Pc News

[Rasputin]

First Impressions of Sony's PlayStation 3

CHIBA, JAPAN -- Although Sony's PlayStation 3 has already been shown in prototype form at various trade events for more than a year now, most sightings have been of development kits only. We finally got a look at the console in action at the Tokyo Game Show today.

In Sony's own booth, about a dozen home-spun games were playable, with several more on display for eye-candy value alone. The standout titles drawing most attention from the huge first-day crowds of journalists, exhibitors, and assorted hangers-on were "Gran Turismo HD"--a racing game being demoed in mock-ups of sports-car cockpits--and "Minna No Golf 5" (Everybody's Golf 5), a fun golfing game that looked remarkably similar to the versions already available for other platforms.

The game console is due to go on sale in the U.S. on November 17, but Sony has already announced that it expects to ship far fewer PS3s than originally announced due to component shortages.

High-Definition Gaming
Away from the games at the Sony booth, it appears that Sega has the best lineup of PS3 games. The outstanding title there was clearly "Power Smash 3," a tennis game that is presented in full 1080p high-definition resolution, which makes it appear closer to a simulation than a traditional game.

Hi-def gaming may take some getting used to, however. For example, close-ups of tennis star James Blake's shaven head that were shown between points were more than a little off-putting. Scratch beneath the glossy hi-def surface, though, and actual game play was surprisingly simple and easy to grasp. That caused a traffic jam of players so engaged that they had to be ushered along to keep the line moving and allow someone else a turn.

Other Sega standards were also out in impressive force. These included "Virtua Fighter 5" and "Sega Golf Club." The former game could hardly fail to impress, with detailed renditions of blizzards of sakura cherry blossoms falling from background trees and realistic-looking Japanese temples. Sega's golf title, on the other hand, looked slightly dated, especially when compared with the Sony golf offering.

Finally, not all PS3 games on show were complete. One of the most interesting games still on the drawing board, but available to lust over, was previewed under the working title of "Lair" and is surely the first high-definition fire-breathing dragon-riding game for any console.

List of PS3 Games
The software title line-up that will be available on November 11 when the PlayStation 3 console launches in Japan became clearer today.

At least six games are expected to be available on the PlayStation 3's launch day. Two games each will come from Sony and Bandai Namco and a title each from Konami and Sega.

One game was also given a price: "Konami's Mahjong Fight Club Online" will cost $43.

Demonstration versions of many of the games are on display at the show, which continues through Sunday.

PlayStation 3 Games List
Here are upcoming PlayStation 3 titles, publishers, and genres, grouped by the date they are projected to launch in Japan.

November 11:

"Resistance: Fall of Man" (SCEI) / First person shooter
"Genji: Days of the Blade" (SCEI) / Action
"Ridge Racer 7" (Namco Bandai) / Racing
"Mobile Suit Gundam: Target In Sight" (Namco Bandai) / 3D action shooting
"MahJong Fight Club Online" (Konami) / Mahjong
"Sega Golf Club featuring Miyazato Family" (Sega) / Golf
November 2006:

"Mahjong Taikai IV" (Koei) / Mahjong
December 2006:

"Gran Turismo HD" (working title) (SCEI) / Real driving simulator
"Armored Core 4" (FromSoftware) / High-speed mech-action
"MotorStorm" (SCEI) / Race
"Formula One Championship" (working title) (SCEI) / F1 simulator
2006:

"Fatal Inertia" (Koei) / Flying combat racing
"Sonic the Hedgehog" (Sega) / Action adventure
"Railfan" (Ongakukan) / Variety
"Need for Speed Carbon" (Electronic Arts) / Street race
"NBA Live 07" (Electronic Arts) / Basketball
"Enchant Arm" (FromSoftware) / Role playing game
Early 2007:

"Heavenly Sword" (SCEI) / Action adventure
"The Eye of Judgment" (SCEI) / 3D card battle
"Virtua Fighter 5" (Sega) / 3D CG battle
"Ninja Gaiden Sigma" (Tecmo) / Action adventure
"Monster Kingdom: Unknown Realms" (working title) (SCEI) / Action adventure
"Lair" (tentative name for Japan) (SCEI) / Flight action adventure
"Virtua Tennis 3" (Sega) / Tennis
"Wangan Midnight" (Genki) / Race game
Midyear 2007:

"Warhawk" (SCEI) / Flight action adventure
"Everybody's Golf 5" (working title) (SCEI) / Golf
Third quarter 2007:

"Dark Sector" (D3 Publisher) / Combat action
2007:

"Afrika" (working title) (SCEI) / no genre given
"Metal Gear Solid 4: Guns of the Patriots" (Konami Digital Entertainment) / Tactical espionage action
No date given:

"Shirokishi Monogatari" (SCEI) / Role-playing game
"Devil May Cry 4" (Capcom) / Stylish action
"Final Fantasy XIII" (Square Enix) / Role playing game
"Bladestorm: The Hundred Years' War" (Koei) / Action
"Coded Arms: Assault" (Konami Digital Entertainment) / First person shooter
"fl0w" (working title) (SCEI) / no genre given

[Rasputin]

Intel To Ship Quad-Core Chips in November

SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel will ship quad-core processors in November for servers and gaming PCs, accelerating its effort to regain momentum in sales of power-efficient chips.

