If Windows ever notifies you about a weak signal, it probably means your connection isn’t as fast or as reliable as it could be. Worse, you might lose your connection entirely in some parts of your home. If you’re looking to improve the signal for your wireless network, try some of these tips for extending your wireless range and improving your wireless network performance.

5. Add a wireless repeater

Wireless repeaters extend your wireless network range without requiring you to add any wiring. Just place the wireless repeater halfway between your wireless access point and your computer, and you’ll get an instant boost to your wireless signal strength. Check out the wireless repeaters from ViewSonic, D-Link, Linksys, and Buffalo Technology.

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6. Change your wireless channel

Wireless routers can broadcast on several different channels, similar to the way radio stations use different channels. In the United States and Canada, these channels are 1, 6, and 11. Just like you’ll sometimes hear interference on one radio station while another is perfectly clear, sometimes one wireless channel is clearer than others. Try changing your wireless router’s channel through your router’s configuration page to see if your signal strength improves. You don’t need to change your computer’s configuration, because it’ll automatically detect the new channel.

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Source: http://www.microsoft.com/athome/setup/wirelesstips.aspx

Look, Ma! No hands! Google uses Maps, cameras, radar for autonomous cars. 

 Picture sitting in your car, maneuvering through busy downtown traffic while talking on your phone or sending a few texts.

This isn’t a scene of illegal texting or phone use. Why not? Because the car in this scenario is driving itself, leaving the passengers inside free to use their mobile phones. (In Google‘s ideal scenario, you’d be talking on an Android phone.) 

This is Google’s image of the future. The company known best for its search engine announced this past weekend that its engineers are working on developing technology for cars that can drive themselves. Autonomous cars may be a bit far afield from Google’s normal work in search, browsers, operating systems and maps, but the company is looking to head down a new road. 

“Our automated cars, manned by trained operators, just drove from our Mountain View campus to our Santa Monica office and on to Hollywood Boulevard,” wrote Sebastian Thrun, a distinguished software engineer at Google, in a Saturday blog post. “They’ve driven down Lombard Street, crossed the Golden Gate bridge, navigated the Pacific Coast Highway, and even made it all the way around Lake Tahoe. All in all, our self-driving cars have logged over 140,000 miles. We think this is a first in robotics research.” 

Thrun also noted that the cars use video cameras, radar sensors and a laser range finder to virtually “see” other cars and the basic traffic flow. The company that introduced Google Maps and Google Earth also used mapping technology to navigate the roadways, and it took advantage of Google’s massive data centers to hold and process all of this information. 

While the autonomous cars were on the road, they were occupied by a “trained safety driver,” as well as a software engineer who could monitor the vehicle’s software operations. 

“We’ve always been optimistic about technology’s ability to advance society, which is why we have pushed so hard to improve the capabilities of self-driving cars beyond where they are today,” Thrun wrote. “While this project is very much in the experimental stage, it provides a glimpse of what transportation might look like in the future thanks to advanced computer science. And that future is very exciting.”

So why would Google, a company whose name is a verb for Internet searching, set its sights on autonomous vehicles? 

One reason is because it can, said Ray Valdes, an analyst at research firm Gartner. 

“The long answer is that likely there are multiple reasons,” Valdes said. “This may have been an offshoot of the Street View mapping in Google Maps, and that took on a life of its own. Probably the project was not killed because it is cool, had support of senior management, and there is some potential reward further down the road, so to speak.” 

Much as they did after Google got into the mobile phone market and the operating system arena, industry watchers are wondering if Google is losing focus on what makes the company money. Self-driving cars? How does that fit into Google’s overall strategy? 

“Although the car project does raise the issue of loss of focus for Google, at the same time Google’s search business has become mature, which means that the company needs to cast a wide net to look for new sizable market opportunities,” Valdes said. “The field of autonomous transportation could, in 10 to 15 years’ time, be larger than the search engine business. It’s an extremely long shot for Google, but the investment is modest, it leverages existing core initiatives — Google Maps — and does support the ‘geeky’ aspect of their brand today.” 

Rob Enderle, an analyst at Enderle Group, isn’t as optimistic. 

“Google is a company that can’t seem to spell the word ‘focus,’ which means activities like this are likely to be more distracting than successful,” he said. “They enter a field where companies like VW and Intel have been active for some time, and penetrating the automotive market can be even more daunting than penetrating the enterprise market.” 

Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9190498/Google_on_new_path

ATI Radeon HD5450 Video Card Review

Just when I thought they had finished cutting halves, ATI has taken the 40nm Cypress architecture to a new low. Low power, that is. In a brand new design, unlike anything they have released with this architecture, ATI is going after the Home Theater PC market with their heat sinks blazing. OK, I exaggerate; the Radeon HD5450 video card actually runs pretty cool, which is the point, really. It’s silent, too, with a large and lovely red heatsink sitting atop the tiny GPU, sans fan. Follow along with Benchmark Reviews as we investigate an early sample of ATI’s new standard bearer for low-power HTPC applications.

With the architecture it inherits from the Cypress, the ATI HD5450 has all the modern features that the larger GPU brings to the table. However, sporting only 292 million transistors, including just 80 Stream Processors, the new card idles along at 6.4 watts and never pulls more than 20 watts; no matter how hard you drive it. They’ve even managed to do this without the energy-saving benefits of GDDR5 this time, as the card will be equipped with GDDR3 or GDDR2, depending on the model and preference of the AIB partner.

The flagship ATI video cards made a huge splash in September, but according to Mercury Research, cards costing over $200 only make up 7% of the market, and the 57xx series landed in the $100-$200 range, which makes up 27% of the market. That leaves a huge opening in the sub-$100 market, and ATI is filling in the gaps with all new, DirectX 11 capable cards in this segment. The specs of the HD5450 indicate a performance level that will struggle with gaming, even at moderate resolution, but will have no problem supporting all the latest application in the home theater environment.

About the company: ATI

Over the course of AMD’s four decades in business, silicon and software have become the steel and plastic of the worldwide digital economy. Technology companies have become global pacesetters, making technical advances at a prodigious rate – always driving the industry to deliver more and more, faster and faster.

However, “technology for technology’s sake” is not the way we do business at AMD. Our history is marked by a commitment to innovation that’s truly useful for customers – putting the real needs of people ahead of technical one-upmanship. AMD founder Jerry Sanders has always maintained that “customers should come first, at every stage of a company’s activities.” We believe our company history bears that out.

