestingly, the most engaging app appears to be Yahoo Mail, which is loaded an average of 26.91 times per week by those who use it. Below that, several versions of solitaire rank in the top 10, which might be indicative of the Windows Store needing a bigger and better stockpile of apps.

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Nvidia Releases 320.18 WHQL Drivers with Support for GTX 780

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:56:32 +0000

This is the Game Ready driver for Metro: Last Light.

What would a new graphics card launch be without new drivers to help squeeze out the most performance possible? So it goes, Nvidia today not only introduced the world to its GeForce GTX 780 video card -- check out write-up with benchmarks -- the GPU maker also made available new GeForce R320 Series (320.18) drivers that are WHQL certified and primed for Metro: Last Light.

The new drivers promise up to a 10 percent boost in performance in Metro: Last Light, and if you use GeForce Experience, Nvidia will take care of detecting optimal game settings with PhysX effects and DirectX 11 tessellation.

The highlights for the R320 series are the same as they were for the 320.14 beta drivers, which we covered last week. To quickly recap, you can expect up to 20 percent faster performance in several PC games running on your GeForce 400/500/600 Series GPUs, Nvidia says. You'll also find a bunch of new and updated SLI profiles.

Nvidia Driver Downloads

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Samsung Touts Over 10 Million Galaxy S4 Sales in First Month

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:21:27 +0000

Fastest selling Galaxy device to date.

The cold, hard truth for companies like Nokia and HTC is that one of their biggest competitors, Samsung, is red hot right now. Apple faces the same concern, though the Cupertino company isn't fighting for scraps like the other guys, it's leaving them behind alongside Samsung, the latter of which just announced it has surpassed 10 million Galaxy S4 sales in less than a month after its commercial debut.

If it took you 10 seconds to get to this point in the article, Samsung just sold another 40 Galaxy S4 devices, as the South Korean handset maker claims it's selling four S4 devices every second. It's a new record for Samsung, which is seeing quicker sales with its Galaxy S4 than any of its predecessors.

"On behalf of Samsung, I would like to thank the millions of customers around the world who have chosen the Samsung Galaxy S4. At Samsung we’ll continue to pursue innovation inspired by and for people," said JK Shin, CEO and President of the IT & Mobile Communications Division at Samsung Electronics.

There's no single reason for Samsung's success, but several. Android at this point is a mature operating system that's really come into its own with the launch of Jelly Bean; the Galaxy S4 device itself is well equipped with a large screen, fast processor, and several features; and finally, Samsung has done a great job marketing the S4's features in a series of TV ad spots, especially when it comes to showing off the built-in camera and the device's editing tricks.

It also helps that Samsung has made the device available in many corners of the world. The Galaxy S4 is currently being sold in more than 110 countries and will gradually be rolled out to 155 territories via 327 partners.

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EVGA Launches New Double Ball Bearing Cooling Solution Dubbed ACX

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 May 2013 15:12:25 +0000

How EVGA's high-end GPU keeps its cool.

Nvidia and its hardware partners are all about the GeForce GTX 780 launch, but that's not the only thing on tap from EVGA. The GPU maker is introducing a totally new ACX Cooler with a double ball bearing design that's more efficient at dissipating heat than the company's previous coolers. A large part of the increased cooling performance is due to the 40 percent increase in heatsink volume, allowing for a 15 percent reduction in GPU temperatures.

EVGA didn't just pay attention to cooling the GPU, but also the surrounding components that make up the card. The ACX Cooler features a reinforcement baseplate that helps maintain a straight PCB (printed circuit board), which helps lower mosfet temperatures by 7 percent and memory temperatures by 15 percent.

Perhaps the most impressive upgrade is that EVGA is using high quality fan blades that are 700 percent stronger and weigh 25 percent less when compared to competitors' dual fan designs, the company claims. By EVGA's math, that makes them 20 percent more efficient by requiring lower power levels. And that dual ball bearing design we touched on earlier? EVGA says they have a 12-year lifespan.

