India's technology guide for laptops, notebooks, desktop PCs, mobile phones, digital cameras, MP3 players, gadgets, and more..
Nvidia Unveils Dual-GPU Card – GeForce 7950 GX2
Nvidia, the graphic card manufacturer, has launched its new dual-G71-GPUs based graphic card package, the GeForce 7950 GX2, today.
The Nvidia 7950 GX2 has two mobile GPUs (graphic processing units) which run in parallel across an internal connector, offering what Nvidia claims is the best single card performance on any graphic card package in the world.
The Nvidia 7950 GX2 is still two cards mounted together but Nvidia has had to do some tweaking in order for both to work together within this form factor.
The two chips are on two separate PCBs and are cooled by two separate coolers, much as with the 7900 GX2 Quad-SLI cards.
$100 OLPC Laptop Advances Closer To Launch
Nicholas Negroponte, cofounder of MIT’s Media Lab and head of the One Laptop Per Child (OLPC) nonprofit organization, said that the laptop, originally estimated to cost $100, would probably cost closer to $135 to $140 by the time it is actually launched.
The research project at the MIT Media Lab had a plan for getting $100 laptops in the hands of millions of children in the developing and underdeveloped world. India is one of the seven countries world-wide selected for the launch of the project, scheduled for April next year.
One notable feature is a hand crank for providing power in places where electricity is undependable or unavailable.
The rugged, 2-pound laptop will be able to make its price goal, Negroponte said, not only by emphasizing essentials but also by eliminating sales and marketing costs that commercial computers have.
Toshiba Launches MK2035GSS 2.5-Inch 200-GB HDD
Toshiba Storage Device Division has announced a new 2.5-inch 200GB HDD, MK2035GSS, based on Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) technology using only two hard-disk platters. Toshiba plans to start mass production of the drive in August 2006.
Toshiba’s second-generation PMR offering features the worlds highest areal density at 178.8 gigabits per square inch (277.1 Mb per square mm) and the highest-capacity drive on the market in the standard 9.5mm mobile PC format.
The new Toshiba 2.5-inch MK2035GSS HDD also boosts of data capacity that is 1.67 times more than Toshiba’s highest capacity conventional 2.5-inch drive.
HP Launches StorageWorks Ultrium 960 Data Backup Tape Drive Systems
HP has introduced its new mass storage data backup system, HP StorageWorks Ultrium 960 Tape Drive for Indian market featuring enhanced 800 GB data media, effectively doubling the capacity of its prevailing Ultrium tape backup drives.
The HP StorageWorks Ultrium 960 Tape Drive represents HP’s third-generation of LTO tape drive technology. Positioned as the highest capacity drive in the StorageWorks family, the Ultrium 960 features an 800 GB compressed (2:1) storage capacity using new LTO 3 media.
HP claims that by doubling the capacity of current Ultrium drives, HP customers now require fewer data cartridges to meet their storage needs, significantly reducing their IT costs and increasing their ROI.
Opera Mobile 8.60 Browser for Windows Mobile and Pocket PC
Opera has recently released its Opera Mobile 8.60 browser software for Windows Mobile and Pocket PC providing users the full Internet experience on wide screen mobile phones running windows software.
Opera Mobile 8.6 for takes full advantage of the larger screen and higher resolution of PPC devices by offering tabbed browsing and surfing in horizontal landscape mode. The browser is based on Opera’s newest core code and runs on Windows Mobile 5 and 2003 SE, for now.
With Opera on your Pocket PC, you can surf the same Web sites as you do on your personal computer. The Opera 8.60 mobile Web browser for Windows Mobile is designed with speed and ease-of-use in mind.
Opera says that the browser runs on both Windows Mobile 5 and 2003 SE and a version of Opera Mobile for Windows Mobile 5.0 Smartphones will be available shortly.
Nokia Releases Symbian Apache Web Server Source Code for Mobile Web Server
Nokia has released the complete source code of the Symbian Port of the Apache web server for mobile phones, under open source project, potentially empowering any user to create and maintain his own personal mobile websites.
Running an Apache web server on a mobile phone sounds pretty exciting and it throws open some potentially new avenues of many useful applications for this massess in view of the fact that mobile phones users outnumbers PC users.
Background
It has been possible to access the Internet using mobile phones for quite a while over various mobile phone internet access protocols like GPRS and WAP, although the role of the mobile phone handset used for internet access has remained to be strictly been that of a client.
Samsung SGH-X660 Mobile Phone For Indian Market
The Samsung SGH-X660 is a stylish, tri-band, clamshell phone that features VGA/CMOS camera with 2x digital zoom, video recording and messaging capability, Photo Caller Id, 8 Mb internal memory, MP3 & AAC ringtones and speaker phone.
SGH-X660 features a signature U-line design that spells style. It is equipped with an external mono-screen (96 x 96 pixels). Its built-in CMOS/VGA camera with 2x digital zoom has excellent quality which also allows video recording.
The convenient external screen shows the time, date, incoming or missed calls without you ever opening the phone. While the wide internal 65K colour screen within unravels clear, vivid pictures, videos, and messages.
Opening the clamshell reveals a 65K color TFT (128 x 160 pixels) screen that displays 8 lines. This screen is bright and has a better contrast over the X640 screen. Samsung SGH-X660 also offers an IrDA port for whatever little synchronization it has to offer.
Upgraded Fujitsu LifeBook S7110 Notebook Launched in India
Fujitsu has released major upgraded model of its bestselling, dual-core processor based notebook PC, the LifeBook S7110. The upgrade involves a new stylish and elegant design and a range of new corporate-friendly features.