Radeon HD5450 Features

The feature set of the ATI HD5450 video card is nearly identical to the entire HD5xxx series. The important differences are all related to the fact that the HD5450 chip is half the size of the HD5670, with half the transistors and a small fraction of the processing power. For those who first saw the monster version of this graphic at the launch of the 58xx series, it’s amazing how little is left in the center of the diagram; only 2 SIMD Engines with a total of 80 Stream Processors. Rest assured; the architecture diagram may have gotten smaller, but the feature list hasn’t shrunk at all.

ATI Radeon HD 5450 GPU Feature Summary

• 292 million 40nm transistors
• TeraScale 2 Unified Processing Architecture
  • 80 Stream Processing Units
  • 8 Texture Units
  • 16 Z/Stencil ROP Units
  • 4 Color ROP Units
• GDDR2/3 memory interface
• PCI Express 2.1 x16 bus interface
• DirectX® 11 support
  • Shader Model 5.0
  • DirectCompute11
  • Programmable hardware tessellation unit
  • Accelerated multi-threading
  • HDR texture compression
  • Order-independent transparency
• OpenGL 3.2 support₁
• Image quality enhancement technology
  • Up to 24x multi-sample and super-sample anti-aliasing modes
  • Adaptive anti-aliasing
  • 16x angle independent anisotropic texture filtering
  • 128-bit floating point HDR rendering
• ATI Eyefinity multi-display technology_2,3
  • Three independent display controllers – Drive three displays simultaneously with independent resolutions, refresh rates, color controls, and video overlays
  • Display grouping – Combine multiple displays to behave like a single large display
• ATI Stream acceleration technology
  • OpenCL 1.0 compliant
  • DirectCompute11
  • Accelerated video encoding, transcoding, and upscaling_4,5
  • Native support for common video encoding instructions
• ATI CrossFireX multi-GPU technology₆
  • Dual GPU scaling
• ATI Avivo HD Video & Display technology₇
  • UVD 2 dedicated video playback accelerator
  • Advanced post-processing and scaling₈
  • Dynamic contrast enhancement and color correction
  • Brighter whites processing (blue stretch)
  • Independent video gamma control
  • Dynamic video range control
  • Support for H.264, VC-1, and MPEG-2
  • Dual-stream 1080p playback support_9,10
  • DXVA 1.0 & 2.0 support
  • Integrated dual-link DVI output with HDCP₁₁
    • Max resolution: 2560×1600₁₂
  • Integrated DisplayPort output
    • Max resolution: 2560×1600₁₂
  • Integrated HDMI 1.3 output with Deep Color, xvYCC wide gamut support, and high bit-rate audio
    • Max resolution: 1920×1200₁₂
  • Integrated VGA output
    • Max resolution: 2048×1536₁₂
  • 3D stereoscopic display/glasses support₁₃
  • Integrated HD audio controller
    • Output protected high bit rate 7.1 channel surround sound over HDMI with no additional cables required
    • Supports AC-3, AAC, Dolby TrueHD and DTS Master Audio formats
• ATI PowerPlay^TM power management technology₇
  • Dynamic power management with low power idle state
  • Ultra-low power state support for multi-GPU configurations
• Certified drivers for Windows 7, Windows Vista, and Windows XP

1. Driver support scheduled for release in 2010
2. Driver version 8.66 (Catalyst 9.10) or above is required to support ATI Eyefinity technology and to enable a third display you require one panel with a DisplayPort connector
3. ATI Eyefinity technology works with games that support non-standard aspect ratios which is required for panning across three displays
4. Requires application support for ATI Stream technology
5. Digital rights management restrictions may apply
6. ATI CrossFireX technology requires an ATI CrossFireX Ready motherboard, an ATI CrossFireX Bridge Interconnect for each additional graphics card) and may require a specialized power supply
7. ATI PowerPlay, ATI Avivo and ATI Stream are technology platforms that include a broad set of capabilities offered by certain ATI Radeon HD GPUs. Not all products have all features and full enablement of some capabilities and may require complementary products
8. Upscaling subject to available monitor resolution
9. Blu-ray or HD DVD drive and HD monitor required
10. Requires Blu-ray movie disc supporting dual 1080p streams
11. Playing HDCP content requires additional HDCP ready components, including but not limited to an HDCP ready monitor, Blu-ray or HD DVD disc drive, multimedia application and computer operating system.
12. Some custom resolutions require user configuration
13. Requires 3D Stereo drivers, glasses, and display

Now that we’ve confirmed that the 5450 is not missing any important features, let’s look at the hardware specifications in detail.

Radeon HD5450 Video Card Specifications

I mentioned in the introduction that the HD5450 had hardware specs well below anything we’ve seen so far in the HD5xxx series. You can see the HD5450 specs in detail a little further below, and they’re nothing to brag about, compared to the HD5670, until you get down to the power numbers. Then, it starts to make sense, as ATI has done everything they possibly could to get these numbers down to where they are. In a typical HTPC box, everything is jammed in tighter than sardines in a can, and the low profile of the sleek, shiny chassis only allows for small fans on the back. So, power is King. If the device consumes power, it had better do something useful with it, and not just dissipate it away, as waste heat! While the specs give us a good clue to the performance of the HD5450, ultimately, it’s the real-world performance we care about, the design tradeoffs that were required to achieve it, and the price for that performance. This graphic puts the general pricing v. performance strategy in perspective:

But before we get to our detailed teardown and testing, let’s look at the actual HD5450 specs:

Radeon HD5450 Specifications

• Engine clock speed: 650 MHz
• Processing power (single precision): 104 GigaFLOPS
• Texel fill rate (bilinear filtered): 5.2 Gigatexels/sec
• Pixel fill rate: 2.6 Gigapixels/sec
• Anti-aliased pixel fill rate: 10.4 Gigasamples/sec
• Memory clock speed: 800 MHz
• Memory data rate: 1.8 Gbps
• Memory bandwidth: 12.8 GB/sec
• Maximum board power: 19.1 Watts
• Idle board power: 6.4 Watts

OK, tired of looking at numbers, let’s take a closer look at the hardware, then? ATI was kind enough to send us a sample of the 512MB reference design video card with passive cooling, so let’s examine the ins and outs.