Thirteen vendors have already announced plans to sell quad-core-based PCs for the high-end enthusiast market, including Dell and its Alienware division, Gateway, Velocity Micro, and Voodoo, Intel Chief Executive Paul Otellini said today at the company's Intel Developer Forum trade show.

Chip Names
Adding extra cores to a chip allows the PC to split up heavy workloads. In a demonstration at the San Francisco show, Otellini showed "Alan Wake," a planned video game from Remedy that devotes an entire CPU (central processing unit) core to the physics simulation of action scenes like explosions and tornadoes. The new quad-core gaming chip, called the Core 2 Extreme, will deliver a 70 percent performance boost compared with Intel's own current dual-core gaming processor, the company said.

Intel will follow the Core 2 Extreme chip with the Core 2 Quad, a four-core chip for mainstream desktops that will ship in the first quarter of 2007, Otellini said. On the server side, Intel will call its new quad-core chip the Xeon 5300, and follow its November launch with a more efficient, 50-watt version in the first quarter of 2007.

The launches would be a crucial boost for Intel, which has been losing market share to competitor Advanced Micro Devices (AMD) and missing recent earnings targets, prompting Otellini to sell several corporate divisions and lay off 10,000 people in recent weeks.

Chip Shipping Schedules
In the past quarter, the company also accelerated its schedule for shipping a new generation of dual-core, 65-nanometer process chips, featuring the Core 2 Duo chip for desktops and laptops and the Xeon 5100 for servers. Intel claims to have had great commercial success with the new family, shipping 5 million Core 2 Duo processors since the chips launched 60 days ago.

Still, the adoption rate for AMD's dual-core Opteron server chip has continued to grow, since many experts consider it far more power-efficient in data centers. Reaching customers first with quad-core chips could help Intel to change that reputation.

"Perception doesn't change overnight, but what you're seeing is Intel rebuilding itself, rebuilding its product line, and laying a foundation for the future," Otellini said.

Chip Details
While adding more cores to a PC or server helps it compute faster, users also demand efficiency. So Intel will maintain current power levels in the new family of four-core chips, running the Core 2 Extreme at 130 watts, and the mainstream Core 2 Quad around 100 watts. The company will make three versions of its quad-core server chips, ranging from a high-efficiency 50-watt chip to a standard 80-watt and a high-performance chip above that.

Intel is also pushing new technology to market by continuing to shrink the process technology it uses to build the chips. Intel will start producing 45-nm process chips by the second half of 2007 at a $3 billion fabrication plant in Oregon, adding another plant in Arizona that year, and a third in Israel by the first half of 2008, Otellini said.

That will allow Intel to move from its current 65-nm Core microarchitecture to the 45-nm "Nehalem" design by 2008 and the 32-nm "Gesher" family by 2010.

[Rasputin]

New Nokia Phones and Music Recommendation Service

Nokia today introduced two new phones, plus music-oriented editions of others, and also announced a music recommendation service that hints at the potential for a full-blown music store from the company.

The new N75 will be Nokia's smallest multimedia phone and is targeted at the U.S. market. The phone includes a camera, a music player, and Internet access.

Nokia has been under pressure to release new, attractive devices in the United States after it announced in June that it will stop making CDMA (Code Division Multiple Access) phones, which are widely used in this country.

"We don't rest until we make it here in the U.S.," said Anssi Vanjoki, executive vice president and general manager of multimedia for Nokia, during an event in New York that was Webcast. "The N75 will be my tool to get that going."

Phone with GPS
Nokia also introduced the N95, a phone that includes a 5-megapixel camera, a GPS (Global Positioning System) capability with mapping applications, and 3D graphics.

The N95 will operate on broadband WCDMA (wideband CDMA) and HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) networks in Europe and Asia. It will also include Wi-Fi capability.

The phone is based on Nokia's S60 software and the Symbian operating system and comes with Nokia's Web browser. Users can insert microSD cards for extra storage on the device and connect via mini USB (Universal Serial Bus) for data transfer.

The N95 is expected to become available in the first quarter of 2007 for $703. The N75 will cost between $350 and $390 and should be available by the holiday buying season.

Nokia Music Service
Along with the phones, Nokia announced a music service that will become available worldwide by year-end.

Registered users of the service can browse a Web site to read music recommendations. Nokia has lined up 40 recommenders--independent music enthusiasts who work for well-known record shops around the globe. Nokia has also signed on musician David Bowie to contribute a monthly feature or podcast about new music that he has discovered. Visitors to the site will also be able to listen to music clips and read artist interviews.

The site will be launched first in the United Kingdom and Australia, although music fans around the world will be able to sign up. Access to the site will be free.

