Wednesday, March 22, 2006

Paypal Tests Payments via Cell Phones. Ebay, Paypal May Go Offline Business

9:36 pm | Anton Shilov

Paypal, the online payment service owned by eBay Inc., has begun testing a new offering to allow people to make and receive payments using cell phones and other mobile devices. Potentially, such a move may allow Paypal and eBay to go offline with their payment systems, provided that they ink deals with traditional stores.

“Paypal Mobile is being tested by an unspecified number of eBay employees and will be available to the public in the United States, Canada and the United Kingdom in the next few weeks. Paypal Mobile will allow people to make person-to-person payments, buy items and donate to charities using mobile devices,” said Amanda Pires, a spokeswoman foe eBay.

Users who wish to use the capability will have to register with Paypal’s web-site to obtain special security codes. While mobile payments is nothing new in certain countries, not a lot of cell network operators or banks have a client base of about 100 million accounts.

• Associate Press: EBay Plans Payments Using Cell Phones.

Windows XP Boots, Works on Intel-Based Apple PCs. Windows XP on Macs: Tested, Benchmarked

9:34 pm | Anton Shilov

After some time of testing and tweaking, enthusiasts have managed to launch Microsoft’s Windows XP on Apple’s Mac computers featuring Intel processors, which means that now users of Macintosh PCs can enjoy benefits of both Mac OS X and Windows operating systems, something, which many have desired. The question is, how fast do Windows XP applications perform on the Mac?

In an attempt to find out how fast do Intel Core Duo based iMac, Mac mini and MacBook Pro perform against laptops that run Windows XP natively, the reviewers from the Gearlog web-site have tried all three and put them against “Wintel” world competitors. The list of benchmarks is, unfortunately, not very long.

“The two Mac desktops outran even blazing-fast single core systems, which typically do the Windows Media Encoder test in 10-13 minutes. We haven't tested any other Intel Core Duo desktops, but the iMac competes well against a Polywell machine with a dual-core Athlon 64 X2 3800+, while the Mini and MacBook Pro are held back a little by their slower laptop hard drives. Predictably, all the Macs blow away the Shuttle XPC M1000, which has the previous generation single-core Pentium M processor. That system scored 16 minutes on Windows Media Encoder, and took 2:52 to complete the Photoshop script,” the review reads.

• Gearlog: Windows XP on Macs: Tested, Benchmarked.
• OnMac.net Wiki: HOWTO Install Windows XP on your Intel Mac.

Cell Phones to Challenge Apple iPod, Says Samsung. Samsung Unveils 8GB Hard Drive Phone

9:33 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

The unmatched popularity of Apple’s iPod digital media player gives a hard time even for such a dedicated company as Samsung. After seeing how Creative Labs, iRiver and Sony failed to produce a worthy competitor for the iPod, Samsung is trying a different approach.

CNET News.com reports that Samsung has taken the wraps off its mobile phone that boasts with the largest hard disk drive seen on such a device to date.

“The “candy bar”-style device, the SGH-i310, will pack 8GB of storage and run Windows Mobile 5.0. Samsung is hoping the device, which can hold more songs than an iPod Nano, will take off with music fans. In addition to its large hard drive, the device will let users sync playlists from their PC as well as store documents, photos and other information in the phone’s internal memory,” says the report.

While the efforts to deliver such a device to the market are no less than commendable, Samsung may face a situation, where such device would not be desirable by end users.

“According to a study by RBC Capital Markets, 70% of consumers have no interest in playing music on their mobiles,” concludes CNET News.com.

• CNET News.com: Samsung Unveils 8GB Hard-Drive Phone.

Web-Site Suggests Improvements to Air-Cooling. Air-Cooling Guide Posted

9:29 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

It is becoming harder and harder to provide a decent cooling for computer hardware in modern personal computers (PC). Since computer parts tend to overheat and because of this their lifetime shortens, sometimes, using a PC with typical coolers becomes not the best solution. But what to do if you do not want to install water-cooling or something like that?