Closer Look: Radeon HD5450

The HD5450 is a radically different design from the previous HD5xxx video cards. From several perspectives, the intended application for this diminutive card has driven a different approach. Physically, everything is smaller, to accommodate usage in low-profile HTPC cases. The sample card I received has a full height I/O bracket, but the DE15HD VGA connector is wired with ribbon cable and is removable, or it can be relocated to an adjacent slot. This way, the card can be easily reconfigured to a true half-height form factor. The card itself is only about an inch longer than the PCI-e interface that it connects to.

Power consumption is at an all-time low, primarily to avoid generating heat. Again, this is an optimum solution for HTPC, where lower power means less ventilation and, ultimately, less overall noise. The video card we’re looking at here is passively cooled, with a lovely red anodized heat sink that is reminiscent of the ASUS ROG heat sinks, used on their gaming oriented motherboards. ATI’s AIB partners will have considerable flexibility for their cooling solutions, allowing them to optimize their offerings along several product pathways. I expect some fan-cooled designs to be recycled, in order to reduce costs, where possible. But for now, we can gaze upon one of the most attractive passive cooling solutions I’ve seen on a video card.

The connections on the I/O plate at the rear of the card are arranged in a common configuration for this class of video card. From left to right: one VGA, one HDMI and one DVI connector – one for everyone. This card did not have a DisplayPort connection, which is required for a three monitor Eyefinity setup. There will be some flexibility in the I/O port arrangement for ATI partners, so pay attention to the product specs when you buy, as it can be hard to tell the HDMI and DisplayPort connections apart with a casual glance.

One thing that becomes obvious when looking at the end-on image above is that this particular passive cooling hardware consumes more than one expansion slot. That may be an issue for some, but remember, there will be a variety of options available from the AIB partners.

The back of the Radeon HD5450 is not quite as densely packed as some of the uber-cards we test here at Benchmark Reviews, but it’s about half-filled with miniature surface-mount-technology components. The main feature to be seen here is the metal cross-brace for the GPU heatsink screws, which are spring loaded, and connect to threaded standoffs on the heat sink assembly on the front side of the card. Also, note that back side DRAM is used, even for the 512MB version of the card.

For most high-end video cards, the cooling system is an integral part of the performance envelope for the card. Make it run cooler, and you can make it run faster was always the byword for achieving gaming-class performance from the latest and greatest GPU. The HD5450 takes a completely different path, more appropriate for the HTPC application it will most likely be used for. By greatly reducing the number of Stream Processors and ROP units, they have built a GPU that consumes so little power, and generates so little waste heat, that cooling is not the limiting factor in performance.

That’s all there really is to see on the outside, so let’s peel back the covers and have a good look around on the inside.

Radeon HD5450 Detailed Features

The big news about the HD5450 is the reduced size of the GPU die. Once again, the newest member of the HD5xxx family has roughly half the number of transistors as the previous one. The chip in the HD5450 is codenamed “Cedar”, and has approximately 292 million transistors on it, compared to 627 million on the Redwood chip, which was released last month with the HD5670. The small size is critical to the cost strategy that ATI is pursuing with all these new releases. After some very lean years, struggling to make it in the graphics chip industry, it appears ATI has finally figured out how to make money.

The Cedar die packaging on the HD5450 GPU is a little bigger than half of the Redwood, because the number of interconnects is roughly the same, with the notable exception of the memory interface, which is 64 bits wide this time. The number of Stream Processors has been radically reduced, from 400 down to 80; only 20% of the number present on the Redwood chips. It’s evident there are a lot of transistors consumed in the other functions of the GPU, besides shaders.

The memory specification is going to be somewhat flexible for the HD54xx products. I expect most units will be sold with 512MB of GDDR3, but GDDR2 is a possibility, perhaps for OEM variants. 1 GB versions will also be available, although it may be tough to make the case for any performance advantage to be had with that configuration, with the exception of Eyefinity usage. As mentioned above, the GPU-memory interface is 64 bits wide with a maximum bandwidth of 12.8 GB/s, using GDDR3. That’s a major hit, compared to the HD5670, with 64GB/s of bandwidth, but I suspect it’s well balanced by the greatly reduced number of Stream Processors.

The K4W1G1646E-HC11 GDDR3 memory chips are sourced from Samsung. They are rated for a maximum clock rate of 900 MHz, and the marketing specs for the card indicate a maximum clock rate of 800 MHz. Version 0.3.8 of GPU-Z reported that the memory on my sample unit was running at 900 MHz. That’s engineering samples for you…. I was suspicious that the clock rate is not being reported correctly in GPU-Z, since it has not been updated to support this new chip yet, but ATI confirmed that they had been building some “extra curricular” prototypes for testing, and some of them got into reviewer’s hands. Oh well; their loss and my gain, I guess. Too bad they didn’t send me some 1 GHz parts, as they are available from Samsung, according to the product specs shown here below.

The power section of the HD5450 video card is simplistic, and optimized for both cost and low power. In this case, all of the dynamic performance scaling is built into the GPU, and the voltage regulators just ride along. I was observing the shader and memory clocks in GPU-Z while using the PC for normal office-type duties, and this card ramped the clocks up and down faster and more dramatically than any card I’ve used recently. That’s where the power savings are going to be made with this card, getting it down very quickly to idle power, which is a miserly 6.4 watts.

Looking at the business end of the passive cooling, I found something that made my mechanical engineering heart shiver. That little square platform, located between the four threaded standoffs, is created by cutting away all the aluminum around it with a milling machine. Then the platform itself is milled to create the flat, smooth surface we all know is essential for good heat transfer from the mirror surface of the GPU. The word you should be thinking is, “Expensive”. I’m pretty sure that the way the GPU chip is mounted on the board makes this expensive manufacturing step essential, and I’m also sure that somewhere there are a couple electronics packaging engineers delivering some serious noogies to the PC Board designer that made all this necessary.

The assembly quality is quite good, for an engineering sample. The heat sink had a bit of a gouge in it, but it was put there before the part was anodized, so it doesn’t stick out too much. The soldering and surface mount component placement was reasonably well done, and the overall board layout was well designed, with a rational flow.

Before we dive into the testing portion of the review, let’s look at one of the most exciting new features available on every Radeon HD5xxx series product, Eyefinity.