Vanjoki hinted that the site might be expanded based on technology Nokia expects to acquire through the purchase of Loudeye, a distributor of digital music. That acquisition, announced in August, hasn't closed yet, so Vanjoki said he couldn't provide further details on how Loudeye's technology might be relevant to the new music recommendation site. He called today's announcement a "precursor" of things to come.

Nokia also introduced music editions of three existing phones, the N70, the N73, and the N91. The phones include dedicated music access keys, additional storage capacity, and new software to make synching easier.

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Offers Early Fix for Critical IE Bug

With attackers finding new ways to exploit a critical flaw in Internet Explorer, Microsoft today released a patch for the problem, ahead of its next scheduled round of security updates.

The patch fixes a critical vulnerability in the way Internet Explorer renders VML (Vector Markup Language) graphics. Hackers had been exploiting the flaw, which also link type="internal" src="/article/id,127229/article.html">affects some versions of Outlook, for more than a week, and in recent days malicious activity had been on the upswing. Microsoft Security Bulletin MS06-055 discusses the problem and the patch. The out-of-cycle release is unusual, but not unprecedented.

Microsoft generally releases its security updates on the second Tuesday of every month, giving system administrators a predictable way to set aside time to test the new software. Occasionally, the company will release patches ahead of time if a flaw is being widely exploited by attackers. In January, it patched a critical flaw in the Microsoft Windows Metafile (WMF) image-rendering engine after it became a widespread problem.

VML 'A Serious Concern'
With attack code that works on the latest version of Windows XP now publicly available, the VML bug is shaping up as a very serious concern for administrators, said Ken Dunham, the director of Verisign's iDefense Rapid Response Team. VML attacks have now "dwarfed the WMF activity in the same period of time compared to last year," he said.

By today, more than 3,000 Web sites were already infecting users with malware that exploited the VML bug, according to Dunham. One week into the WMF outbreak last January, iDefense saw about 600 sites exploiting the problem.

Security experts also warn that there are many variants of the VML malware, some of which may be missed by security software. Researchers at iDefense are now looking at a dozen possible variations of the VML exploit code and have confirmed the existence of seven variants, Dunham said. "With WMF there wasn't nearly as much modification. We see a lot of different permutations and obfuscation techniques being utilize with VML attacks."

A group of security researchers released a patch for the VML flaw late last week, independent of Microsoft, but criminals have even found a way to exploit the fix.

In the past few days they have been circulating phoney e-mails, claiming to be a patch for the VML problem. If downloaded, this fake patch actually installs malicious software on the victim's system, Dunham said. The increase in attacks put Microsoft on the spot to produce an early fix.

Microsoft's next regularly scheduled security updates will be released Oct. 10.

[Rasputin]

Peer-to-Peer Developer Sues Record Companies

Peer-to-peer file-sharing software developer Lime Wire has countersued the biggest record companies, charging them with anticompetitive behavior.

The suit, filed Monday in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York, follows the closing of most of the popular file-sharing Web sites due to lawsuits initiated by record companies. It also comes on the heels of a suit filed by 13 record companies against Lime Wire, accusing the developer of music piracy and demanding damages that could amount to $476 million.

Lawsuit Details
Lime Wire now charges the record companies with colluding to create a monopoly over the digital distribution of copyrighted music. The record companies "have engaged in these unfair business practices for the specific purpose of eliminating sources of decentralized peer-to-peer file sharing and acquiring a monopoly over digital distribution of commercially valuable copyrighted music and movie content," the lawsuit reads.

The alleged unfair business practices include collusion among the record companies to price their licensing rates such that independent music sellers can't afford to stay in business, Lime Wire said.

Lime Wire added that a since-changed policy at the record companies of requiring licensees to negotiate only with certain companies that represent a group of record labels resulted in artificially high licensing fees.

Lime Wire also charges the record companies with trying to extend their monopoly by forcing music distributors to work only with their affiliated filtering system supplier. Lime Wire says it developed a filtering application to prevent illegal downloading and encourage legal content purchasing. But the record companies refused to give the developer access to the metadata that uniquely identifies each song in order for the filtering system to work, Lime Wire claims.

Instead, Lime Wire alleges the record companies encouraged Lime Wire to use their preferred supplier for a P-to-P filtering system, iMesh. While Lime Wire concedes that iMesh is not owned by the record companies, it alleges the supplier is controlled by the record companies. A top executive at iMesh is a former leader of the Recording Industry Association of America and iMesh is the only RIAA-sanctioned business of its kind in the U.S., according to Lime Wire.

Lime Wire is asking for a jury trial. The record companies named in the suit include Arista Records, Atlantic Recording, BMG Music, Capital Records, Electra Entertainment Group, Interscope Records, Laface Records, Motown Record Company, Priority Records, Sony BMG Entertainment, UMG Recordings, Virgin Records America, and Warner Bros. Records.

Lime Wire: Last P-to-P Standing?
The suit follows some high profile settlements by other leading P-to-P networks. In July, Kazaa agreed to pay at least $100 million to four record companies and an additional amount to motion picture companies to settle lawsuits. Earlier this month, eDonkey agreed to pay $30 million to settle similar suits.