Here's a look at the cooler on EVGA's upcoming GeForce GTX 780 graphics card:

Stay tuned to this space as we currently have the card in our lab for testing and will release benchmarks soon!

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GeForce GTX 780 Benchmarks

josh norem — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:01:01 +0000

Team Green captures the single-GPU crown, again

Today Nvidia pulls the wraps off its $650 GK110-based 700 series flagship card, the GeForce GTX 780. This board slides directly into the yawning chasm that exists between the $500 GK104-based GTX 680 and the $1,000 GK110-based GTX Titan, though despite its price it's actually much closer in specs and performance to the Titan than it is to the GTX 680.

Specifications

Like the Titan, the GTX 780 is a GK110 board, so it has all 7.1 billion transistors, a 384-bit memory bus care of six 64-bit memory controllers and two less SMX clusters with 12 for a total of 2,304 CUDA cores. Its 3GB of memory runs at the usual 6GHz clock speed, and its 863MHz core clock speed is just a smidge higher than the Titan’s 836MHz clock. Its 900MHz boost clock is also a bit faster than the Titan’s 876MHz. Overall, it would be fair to refer to the GTX 780 as the so-called Titan LE that has been rumored for a while now, as it’s a basically a slightly neutered version of the Titan, at least as far as gamers are concerned. Performance in games is extremely competitive with the Titan, more so than we thought it would be given its price. When it comes to compute performance, however, the GTX 780 is heavily neutered compared to the Titan, and for good reason. The 1.5 Teraflops of double precision performance that was so welcome in the Titan is nowhere to be seen in the GTX 780, as Nvidia is reserving that feature for the pricier Titan, and is also billing the GTX 780 as strictly a gaming card. The GTX 780 still offers respectable single precision performance though, clocking in at 4 Teraflops compared to the Titan's 4.5 Teraflops. For comparison, the GK104-based GTX 680 can only push 1 Teraflop of single precision, and its double precision performance is just 1/24th of that by Nvidia's design. It wants these "cheap" cards to be used for gaming, period, and its expensive Tesla cards to be used for Compute. This is why the Titan costs $1,000 and the GTX 780 costs $650.

GTX 780 Specs

Otherwise the card looks, feels, and runs almost exactly like a Titan. It has the same 10.5-inch length, the same six-pin and eight-pin PCIe connectors, and the same HDMI, DisplayPort , and DVI connectors. It supports up to three-way SLI. The minimum power supply required is 600w, and the card's TDP is 250w, just like the Titan.

New Technology

Nvidia is releasing the GTX 780 with a fair bit of cool new technology that helps round out the package a bit, so let's look at each of them one by one.

Adaptive Fan Control

Nvidia's all-new Adaptive Fan Control smooths out the speed at which the fans spin up and down, resulting in less noticeable noise during operation.

Even though the GTX Titan was and is a "quiet" GPU by our standards, Nvidia tells us that it's not necessarily fan noise that people notice as much as changes in fan speed, and we have to say there's some truth to that. Once a fan is spinning at a certain RPM we tend to not notice it, especially as the Titan and the GTX 780's fans never really spin very fast. It is certainly noticeable though when the fans spin up or down suddenly; we all hear that. So on the GTX 780 Nvidia has smoothed out the speed at which the fans spin up and down so you don't hear the change in fan speed.

ShadowPlay

ShadowPlay is designed to improve the in-game video recording experience over FRAPS by consuming less system resources and compressing the videos. It will work with any Kepler GPU and will be released this summer.

Now this is a cool feature, albeit one we have not tested as it was not available just yet. This is software that only works with Kepler GPUs to record your gaming sessions by using the GPU's built-in H.264 video encoder. The software will just record everything you do and keep only the portion that you just played, hence it's name, as it records everything that you just did, like a shadow. You can tell the software to just keep the last five minutes, 10 minutes, or 20 minutes, and it'll intelligently delete what is not needed, helping keep file sizes down by both deleting unneeded video and also through video compression. Nvidia also claims the peformance hit from turning on Shadowplay is less than five percent, so it's main advantages over FRAPS are that it only records what just happened instead of everything, and it requires less system resources to do so. This software will be rolling out this summer and will be available via Nvidia's GeForce Experience software, and will be supported on any Kepler GPU. It should be noted that beginning with this launch driver, the GeForce Experience software will replace the Nvidia Update software in the driver package, and though users can opt out of installing it, by default it will be installed with all Nvidia drivers going forward.