ATI Radeon HD5450 Temperature

It’s hard to know exactly when the first video card got overclocked, and by whom. What we do know is that it’s hard to imagine a computer enthusiast or gamer today that doesn’t overclock their hardware. Of course, not every video card has the head room. Some products run so hot that they can’t suffer any higher temperatures than they generate straight from the factory. This is why we measure the operating temperature of the video card products we test.

To begin testing, I use GPU-Z to measure the temperature at idle as reported by the GPU. Next I use FurMark 1.7.0 to generate maximum thermal load and record GPU temperatures at high-power 3D mode. The ambient room temperature remained stable at 23C throughout testing. The ATI Radeon HD5450 video card recorded 30C in idle 2D mode, and increased to 43C after 20 minutes of stability testing in full 3D mode, at 1920×1200 resolution and the maximum MSAA setting of 8X. Obviously, there were no fan settings for this test, but the case I tested in has a large side panel fan.

43C is an impressive result for temperature stress testing, especially for a card that relies on passive cooling. This is a key performance measure for a card like this, and it delivers the goods.

FurMark is an OpenGL benchmark that heavily stresses and overheats the graphics card with fur rendering. The benchmark offers several options allowing the user to tweak the rendering: fullscreen / windowed mode, MSAA selection, window size, duration. The benchmark also includes a GPU Burner mode (stability test). FurMark requires an OpenGL 2.0 compliant graphics card with lot of GPU power! As an oZone3D.net partner, Benchmark Reviews offers a free download of FurMark to our visitors.

FurMark does do two things extremely well: drive the thermal output of any graphics processor higher than any other application or video game, and it does so with consistency every time. While FurMark is not a true benchmark tool for comparing different video cards, it still works well to compare one product against itself using different drivers or clock speeds, or testing the stability of a GPU, as it raises the temperatures higher than any program. But in the end, it’s a rather limited tool.

In our next section, we discuss electrical power consumption and learn how well (or poorly) each video card will impact your utility bill…

Radeon HD5450 Final Thoughts

Most everyone who reads this site is familiar with the concept of diminishing returns. As you get closer to the highest level of performance (let’s call that 100 %…), it costs considerably more to get the last 10% of performance than it does to go from 80% to 90%. When you look at two gaming-class video cards using the same technology, the increase in frames-per-second doesn’t match the increase in price. The HD5850 and the HD5870 are a good example; does the 33% increase in price give you a 33% increase in performance? You wish…..which is why lots more people are buying the HD5850.

Just as the law of diminishing returns works on the high end of the market, there is a corresponding force at work on the lower end of the scale. As you move closer to the lowest possible cost, you start to bounce up against fixed costs that won’t budge. Marketing, sales, design, testing, certification processes, transportation, packaging, and connector costs are all stubbornly rigid. Right now, the cheapest cards at Newegg, based on NVIDIA and ATI chips are the 8400GS and HD4350, priced at $30 and $36, respectively. I dare say, we’re not going to see any new cards introduced that will be any cheaper than these are; it’s just not fiscally possible, if we assume that the vendor is going to make a profit.

My point is, the vendor can try and cut every possible feature, performance enhancing hardware, included software, industrial design, packaging costs, etc. and end up with a product that barely functions, and it would still probably cost $25 on the retailer’s shelf.

In my review of the HD5670, I wondered out loud, “How many more times ATI can slice the pie and still come up with a fully functional video card? Could there be one more cut, for an ultra-low power solution? But I think this is probably it, for a card that can honestly support gaming applications as well as general usage and HD video.” As it turns out, the Radeon HD5450 is that fully functional low-power card, and I still think the Redwood class of ATI GPUs is the lowest you can go and still support modern games. The game changes when you look at HD video, however. This card eats it up for breakfast, and still has some headroom left over for whatever HW acceleration scheme comes along next.

As I sit here on the edge of my chair, waiting for dribs and drabs of information about the latest monster-sized GPU chip from NVIDIA (…hey, they named them this week. Wow), with a die size approaching the dimensions of the original Post-It note, I did wonder what the attraction was to a discrete graphics card with a GPU that’s less than half the size of a US dime. The answer is that even the best Integrated Graphics Processor (IGP) is still less than half as powerful as the Radeon HD5450, and they generally max out with 128MB of SidePort GDDR3 memory. Many of them struggle to render full HD 1080P video smoothly, and the CPUs that they are bundled with usually can’t help the effort much.

So, grab that old microATX board out of the closet, dust it off, add the Radeon HD5450, drop it into a shiny new, slim line HTPC box and you’re off to the movies in style.

ATI Radeon HD5450 Conclusion

Looking at the performance of the ATI Radeon HD5450, you have to give up the idea that this is going to be any kind of solution for a gaming rig. In modern FPS games, it was well below any reasonable person’s expectation for visual quality. Even at the reduced resolutions and quality levels that we introduced in our review of the HD5670 and GT240, the HD5450 just barely got into double digits for frames-per-second. This card is not really practical as a multi-purpose solution. We’ll have to wait a bit for the HD55xx to see if it’s possible to successfully bridge the two requirements of gaming and video playback. The strength of the HD5450 lies in Home Theater PC usage only, where it performs superbly. ATI is currently leading the game in image quality for HD video, and this small, low power, silent and cool board supports all the latest software enhancements that make those improved visuals possible.

The appearance of the passively cooled HD5450 is visually stunning. There are some really ugly passive cards out there, along with a few decent looking ones, but nothing comes close to the design statement that this one makes. AIB partners will have pretty much total flexibility to implement their own cooling systems, and I don’t expect any one of them to top this. Batmobile indeed; this one is fine art, of the industrial design variety.

The build quality of the Radeon HD5450 was quite good, for an engineering sample. The parts were all high quality, the soldering and component placement were to a high standard, and the heat sink was manufactured and assembled perfectly.

The features of the HD5450 have been carried over in full measure from the very first HD58xx series: DirectX 11, Full ATI Eyefinity Support, ATI Stream Technology Support, DirectCompute 11 and OpenCL Support, HDMI 1.3a with Dolby True HD and DTS Master Audio. Nothing was left out on this card, despite it being produced for a clearly different role than the original barn burner gaming cards. Even though this card will not thrive in a multi-functional role, it still provides a solid HTPC experience and is a considerable upgrade for many systems still relying on IGP.