Bona Fide Reviews has posted an article written as a guide on how to build a properly ventilated system. The author writes about the following factors and hardware parts influencing air cooling performance:

• Computer case
• Power supply unit
• CPU cooler
• GPU cooler
• Thermal interface
• Memory module heatspreaders
• Cables
• Dust

Bona Fide Reviews: A Beginner’s Guide to Air Cooling Your Smokin Hot Computer.

A PC Enthusiast Dream: $7000 Gaming PC. Web-Site Assembles Killer Gaming Rig for LAN Parties

9:28 pm | Anton Shilov

Have you ever dreamed about the fastest gaming system to date? It is very likely that you have. But the technology moves forward at such a rapid pace that it very unlikely that someone can remember all the latest products from all the developers and builders. In order to refresh memory of potential highest-end systems buyers, ExtremeTech has released its Killer Gaming Rig: Spring 2006 guide.

This time the authors used AMD Athlon 64 FX-60 central processing unit, Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe mainboard, 2GB Corsair PC-3500LL memory, ATI Radeon X1900 XT in CrossFire mode as well as Dell UltraSharp 3007 WFP as the base for their system that cost $7041 in total.

If you are going to assemble a high-performance gaming system, you may be interested in having a look at the appropriate article at ExtremeTech, as the author very briefly describes peculiarities of every piece of hardware used. In addition, the web-site publishes benchmarks of the system that was built with no limits in mind.

• ExtremeTech: Killer Gaming Rig: Spring 2006.

Web-Site Reviews AMD Opteron 165, 180 Processors. Performance of Affordable Opteron Chips Examined

9:27 pm | Yaroslav Lyssenko

Originally introduced as server processors, AMD Opteron 100-series chips now use desktop infrastructure in a quite a lot of cases, which attracts a lot of attention of computer enthusiasts, particularly, overclockers, who plan acquiring such products for their desktops.

While AMD Opteron processor 100-series is targeted at 1P server applications, such as those used by Internet and application service providers, and intensive workstation applications such as engineering and digital content creation software, the processors are very interesting for desktop enthusiasts. The Tech Report has compared AMD’s Opteron 165 and 180 processors with desktop offerings from AMD and Intel, both in professional applications as well as in popular games and contemporary office tasks.

“Fortunately, characterizing the performance of these two CPUs is fairly easy, thanks to a startling amount of consistency in terms of relative performance across a range of benchmarks. The Opteron 180 performs exactly like an Athlon 64 X2 4800+, which is to say, exceptionally well. This thing outruns the Pentium D 950 - ostensibly its most direct competitor from Intel - virtually across the board. The Opteron 180 also outperforms the more expensive Pentium Extreme Edition 955 in the lion’s share of our benchmark suite. For high-end, single-socket workstations, the Opteron 180 is as good as it gets right now. Only the Athlon 64 FX-60 is faster, but that chip is targeted at gaming PCs rather than workstations,” concludes the author.

“The performance picture for the Opteron 165 is more complex. More often than not, the 165 scores higher in the benchmarks than its closest real competitor, the Pentium D 930, but the Opteron 165 doesn’t have nearly the dominance that the Opteron 180 does. Although AMD’s K8 architecture delivers quite a bit of performance per clock, the Opteron 165’s 1.8GHz clock speed is low enough to keep it from really exploiting that architectural advantage. The 165’s relatively low memory bandwidth and high memory access latencies in our synthetic memory tests compared to the other K8 chips we tested are testaments to that fact. I would recommend stepping up to a higher clock speed if possible. At 2GHz, the Athlon 64 X2 3800+ looks like a better option for those building their own systems, at least if we’re talking about running at stock speeds,” adds the author in regards to AMD Opteron 165 performance level.

• The Tech Report: AMD’s Opteron 165 and 180 Processors.

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