EDonkey's founder last year predicted that all U.S. P-to-P companies would cease to exist because they wouldn't have the resources to defend themselves against the record companies after a Supreme Court ruling against Grokster. That ruling vaguely said that P-to-P software developers may be liable for illegal use of the software.

[Rasputin]

AOL Members Sue Over Search Data Release

Three people have sued AOL LLC over the company's controversial release of member search-engine records, in what their lawyers are billing as the first such lawsuit seeking national class action status.

The three AOL members charge the Time Warner subsidiary with, among other things, privacy violation, false advertising and unjust enrichment.

Two unnamed AOL members residing in California and Kasadore Ramkissoon, who lives in New York, filed their lawsuit on Friday in the U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California.

The lawsuit seeks monetary relief for all affected AOL members in the U.S. whose search data was disclosed without consent from January 1, 2004 until the present.

The plaintiffs also ask the court to instruct AOL not to store or maintain users' Web search records, and to destroy the Web search records it currently has.

Background
The lawsuit stems from AOL's decision to post on its research Web site about 20 million search records from about 658,000 of its members, covering the three-month period between March and May.

AOL didn't disclose the names of the members, but it grouped each member's records with a unique number. This made it possible to see what each individual searched for. The data included search queries, as well as Web sites the members clicked on to.

When the issue became a privacy scandal in August, AOL apologized and pulled the data from the Web site, but by then the data set had been downloaded multiple times and the records remain available online.

The records contain sensitive information like credit card, telephone and Social Security numbers, birth dates, full names and addresses. The New York Times tracked down one of the affected members and, with her permission, interviewed and identified her.

The law firm Berman DeValerio Pease Tabacco Burt & Pucillo represents the plaintiffs. A copy of the complaint is posted on the law firm's Web site .

AOL Aftershocks
The scandal has had significant repercussions within AOL. Its chief technology officer, Maureen Govern, resigned and two other employees were fired.

Last week, in an e-mail sent to all employees and obtained by IDG News Service, AOL's Chief Executive Officer Jonathan Miller referred to the incident as "the search data debacle" and announced AOL plans to hire, for the first time ever, a chief privacy officer.

In the e-mail, Miller outlined a reorganization of AOL's business structure, which will include a unit solely dedicated to what he termed the "protection" of AOL consumers.

Last week, in its latest search engine usage study, Nielsen/NetRatings reported that in August, people in the U.S. ran 18.2 percent fewer queries on AOL's search engine, compared with August 2005.

Nielsen/NetRatings didn't venture any explanations for the drop, but industry observers have pointed directly at the search data scandal as the culprit. Among the top five search engine providers, AOL was the only one whose usage share shrunk last month.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation filed a complaint with the U.S. Federal Trade Commission against AOL in August over the search data release.

[Rasputin]

New Firefox 2 Release Candidate

Today the Mozilla Foundation released another milestone towards a final Firefox 2. This release candidate is more polished than the last beta download, and is mostly ready for general use. But if you use custom add-ons and themes - really, the best things about Firefox - it's a safe bet some of them won't yet be compatible.

If you're thinking of trying it, bear in mind that this version, codenamed "Bon Echo," will install over your previous version. Prior version 2 betas would install alongside old versions, but not this one. You'll still have your same bookmarks, themes and extensions, though again many of them may not be compatible.

The new download doesn't add any major new features compared to previous betas, but instead improves on what has already been added. There's built-in anti-phishing that warns about known phishing sites, improved RSS handling, session saving, and major tab handling upgrades, among other things. Mozilla has a detailed list of what's new in their release notes. Here's a shot of the anti-phishing warning (this is from a Mozilla test site):
When you click on an RSS feed icon next to the URL or on a Web page, you'll get a prompt for how you want to handle RSS feeds. Previously, you could only add the feed as a Live Bookmark, but you can now add it to Web site feed aggregators (like a My Yahoo page) or a standalone program:
Great idea, but it might still need a little work. Either that, or some of the feeds aren't formatted in a way that some reader choices can use. I got this error when I tried to add a Mozilla Add-ons feed to My Yahoo:
didn't have any problem with the session saving, once I chose the option on the Main options tab to "Show my windows and tabs from last time." I highly recommend using this feature, which will start Firefox with the same tabs you had open the last time you closed the program.

Particularly because one of my favorite extensions that used to give me that functionality, Tab Mix Plus, doesn't yet work with this release candidate. Neither does Forecastfox, Update Notifier, or a couple of others I use. Likewise, most of my themes went bust.

There are often in-development extensions you can grab that do work, and there are ways to tweak the extension files to trick Firefox into loading add-ons it doesn't think are compatible. But if you've got must-have addons, you might want to wait for the final version so extension authors have time to catch up. I'd expect it in a month or so, based on the version 1.5 timeline.

For me, my must-have Google Browser Sync, Noscript and Adblock Plus extensions all do work. As do StumbleUpon, IE View and Mouse Gestures. And I haven't yet found any major problems or bugs, so I'll likely be sticking with version 2 from here on out.

