Pc News

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Laptop Vendors Seek Better Battery Standard

A group of laptop vendors and battery manufacturers plans to announce a standard for making safer lithium ion batteries by June 15, 2007, in an attempt to recover from a massive series of battery recalls in recent months.

The new standard will cover "process requirements, quality control and assurance" for all forms of rechargeable lithium ion battery cells, from prismatic to cylindrical and pouch, according to the Association Connecting Electronics Industries, known as IPC.

At an October 12 meeting at IPC offices in Bannockburn, Illinois, the group also voted to name Lenovo executive Anthony Corkell as chairman of this IPC Lithium Ion Battery Subcommittee. Corkell, Lenovo's executive director of standards and quality engineering, will report to a larger IPC standards board run by John Grosso, Dell's director of supplier engineering and quality.

The group did not list specific changes it was requiring, and Corkell did not respond to requests for comment. But lithium ion technology is already well established, so the new standard will probably focus on process controls and quality assurance, says IPC spokesperson Kimberly Sterling.

Background
The group first convened in September, after batteries made by Sony Energy Devices short-circuited and caught fire. In August PC vendors including Dell and Lenovo had worked with the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission to recall about 8 million batteries and to offer free replacements.

Other vendors involved in the recall include Apple Computer, Fujitsu, IBM, and Toshiba, but it is unclear whether any of those companies participated in the meeting. Even the battery manufacturer itself--Sony--may not have attended, raising questions about who would actually follow the new standard when it is published.

IPC declined to provide a roll of attendees. "All I can tell you is that the major laptop manufacturers were well represented," Sterling says.

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Watch for Desktop Deals

Demand for desktop PC motherboards "is falling off a cliff" in late October as users put off purchases until Microsoft Windows Vista launches in January, investment banking firm Goldman Sachs said Saturday.

Blames Vista, CPUs
Motherboard orders for the clone, or white box, desktop PC market has slid nearly 20 percent from its early October peak.

"Motherboard demand weakness is in line with our view that Vista has a negative impact on (fourth quarter) motherboard demand, but it happened earlier and more significantly than we expected," said Henry King, executive director of technology research for Goldman Sachs, in Taipei, in a Saturday report.

He also blamed a scarcity of low-cost Intel microprocessors and Advanced Micro Devices AM2 processors for the drop in demand, since it means there are fewer low-cost PCs on the market. Demand for low-cost PCs remains hot, he said.

Rising user demand for laptop computers is also pushing demand for desktop motherboards down, he said.

As motherboards and other desktop PC components pile up at the end of October and in November, King believes companies will start a price war to clear their inventories.

Notebook Woes
The laptop PC sector is also facing some trouble. Strong user demand for laptop PCs is causing a shortage of components, King said.

At an investors conference last week, Acer executives said they expect to be able to procure only 95 percent of the components they need to sell laptop PCs in the fourth quarter, which is the peak season due to year-end holidays.

"Since the second half of August, we've seen demand rush in. We can't fill all our [laptop] orders," said Gianfranco Lanci, president of Acer, at the conference. The world's fourth largest PC vendor expects a short supply of laptop batteries as well as microprocessors.

A massive recall of laptop batteries by major PC vendors such as Dell and Apple Computer has caused a shortage of batteries because it comes at the time of peak laptop demand for the year. The recall was due to defective Sony parts that can cause the batteries to overheat and possibly catch fire. Sony expects the recall to total around 9.6 million batteries.

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Old Flaw Haunts New Microsoft Browser

A security problem originally found in Microsoft Internet Explorer 6 browser has returned to haunt IE7, the new version of the browser launched two weeks ago, a security consultant said Monday.

Danish security consultancy Secunia AsP posted an advisory regarding an issue where an attacker could potentially snare logins and passwords from an unsuspecting IE7 user. Over two years ago, security researchers reported the same fault in IE6.

Misled by Pop-Ups
If a user visits a Web site specially crafted by an attacker, and then opens a "trusted" site such as a bank or e-commerce site that has a pop-up window, the attacker can put new content into the pop-up, said Thomas Kristensen, Secunia's chief technology officer. This could enable the attacker to ask a user for financial information or passwords, he said.

When the problem was revealed in June 2004, Microsoft gave instructions for a workaround for IE6: disable the setting "Navigate sub-frames across different domains." That setting is disabled by default in IE7, but does not appear to prevent the attack, Kristensen said.