Head on over to page 2 to read about the rest of the new features, see the benchmarks, and our final thoughts.

GPU Boost 2.0

The GTX 780 features GPU Boost 2.0 temperature target settings as well as the ability to overvolt the board.

This feature first appeared on the GTX Titan and it works beautifully. Its main goal is to prevent the GPU from throttling itself due to excessive heat, which results in reduced performance. To prevent this from happening, users can now set the peak temperature for a card, which by default is set to 81C but it can be pushed up to 95C if you like (the card can handle it). Nvidia tells us these cards can go all the way up to 105C before the hardware is damaged, but you'd be lucky to push either a Titan or a GTX 780 past 80C typically since their coolers are so effective. However, the GPU will overclock as high as it can until it reaches that pre-determined temperature, so you can nudge the temperature GPU Boost 2.0 also allows for overvolting a card, so you can overclock it as high as you can get away with by pushing the core clock power target, temperature target, memory, and voltage. Only the Titan and the GTX 780 offers these features at this time. If you try to use them on a GTX 680, for example, they are simply greyed out.

Performance

When we first heard of this card we figured it would land squarely in between the $500 GTX 680 and the $1,000 GTX Titan, both in performance and price. Then Nvidia informed us the card was priced at $650, and we looked at the benchmark charts and thought this was either a very competitively priced product, or the Titan is really overpriced, at least for gamers. Looking at the benchmark chart (below) you can see the GTX 780 is within five to 15 percent of the Titan in all benchmarks, which is seriously impressive given it costs $350 less. In general we run all games at 2560x1600 with 4XAA enabled, which is extremely taxing on even the most hardcore systems, and yet the GTX 780 was just on the cusp of playing all games extremely smoothly, with the exception of Metro: Last Light, which will remain a ball buster for the forseeable future it seems. Even though we'd prefer to have at least 40-50fps, that is just not possible with a single GPU at the resolution we run, and only the Titan can get close to achieving it. That said, the GTX 780 is damn close, and easily puts some distance on both the GTX 680 and the Radeon HD 7970, making it the fastest sub-$1,000 GPU available at this time. It should also be noted that the card ran cool and quiet throughout testing, and we were able to run it at 1,084MHz with no problems at all.

GTX 780 Benchmarks

Final thoughts

This is one wicked fast GPU, and if it was $750 or so like we thought it would be you would see us waffling a bit between this card and the Titan. However, at $650 it is very competitive, though we've yet to compare it to dual GTX 660 Ti cards or GTX 670 cards in SLI, but then you have to deal with dual GPUs. Also, add-in board partners will be releasing their own versions of the GTX 780 with custom cooling solutions, but we do not know at this time whether the boards will be overclocked or offer larger frame buffers.

In our opinion, the best news about the GTX 780 is at the resolution we use for testing there was no such thing as an affordable GPU that could handle it. The GTX 680 and the HD 7970 were all stuck around 20fps or so for newer games, though the Titan could handle them much better. With the GTX 780 we have a truly semi-affordable card that can run newer games at these resolutions and AA settings just fine. Nvidia says the GTX 780 is 34 percent faster than a GTX 680 and that seems about right to us, and 70 percent faster than a GTX 580, so people with older cards will see quite a jump in performance by upgrading. There also might be other 700-series cards in the pipeline, so anyone looking to upgrade might want to wait just a bit before pulling the trigger on a new card.

As far as how AMD will respond, that remains to be seen. The company reminded us that the HD 7970 GHz edition is still the fastest card at its price point of roughly $420, and that is certainly true. Whether or not it will respond with a GCN 2.0 board dubbed Radeon 8790 or similar is anyone's guess, but given the ferocity of the GPU wars as of late we'd be shocked if AMD sat on the sidelines for very long.