[Rasputin]

First Look: HP Introduces Media-Centric TV, Network-Attached Storage Drive

Like many companies, Hewlett-Packard is building bridges between your PC and your living room--the most comfortable location for viewing digital media. The company's latest spans are its 37-inch SLC3760N MediaSmart television ($2199) and its mv2020 Media Vault network-attached storage drive ($549). The MediaSmart TV was first announced earlier this year at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas; the Media Vault is being announced today. Both products are now shipping.

The MediaSmart TV's native resolution is 1366 by 768p--not high enough for displaying Blu-ray or HD DVD discs at full, native 1080p resolution, but more than adequate for HDTV broadcasts and standard-definition DVD playback.

The TV's hook is that it will display photos, albums, and video streamed over your home network without requiring you to set up a stand-alone digital media adapter (DMA) to serve as the link between your network (and its content) and your television. The MediaSmart TV has a DMA on its back; the adapter includes both a 10/100 ethernet port and 802.11a/b/g wireless for connecting to your home network's router. The MediaSmart's adapter provides three other ports as well--including an HDMI one--that connect back into the TV itself to complete the data circuit between network and display. Having to attach three cables from one part of the TV to another seems a bit counterintuitive, but the result is seamless, remote control access to the media files on your network from the comfort of your couch or chair.

The Media Smart TV supports Windows Media Connect and PlaysForSure, and it will work with any Digital Living Room Network Alliance or universal-plug-and-play-compatible (UPnP) device. Most newer network-attached storage drives--including Buffalo Technology's TeraStation Home Server, Maxtor's Shared Storage Plus, and Infrant's ReadyNAS NV--support this standard. I tested the SLC3760N in conjunction with HP's Media Vault, however, to see how the two products together handled the streaming media experience

Living Room Stream
In my hands-on tests, the MediaSmart TV connected without a fuss to the network and instantly recognized the Media Vault as a UPnP media server. I could easily access photos and videos and play various music files. File formats supported by the MediaSmart TV include AVI, DVR-MS, DivX (MPEG-4), MPEG-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-2, WMV, and WMV-HD for video; BMP, GIF, JPEG, and PNG for photos, and MP2, MP3, WMA, and WMA-Pro for audio. Unfortunately, it doesn't handle AAC files, so iPod users won't be able to stream protected AAC music from iTunes to their TV.

The MediaSmart's on-screen interface easy to learn and use, and I found the TV's functionality well-integrated with the remote control. Still, I wish that HP had included exit options on the on-screen menus; that way, I could have browsed content using the remote's "select" button instead of having to rely on the separate "back" button to backtrack.

Network-Attached Storage With a Twist
The Media Vault is a smart-looking silver-and-black minitower that closely resembles the chassis used on one of HP's compact PCs). In the PC World Test Center's evaluation, the mv2020 turned in middle-of-the-pack performance, taking 6 minutes, 6 seconds to complete our copy files test, and 4 minutes, 51 seconds to run our file search test. The mv2020 ships with a single 500GB fixed SATA drive, plus one removable expansion module that can accommodate the SATA hard drive of your choice (up to 750GB), for a total of 1.2TB of storage. HP sent us the mv2020 with a second 500GB SATA drive already installed in the expansion module.

At $550 for the 500GB model, the mv2020 is a roomy network-attached storage drive with an attractive cost per gigabyte ($0.55 per GB). HP also offers a 300GB mv2010 for $350.

The mv2020 attaches to your network via its single gigabit ethernet port (in this regard, the MV200 actually outstrips the SLC3760N's 10/100 ethernet connection). The unit may be configured for access through the Web, through FTP, and through your network. You can grant access to the device for entire workgroups or single users.

Installation required only a bit of effort: The mv2020 shows up under Network Places; and in order to access it from within Windows Explorer, you'll have to map it to a drive letter. The unit's HTML setup app (accessible through your Web browser) doesn't specifically mention RAID, but it allows you to set up one drive to mirror another for redundancy--a useful precaution against drive failure when you're backing up data.

By default, HP ships the unit with several preconfigured folders, including one for backups and another (titled MediaShare) for media that you intend to share on the network. To get you started with media sharing, HP has preloaded a copy of Universal's movie The Bourne Identity onto the unit in a folder titled CinemaNow (the company also supplies two free movie downloads at CinemaNow).

The mv2020 will functions as a print server if you attach a supported USB printer to one of its three USB 2.0 ports (two are rear-mounted and one is front-mounted). You may attach additional USB storage drives to expand the mv2020's storage capacity.

Based on what I've seen with the MediaSmart TV and the Media Vault storage device, HP understands consumer/PC convergence. Both of these devices are excellent choices for anyone who wants to set up a home multimedia network with minimal fuss.

[Rasputin]

Intel's New Mobile Platform Coming Next Year

SAN FRANCISCO -- Intel's "Santa Rosa" notebook platform will hit the streets in the first half of 2007, bringing improvements in processing power, battery life, and wireless connectivity over the current Centrino architecture.