Microsoft has been notified of the flaw, which was submitted to Secunia by a user, Kristensen said. Microsoft officials did not have an immediate comment this morning.

Secunia rated the problem as "moderately critical," but Kristensen said the company was not aware of sites trying to exploit the flaw.

An alert user might notice that they're under attack: Since the URL for the pop-up window is visible, it may be possible to identify a fraudulent request for password information, for example. But "it would require you to pay some attention to the address bar," Kristensen said.

However, a clever attacker could also use this problem in combination with a pop-up spoofing weakness identified last week. Microsoft hasn't patched that problem.

Second IE7 Flaw
Following IE7's release on October 18, Secunia found a problem it shared with IE6.

That vulnerability allowed an attacker to potentially read information from a secure Web site if the user had also opened a maliciously crafted Web site. Microsoft said that the problem is actually in code called by the browsers in another application, Outlook, which remains unpatched.

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Seagate Readies Secure Drive

Early in 2007, Seagate Technology will begin shipping its first widely available hard drives with built-in encryption.

The Momentus 5400 FDE.2 (which stands for Full Disk Encryption 2) will include a special encryption chip that will make it impossible for anyone to read data off the disk, or even boot up a PC, without some form of authentication. Designed for notebook computers, the 2.5-inch, 5400 rpm drive will come with a storage capacity of 80GB, 120GB, or 160GB.

Users could give a password to gain access to the drive, but Seagate expects notebook vendors to also develop other authentication systems such as fingerprint and smart card readers.

Laptop Use First
Though PC makers have not yet publicly announced support for the technology, which Seagate is calling DriveTrust, the disk maker expects "many" PC makers to ship systems with the disks, said Scott Shimomura, a senior product marketing manager with Seagate.

Seagate is also working with software vendors to develop things such as enterprise password management systems that work with the drives, he said.

This kind of widespread adoption would distinguish the FDE.2 from Seagate's first attempt at full drive encryption, the Momentus 5400 FDE, announced in June 2006.

That drive, which was not adopted by any major hardware makers, was considered a proof-of-concept product, Seagate now says. The drive maker joined with Secude IT Security to tout a fortified laptop at the CeBIT show last March, as well.

Unlike the FDE, the FDE.2 will ship with better-performing 128-bit Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) encryption and faster Serial Advanced Technology Attachment (SATA) interface.

Seagate's drives will be available to notebook manufacturers around January, which means they should ship in notebooks shortly thereafter, Shimomura said.

Next: Desktops, Servers
Though Seagate wouldn't say how much of a premium users would pay for encrypted drives, Shimomura said the price markup would be comparable with the cost of software-based encryption. That would put the extra charge for an encrypted notebook at less than $100.

Seagate also expects to expand DriveTrust to its desktop and storage array platforms at some point, Shimomura said.

"There's nothing to say that this couldn't eventually make its way into the smaller form factor drives as well," he added. "Right now, we're trying to address the markets that have the most immediate need."

A recent survey by security vendor Vontu and The Ponemon Institute found that 81 percent of respondents reported that their companies had lost laptops containing sensitive information in the previous year. In 2006, lost or stolen laptops have been blamed for possible data breaches at Ernst & Young, Ahold USA and, most famously, the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs.

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Office Live Goes Live on November 15

Microsoft's Office Live service is set to go out of beta on November 15, and will eventually offer small businesses a chance to buy ads from rival Google and others, according to a Microsoft executive.

Office Live is Microsoft's Web-based service aimed at giving small businesses a Web site as well as providing basic management, worker collaboration, accounting, and customer relationship management capabilities. The service also will be available in beta versions in France, Germany, Japan and the UK on November 15.

New Online Ad Service
Microsoft will also introduce a beta of a new service at that time, Office Live adManager, which lets users purchase online advertising for Microsoft's MSN.com and Windows Live Search properties, said Baris Cetinok, director of product management for Office Live. And in the next six months, the company also plans to add the ability to let users purchase ads for search engines from Google, Yahoo, Ask.com, and Local.com, he said.

"Small businesses want to be able to do sales and marketing wherever they want," Cetinok said. "It's hard for them to figure out how different search engines work. If we can bring these together in one place, they can do real-time results and price comparison ... to find out which search engine sends them the most traffic."