As of March 2010 there are several models available at different prices for the Radeon HD 5450, depending on DRAM configuration and cooling solution. PowerColor offers the AX5450 for $40, while the Sapphire 100291L lists for $43 and XFX HD5450 sells for $50. This is a small price premium from the lowest priced cards available from our favorite e-tailer, but launch pricing is always a bit high, for obvious reasons. We saw in our gaming tests that it takes an extra $50-70 to get decent results with challenging titles, but the extra performance also buys you higher power requirements, more noise and more heat.

The ATI Radeon HD5450 earns a Silver Tachometer Award, because there are some buyers that absolutely demand a passively cooled, completely silent video card, and they also need that card to support the latest technology and features for HD video playback. Until now, those two requirements were mutually exclusive; now there is a product; the one and only product, which completely meets their needs. The fact that it’s impossible to build a dual-use card with 40nm technology that does all that and can play FPS games convincingly is a shame. Fortunately, we’ll only have to wait a year or so, to see what 28nm GPUs can do.

Pros:

+ Modern feature set
+ Extremely low power consumption
+ Aggressive power modulation of GPU and RAM
+ Best video quality currently available
+ HDMI, VGA and DVI interfaces on single slot
+ Cool, silent operation
+ Truly awesome looks
+ Very low heat generation

Cons:

- High-end gaming titles are almost impossible to play
- AIB partners will probably mess with the good looks

Ratings:

• Performance: 8.50
• Appearance: 9.75
• Construction: 9.25
• Functionality: 8.75
• Value: 8.50

Final Score: 8.95 out of 10.

Source: http://benchmarkreviews.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=455&Itemid=72

This has been tested using Windows Vista.

Get your hands on a USB drive that’s at least 3GB in size. You’ll also need a Windows installation disk.

 Format the USB Drive

1. Insert the USB drive into your computer.
2. Right-click Computer in the Start menu and then select Manage.
3. Select Disk Management under Storage in the left column of the Computer Management window.
4. Right-click the USB drive in the bottom center section of the Computer Management window and select Format. Warning: Make sure you select the right disk to format. Formatting a disk will erase all data on it.
5. Change the file system to NTFS and then click OK to format the USB drive.
6. Wait for the USB drive to be formatted. The formatting progress will be shown in the Computer Management window.

Set the USB Drive’s Volume to Active

1. Open the command prompt with administrative privileges by going to Start, All Programs, Accessories, and the right-click Command Prompt and select Run as administrator.
2. Type diskpart in the command prompt and then press enter on your keyboard.
3. Type list volume and the press enter.
4. Find the USB drive in the list of volumes. In this example Volume 3 is the USB disk I’m using. Select the volume by typing select volume X (with X being the volume number of the appropriate USB drive) and then press enter.
5. Set the volume as active by typing active and then press enter.
6. Type exit and then press enter.

Create a Boot Sector on the USB Drive

1. You’ll need a utility called bootsect.exe which can be found in any Windows CD\ DVD in the boot folder. Copy bootsect.exe from a Windows Vista installation disk and past it in the C:\Windows\System32 directory in your computer.
2. Once you copied bootsect.exe from a Vista installation disk to the System32 folder on your computer, type bootsect /nt60 X: (where X is the drive letter of the USB drive) and then press enter.

Copy Windows Installation Files

1. Insert a Windows Vista installation DVD.
2. Open Computer from the Start Menu.
3. Right-click the DVD drive the Vista install DVD is in and select Explore.
4. Copy all of the files from the Vista installation DVD and past them in the USB drive.

Now you can install Windows  from a USB drive!

Source: http://maximumpcguides.com/windows-vista/create-a-bootable-usb-drive-to-install-windows-vista/

At first glance, the version breakdown does look a lot like Windows Vista. There are six SKUs of Windows 7: Starter, Home Basic (developing markets only), Home Premium, Professional, Enterprise and Ultimate. But there are a couple reasons it’s less horrendous than the Vista situation.

• Consumers are really only picking between Home Premium and Professional. There’s no more Home Basic in the civilized world, which was a gimped version of Vista that didn’t have Aero or Media Center that a lot of consumers unwittingly got stuck with. Ultimate, for the most part, won’t be very visible to the average guy says Microsoft. So you’ll only get Ultimate if you know that’s what you want from the start (meaning you’re likely tech savvy enough to wade through the SKU muck). Regular people won’t ever see Starter or Enterprise. Basically, you’ll walk into Best Buy and pick either Home Premium or Professional, whether you’re buying a new PC or a copy to install. It’s a lot more like the Windows XP Home and Professional dichotomy.

• Professional has all the same media and entertainment features as Home Premium. With Vista, if you wanted the pro-class OS and needed media features like Windows Media Center, you had to buy Ultimate. Now, it works more like a true hierarchy—Professional and Enterprise have every feature that’s in Home Premium, plus the business-y features. And then Ultimate is a step above them.

The Upgrade Question
Microsoft wouldn’t discuss pricing, but the general sense was that there will be full retail packages of Windows 7 alongside upgrade editions for Vista users. While they didn’t come out and say it directly that XP would require a full retail package, Microsoft said that, as in the Windows 7 beta, going to Windows 7 from XP will require a clean install and “that will be reflected with the packaging.” There will be migration tools and stuff, but it looks like they’ll be paying more to upgrade than Vista users. Update: Mary Jo Foley confirms XP users can buy an upgrade license, even though you’ll need a full install.

Now for a quick runthrough of every version.

Windows 7 Starter is for emerging markets mostly, but also for some netbooks as an option. It’s pretty gimpy, and only runs three apps at a time, though it’ll have the new taskbar, Device Stage and jump list. Since Home Premium (and even the Ultimate beta) runs pretty well on netbooks, most of them are probably going to stick with that, so don’t worry too much about it.

Windows 7 Home Basic is for developing markets only, and Microsoft didn’t even tell me anything about it, so forget about it. [This info was added in an update.]

Windows 7 Home Premium is the standard consumer offering of the OS with Aero Peek, Media Center and all the other cool features we’ve been talking about, and what most people will be running, whether they’re on a desktop or a netbook. It’s better at media than Vista Home Premium, since it ships with DVD playback and codecs like DivX out of the box. In case you’re wondering why Microsoft kept the “Premium” tack-on despite the extinction of Basic—it’s because in market testing, Vista users thought they were getting downgraded, going from Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home.