PS: Here is a promotional video Nvidia sent us that walks you through the GTX 780's hardware and software.

OCZ's Vertex 450 Solid State Drive Family Runs Barefoot

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 May 2013 13:00:25 +0000

New SSD line gets its kicks from the Indilinx Barefoot 3 Series controller.

One thing OCZ had yet to do up to this point was deploy in-house ASIC technology on its Vertex family of solid state drives. That changes with the introduction of the Vertex 450 Series, which OCZ is marketing as a mid-range performer that sits between its value offerings and flagship Vector line. The Vertex 450 Series uses OCZ's Indilinx Barefoot 3 M10 controller, essentially a newer iteration of the Barefoot controller found in the Vertex 4.

In comparing the two, the Barefoot 3 M10 has a lower clockspeed and supports 20nm NAND flash memory. It also boasts AES-256 encryption, sustained performance across all file types, and a power-optimized clock generator that helps improve yield and drives down cost, the combination of which translates into better overall availability and value for consumers, OCZ says.

The Vertex 450 Series pipes data through a SATA 6Gbps interface at various rates, depending on the capacity. Here's a breakdown of each one's performance:

128GB: 525MB/s read, 290MB/s write, 75,000 4KB random read IOPS, 70,000 4KB random write IOPS
256GB: 540MB/s read, 525MB/s write, 85,000 4KB random read IOPS, 90,000 4KB random write IOPS
512GB: 540MB/s read, 530MB/s write, 85,000 4KB random read IOPS, 90,000 4KB random write IOPS

All three drives come with a 3-year warranty, Acronis cloning software, and a 3.5-inch adapter. MSRPs have been set to $130 (128GB), $235 (256GB), and $500 (512GB).

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AMD Details Multifaceted Mobile APU Strategy

Paul Lilly — Thu, 23 May 2013 04:12:19 +0000

AMD attempts to change with the market.

The rapid shift to mobile seems to have caught x86 chip makers off guard, but on the bright side for Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), this tectonic shift in technology represents a new opportunity to perhaps do things differently than before. Maybe the outcome will be different, maybe not, but either way, we have an early look at AMD's agenda for the changing market place, and it starts with "Temash."

Temash

Temash is AMD's solution for touch tablets, notebooks, and hybrids less than 13 inches in size. According to AMD, it's Temash-based APUs (Accelerated Processing Units) offer the best graphics of any SoC (System-on-Chip) on the planet and is part of its "Elite Mobility" platform.

"The performance of Elite Mobility APUs will reset user expectations for what they can do in tablets and hybrids," AMD explains.

Compared to its 2012 platform, AMD's Elite Mobility APUs for 2013 offer up to 212 percent more performance with less than half the power consumption. And compared to Intel's CloverTrail parts, AMD says Temash has several advantages, including application acceleration through GPU compute, DirectX 11 support, high-speed SATA support, support for up to two USB 3.0 ports, 8GB system memory support, and more.

AMD announced three Temash APUs, including the A6-1450 (four cores clocked at 1GHz base/1.4GHz max, 2MB L2 cache, DDR3L-1066 support, 8W TDP) with Radeon HD 8250 graphics (128 Radeon cores, 300MHz base/400MHz max clockspeed); A4-1250 (two cores clocked at 1GHz, 1MB L2 cache, DDR3L-1333 support, 8W TDP) with Radeon HD 8210 graphics (128 Radeon cores, 300MHz); and A4-1200 (two cores clocked at 1GHz, 1MB L2 cache, DDR3L-1066 support, 3.9W TDP) with Radeon HD 8180 graphics (128 Radeon cores, 225MHz).