Of course, he added, Microsoft hopes Office Live adManager also will drive online advertising revenue for Microsoft. "We are going to be very aggressive," he said.

So far, Microsoft has seen its online advertising revenue remain flat since it launched adCenter in the U.S. in May. But on its most recent quarterly earnings call last week, Chris Liddell, Microsoft's chief financial officer, said the company was seeing progress in this area, though he was not clear on exactly what metrics the company is using to track that progress.

Office Live Details
Office Live will be available in three versions: Office Live Basics, which is a stripped-down, free version; Office Live Essentials, which costs $20 per month and can support up to 10 users; and Office Live Premium, which costs $40 per month and can support up to 20 users.

All three versions will include adManager, as well as another new service called Office Live Business Contact Manager, a CRM service, Cetinok said.

Another change to the full version of Office Live will be a simplified Web-site design tool, Cetinok said. The new tool made it easier for users to bring custom HTML to their Web sites, something beta users requested, he said.

More than 160,000 businesses have tested Office Live so far.

Microsoft first launched its Live services plans in November 2005 under the direction of Ray Ozzie, Microsoft's chief software architect.

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Tips & Tweaks: Post-Halloween Goodies

Well, I've been scooped. PC World colleague Dan Tynan has dug deep into Dig This territory with "The 15 Freakiest Web Sites"--a whole article about, well, freaky sites.

Dan, as his colleagues, and probably even his wife, will agree, is a freaky expert. Take, for example "William Shatner Sings." And while we're on the subject of sounds from Shatner, check out Urban Chillers, where the acting is scarier than the short horror films.

All this got me thinking... with all the wacko sites and pics I've come across over the years, Dan's got nothing on me. So this week I've dug deep into my own archive and come up with a trove of Dig This hits.

Stay in the Spirit
A Disagreeable Squash: With Thanksgiving just around the corner, I thought a bit of pumpkin overindulgence might amuse you. [With thanks to Gabe.]

A Famous Scream: Listen, did you hear that scream? If you're a movie buff, you may have heard it before, lots of times. That's because the Wilhelm scream has been in dozens of movies. For a detailed history of the scream, go to Hollywood Lost and Found. VideoSift has a compilation that shows dozens of examples.

The Final Word: This is definitely nothing I want on my tombstone.

You Can Take It With You: Word is, a Silicon Valley dot.gone.bust firm has gone into a new business, one that helps you make the computing transition into the afterlife. (It also gives the Blue Screen of Death a new meaning.)

Ghost Hunting Gear: Spend some time at The Shadowlands and pick up some honest-to-goodness ghost hunting equipment. Dousing supplies, Electronic Voice Phenomena testing devices, and (no, I'm not kidding) Ghost Hunting Kits.

Alternate Universes
Mysterious Environments: The Crimson Room is a really, really difficult puzzle, a Flash game that I doubt even the brightest of you will get through in short order. So go kill a little time. (One clue that's not cheating: Use the Tab key to find out where to click.)

If you liked The Crimson Room, you'll get a kick out of Mystery of Time and Space, a 12-level game of the same ilk.

Virtual New York: Celluloid Skyline will easily give you a half hour to avoid a deadline. Start by clicking the "Visions of the Dream City" link to understand the interactive feature. Then click one of the locations towards the top of the page, say, "Waterfront Setting ... " Choose a photo from the menu on the left and slide your mouse across the photo on the right.

Lose Yourself: I love mysterious, creative sites and 99 Rooms is both (and a great way to lose an hour). See the four boxes at the bottom of the screen for instructions (well, kind of). Once you enter the site, watch for how the cursor changes and use it as a guide for what to click (try doors and light switches). And don't worry, there's no beginning or end--just wander around. [Thanks, Brad.]

Bizarre Web Sites
Culture Shock: Japander's a site with videos of celebrities doing Japanese commercials. They aren't shown in the U.S.--the thing is, most of these stars wish no one knew about the commercials.

Dancing Chicken: The Subservient Chicken deserves a spot in the Timewasters Hall of Fame. Just tell the chicken what you want it to do--sit down, lay an egg, flap its wings, and yes, flip you the bird.

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Google Buys JotSpot, Offers Free Wiki Pages

In a bid to grow beyond its roots as a search engine, Google has acquired JotSpot, a developer of wiki technology for collaborative Web sites.

