Technology World!

Apple profits for hardware will drop but software sales and market share will climb

Last year when the first generation iPhone was announced by Apple, the bill of materials for the device was estimated to be in the area of $170. According to recent analysis the new iPhone 3G could be costing Apple significantly less to make than the original iPhone.

According to teardown analysis from Portelligent Inc., the new iPhone 3G could have a bill of materials as low as $100. This reduction in the cost to build the device takes into account the increased prices for the addition of a 3G chipset and a GPS chip.

“Gen2 iPhone pricing is aggressive enough that it made me think Apple’s really taking the gloves off on this one,” noted Portelligent president David Carey. “They are probably not as worried about iPhone hardware profits as they are about getting a piece of the action on service revenues and getting more Macs in homes and offices all around the globe.”

This aggressive pricing is taking some money out of Apple’s coffers on hardware sales. However, Apple will likely make up the losses on hardware sales in revenues for software sold via the App Store. DailyTech reported that the App Store could be a billion dollar business for Apple by 2009.

Will Strauss from Forward Concepts told EETimes that he believes the iPhone 3G is using an Infineon baseband and RF transceiver along with a Samsung applications processor. Samsung launched a handset with these same parts recently and pointed out that the cost of the Infineon chips were about 20% less than similar chips from Qualcomm.

According to Carey, the addition of the HSPDA chipset adds $15 and the addition of the GPS chip adds another $5. Those additional costs are offset in part by the reduced memory pricing compared to last year. These cost figures, of course, don’t take into account development, marketing, and software costs.

Free, effective protection against computer viruses. AntiVir Personal Edition is a software that helps you protect and monitor your PC.

AntiVir software is a reliable free antivirus solution, that constantly and rapidly scans your computer for malicious programs (such as viruses, Trojans, backdoor programs, hoaxes, worms, dialers etc.), monitoring every action executed by the user or by the operating system and being able to react promptly when a malicious program is detected.

Protects your computer against dangerous viruses, worms, Trojans and costly dialers.

Avira AntiVir Personal gives you the following functions:
· Control Center for monitoring, administering and controlling the entire program
· Central configuration with user-friendly standard and advanced options and context-sensitive help
· Scanner (On-Demand Scan) with profile-controlled and configurable search for all known types of virus and malware
· Integration into the Windows Vista User Account Control allows you to carry out tasks requiring administrator rights
· Guard (On-Access Scan) for continuous monitoring of all file access attempts
· Integrated quarantine management to isolate and process suspicious files
· Rootkit protection for detecting hidden malware installed in your computer system (rootkits) (Only for 32-bit systems)
· Direct access to detailed information on the detected viruses and malware via the Internet
· Simple and quick updates to the program, virus definitions, and search engine through Single File Update and incremental VDF updates via a webserver on the Internet
· Integrated Scheduler to plan one-off or recurring tasks, such as updates or test runs
· Very high rates of virus and malware detection using innovative search technologies (search engines) and heuristic search processes
· Detection of all common archive types, including detection of nested archives and smart extensions
· High-performance multithreading function (simultaneous high-speed scanning of multiple files)

Download:
Avira AntiVir Personal Free 8.1.00.295 (link 1)
Avira AntiVir Personal Free 8.1.00.295 (link 2)
Avira AntiVir Personal Free 8.1.00.295 (link 3)

Source- Keznews

Contrary to what the media has reported thus far, a new survey found that 82% of gamers love in-game ads.

 Don’t believe anything you’ve heard about in-game advertising from basically every video game news outlet to date, because a new study found that 82% of consumers love them unconditionally.

Confused? So was Wired’s Earnest Cavalli, who had previously went off on a tirade against in-game ads, calling them an annoying distraction that any normal person should detest.

Apparently, if the study is to be believed, he was wrong.

According to the Nielsen company and in-game ad entrepreneurs IGA Worldwide, the survey showed that “82% felt games were just as enjoyable with ads as without,” and “there was an average 61% increase in consumers’ favorable opinions of products advertised in-game post-play.”