Windows 7 Professional has everything that Home Premium does, but with business and “enthusiast” features like file encryption, location-aware printing and advanced backup.

Windows 7 Enterprise is for businesses buying OS licenses in bulk, so you probably won’t have to worry about it (unless you’re paid to). It’s got everything Professional does, but with a few additions like BitLocker full-disk encryption and direct access capability, so you don’t have go through a VPN for remote access.

Windows 7 Ultimate is, as you might have guessed, the ultimate version of Windows. Unlike Vista, where it was the combo of Home and Business with a couple added features, this time, it’s like the end user version of Enterprise—in other words, the Enterprise version that regular people can buy. It has BitLocker, notably, and a few other advanced features. It seems like visibility of this will be low, outside of a few “special promotions” from vendors occasionally, to minimize confusion.

Not quite as clean as we’d have liked it, but if Microsoft does a good job with education and people really only have to pick between Home and Professional, it’ll be a lot smoother ride this time around. Since they’re keeping the upgrade vs. full version setup intact, hopefully they’ll follow our advice and sell it to Vista users very cheaply. We’ll find out when they reveal pricing in the coming months.

Source: http://gizmodo.com/5145366/all-the-flavors-of-windows-7-explained

On Friday, Dell will release the Streak, a smartphone/tablet hybrid apparently aimed at folks who think that even the gigantic screen on the Droid X is too small. So how big, exactly, is the Dell Streak? Big. The device ships with a 5-inch touchscreen, which Dell says “is ideal for experiencing thousands of Android Market widgets, games and applications, all without squinting or compromising portability.”

For comparison sake, the iPhone 4 is 3.5 inches diagonally. Droid X enjoys a 4.3-inch screen. The iPad is 9.7.
And to be fair to Dell, the Streak, priced at $299.99 with a two-year AT&T contract, is a full-featured machine. The Dell Streak gets a 5-megapixel camera with a dual-LED flash in back, a front-facing camera for video chat, the powerful 1GHz Snapdragon processor, 2GB of internal storage, Bluetooth capability and Wi-Fi connectivity. According to Dell, the Streak will ship with the Android 1.6 OS.

But not everyone is convinced that the Dell Streak is going to be a smash success. Over a PC World, Barbara E. Hernandez runs down “five reasons you don’t need the Dell Streak.” Her list includes the AT&T service, which is pretty notoriously spotty, the “dork factor” – the Streak is far too big to be cool, Hernandez says – and the relatively antiquated Android 1.6 operating system.

But the biggest problem, Hernandez maintains, is that the Streak is essentially a “tweener” device, somewhere between a smartphone and a tablet. “The Streak is only 0.7 inches larger than a Droid 2 or HTC Evo screen,” she writes. “Part of the design benefits of the Streak is that users can put it in their pockets, but it must be a pretty roomy pocket. Using an iPad would be less costly and give you almost twice the viewscreen – 5 inches versus 9.7 inches.”

Source: http://www.csmonitor.com/Innovation/Horizons/2010/0812/Dell-Streak

Despite a blizzard of bad press about the iPhone 4′s antenna, more than nine out of 10 consumers who have the smartphone said they’re happy with their purchase, a pollster said today.

But early buyers of the iPhone 4 are less likely to be satisfied with the smartphone than were early adopters of last summer’s iPhone 3GS, acknowledged Paul Carton, research director at consumer spending research company ChangeWave.

According to a survey ChangeWave conducted in late July, just days after CEO Steve Jobs announced Apple would give free Bumper cases to solve reception problems, 93% of iPhone 4 owners said they were “very satisfied” or “somewhat satisfied” with the device.

That number is down from the 99% scored by the iPhone 3GS the month after its launch in 2009.

“Considering how much was written, I think it’s quite an accomplishment that this satisfaction [rating] stayed up that high after all this,” said Carton in a conference call with reporters today.

Carton attributed the drop in satisfaction ratings for the iPhone 4 to what he called a “firestorm” of negative press about the smartphone’s reception. ChangeWave’s survey put the “very satisfied” number for the new phone at 72%, with another 21% reporting they were “somewhat satisfied.” The iPhone 3GS scored 82% and 17%, respectively, last summer.

“It would have been astonishing if the antenna issue did not have an impact,” Carton said. “There was lots of media reaction and huge amounts of discussion about the issue.”

Complaints about the iPhone 4′s reception surfaced within hours of its June debut, as buyers complained that touching the external antenna — embedded in a steel band that encircles the case — often dropped calls or caused the signal strength indicator to plummet. Initially, Apple told consumers to hold their phones differently or buy a case, then claimed that flawed code in the operating system inaccurately reported signal strength.

Just days after Consumer Reports magazine said it could not recommend the smartphone because it dropped calls and lost signals, Jobs held a hastily-called news conference to defend the iPhone 4 and announce the Bumper case giveaway.

About one in five iPhone 4 owners were affected by the antenna problem, Carton said, citing responses to one of the survey questions. While 78% of the iPhone 4 owners said they hadn’t experienced the antenna-touching reception issue, or that it was “not much” of a problem, 21% said it was “somewhat of a” or a “very big” problem.

But iPhone 4 buyers reported 17% fewer dropped calls than did owners of the iPhone 3GS: The former said they’d had experienced dropped calls 5.2% of time, compared to 6.3% of the time for iPhone 3GS users. “Despite all the issues, in actuality, iPhone 4 owners reported slightly fewer dropped calls than 3GS owners in June 2010,” said Carton.

Those results are at odds with Steve Jobs’ admission last month that the iPhone 4 dropped an additional one call per hundred calls placed compared to earlier iPhones.

Carton acknowledged that the iPhone 4 did not score as high in satisfaction as last year’s iPhone 3GS, but said Apple’s newest smartphone still ranked higher than rivals.

“Despite a bumpy release, the iPhone 4 is outperforming almost every other smartphone in terms of satisfaction,” he said, pointing to earlier surveys that include competitors’ phones. “It’s not as high as what we’ve seen before from the iPhone … but the good news for Apple is that the [antenna] issues seem to be clearing up.”

Last year, a ChangeWave poll showed that the iPhone 3GS handily beat other smartphones in consumer satisfaction, and yielded numbers Carton at the time called “on a different planet.”