Earlier this month, Google announced that it would offer online word processing and spreadsheet applications to its millions of Web searchers. The company also has a blogging service, but hasn't yet introduced a tool for Web-based collaboration.

Now Google has filled that gap by acquiringJotSpot , according to a Tuesday post on JotSpot's blog by its cofounder and CEO, Joe Kraus. He did not disclose the terms of the deal, and Google did not answer requests for comment.

Joining Google allows us "to plug into the resources that only a company of Google's scale can offer," like a huge audience, access to world-class data centers, and a team of incredibly smart people, Kraus said in his blog.

JotSpot's Background
Kraus and his partner, Graham Spencer, founded JotSpot in Palo Alto, California, just three years ago, but they can already boast of customers with big names like eBay, Intel, and Symantec. The term "wiki" is typically used to describe software that allows users to share and edit documents on the Web.

JotSpot has stopped accepting new registrations while it ports its application to Google's software architecture, but it will continue to support those existing users. Visitors and customers of eBay use JotSpot technology to share articles on topics such as the Web site's policies, selling tools, and specialty sites.

Kraus was coy about his plans for future changes. But the companies have already made one change--customers can now use JotSpot for free. That move could help Google retain current customers and quickly attract new ones.

In another change, Google has discontinued the downloadable Wiki Server (beta), a version of the service used by large companies that want to host the wiki on computers inside their own firewalls to ensure better security. Individuals and small businesses have usually relied on JotSpot to host the pages for them.

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Nokia Simplifies Dual-Mode Phones

Using dual-mode Wi-Fi and cellular mobile phones may get easier with new software that Nokia is offering to service providers and application developers.

Typically, each time users of dual-mode phones try to access Internet services, they must choose which network they want to connect to, sometimes from a list of multiple cellular and Wi-Fi networks. But if a user subscribes to a service from a provider using Nokia's Service Suite, that choice can happen automatically, based on lowest cost and highest speed network or other parameters set by users or the service provider.

Service Deployed in Norway
Telio Telecom, a Norwegian Voice over IP provider, is already using the Nokia Service Suite. Telio offers voice over Wi-Fi services to users of dual-mode phones.

In addition to automatically choosing the proper network, the software also helps Telio provision the service, said Jouni Malinen, director of Nokia's emerging business unit. Once a customer signs up for Telio's service, the customer receives a message on the phone that automatically changes the phone's settings to enable the service. Without the Nokia Service Suite, customers would have to manage multiple potentially complicated configuration changes to enable the service, Malinen said.

In addition, the Nokia Service Suite allows application providers such as Telio to push out updates to phones so that customers don't have to execute cumbersome setting or configuration changes if updates are required.

Suite Bundles Existing Functionality
While some of the mechanisms offered by the software are available already through various existing device management standards, Nokia has bundled the functions together in the Nokia Service Suite. "Our aim is to put everything needed in one solid product in order to guarantee a good user experience," Malinen said.

The software isn't limited to supporting voice applications. It can also help optimize the download or upload of media such as music, photographs, or videos. For example, the software may detect that a user is in range of a Wi-Fi hotspot that the user subscribes to and then, because the Wi-Fi network is high-speed and available, automatically initiate the scheduled upload of photographs to a blog site.

Nokia Service Suite consists of server software that an application provider deploys as well as device software that is already built into many Nokia phones including the Eseries, Nseries, and Nokia Series 80 phones.

Moving Beyond Nokia Phones
In the future, Nokia plans to support phones from other manufacturers as well, Malinen said. "We can really guarantee the best experience on our own devices but as we're basing this on standards and open interfaces, nothing prohibits us from bringing other devices on board," he said.

With the introduction of more phones that include Wi-Fi capabilities, application and service providers are likely to offer new ways to use the high speed and potentially lower cost networks. But they'll need to overcome some hurdles, such as complicated phone configurations, which may currently slow down use.

The Nokia Service Suite software is a step toward making dual-mode phones easier to use, Malinen said.

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Microsoft Steps Up Anti-Piracy Efforts

Microsoft is preparing 55 legal actions worldwide against sellers on auction sites who are hawking illegal copies of the company's software, the company said today.

The actions are a mix of lawsuits and criminal complaints, said Jean-Christophe Le Toquin, a Microsoft attorney for Europe, the Middle East, and Africa region. Microsoft has or will file 34 actions in Europe including Germany, France, Poland, Belgium, the UK, and the Netherlands.