The IGA press release also pointed out a 33% increase in positive brand association after exposure to in-game ads, which basically translates into “people loved seeing in-game ads.”

As with any survey, the numbers can easily be skewed or manipulated, but so far this one checks out. Still, who was surveyed? What kinds of ads were used? Do people really like ads that much when playing the latest video game?

Source- GamePro

The Windows XP era ends June 30 and soon hardware vendors will be shipping you all Vista all the time (in most cases).

The save XP effort failed. The whining should cease. And now it’s time for Vista to sink or swim.

Ina Fried has a good overview of where Windows XP will stand with PC manufacturers. And Matt Asay highlights a report from Evans Data noting that 92 percent of developers are ignoring Vista. Coupling these two items together and you come to one conclusion: Folks are skeptical about Vista, but a lot of that skepticism is because XP is still lingering.

If you’re a Vista complainer you have two options from here:

* Move away from Windows completely (users try a new OS and developers jump ship).
* Or shut up and go with Vista.

My hunch is most folks will do that latter. I’d love to believe that Microsoft’s Vista miscues would result in a mass exodus, but I doubt that will happen. I also wonder why people live in New Jersey and pay those ridiculous property taxes, but shockingly enough people stay. Based on my Libertarian leanings I’d reckon there would be four people left in Jersey by now.

But I digress. Once consumers no longer have the XP option they’ll fall in line with Vista. Sure some percentage will go Mac, but if you didn’t jump yet–after a gazillion brilliant Apple ads knocking Vista–you probably won’t. And the developer worries: Developers will fall in line too. Evans Data notes:

Only eight percent of North American software developers are currently writing applications to run on Microsoft’s Vista operating system, while half are still writing programs for XP, according to Evans Data’s Spring 2008, North American Development Survey. These same developers forecast a fragmented Windows market in 2009 with only 24 percent expecting to target Vista and 29% expecting to continue with XP.

“Developers have taken a wait and see approach to Vista”, said John Andrews, Evans Data’s President and CEO. “The new operating system has had more than its share of problems and the desire to move from XP on the Windows platform is still lagging - that coupled with interest in alternative operating systems is suppressing development activity and that in turn will further erode Vista’s acceptance.”

source: blogs.zdnet.com

New evidence suggests that basic life really may have come from the stars.

It has long been thought that the seeds for life came to a primordial Earth from solar system leftovers crashing into the planet. These meteorites, comets, or other unknowns may have contained vital components with which budding life on Earth either assimilated or used as a catalyst to create itself. Now, in a paper to be published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters, European scientists claim they have evidence to prove the theory may be correct.

The group, based at Imperial College London, found some of the base building blocks for life, nucleobases, in dust from the Murchison meteorite which fell to Earth in 1969. Nucleobases, in this case uracil and xanthine, are the components that make up two of the most important parts of any Earth-bound life form, DNA and RNA.

In order to confirm that these molecules weren’t from simple contamination, the researchers analyzed the individual atoms of the nucleobases. They found the carbon contained within was a heavier breed that what forms naturally on Earth. The molecules must have come from space.

Professor Mark Sephton, a co-author of the paper states “Because meteorites represent left over materials from the formation of the solar system, the key components for life — including nucleobases — could be widespread in the cosmos. As more and more of life’s raw materials are discovered in objects from space, the possibility of life springing forth wherever the right chemistry is present becomes more likely.”

While giving insights on how higher life may have formed on Earth, the finding may also bolster the theory that life may have once existed on a warmer, wetter Mars or a cooler, clearer Venus. NASA hopes to find evidence for such theories by analyzing the ice contained in the soil of the red wasteland that the Mars Phoenix Lander touched down on.
Credit- Dailytech

Most of you guys were looking for some High Quality Office Icons and here some.

Microsoft Office Icon Pack description
A set of 26 splendid Icons designed to let you customize your Office applications

Microsoft Office Icon Pack will enable you to change the deafult icons for the Office components installed on your PC. All these high quality icons come in both PNG and ICO format.