“We should look at the iPhone 4 as a work in progress. If the antenna issue disappears, the iPhone 4 could end up at least equivalent in satisfaction to the 3GS,” said Carton. “This shows that [Apple's] brand is resilient and can take the hits. And frankly, I don’t see this having a long-term impact.”

iPhone 4 owners are less satisfied with their smartphones.
Source: http://www.computerworld.com/s/article/9180146/iPhone_4_antenna

SEOUL — The South Korean police raided the offices of Google Korea on Tuesday as part of an investigation into whether the company illegally collected and stored personal wireless data.

The U.S. search and advertising titan is already facing lawsuits and investigations in several countries in connection with private wireless data collected by its “Street View” cars. Street View, which was first launched in 2006, allows users to view panoramic street scenes on Google Maps and take a virtual walk through cities.

From late last year until May, Google Korea dispatched cars topped with cameras to cruise around South Korea to photograph neighborhoods ahead of the planned lunch of Street View service in this country this year.

Police suspect those cars may have illegally captured and stored personal data from wireless networks while they were mapping streets, the Cyber Terror Response Center of the Korean National Police Agency said in a statement.

“We will investigate Google Korea officials and scrutinize the data we confiscated today” to see whether company has violated the country’s laws on communications and privacy, it said.

“We intend to find out what kinds of data they have collected and how much. We will try to retrieve all the original data illegally collected and stored through domestic Wi-Fi networks from the Google headquarters.”

Google Korea officials were not immediately available for comment. Google, based in Mountain View, California, said previously that the collection of personal wireless data in other countries was unintentional and a blunder, and that the company would cooperate with investigations.

Google has had a hard time in South Korea’s Internet market, which is dominated by a couple of domestic search engines. One, Daum, already runs a popular service akin to Street View.

Google said Tuesday it would introduce its Street View service in Germany before the year’s end, the Associated Press reported from Berlin.

The company said the feature will be available for the country’s 20 biggest cities and people can ask to have the photo of their house removed from the database starting next week — a move aimed at dispelling privacy fears.

It says Street View provides photographs of neighborhoods taken by Google cameras, but faces and licenses plates will be blurred.

Source:  http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/11/technology/11google.html?_r=1&ref=technology

1. Lower System Requirements
Unlike Windows Vista, which required significantly more memory and processing speed to power its graphical user interface, Windows 7 isn’t a system resource hog. As such, the same machines you now having running Vista should easily be able to accommodate the new OS, which in many cases loads programs and boots or shuts down faster. Less money spent on hardware upgrades translates into immediate cost savings, while a decrease in downtime twiddling your thumbs waiting for software to load provides a corresponding productivity boost. Furthermore, even a relatively slow 1GHz PC with 1GB of memory can run Windows 7 (though 2GB of RAM is recommended and 4GB for the 64-bit edition), making it suitable for installation on low-end netbook computers on up to high-end desktops.

2. Simpler Navigation
A trio of improvements to the user front-end makes Windows 7 easier to navigate and multitask within than its predecessors. To begin with, using Aero Peek features, Windows 7 users can more easily view desktop contents by turning all open windows transparent. With Aero Shake, you also have the option to simply grab an active window and physically shake the mouse to minimize other panes cluttering up one’s monitor. Last, but not least, Aero Snap functions automatically resize windows to take up half the screen when they’re dragged to either side of your display.

3. Better Multitasking
Borrowing a trick from Apple’s Snow Leopard operating system, Windows 7 now offers a more aesthetically pleasing, icon-based taskbar that lets you permanently pin and organize favorite programs on it. You can additionally point to icons to get thumbnail previews of open files and windows associated with each program, all accessible with a click. Everything’s displayed in as minimally intrusive a way possible as well, helping cut down on clutter and making it possible to keep track of everything that’s happening on your desktop. Jump lists for each piece of software, available when you right-click on the respective program, even let you immediately pull up recently opened files and documents–a major time-saver.

4. Greater Stability
Unlike Windows Vista, most hardware and software is readily compatible with Windows 7 and will work right out of the box, with no need to download and install additional drivers. Happily, in instances where necessary, locating and adding these updates to your PC proves a relatively painless procedure.

5. Enhanced Security
Instead of making you play watchdog and constantly click to approve program access, Windows 7 does away with the vast majority of Windows Vista’s nagging pop-ups. Users can now control the relative amount of prompts regarding system security they receive using an intuitive slider bar control, with alert messages minimized to avoid becoming a nuisance. In addition, the Internet Explorer 8 web browser is better-guarded against external threats. Purchase the Ultimate Edition ($219.99 upgrade), and you can further encrypt drives and data using BitLocker technology to protect sensitive files and even portable USB keys from unauthorized intrusion.

6. Multi-Touch Capabilities
If you have a compatible touch-screen PC or laptop, multi-touch physical gestures can now be used to navigate the operating system and pull up documents and data with a flick of a finger.

7. Simpler file organization
Libraries, which serve as all-purpose containers, allow you to conveniently catalogue photos, music, video and files in single locations, no matter where they live on your hard drive. Because of this, it’s a breeze to keep all materials related to the same work project organized in one readily retrievable location.

8. Optimized Network Setup
Brisk, painless network setup via new HomeGroup features makes it simple to share devices, documents and printers between other PCs running Windows 7 on a password-protected home network. Entrepreneurs who need to access a larger companywide network may need to upgrade to the Professional Edition ($199.99), which allows connectivity with more complex workplace servers.

9. Less Clutter
Don’t like all the so-called “bloatware”–useless applications that traditionally come installed on any new operating system or PC? You’ll be right at home here, as programs like Windows Mail, Windows Calendar, Movie Maker and Photo Gallery aren’t even included with installation except in cases where they’re pre-bundled by certain PC manufacturers. Instead, you choose to optionally download them for free from Microsoft. While some may balk at these typically preinstalled apps’ omission, for others, it’ll be seen as an effective way to cut down on unused programs that needlessly waste hard drive space and system memory.

10. Overall Performance
Given its suite of welcome upgrades, Windows 7 is sure to inspire more third-party developer support than Windows Vista, and enjoy a larger business software library that takes advantage of its built-in features. As the system’s improvements significantly enhance users’ everyday work and online experience, it’s inevitable that your enterprise will want to take advantage of programs which natively support these updates. Even those who opt for just the basic Home Premium edition ($119.99 upgrade) and never buy another application will be able to appreciate extras like faster and more reliable desktop search functions and simpler document retrieval. Making it infinitely simpler to organize, store and navigate both your desktop and supported applications, more than a few entrepreneurs will find that Windows 7 has been well worth the wait.