The company will seek prison terms for high-volume sellers and fines for less flagrant violations, Le Toquin said.

Microsoft has stepped up its anti-piracy campaign through legal suits. The company also sent out a program, Windows Genuine Advantage, to Windows computers that verifies whether the OS is a genuine, licensed copy.

Pirates Using eBay
Microsoft said it has received tips from consumers who have been notified that their OS is not legitimate, and those customers have informed the company where they bought the software. In the UK, teams have visited software resellers to remind them of the legal consequences of piracy.

The new legal measures could take one to two years to wind through courts, depending on how quickly local police cooperate, Le Toquin said. Microsoft investigators purchased most of the fraudulent software through eBay, which hosts an estimated 50,000 pieces of pirated Microsoft software a year, he said.

Some fakes are of such high-quality that the compact discs and packaging are sent to a special Microsoft lab in Ireland for confirmation, Le Toquin said. Sellers draw buyers with prices well below market.

"It can be from a few euros to half the price," Le Toquin said.

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Movie Downloads Are Still a Flop

Given all the recent hullabaloo about digital movie downloads, you'd think Hollywood finally had embraced the Internet revolution.

Online services such as Amazon's Unbox, Apple's iTunes, CinemaNow, and Movielink promise instant access to movies without your having to schlep to Blockbuster or wait for Netflix. You can watch a movie shortly after it starts to download, carry movies on a portable player, and, with CinemaNow, burn them to disc to watch in your living room.

So what's wrong with this picture? A lot. Some downloadable films are more expensive than their DVD counterparts and offer fewer features. Downloading the movies can be tiresome. And watching films on something other than your PC or portable device can be a pain.

How Fast?
Apple's iTunes does the slickest job of integrating an online movie store with a media player, but at press time fewer than 100 movies were available, all from Disney-owned studios. I tried the 99-minute Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy ($10, no special features), which took only 90 minutes to download. And I could start watching it right after the download began.

I launched Poseidon from Amazon Unbox just 3 minutes after starting the download to my PC at 600 kilobits per second, but when I tried an episode of Firefly at 300 kbps, I had to wait nearly 20 minutes. The $15 Poseidon came with only a making-of featurette. Unbox's sharper images and richer colors set it slightly apart from the other three.

As for other features, only CinemaNow lets you download and burn films to a disc with standard DVD menus, extra features, and even printable cover art for the disc case. But at press time only 113 titles were available for burning, most of them obscure (Space Truckers, anyone?).

I downloaded Tupac Live at the House of Blues from CinemaNow over an 802.11g wireless connection; burning it to DVD took exactly 4 hours. Though the disc played back fine on my DVD player and on two test PCs, a third computer couldn't read it until I installed a new codec.

The Tupac download looked so-so; however, a company representative said that the download's quality was identical to the DVD's. In general, the image quality of all four services was good.

CinemaNow's $20 Poseidon downloaded to my testing laptop in just 90 minutes and was available to watch within roughly a minute. But it cost $5 more than a comparable DVD at Target, with no special features. Movielink also charges $20 for a bare-bones download of Poseidon.

Tune In Next Year
The real challenge? Watching digital flicks in your living room. I hooked the laptop to my home projector, but movies displayed at less than half the size of a DVD. Next year, devices such as Apple's iTV that let you feed digital content directly to the boob tube should make movie downloads more attractive. For now, downloadable movies are like popcorn without any butter or salt--tolerable but hardly tempting.

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The Print Shop: Practical, Possible, and Peculiar Printer Technology

As PC World's printing expert, I'm most often on the lookout for new models promising improvements in ease of use, cost per page, or photo output quality. As important as these key points are, the world of printers also has its fair share of headline-grabbing innovation. This month I run through hot new models available for purchase now, and discuss some interesting concepts that may find their way into products of the future. And don't forget to read down to where I discuss the printer that prints on toast!

Hey Presto! Print Photos and E-Mail via a Phone Line
HP is targeting what it says are the nearly 65 million American adults who have yet to jump online. The new $150 HP Printing Mailbox device (pictured left and available now), pairs with the company's forthcoming Presto Service, which is set to launch mid-November.