Screenshot- Click Here to View

Download at Softpedia

Specifications:

Here’s The Conclusion of:

• Hothardware-

  
  

  Performance Summary: Summarizing the performance of NVIDIA’s new GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 cards is quite easy.  The GeForce GTX 260’s overall performance falls somewhere in between the single-GPU based GeForce 9800 GTX and dual-GPU powered GeForce 9800 GX2, and it is usually faster than the dual-GPU powered Radeon HD 3870 X2 as well.  The flagship GeForce GTX 280, however, was overall  the fastest single graphics card we have ever tested.  There were a couple of instances when the GeForce 9800 GX2 pulled ahead of the GTX 280, but in the vast majority of our testing, no other single graphics card could match the performance of the GeForce GTX 280.

  
   
  

   

  NVIDIA has done it again and raised the bar for that can be considered an ultra high-end GPU.  The GT200 series GPU at the heart of the GeForce GTX 280 and GeForce GTX 260 offers more brute force performance than anything else to come before it.  Though producing such a massive GPU, does have its drawbacks, which are evident when you consider its die size and when looking at power consumption characteristics, the fact remains NVIDIA has produced the most powerful and fastest graphics card we have ever tested - yet again.

  Suggested retail pricing for the GeForce GTX 280 is set at $649 and the GeForce GTX 260 checks in at a more palatable $399.  NVIDIA has informed is that the GeForce GTX 280 will be available in quantity tomorrow ( June 17th) and the GeForce GTX 260 is slated to arrive Thursday of next week, on June 26.  At those prices, the GeForce GTX series does not come cheap.  But enthusiasts have always had to “pay to play” so to speak.  We suspect there may be some wiggle room in these prices, however, as partners push clock speeds higher than NVIDIA’s reference specifications and as ATI pushes out their next-gen GPU architecture, which is rumored to offer strong performance and a relatively low price point.  As usual, we’ll know more in the coming weeks.

  For now though, NVIDIA has further cemented their position atop the 3D graphics food chain.   They have executed once again with a new line of graphics cards that not only offer significantly higher frame rates, but large performance gains for gamers, game developers and researchers looking to exploit both GPU and GPGPU capabilities of NVIDIA’s massive new multi-purpose graphics and compute engine.

  

   

  Extreme Performance PhysX Support Coming Large Frame Buffers Low Idle Power Consumption	High Peak Power Consumption Expensive Can Be Somewhat Loud

• AnandTech- There’s no question that NVIDIA has built a very impressive chip with the GT200. As the largest microprocessor we’ve ever reviewed, NVIDIA has packed an unreal amount of computational horsepower into the GT200. What’s even more impressive is that we can fully expect NVIDIA to double transistor count once again in about 18 months, and once more we’ll be in this position of complete awe of what can be done. We’re a little over a decade away from being able to render and display images that would be nearly indistinguishable from reality, and it’s going to take massive GPUs like the GT200 to get us there.Interestingly, though, AMD has decided to make public its decision to go in the opposite direction. No more will ATI be pushing as many transistors as possible into giant packages in order to do battle with NVIDIA for the coveted “halo” product that inspires the masses to think an entire company is better because they made the fastest possible thing regardless of value. The new direction ATI will go in will be one that it kind of stumbled inadvertently into: providing midrange cards that offer as high a performance per dollar as possible.With AMD dropping out of the high end single-GPU space (they will still compete with multiGPU solutions), NVIDIA will be left all alone with top performance for the forseable future. But as we saw from our benchmarks, that doesn’t always work out quite like we would expect.There’s another very important aspect of GT200 that’s worth considering: a die-shrunk, higher clocked version of GT200 will eventually compete with Intel’s Larrabee GPU. The GT200 is big enough that it could easily smuggle a Penryn into your system without you noticing, which despite being hilarious also highlights a very important point: NVIDIA could easily toss a high performance general purpose sequential microprocessor on its GPUs if it wanted to. At the same time, if NVIDIA can build a 1.4 billion transistor chip that’s nearly 6x the size of Penryn, so can Intel - the difference being that Intel already has the high performance, general purpose, sequential microprocessor that it could integrate alongside a highly parallel GPU workhorse. While Intel has remained relatively quiet on Larrabee as of late, NVIDIA’s increased aggressiveness towards its Santa Clara neighbors is making more sense every day.