Source: http://www.entrepreneur.com/technology/shinyobjects/article203890.html

1. Taskbar icons have keyboard shortcuts. To open these applications through shortcut keys, simply hold down the Windows key and press the number on the keyboard that corresponds with the icon, working from the Start “orb” button to the right. For example, if Internet Explorer is the first icon, press Windows-1 to open IE.

2. You can move items on the taskbar. I know it feels like this was already possible in Windows XP and Vista, but this actually is a new Windows 7 feature.

3. Paint and WordPad use the new ribbon interface. In addition, Paint has new brushes, and both applications have new Save As options. However, you still can’t open more than one document or picture at a time.

4. There is a great new tool for supporting family members and friends from afar. Click the Start button and type psr to open the Problem Steps Recorder. This tool can capture step by step (even take screenshots) what a person is doing. When they stop the recording, the session is bundled as an MHTML file and compressed for easy emailing back to support, which in most cases is you. (An MHTML file is an IE-only HTML variant.)

5. You can have more than one clock on your notification area. For those of us who work with people in other time zones, you can display clocks for each of those regions. Click the clock in the notification area and choose Change Date and Time Settings. Select the Additional Clocks tab to display as many as two other clocks and to set their time zones. (This feature actually came with Vista, but few people know about it.)

6. There’s a fast way to run a program using administrator privileges. To open an application with administrator permissions, you usually locate it through the Start menu, right-click the application, and choose Run as Administrator from the contextual menu. However, you can also simply type the name in the Instant Search bar at the base of the Start menu and press Ctrl-Shift-Enter.

7. There is a replacement to the Security Center called the Action Center. Located in the Control Panel, it provides both security and maintenance information for your system. It also provides links to many other features such as backup settings.

8. There is a new UAC (User Account Control) slider to set the desired prompt level. You can reach it quickly by typing uac in the Instant Search bar. This slider is set by default to a less annoying setting than what Vista had, but you can bring the settings back to Vista mode, leave it in Windows 7 mode (which prompts you only if an action is attempted beyond your input), or lower the settings to the bottom and turn off the UAC security altogether to what I like to call “Mac mode” (yes, I know the Mac’s UAC equivalent prompts users for the same kinds of actions as UAC’s Windows 7 mode). Note that the slider is also available in the Action Center.

9. You can quickly turn on and off certain Windows apps. To turn on and off built-in apps such as Internet Explorer, DVD Maker, and Media Player, type features in the Instant Search bar and select the Turn Windows Features On or Off link under Control Panel; then locate the feature you want to hide or display.

10. You can run a private version of Internet Explorer. If you are at a conference or in a public location and want to run a private version of Internet Explorer, you can quickly jump to the InPrivate Browsing mode to do so. There are several methods. You can click and drag the IE icon up or right-click it to get a contextual menu in which you choose Start InPrivate Browsing. Or in IE itself, choose Safety > InPrivate Browsing or press Ctrl-Shift-P to open a new, private IE window. You can also set a desktop shortcut for IE that automatically launches in InPrivate Browsing mode; just append -private after the application path, with a space before the hyphen. No matter how you launch that private session, IE won’t retain any of the information you view or type during that session.

11. You can turn off auodetection of your location and other such browser information. Sometimes, when you go to a site, it locates your connection point and asks, for example, “Would you like to know the weather in [your location]?” That may freak you out a bit, but you can use a new IE feature called InPrivate Filtering, located in IE’s Safety options, to choose what browser information you want to filter out from sites’ access.

12. You can set up a quick home network. Use the new feature called HomeGroups to share documents, pictures, and printers easily with other members of your home network also running Windows 7.

13. Find out what’s causing reliability issues. If your PC has issues every once in a while, such as crashes or application hangs, type reliability in the Instant Search bar to open the Reliability Monitor; it will show your system’s reliability history over a period of time and what seems to hit your reliability the most.

14. See a system diagnostic of your computer in 60 seconds with minimal effort. Rather than go to Administrative Tools, then to Performance Monitor, and finally to Data Collector Sets just to launch the System Diagnostic DCS, simply open up an administrator command prompt and type perfmon /report.

15. You can enforce time limits and game restrictions on users. Use the Parental Controls in the Control Panel. Yes, they’re great for home control but also for libraries, schools, and kiosk systems not connected to a domain.

16. Find missing tools such as Windows Mail and Photo Gallery. These have been moved to a download site called Live Essentials.

17. Work fast using PowerShell. PowerShell v2 is included with Windows 7, which also offers a new semi-GUI version of the tool called PowerShell ISE. PowerShell ISE has three panes: The bottom one is for direct command input, the middle one is for output, and the top one is for scripting and saving those scripts as PS1 files. One tremendous benefit of PowerShell v2 is its remoting capability, which lets you perform tasks on other systems through the command line.

18. Control application access control via AppLocker. This tool uses rules and file properties to provide access control to applications. Although you’d typically use AppLocker on a domain, you can play with the settings and become more familiar with AppLocker by opening Administrative Tools, opening the Local Security Policy, and expanding the Application Control Policies. There, you can create rules that relate to the publisher, path, and/or file hash, along with a host of other settings.

19. Get automatic email alerts for error events. Have an error event in Event Viewer that you want to be emailed about when it happens again? Open Event Viewer, locate the event error through the logs, select the event, and use the Attach Task to This Event wizard in the Actions pane to attach a task to that event, such as displaying a message, running a program, or sending an email.

20. See your Windows Experience Index (WEI) performance score. Type wei in the Instant Search bar and click the Check the Windows Experience Index link to see your system score (aka the Base score) and individual component scores. To see the underlying XML files that are created when this score is calculated, go to c:\Windows\Performance\WinSAT\DataStore and look for the latest (Formal) assessment XML for a full review of the results from the Windows System Assessment Tool (WinSAT). Finally, if you want to have some nerdy fun, you can adjust the permissions settings and give your system a higher WEI score.

Source: http://www.pcworld.com/businesscenter/article/199089-2/20_windows_7_tips_and_tricks_for_it_admins.html