Here's how the concept will work. Friends and family can send an e-mail or photos to a loved one who's signed up with the Presto Service, which will then convert the messages into a customizable themed layout (such as "holidays"), ready for print. The Printing Mailbox then automatically receives and prints messages on a regular schedule that you can program.

A Presto Newsstand option will also allow the Printing Mailbox to receive and print popular columns, puzzles, recipes, and feature stories on a daily basis. The Presto Service will cost $10 a month, or $100 a year.

This is an interesting idea from HP, for two reasons. First, it's quite clever, and I might personally look into it for my not-so-tech-savvy grandparents. Second, it will obviously also help HP tap into the broad base of those who haven't yet discovered photo printing, and sell more replacement ink to those who have.

Look for an upcoming review (as well as my previous PrintShop columns) at PC World's Printer InfoCenter.

World's Smallest Color Laser Printer
Samsung is launching a new CLP-300 line of color laser printers that weigh just 30 pounds and boast a compact footprint of just 15.4 by 13.5 by 10.4 inches (width by depth by height). The company claims the CLP-300 is the smallest color laser printer in its class, and is designed for small businesses, home users, and even students. Available now, the standard CLP-300 costs $300, while the $350 CLP-N adds a built-in 10/100 ethernet port for network operation.

Both models have a base resolution of 600 by 600 dots per inch (dpi) that can be enhanced up to 2400 by 600 dpi, and they also feature easy-to-install toner bottles with yields of up to 2000 pages for black and up to 1000 pages for color.

Paper management comes in the form of a 150-sheet semi-cassette input tray, while output capacity is 100 face-down pages. As has become quite common, the CLP-300 series can also print onto special media such as envelopes, transparencies, labels, and cards. Finally, either unit will support Windows 98 through XP, Mac OS X, and various flavors of Linux.

Though we didn't receive a test unit in time for our latest Top 10 color lasers roundup, the PC World Test Center will definitely put one through its paces as soon as we can get it.

Bless USB and Parallel Printers With Bluetooth
OK, here's a quickie but goodie. The BT-0260(pictured left, courtesy of USBGear.com) is a Bluetooth version 2.0 combination printer adapter for current USB printers and older parallel port models. The adapter lets you print wirelessly from Bluetooth-equipped devices such as a notebook, desktop, PDA, or phone.

USBgear.com sells it for about $68, and--as an aside for the geek elite--it's actually made by Taiwan's CC&C Technologies.

Printing Future? 1000 Pages per Minute
We recently compiled an ambitious list of PC World's 100 Fearless Forecasts. One research project to make the list of future technologies was JeTrix. Instead of a small printhead that moves back and forth across a sheet of paper, JeTrix heads can be built as wide as the sheet, allowing for some truly amazing output speeds.

The folks over at Physorg.com have interviewed the developers here.

A Printer for Toast
The Zuse compact toasting device (pictured right) can burn images of 12 by 12 pixels onto bread using line-by-line toasting, a technique similar to that of early dot-matrix printers. The concept uses an optical sensor instead of a switch to know when to start toasting and currently stores up to 50 pictures in memory that are randomly "printed" onto your bread.

Drawing inspiration from products such as the classic "Toast-O-Lator," the Zuse was created by Jokob Illera of Inseq Design as his diploma project at Vienna's University for Applied Art. Jakob tells me that he's currently in negotiations with different companies to bring the product to consumers and hopes that in about six to nine months, the Zuse will be available for about $50.

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Test: Intel's Quad-Core CPU Speeds Video

Tests show that Intel's first quad-core chip, the 2.66-GHz Core 2 Extreme QX6700, should bring impressive speed boosts to complex video-editing and 3D-rendering work. But while you might think that since two cores are good, four cores will be twice as good for all your computing tasks, our exclusive tests of the new chip tell a different story.

Although PCs with the new quad-core chip (formerly code-named Kentsfield) offer plenty of speed, our tests reveal that many users will get more bang for their buck by sticking with Intel's other Core 2 Extreme chip, the 2.93-GHz, dual-core X6800. For the same $999 price, the X6800 chip offers just a bit more clock speed than the 2.66-GHz QX6700 does, and with few mainstream applications tuned to take advantage of four or more CPU cores, the extra clock speed provides a real performance advantage on most tasks. Systems with the new chip should be available this month.

