Friday, January 21, 2005

Bill Gates Talks Longhorn, Xbox 2. Microsoft Chairman Interviewed

1:44 am | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Microsoft co-founder and chairman Bill Gates recently answered a number of questions from a gadget’s weblog Gizmodo concerning the future of Microsoft, competition with Apple, plans for Longhorn, Xbox 2 and others.

“Well, the PC is our superset device in terms of media integration. You’ll see a ton of that stuff you see on the PC, like the ability to listen to your tunes... we did some of this on Xbox 1, where you could move music over and have tracks – it wasn’t a required feature for the games. We did build in the music mixer-type stuff, but we’ll build a lot of that stuff into the base thing. We’re evolving the photo and music stuff that’s in Windows and Xbox will get some of that extra capability. So you’ll see more synergy between Windows and Xbox. And we think these portable media devices, whether they are music only or with video, will take off. So we’ll make sure that we connect up as much as we can,” Mr. Gates said.

“Well, we're very proud of the role of the PC in allowing lots of voices to exist and make them accessible. Historically, the publishing baron in the city had a very high share of voice, and they didn't even need to employ the best writers, because they had kind of the unique distribution. As more and more reading gets online, the ability to get to lots of different things, and the competition and quality that takes will be pretty amazing,” Bill Gates said praising weblogs.

• Gizmodo:  G-Money and Me Bill Gates Interview.
• Gizmodo: Gates Interview Part Two Windows Post-Longhorn and Apple's Office Suite.
• Gizmodo: Gates Interview Part Three: Xbox 2 and Xbox Live.

Intel’s Latest Centrino Incarnation Under Exploration. Intel’s Sonoma Platform Reviewed

1:23 am | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Centrino has been one of the most successful products of Intel Corp.. This week this platform product was renewed with the Sonoma Mobile Technology which features an enhanced Intel Pentium M processor, new chipsets, new wireless LAN adapter, DirectX 9.0 integrated graphics core, DDR2 support, Serial ATA support and improved audio.

“The Sonoma Mobile Technology platform is showing great promise. With support for 533MHz processors and 533MHz DDR2 memory modules, it will give mobile PCs a much needed boost in performance as well as power saving capabilities. With Sonoma, mobile PCs can now offer close-to-desktop performance with mobility-grade power consumption. This is all thanks to the new Intel 915 Express chipset (codenamed Alviso). But that’s not all that this new chipset offers. It also has an option for an improved and as we have seen, a much faster integrated graphics solution in the form of the Intel Graphics Media Accelerator 900,” reports Adrian’s Rojak Pot web-site, who managed to compare performance of the Sonoma notebook versus typical Intel Centrino laptops.

• Adrian's Rojak Pot: Intel And The Centrino Mobile Technology.
• Hardwarezone.com: Next Generation Centrino: Sonoma.
• Intel Press Room: You Can Take It With You.

ATI’s Latest Mobile VPU Reviewed. MOBILITY RADEON X700 Reviews Hit the Web

12:46 am | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Gaming on the move is becoming more and more popular and with the arrival of the latest games like Doom III, FarCry and Half-Life 2 there is more than ever need for powerful graphics solutions for notebooks. ATI’s latest MOBILITY RADEON X700 features 8 pixel and 6 vertex pipelines, bringing a serious graphics muscle for laptops, but at an affordable price-point and in relatively low thermal envelope.

“Internal ATI documentation mentions that MOBILITY RADEON X700 outperforms its thin and light predecessor, MOBILITY RADEON 9700, by a factor of two in most applications (2.5 times in Half-Life 2). Based on our testing results today, we’d say ATI is shortchanging themselves, as not only is MOBILITY RADEON X700 faster than the 4-pipeline MOBILITY RADEON 9700, it’s also faster than ATI’s first DX9 product, the RADEON 9700 PRO on the desktop,” claims web-site FiringSquad, who had an opportunity to test the latest mobile VPU from ATI.

• bit-tech.net: ATI Mobility Radeon X700.
• FiringSquad: ATI MOBILITY RADEON X700 Perfomance Preview.

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