Posted 08/24/2009 at 07:35:36pm

Very nice looking board.

Also, they don't say in their specs, but judging from the picture, it looks like they have a NAND slot right off of the memory banks. I'd love to take a look at the BIOS and see what support they give for it.

Posted 08/24/2009 at 11:05:25am

That is hilarious. It just shows that someone in the shipping department has fun at work and has a sense of humor. It's just too bad the receiver of the package didn't.

Posted 08/12/2009 at 01:51:52pm

A quick note about a few of the differences between this and the Kindle is the Sony Reader uses the xml based BBeB format for their books and the Kindle uses a proprietary format. What this means, is if the Kindle ends up getting discontinued and your device breaks, you lose everything you purchased. On the other hand, Sony's BBeB format can be fairly easily converted to a different format because it's xml based, so in the event of the Sony Book Reader being discontinued, you don't have to shell out more money to replace all you purchases.

Another thing that was a big deciding factor for me was the ability to upload RTF, TXT, PDF, and images straight to the Sony Reader for viewing on the go without any modification, while for the Kindle you need to email them to your Kindle and pay a small fee to have those same documents converted to the Kindle format and sent to your device over its wireless connection.

The Kindle has wireless access while the Sony Reader does not. This is a nice convenience which enables you to download books on the fly, but as we saw a couple weeks ago, this enables Amazon to remove content from your Kindle as they see fit.

I suggest checking out the following links for the more info on all the features these both offer.
http://ireaderreview.com/2008/12/12/kindle-vs-sony-reader-plasticlogic-hanlin-irex-cybook/
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Reader
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Amazon_Kindle

Posted 08/11/2009 at 11:48:00am

It looks very nice, but I think anything from Intel's Lynnfield family will smoke this in terms of performance, with the PCI-e controller being on die and in the case of the Clarkdale & Arrandale chips, having the GPU on die as well.

Posted 08/06/2009 at 01:31:42pm

Maybe it's just me, but I don't really see the issue here. What exactly is the problem with Google giving away public domain books? As long as they're only making public domain books available and not books that still hold copyrights, being the best and fastest at doing it should not instantly make them a monopoly. Now, if they're giving away copyrighted material, they should be called out for it, but not just because other companies are unable to pull themselves together enough to compete with them.

Where exactly does the crying monopoly and anti-trust thing end?
I enjoy doing sleight of hand tricks. There's a guy in Las Vegas named Mike Close that is much better than I am to the point that I am unable to compete with him. Now, at what point can I say that he holds a monopoly on close up sleight of hand tricks because do to his many, many years of practice he has created a huge gap between his skill and everyone else's that I've seen?
 
But I digress.
I do not believe that a company should instantly be labeled a monopoly because no other company is willing push themselves the next level to complete on equal footing. Any company that expects a handout from someone else that's doing a better job deserves to be crushed.

Posted 08/04/2009 at 02:58:17pm

This might be kind of interesting if it's real. I would hope that there would be a docking station of some sort so you're not always forced to use the touch screen. The $700 - $800 price tag seems possible but not likely. Also, I'd be curious to see how they'd solve the cooling issues they've had with the MacBook Air and recently with some of the iPhones, as I'm assuming they'd try to go with the sleek "one piece" design.

Posted 08/03/2009 at 04:21:19pm

I'm no fan of IE, but I think MS should stop folding to the EU and their threats. If they really want to shut them [the EU] up they should ship Windows 7 with no browser installed and just have a little notice in the OS saying "As per orders of the EU this OS contains no preinstalled browser". Some people may get pissed off at MS, but a greater number will be pissed off at the EU and the people they elected in there.
 
Or, they [Microsoft] could just tell the EU they're going to sell their product intact with a browser whether they like it or not. Then the moment the EU starts making threats, MS should announce that they're pulling their product from the shelves in all EU countries. The EU will change its tune real quick.
 
Governments only have power because the people say they have power. The moment people stop recognizing that power, governments are just bullies trying to control the masses and the Pope is just a guy in a stupid hat.

Posted 07/28/2009 at 01:25:23pm

This is where SSD is really going to shine. With the prices going down and sizes going up, the question of, "How do I back up my backup?" is going to be a short lived one. Obviously redundancy is going to be desired, and having solutions to protect your data is still going to be a concern, but a drive with a theoretical 60 year lifespan is going to make the chore of monitoring and frequently replacing drives a thing of the past.

Posted 07/19/2009 at 04:41:04am

Yet another reason why I prefer the Sony E-Book reader.
It has the ability to view documents, pictures and books in a non-proprietary format; is easily expanded space-wise with an SD card and it can't be remotely monitored or mucked about with through a wireless connection.

Posted 07/01/2009 at 01:14:53pm

I have one of these at home and I really like it.

The only downside I've seen with the board is the weird heatsink on the Tylersburg chip. Normally this wouldn't be an issue, but when this is installed in a fairly standard midtower case and you're are using one of the rather large top of the line videocards, air circulation for anything lower than that card is cut dramatically. With as hot as the Tylersburg runs, especially if you're overclocking or using one of the higher QPI enabled CPUs, it can get a little toasty inside the box. Because of the size of the Tylersburg heatsink and the way it's shaped, it's not very easy to strap a fan on it to provide any extra cooling.

Other than that, I like this board very much. I've worked with a lot of i7 boards, and this is by far my favorite.