Kabini

Moving up to AMD's Mainstream APU platform, we have Kabini. AMD is pitching Kabini as the first x86 quad-core SoC for entry-level and mainstream systems with best-in class graphics on the level of consoles. These consist of two A-Series APUs, including the A6-5200 (four cores, 2GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 25W TPD) with Radeon HD 8400 graphics (600MHz) and A4-5000 (four cores, 1.5GHz, 2MB L2 cache, 15W TDP) with Radeon HD 8330 graphics (600MHz), and three E-Series APUs, including the E2-3000 (two cores, 1.65GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 15W TDP) with Radeon HD 8280 graphics (450MHz), E1-2500 (two cores, 1.4GHz, 1MB L2, 15W TDP) with Radeon HD 8240 graphics (400MHz), and E1-2100 (two cores, 1GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 9W TDP) with Radeon HD 8210 graphics (300MHz).

Richland

AMD's "Elite Performance" tier is where its Richland APUs take residence. These parts purportedly offer up to 71 percent better graphics performance than Intel's Core i5 line while still being able to run up to 10+ hours while resting and 7.5+ hours surfing the web, AMD claims. These chips are destined for elite ultrathins.

Here's a look at the Richland parts and their respective specs:

Between Temash, Kabini, and Richland, AMD seems to have all of its mobile bases covered, now it's just a matter of whether or not it can bring them home to consumers.

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ASRock's Specially Coated 8 Series Motherboards are Waterproof

Paul Lilly — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:58:07 +0000

Don't try this at home.

Before self-contained liquid cooling solutions (LCS) became mainstream, water cooling enthusiasts would march over to places like Danger Den (R.I.P.) and order custom parts, fit them together, and then pray to Poseidon that he'd have mercy against leaks. Back then, water cooling aficionados sure could have used a board like any of ASRock's new specially coated 8 Series mobos. Using a layer of "Comformal Coating," ASRock says its treated mobos aren't afraid to get wet, a trait the company hopes the professional overclocking crowd will embrace.

"The special layer of Conformal Coating makes ASRock's motherboards invulnerable to conductive liquids, so overclockers won't have to worry about accidentally spilling liquid nitrogen, liquid helium, or even clam chowder over their motherboards while they are overclocking," ASRock explains. "Along with conductive liquids, Conformal Coating also protects the motherboard against dust, corrosion and extreme temperatures. It is the ultimate armor for the upcoming 8 Series motherboards."

ASRock demonstrates the feature in a short YouTube video, which we've embedded below. Bear in mind that the water you see being poured over the motherboard was routed to avoid the pins, which ASRock says still carries the risk of short circuiting. That means you probably can't get away with sticking one of these boards on the bottom of your fish tank, but should an accidental spill occur, there's a good chance your system will survive, or at least the mobo.

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Futuremark Injects Battery Test Into Upcoming PCMark 8 Benchmark

Paul Lilly — Wed, 22 May 2013 19:01:49 +0000

Popular benchmarking tool receives a significant update.

Looking for something new to test your hardware with? Hang tight for about another month and you'll be able to stress your components using Futuremark's upcoming PCMark 8 software. Futuremark received help from members of its Benchmark Development Program, which include Acer, AMD, Condusiv Technologies, Dell, HGST, HP, Intel, Microsoft, Nvidia, Samsung, SanDisk, Seagate, and Western Digital.

"We believe that this open process of close cooperation with industry experts is the only way to create accurate and impartial benchmarks that measure performance fairly. Having high-level access to the industry's leaders also ensures that our benchmarks are not only relevant for today's hardware, but remain relevant year after year," Futuremark said.

Like previous versions of the popular benchmark, PCMark 8 focus on tests that mimic real-world usage scenarios, such as browsing the web, photo editing, video chat, writing, and gaming. New to this edition, however, are additional benchmarks based on productivity and creativity applications from Adobe and Microsoft.

Also new is a "Battery Life" mode that loops a test until the battery is almost empty. Testing battery life is the one trickiest things to do since everyone uses their PCs differently, so we're pretty interested to see how PCMark 8's test does with it.

PCMark 8 is in the final stages of development and expected to launch by the end of next month.

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Store More Than Just Photos in Flickr's 1TB Bucket

Paul Lilly — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:38:00 +0000

An end-around solution to storing common files in Flickr.