The thin and light weight upgraded Fujitsu LifeBook S7110 weighs about 1.8kg, featuring a 14.1-inch XGA TFT screen along with array of performance, security, design and feature-set improvements.
The company says that it has devised an innovative set of security features to protect your sensitive data. The new security features in the device are BIOS lock, two passwords hard disk lock, LifeBook lock, the RF-based fingerprint sensor, a dedicated smart card slot and a Trusted Module Platform option.
Download – DivX Pro Player
DivX Pro player software provides you all what you need to play your favourite DivX videos including every older version; even purchased or rented DivX movies, DivX HD files, and videos created with advanced features such as menus, subtitles and more.
DivX Pro software also lets you create and manage video collections, burn discs and activate your DivX Certified device.
The included DivX Web Player allows you to watch online DivX coded media. The latest version of the DivX Pro Codec for Windows offers multi-threading support, giving you better performance.
Intel Launches Dual-Core Xeon 5100 Series Processor
Intel has introduced its next generation dual-core processor, the Intel Xeon processor 5100 series, for dual-processor (DP) servers and workstations based upon its energy efficient, Intel Core microarchitecture.
Intel claims that the new processor delivers up to 125% performance improvement over previous generation dual-core Intel Xeon processors and up to 60% performance improvement over competing AMD brand of x86-based architectures.
Based on Intel’s 65nm process, the Intel 5100 series processor is fitted with fully-buffered dual in-line memory (FB-DIMM) technology, Intel virtualisation technology, Active Server Manager to integrate hardware, software and firmware, and I/O acceleration technology to improve application response time, server I/O performance and reliability. Every chip contains 4MB of L2 cache shared by the two cores. The chips will use Intel’s LGA-771 interconnect.
Indian Software and Services Export Grew 33% in 2005-06
According to leading software industry body, National Association of Software and Services Companies (Nasscom), Software and services exports from India grew 33 percent during the period 2005-06 to $23.6 billion.
Nasscom said the overall Indian software and IT enabled services industry grew 31 percent in last fiscal to $29.6 billion.
The overall software and services industry will grow by 25-28 percent in 2006-07 to $36-38 billion, Nasscom predicted.
IT and ITES exports are likely to grow by 27-30 percent in 2006-07 to $29-31 billion.
The number of employees in the IT and ITES sector grew to 1.29 million in 2005-06 from 1.05 million in 2004-05.
Haier Launches CDMA and GSM Mobile Phones Handsets
Haier, a Chinese electronic consumer products maker, has announced its entry into the Indian mobile handset market with the launch of its CDMA range of mobile handsets in India in association with Tata Teleservices along with the launch of several GSM and CDMA mobile phone handsets priced, starting from Rs 2000 a piece.
Haier also declared its intent for setting up a mobile phone handset manufacturing unit in India in the next 18-24 months to address the target of selling five million mobile phone handsets in India over the next two years.
Company has also introduced a new range of both CDMA and GSM mobile phones in a price range of Rs 2,000 to Rs 20,000 for indian consumers.
Haier has approached one of the largest GSM operators in India to develop customised packages with Haier’s GSM handset range.
Despite its existing brand recognition in India due to presense of its other white goods business in Indian market, this ambitious Chinese brand will have to compete head on with the likes of Motorola, Nokia, Sony Ericsson and Samsung, though its aim is not as immodest as to try toppling the leader, Nokia.
AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Dual-Core Processor For AMD Socket AM2 Now Available
AMD (Advanced Micro Devices Inc.,) provider of CPU microprocessor solutions, announced availability of AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 dual core processor and the AMD 64 X2 5000+dual-core processor compatible with its new socket AM2 platform. The new processors enable computers to support multiple operating environments.
AMD’s socket AM2 is designed by AMD to enable next-generation platform innovations such as AMD Virtualization and high-performance, unbuffered DDR2 memory to the award-winning AMD64 architecture. Additionally, socket AM2 streamlines the work for motherboard manufacturers, while reducing costs through economies of scale.
New AMD64 Technology can adapt to 64 bit computing technology and can also support Windows Vista slated for release next year. The company said the new processors would be cost effective and have visualization capabilities.
ATI Launches Crossfire Xpress 3200 and Radeon Xpress 1100 Chipsets For AMD Socket AM2
ATI Technologies Inc., has introduced the Crossfire Xpress 3200 chipset and Radeon Xpress 1100 series of chipsets, for advanced AMD’s socket AM2 motherboards.
ATI CrossFire Xpress 3200 is more than just a Socket 939 chipset. The new ATI dual X16 chipset would be launched for Socket 939, but it was designed from the ground up for AMD Socket AM2. ATI is now showing how well the CrossFire Xpress 3200 performs on the new AM2 socket with DDR2 memory.
The feature-rich Crossfire Xpress 3200 chipset and Radeon Xpress 1100 series of chipsets employ ATI’s new Southbridge Technology, the SB600 series, which provides the most connectivity options available today, including 10 USB 2.0 ports, 4 SATA Generation II ports, RAID support, high-definition audio, and support for established connectivity options, such as parallel ATA.
Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse
Logitech, a major peripheral devices technology vendor, has announced the Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse featuring a 2.4 GHz wireless technology.
The Logitech V500 Cordless Notebook Mouse is loaded with innovations such as an expandable chassis, a touch-sensitive solid-state scrolling panel, and 2.4 GHz wireless technology. It is designed for the mobile professional and the notebook PC segment.
At 3 3/4 inches by 2 1/4 inches by 1 1/8 inches, this mouse is just 2.3 ounces when packed away, according to a press release.