Intel has enjoyed strong sales with Centrino, which combines a low-wattage processor and wireless ability with an efficient chipset. Now the company will upgrade those ingredients to a more efficient version of the Merom" Core 2 Duo chip " and "Crestline" ICH8M chip set, together code-named Santa Rosa.

The company will also make the Santa Rosa notebooks start up faster by augmenting current memory technology with a NAND flash-based disk cache, said Dadi Perlmutter, senior vice president and general manager of Intel's mobility group, at Intel Developer Forum on Wednesday. Compared with a Centrino PC, that "Robson" technology will allow future notebooks to load applications twice as fast and wake up from a hibernation state twice as fast.

Wireless Improvements
For wireless connectivity, the new notebooks will use the pending 802.11n standard, capable of streaming data at 300M bits per second (bps), five times faster than the current 802.11g, Perlmutter said today at the Intel Developers Forum here.

In a demonstration, he played high-definition segments of a film called "Spoon" on a Santa Rosa platform running Microsoft's Vista OS. That level of broadband connectivity will also allow Intel to extend its new vPro business bundle to notebooks, after having launched it for desktops on Sept. 7.

"But the jewel of the crown for wireless connectivity is WiMax," Perlmutter said. Intel plans to deliver an integrated Wi-Fi and WiMax chip by 2008. WiMax is a metropolitan-area wireless technology designed to deliver at least 1 mbps of data and in some cases much more. The company's WiMax plan will be supported by a commitment from service providers Sprint and Clearwire to start building mobile WiMax networks in 2007 and provide commercial service by 2008.

Intel also said it would extend WiMax support to future reference designs for the handheld Ultramobile PC (UMPC) platform, including a 2.5-pound version for students up to university age.

Intel also expects vendors to begin selling a low-cost "Classmate" notebook in developing nations in the first quarter of 2007, according to spokesman Larry Carr.

[Rasputin]

Attackers Target New PowerPoint Bug

One day after patching a widely exploited flaw in its Internet Explorer browser, Microsoft has a new bug to worry about, this time in PowerPoint.

Attackers have been exploiting a newly discovered bug in Microsoft's Office presentation software in extremely targeted attacks, McAfee reported Wednesday.

Researchers were made aware of the attacks when a customer submitted two different malicious PowerPoint files, both of which exploited the same vulnerability, said Craig Schmugar, a virus researcher at McAfee. Both files installed malicious remote-access Trojan horse software that then attempted to connect to an outside Web server, he said.

Affects at Least Three Versions of Office
Though McAfee is not releasing technical details of the exploit, the security vendor says that it has confirmed that the attack works on three versions of Office running on the Windows 2000 operating system: Office 2000, Office XP, and Office 2003. Other platforms and other Office applications may also be affected, but McAfee has not yet had time to complete its testing, Schmugar said.

Schmugar discussed the problem in a McAfee blog.

Microsoft "has concluded that this issue affects users of Microsoft Office 2000, Microsoft Office 2003, and Microsoft Office XP," the company said in a statement.

Microsoft and other security vendors, including Symantec and McAfee, have added signatures to their security products so that they can detect this malicious code.

Office Attacks
Over the past few months, attackers have focused on Office, exploiting a number of undisclosed Office bugs in extremely targeted attacks, often on government agencies or contractors. These attacks usually take the form of an e-mail that has a malicious Office document attached and is sent to a small number of victims.

This latest PowerPoint attack fits that pattern and was sent to a defense contractor, Schmugar said. He declined to provide further details about the intended victim.

Because the attack has been extremely limited in scope, it is considered to be a low risk for most users, Schmugar said.

News of the attack comes the day after Microsoft issued an emergency patch for a widely exploited bug that affected the VML (Vector Markup Language) rendering engine used by Internet Explorer and Outlook. Hackers are exploiting this critical flaw in the browser via mass e-mail and on thousands of Web sites, security experts said.

Microsoft's next set of security patches will be released October 10. The software vendor did not say whether it plans to patch this latest PowerPoint flaw.

[Rasputin]

Microsoft Sues DRM Hackers

Microsoft is suing a group of hackers who apparently gained access to the company's proprietary source code, creating a program that wipes media files clean of file-sharing restrictions.

The suit, which Microsoft filed last week in a district court in Seattle, gives only a nickname for the ringleader, "viodentia," who is one of ten "John Does" whom Microsoft believes are responsible for breaking its Windows Media Digital Rights Management (DRM) software.

Hackers Yank DRM
In August, a program called FairUse4WM surfaced that removed the DRM technology from Windows Media 10 and 11 files. Many major download services, such as Napster, use Windows DRM, and its removal would allow the files to be copied without restriction or uploaded to file-sharing networks.

Microsoft is suing for copyright infringement, since FairUse4WM uses code from the company's Windows Media software development kit version 9.5, a toolset used by software developers to build applications.

Microsoft said the hackers have caused it more than $75,000 in losses. It is seeking a permanent injunction against the defendants and compensation.

In a separate document filed with the court, Microsoft said the defendants have gone to substantial lengths to hide their identities. It asked for extra time to issue subpoenas to e-mail service providers, to track down some e-mail addresses linked to the individuals, to help it to identify them.