  We already know that Larrabee will be built on Intel’s 45nm process, but given the level of performance it will have to compete with, it wouldn’t be too far fetched for Larrabee to be Intel’s first 1 - 2 billion transistor microprocessor for use in a desktop machine (Nehalem is only 781M transistors).

  Intel had better keep an eye on NVIDIA as the GT200 cements its leadership position in the GPU market. NVIDIA hand designed the logic that went into much of the GT200 and managed to produce it without investing in a single fab, that is a scary combination for Intel to go after. It’s not to say that Intel couldn’t out engineer NVIDIA here, but it’s just going to be a challenging competition.

  NVIDIA has entered a new realm with the GT200, producing a world class microprocessor that is powerful enough to appear on even Intel’s radar. If NVIDIA had the ability to enable GPU acceleration in more applications, faster, then it would actually be able to give Intel a tough time before Larrabee. Fortunately for Intel, NVIDIA is still just getting started on moving into the compute space.

  But then we have the question of whether or not you should buy one of these things. As impressive as the GT200 is, the GeForce GTX 280 is simply overpriced for the performance it delivers. It is NVIDIA’s fastest single-card, single-GPU solution, but for $150 less than a GTX 280 you get a faster graphics card with NVIDIA’s own GeForce 9800 GX2. The obvious downside to the GX2 over the GTX 280 is that it is a multi-GPU card and there are going to be some situations where it doesn’t scale well, but overall it is a far better buy than the GTX 280.

  Even looking to the comparison of four and two card SLI, the GTX 280 doesn’t deliver $300 more in value today. NVIDIA’s position is that in the future games will have higher compute and bandwidth requirements and that the GTX 280 will have more logevity. While that may or may not be true depending on what actually happens in the industry, we can’t recommend something based on possible future performance. It just doesn’t make sense to buy something today that won’t give you better performance on the software that’s currently available. Especially when it costs so much more than a faster solution.

  The GeForce GTX 260 is a bit more reasonable. At $400 it is generally equal to if not faster than the Radeon HD 3870 X2, and with no other NVIDIA cards occupying the $400 pricepoint it is without a competitor within its own family. Unfortunately, 8800 GT SLI is much cheaper and many people already have an 8800 GT they could augment.

  The availability of cheaper faster alternatives to GT200 hardware is quite dangerous for NVIDIA, as value does count for quite a lot even at the high end. And an overpriced high end card is only really attractive if it’s actually the fastest thing out there.

  But maybe with the lowered high end threat from AMD, NVIDIA has decided to make a gutsy move by positioning its hardware such that multiGPU solutions do have higher value than single GPU solutions. Maybe this is all just a really good way to sell more SLI motherboards.

• InsideHW- When it comes to performances nVIDIA is once again „the king of the hill“. Every game we tried was playable even at largest resolutions like 2560×1560 with AA and AF. Everything except of course, Crysis which couldn’t run perfectly smoth on maximum resolution with AA and AF enabled. But every other game isn’t a problem for GTX280. The final verdict for this card is simple: it’s new, it’s no doubt the best SingleGPU card today, and it will satisfy even the most hardcore gamers for whom this card is intended for. You are probably wondering when will we explain the part with G70 and 71? Well, if you want the best graphics card right now, and you have enough money (around 550€) you should go and buy nVIDIA GeForce GTX280. If you are one of those who will find this product to expensive and wont buy it just because of that (despite you actualy can) rest assured that nVIDIA GeForce GTX280 is geat product. Of course you can always wait for „G71“ (as it was case with G70) version of GTX280 that will be produced in smaller production process, with less power consumption and lower price.