In the process of overhauling Flickr, Yahoo announced that photographers would be allowed to upload up to 1TB of photos and videos for free, the only restrictions being the size of each individual file (200MB for photos and 1GB for 1080p videos) and length of clips (up to 3 minutes long). Other than those caveats, it's a generous storage container that's big enough to hold half a million photos shot at 6.5 megapixels. But what if you could also upload common files? There's a way you can do that.

Thomas Claburn at InformationWeek discovered a piece of interesting Ruby code posted to Github called flickr-store. Developer Ryan LeFevre came up with the code, which lets users encode any file as a PNG so that arbitrary data can then be uploaded to Flickr.

"This is mostly proof of concept right now. Don't do anything beyond tinkering with it yet," LeFevre warns.

If it works as intended, then it's a pretty slick workaround that could come in handy for backing up certain files, though we wouldn't recommend using it to store critical data. The biggest reason is that it's not immediately clear whether such a method runs afoul of Flickr's terms of service.

"I'm sure they frown upon it, but they claim you cannot upload anything that interferes with the services and I don't believe this does," LeFevre told InformationWeek.

In other words, caveat emptor.

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Former HTC Employee Encourages Other Staff to "Just Quit" the Company

Paul Lilly — Wed, 22 May 2013 16:09:19 +0000

Rough waters ahead for HTC.

My how the mighty have fallen. It seems hard to believe now, but HTC was once a top dog in mobile. Having led the Android revolution with the introduction of the HTC Dream (you may know it as the T-Mobile G1), HTC for a long while was reporting record revenues and profits. More recently, however, HTC's been struggling to remain relevant in a category (mobile) that's largely dominated by Apple and Samsung, and it's slumping sales bear that out. Equally troubling for HTC as it tries to right its ship is that its crew is turning against it and jumping overboard.

Eric Lin, former product strategy manager at HTC, took to Twitter to encourage other employees to quit, suggesting he's much happier after having done so himself.

"To all my friends still at HTC -- just quit. Leave now. It's tough to do, but you'll be so much happier, I swear," Lin tweeted earlier this week.

There are some funny comments that follow, including one that reads, "I like your subtlety; I almost didn't get that you were telling everyone at HTC to quit," but this is no laughing matter for HTC.

Lin isn't the only one to jump ship. So did former chief product officer Kouji Kodera, who HTC said left to "pursue other interests," along with several others from marketing and communications positions, AllThingsD reports. The timing of the departures stinks for HTC, which is trying to reverse course and focus its efforts on building and marketing a small number of killer devices rather than bombard consumers with dozens of different models.

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Fractal Design Node 304 Mini-ITX Case Now Available in White

Pulkit Chandna — Wed, 22 May 2013 14:39:48 +0000

It's bigger on the inside

You would be hard pressed to list mini-ITX cases capable of accommodating up to six 3.5"/2.5" hard drives. We also can’t think of too many, but we do know that Swedish company Fractal Design's Node 304 is definitely one such deceptively spacious case — the Tardis of PC cases, if you will.

The Node 304 has been on the market for quite a while now and, as some of you might recall, recently we even told you about a CyberPowerPC machine that uses it. But until now there was one big problem: it was only available in black. Thankfully, Fractal Design has finally expanded the color options and the minimalist case is now also available in white.

The Node 304, which has an MSRP of $89.99, can hold a lot of other things besides all those hard drives. Here are some technical specs:

Mini ITX, DTX motherboard compatibility
Two expansion slots
Six 3.5" or 2.5" HDD / SSD
ATX PSUs, up to 160mm in length (To fit in combination with a long graphics card, PSUs with modular connectors on the back typically need to be shorter than 160 mm)
Graphics cards, up to 310mm in length, when 2 HDD brackets are removed (Graphics cards longer than 170 mm will conflict with PSUs longer than 160mm)
Tower CPU coolers, up to 165 mm tall
Includes three Silent Series R2 hydraulic bearing fans and a three-speed fan controller
Fan filter for graphics card
Two USB 3.0 ports on the front ( includes internal USB 3.0 to 2.0 adapter)
Case dimensions (W x H x D): 250 x 210 x 374 mm
Case volume: 19,5 Liters
Net weight: 10.8lb

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