Graphics Speed
We looked at a preproduction QX6700 chip in a reference system with a preproduction D975XBX2 motherboard and our standard set of components, including 2GB of DDR2 memory, a pair of SATA hard drives configured in a striped array, and an nVidia GeForce 7800GT-based graphics card. We also looked at three high-end, fully decked-out commercial systems--the Alienware Area-51 7500 ($4479), CyberPower Gamer Infinity 1950 ($3599), and Xi MTower IGE ($4149)--equipped with the quad-core processor. We then compared these systems with previously tested reference PCs as well as with an Extreme X6800-based CyberPower Gamer Infinity SLI Ultra and a 2.67-GHz Core 2 Duo E6700-based Dell XPS 700 (click the icon below to see our complete chart).


As our previous tests have shown, systems with the dual-core Extreme X6800 provide blazing performance. It's still the faster chip for single-threaded apps, such as familiar Office productivity programs. It also holds the advantage in the multitasking test we use in our WorldBench 5 suite: The reference PC with the X6800 finished in 279 seconds compared with 292 seconds for the system with the quad-core chip. Systems with Kentsfield scored nearly identically to a same-speed Core 2 Duo on standard productivity apps, which is unsurprising since Kentsfield is essentially a pair of linked Core 2 Duo dies on one chip.

Results from the commercial systems generally mirrored those of the reference PCs. The quad-core Alienware Area-51 7500 system stood out a bit because it nearly matched the Core 2 Extreme X6800-based CyberPower PC on our two Adobe graphics tests and our gaming test, and edged slightly ahead on our Nero Express test.

The new chip really starts to shine with programs that can take advantage of its four cores, such as video and 3D editing software. We ran several video and 3D editing tests on a quad-core chip at an Intel preview event and, though we didn't confirm these results in our lab, we saw some dramatic speed improvements--around 80 percent in POV-Ray 15, a 3D scene-rendering app, and 33 percent in Sony's Vegas 7.0a video editor.

Bottom Line
These preliminary performance results support Intel's decision to roll out the quad-core chip as a CPU for enthusiasts first. While gamers won't see many immediate gains from going quad-core, next year's Alan Wake and Unreal Tournament 2007 will support multithreading (a few current games have patches that provide only limited support for multithreading), making it a fair investment. And anyone working with video or 3D rendering should get significant boosts right away.

As more games and mainstream programs begin to take advantage of multiple CPU threads, and as video editing and video sharing continue to grow in popularity, more and more people will see real benefits from multiple CPU cores. In the first half of next year, new Core 2 Quad chips (as Intel is officially referring to the new quad-core line) should supply that power, beginning with a 2.4-GHz CPU running on the 1066-MHz bus. Intel also plans to launch quad-core versions of its workstation- and server-focused Xeon line before year's end as well.

Meanwhile, AMD intends to release its dual-socket 4x4 platform, its own two-chip quad-core offering, before the end of the year.

[Rasputin]

Vista, Office 2007 Coming Later This Month

After years of waiting, U.S. business customers will finally have a chance to get their hands on Windows Vista and Office 2007 when Microsoft launches the products on November 30 at an event in New York City.

The company sent e-mail invitations to a launch event, which is called Microsoft New Day for Business, on Wednesday. According to the e-mail, the event "will mark the business availability of three major releases from Microsoft" In addition to Vista and Office 2007, Microsoft Exchange Server 2007 also will be released to business customers at the event.

Microsoft Chief Executive Officer (CEO) Steve Ballmer will be on hand for the event, along with Microsoft partners and customers, according to the invitation. The event will be held at the Nasdaq Stock Market in midtown Manhattan and the Marriott Marquis in Times Square.

Coming Sooner?
Microsoft will launch the products in Canada slightly earlier than in the U.S., the IDG News Service previously reported. According to the MSDN Canada site, Microsoft will hold New Day for Business events throughout Canada starting in Edmonton, Alberta, on November 23.

Following the Edmonton event, which will be held at the Shaw Conference Centre, Microsoft will hold events in Toronto on December 5, Montreal on December 7, Ottawa on December 12, and other cities throughout the country through January 2007.

Even though Vista and Office 2007 will be available to business customers later this month, many business customers have said they likely will not upgrade to Vista right away but will hold off until they do hardware upgrades or can justify the cost of the new OS. Microsoft is hoping customers will deploy Vista and Office 2007 together, and is planning press interviews in New York on Monday to discuss specifically the benefits of doing so.