The hackers have proved enduring foes for Microsoft. Soon after FairUse4WM was released, Microsoft issued an update to its DRM software, making the hacking program ineffective. The hackers responded less than a day later by updating FairUse4WM again.

Security vs. Convenience
Their efforts are unlikely to affect the growth of legitimate download services, however, since content providers are aware that no DRM is unbreakable, analysts said.

"I think in the long term it's not going to deal Microsoft any crushing blow, but it's certainly an irritant for them," said Jonathan Arber, research analyst for Ovum in London.

Technology companies will have to make it too hard for hackers to break the DRM, a leap that could be difficult considering any update to the DRM technology would still have to be compatible with hardware in the market, said Paul Jackson, principal analyst at Forrester Research.

Additionally, frequent software updates tend to alienate users, he said. "It's a question of highly determined hackers desperate to prove their moxie, versus a corporation that can't release updates every ten minutes because that annoys people," Jackson said.

[Rasputin]

PC World's 100 Fearless Forecasts

The standard dreams of future technology, such as intergalactic spaceships and do-everything robot servants, are still a ways off, but plenty of exciting technology advances will be here fairly soon.

Desktops and Laptops
Artwork: Chip TaylorAdvanced Diagnostics in Windows
Windows Vista will include a feature to detect disk and other component failures before they happen. If this works as promised, it could be a big plus, allowing you to save your data and fix the problem before the component fails.

15-Minute Vista Installations
Microsoft vice president Jim Allchin claims that the release version of Vista will install in under 15 minutes. Our tests with the beta versions have taken more like an hour, but a quicker install will be very welcome if Microsoft pulls it off.

Superfast Boot-Ups
Adding flash memory to the motherboard could lead to PCs that boot up and load applications more quickly. We expect to see systems with such technology in 2007.

HDMI on the Desktop
The High Density Media Interface (HDMI) connector is the standard way to link high-definition video components, and graphics cards with HDMI interfaces are now available. We'll see more desktop PCs coming with HDMI ports, making connecting a PC to an HDTV easier.

More Factory Overclocking
An increasing number of desktop PCs that come to us for testing are overclocked, where the processor is set to run faster than the manufacturer's speed rating. This used to be a tweak that only hard-core geeks would make, but vendors such as ABS and Velocity Micro are using the technique to squeeze more performance out of processors.

AMD 4X4 Enthusiast Systems
AMD is pushing a new design for machines aimed at gamers and other speed freaks: Its 4X4 design allows for two Athlon processors on one motherboard--for a total of four CPU cores with existing dual-core processors, and a total of eight with the quad-core chips the company will be releasing next year. 4X4 motherboards will be available later this year.

AMD's Torrenza
AMD is working on a new technology (code-named Torrenza) to connect its processors to coprocessor devices that handle tasks such as processing video, or modeling physics for more realistic games. The new coprocessors will be able to talk directly to the processor at high speed. The technology will appear on high-end systems (such as servers) first, but it could work its way down to desktops.

Accurate Speech Recognition
Though the vendor of the Dragon NaturallySpeaking speech-recognition program claimed an accuracy of 99 percent, in our recent tests the application managed an accuracy of only about 96 percent--not bad, but not good enough. We don't need perfection, but we are looking forward to a speech-recognition system that is fast and accurate enough to replace a keyboard for writing.

Windows SideShow Displays
Microsoft's Vista operating system will support small displays and controls on the lid of laptops. Such screens will show you when you have new e-mail or allow you to look up phone numbers, without your having to open the case and boot the system up.

The Modular PC
Dell chief technology officer Kevin Kettler envisions a modular PC, for which upgrading is a simple matter of pulling out the old component and dropping in the new. Right now upgrading a PC is like brain surgery with a risk of an accidental lobotomy, so we're looking forward to anything that can make it a less invasive procedure.

GPS to Go
At the moment, only specialized laptops have built-in GPS receivers. But as the receivers get cheaper, more notebook PCs will start coming with them included.

More Notebook Biometrics
Fingerprint scanners are already present on many laptops, and we'll see more of them on lower-cost models, providing new ways of authenticating users and securing data.

3D Desktops That Work
Past attempts to transform the computer desktop into a 3D environment have been headache-inducing failures, but a combination of faster graphics cards and processors means that 3D desktops finally may be a reality. Prototypes such as BumpTop allow you to organize files and folders as if they were pieces of paper.

A PC That Runs All OSs
Choosing an operating system should be like choosing a pair of shoes in the morning: You pick the one that suits where you're going. Apple has made progress with Macs that can run MacOS and Windows, but we're looking forward to systems that can run any and all OSs, either separately or all at once.

More Laptops With No Operating System
Lenovo just started selling its ThinkPad T60p laptops without an OS. That's ideal if you're planning on running Linux, since you save a hundred dollars that would have gone toward a copy of Windows you'd never use. We hope other vendors will follow Lenovo's lead.