 

For reviews from all other sites from all over the internet check out these links:

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280
@ AnandTech
@ TweakTown
@ InsideHW
@ Guru3D
@ Elite Bastards
@ Hardware Secrets
@ Hot Hardware
@ Chile Hardware
@ Driver Heaven
@ Hardware Canucks
@ Overclockers Club
@ MADBOXPC
@ The Tech Report
@ t-break
@ Benchmark Reviews
@ Technic3D
@ Legit Reviews

TweakVI description

Tweak hundreds of hidden features of Windows Vista, optimize your machine and customize it to your needs
TweakVI is the first software designed to both tweak and optimize Windows Vista.

Tweak hundreds of hidden features of Windows Vista, optimize your machine and customize it to your needs with TweakVI.

The main application of TweakVI together with many plugins is available completely for free. Additional plugins can be downloaded after subscribing.

Unlike other tweaking utilities, TweakVI bundles lots of different utilities in one. TweakVI was developed to combine both tuning and optimizing features to increase the speed of your Windows Vista system.

TweakVI is the worlds first software for Windows Vista to combine both customization, tweaking and optimization features.

Activate hundreds of hidden Windows Vista settings, clean your registry, activate system and software restrictions, protect your privacy, display detailed system information, create a 256 MB RAM drive, clean your harddrive, manage TrueType fonts, optimize your CPU, optimize your RAM, improve your internet connection and manage system updates.

Here are some key features of “TweakVI”:

· Clean your registry.
· Activate system and software restrictions.
· Display detailed system information.
· Create a 256 MB RAM drive.
· Protect your privacy.
· Clean your hard drive.
· Manage TrueType fonts.
· Improve your internet connection.
· Optimize your CPU.
· Optimize your RAM.
· Manage system updates, and much more.
· You can even transfer your tweaks and settings to other machines.

What’s New in This Release:

· Several changes and minor fixes to a few plugins and the main application
· Updated help file
· Several changes to the setup for better performance and convenience during an update installation
· Added Danish language files… and more

Download at Softpedia

The flat panel television market is awash with brand names trying their best to win you over with features and design. The LG 42LG60FD is designed for the consumer that wants their television to mesh with their chic décor while also delivering excellent image quality. Having lived our lives being told to not judge a book by its cover, we were eager to run the unit through its paces and find out if the image quality was as good as the design. While the unit easily aced our image quality testing, the sound quality was abysmal and the downfall of an otherwise excellent unit.

The 42LG60FD is affectionately named “Scarlet” due to its somewhat misleading advertising campaign but also because of the red colour of the rear of the unit. It seems an odd design choice considering no one will ever see it but there’s no denying its distinctive look. The stand has a chrome-like mirrored finish and at the centre of the lower bezel is a hollow circular opening that extends to the rear of the television. When switched off, a red neon glow can be seen inside the cavity which pulses white on start up and glows blue during operation.

The LG 42LG60FD has a native resolution of 1920×1080 and can accept video signals from 1080p down to 480p. The unit has four HDMI ports and two Component connections as well as a single S-Video and Composite connection. A D-Sub port provides PC support and there is a USB 2.0 slot for MP3 and JPG playback. We noticed a lag in the handshake time of the HDMI ports which caused a delay of a few seconds when switching between HDMI video sources, slightly annoying in our opinion.

We tested the unit at 1080p, 720p and 576p to find any aberrations in native and interpolated resolutions. At 1080p and 720p there were no image quality issues to speak of. The black levels were excellent and the colours were rich with no overbearing hues. The unit has four preset picture modes, two expert modes and two specially calibrated ISF (Image Science Foundation) modes. Out of the box, the regular picture mode tended to display a little background noise when viewing Blu-ray films but this was easily corrected using the expert modes. Unlike many televisions on the market, there is a wide variety of calibration options allowing for you to attain the best image quality possible.

[...read full review....]

Description:

First Impression:

The OCZ Rally2 Turbo comes in a very bold and stylish blister pack. The packaging is very informative, providing the consumer with just about every bit of information they could want. You can also see what you’re getting, which will not leave you guessing.

Opening up the package we find the OCZ Rally2 Turbo drive, a handy OCZ branded lanyard to make holding on the the Rally2 Turbo easier, and a short USB extension cable so you don’t have to continually stretch behind the computer to gain access to your rear USB ports.

[...Read Full Review...]