The general release of Vista and Office 2007 is still on track for January 2007.

[Rasputin]

Dell Launches First AMD-Based Laptop

Dell launched its first notebook PC powered by a processor from Advanced Micro Devices instead of an Intel chip.

With the Inspiron 1501, Dell offers users a choice between AMD's low-end Sempron, mobile Turion 64, and dual-core Turion 64 X2 chips. The product is aimed at home entertainment and small business users, offering a baseline configuration of the Sempron chip, widescreen 15.4-inch display, 80GB hard drive, and 512MB of memory for a starting price of $549.

Dell launched the product today without fanfare, simply listing it on the company Web site without the usual flurry of press releases. The company did not return calls for comment.

Dell had announced in May that it would began selling AMD-based servers, after remaining loyal to Intel processors for so long that it was the only major PC vendor not offering its customers a choice. By then, AMD had eaten significant chunks of Intel's enormous market share, riding the success of its efficient Opteron server chip to acclaim for its full range of chips. Indeed, by September Dell had also launched AMD-powered desktops.

Intel has since struck back, launching its new Core 2 Duo and Xeon 5100 families of chips in June, July, and August. But the damage was already done, as a series of disappointing quarterly earnings results forced Intel to reorganize the company and lay off 10,500 employees.

Vote of Confidence
Dell has shown great confidence in AMD by choosing to use the new chips in its notebook line, the one segment of the PC industry that has been fighting a recent slump in sales growth, analysts said.

"This really shows that AMD has emerged as a legitimate option," said Samir Bhavnani, research director at Current Analysis. "For years one of the concerns Dell had with AMD was its ability to meet demand. Dell would not choose to implement AMD processors in a hot category like notebooks if it wasn't fully confident in AMD's ability to deliver."

Now that AMD has finally climbed aboard the Dell sales machine, it can claim a presence with nearly every vendor in the U.S. notebook market. The only remaining bastions of purely Intel notebooks are Lenovo Group, Sony, and Toshiba, Bhavnani said.

"For Intel this is a blow, but one they have been anticipating as Dell announced AMD as an option in both servers and desktops earlier this year," he said.

The only question remaining for U.S. notebook shoppers is whether to upgrade their Dell Inspirons with enough memory to accept Microsoft's Windows Vista when it arrives in 2007. The Inspiron 1501 comes with a baseline OS of Windows XP Home Edition, with an option for XP Professional or XP Media Center Edition 2005.

[Rasputin]

Symantec Software Supports Vista

In the next few weeks, Symantec will roll out products aimed at early adopters of the Windows Vista OS and 64-bit computing, while also expanding the capabilities of its backup software.

Symantec on Wednesday unveiled Backup Exec 11d, which has been under testing since early this year. Available on November 6, the newest upgrade adds recovery support for Microsoft Exchange with what Symantec calls "granular recovery technology."

The feature can restore an individual e-mail rather than a whole mailbox. It can also be used for data contained in SharePoint Portal Server or Active Directory, Microsoft's software for managing identities, such as in the case of restoring a deleted user.

Backup Exec 11d, which also works with SQL Server, continuously backs up data as it's created. Users have an option of 128-bit or 256-bit encryption for stored data. The software also works with 64-bit Windows environments, Symantec said.

Antivirus for Vista
The company also announced an incremental beta release just ahead of the December release of its Antivirus Corporate and Antivirus Enterprise editions. Antivirus 10.2 is available for download for current Symantec customers who are now testing Vista. Both editions work for 32-bit or 64-bit editions of Vista.

The Enterprise Edition adds an antispyware client plus a console that integrates the antivirus, firewall and intrusion protection functions, Symantec said. Both Antivirus versions should be released within 30 days of the final release of Windows Vista, scheduled for availability to business customers this month.

Early next month, Symantec will release Ghost Solution Suite 2.0, a tool for managing and provisioning Windows machines on a network. The 2.0 version supports Vista and 64-bit Windows machines.

Also new is an ability to edit NTFS file system images, Symantec said. Ghost Solution supports the GUID partition table to image larger partitions, which Symantec said eases migration to Vista. The GUID partition table is used in some hardware systems, such as Intel's Itanium processors.

In other developments, the company said it has started the Global Symantec System Builder Program to better train system builders. The company also said it's honing in on the small and medium-size business market, increasing its investment in tools and training for its partners and their infrastructure.