Another Attempt at Origami
Microsoft's Origami PC concept hasn't been a big success, and we found the devices interesting but flawed. Will the manufacturers and Microsoft take a second swing at the idea? That remains to be seen, but a potential market exists for a device that resides between a PDA and a laptop.

Radical New Designs
Extreme designs such as toaster-size Shuttle PCs and the notebook/desktop hybrid Dell XPS M2010 have shown that PC design is still evolving. New designs may not always work, but anything that gets us away from the boring tower PC is progress.

Revamped Interfaces
Remember how cool it was in the movie Minority Report, when Tom Cruise's character pushed and pulled images around on virtual screens? It's not so far away: Researchers are already experimenting with new interfaces that allow you to use touch screens to manipulate data. For a peek, see the amazing demo by NYU researcher Jeff Han.

[Rasputin]

In Brief: Apple News, and Flash Doubles Up

Apple news: A spiced-up line of iPods featuring full-size MP3 players includes a matchbook-size Shuffle, too. The $79 1GB Shuffle, measuring 1.07 inches by 1.62 inches, holds 240 songs and has a battery life of 12 hours, the company says. Apple has also updated its iTunes Store to sell movie downloads for video-capable iPods and computers. iTunes Store 7 is now offering movie titles from Miramax Films, Pixar, Touchstone Pictures, and Walt Disney Pictures for $10 to $15 each.

Flash doubles up: Samsung Electronics says it has developed technology to double the capacity of NAND flash memory chips for digital cameras, MP3 players, and smart phones. Samsung credits a manufacturing technology that halves the size of the NAND chip circuits for the higher capacity. The technology will support 64GB flash cards that are capable of storing about 20 DVD-resolution movies each. Samsung expects the new chips to appear in products by 2008.

[Rasputin]

E-Voting: No Fix Yet

In 2004, when touch-screen voting machines were widely deployed for the first time in a national election, concerns about the security and reliability of the machines--and therefore, the integrity of election results--abounded. Since then, some election officials have adopted voter-verified paper audit trails (VVPATs) to improve the reliability of election results. Security holes continue to be discovered, however; and of the 32 states that use touch-screen machines, only 17 require that the machines produce paper trails.

Moreover, the paper trails themselves pose new and unexpected problems, says David Dill, a Stanford University computer science professor and the founder of VerifiedVoting.org, one of the leading proponents of mandatory paper trails for e-voting machines. Paper-trail systems may fail for mechanical reasons or through human error, as they did in Ohio this year.

[Rasputin]

Mobile Core 2 Duo Delivers Only Slight Performance Gains

Eight months ago Intel rocked the mobile processor world with its first dual-core CPUs, which in our tests outpaced a similarly configured laptop running on a single-core processor by 30 percent when performing two tasks simultaneously. Now comes Core Duo's successor, Core 2 Duo, with claims of even better performance plus 64-bit support. Should you be kicking yourself for jumping the gun and buying a Core Duo notebook earlier this year?

PC World tests indicate that you shouldn't sweat it too much. Whereas Core 2 Duo desktops racked up dramatically higher test scores than their Pentium D--based counterparts, notebooks got only a small performance boost from the mobile Core 2 Duo (formerly code-named Merom). Battery life for comparable products was similar.

The latest descendants of Intel's Centrino-CPU-and-wireless-chip-set combination, Core 2 chips fall into two lines: the T5000 line, which includes the 1.66-GHz T5500 and the 1.83-GHz T5600; and the T7000 line, which features 2-GHz (the T7200), 2.16-GHz (the T7400), and 2.33-GHz (the T7600) models. (Intel says that it will produce low-voltage and ultra-low-voltage Core 2 Duo CPUs for the smallest ultraportables by summer 2007 and the end of 2007, respectively.)

Core Duo vs Core 2
Like their Core Duo predecessors, Core 2 Duo processors have a 667-MHz frontside bus, a 945 chip set, and a 3945ABG wireless chip set. The two most significant improvements are the doubling of Level 2 cache to 4MB (in the T7000 line) and support for 64-bit processing. The latter brings Intel's Core 2 Duo up to par with AMD's Turion 64 X2.

We tested three Core 2 Duo--based notebooks: a $1906 Dell XPS M1210 equipped with a 2-GHz T7200 chip (the Best Buy in our ultraportable chart, page 60); a $2164 Gateway M685-E desktop replacement with a 2.16-GHz T7400 chip, and an all-purpose $1499 HP Pavilion dv6000t with a 1.83-GHz T5600 chip. The biggest performance increase over laptops with same-speed Core Duo CPUs was 7 percent--enough to shave a few seconds off day-to-day business operations, but nothing more.

No Big Battery Gain
In our tests, Core 2 Duo didn't affect battery life much. The Dell, carrying a 12.1-inch wide-screen LCD and a 9-cell battery, did best here, running for 4 hours, 23 minutes.

Core 2 Duo chips cost the same as Core Duos used to, so you can expect fire sales as Intel begins to discount the older Core Duo chips. In view of the modest performance gains, shoppers should think long and hard before paying a premium for a Core 2 laptop.