|
Main Menu
See more excellent Tweak-related sites in links
Tweak Central is hosted by Pair Networks |
|
|
  |
 Archived
News - what WAS new: |
|
 |
|
Archived News - August
2001
|
Microsoft has just released
it's latest browser ...oops, I mean part of the Operating system.
Young people are asking, "What's a browser?"
I thought I heard that some people were having problems with this browser,
so the usual warning for microsoft products applies: Limber up before
you stick your head between your knees to kiss your ass good bye  .
Oh, I mean back up your data and stuff...
Just to let you know, Crucial (Micron)
has just lowered prices again. If you bought RAM last week 'cus I told
you to (like I did) well, I guess I owe you a couple bucks. Just add it
to my tab.
In unrelated news, it looks like Chris Tom (AMDZone)
and Thomas Pabst (Tom Shardware) are having a little
spat. It's cute to see two grown men and professional web masters
squabble. Hey, if anyone wants to pick a fight with me, bring it on, I
got time!
Thank Chris Tom (AMDZone)
for this one. Everyone knows memory is dirt-cheap these days, but this
is just ridiculous. Crucial (Micron)
memory is some of the highest quality stuff you can get. At these prices
there's no excuse for not having TONS of RAM. Boycott
Rambus has a convenient price sheet for your parusal. For example,
"256MB PC133 SDRAM.............$ 35.99" and free 2-day shipping.
I have an ad from a 1989 Mac World magazine in which 4MB of (slow) RAM
is $499. Oh, look:
Yeah, that's what the price of RAMBUS
looks like. (The memory, not their
stock  ).
If you don't know what kind of memory you need, Crucial
has a convenient wizard to help you.
Everyone knows that more RAM makes your computer faster. Ha. But seriously
folks, most machines will benefit from more memory. There are certain
cases where this isn't true, so if you're not sure, drop
me an email and get included on my spam list... er I mean... let me
help you.
I was checking out DeskMod.org
which I think is down, and they had links to these three sites, all of
which look really cool: DeviantArt,
Lots of skins and WinCustomize.
These sites have all kinds of stuff like desktop wallpaper, custom icons
and utilites. Another great site for customizing is Desktopian.
I also added TweakOut to the links
page. They have a lot of tips and tweaks on their... tips and tweaks page...
Side note: Van's Hardware Journal
added to the links page. Van Smith used to be at Tom
Shardware but has started his own site. It's a great mix of computer
news and paranoia that he updates daily! Go take a pull.
After months of legal wrangling between Via
and Intel, Via has finally released its
P4X266 chipset. This is the first chipset to support Pentium 4 and DDR
SDRAM. What's the big deal? Until now, if you wanted a Pentium 4, you
had to use RAMBUS RAM (which we all
know is expensive and the company
is evil). Intel is set to release its own i845 chipset supporting
SDR SDRAM but legal obligations (with RAMBUS) prevent Intel from selling
DDR SDRAM chipsets for the Pentium 4 until 2002 (I think).
The benchmark results of the P4X266 look suprisingly good, so go take
a look:
AnandTech
Via P4X266 review - 14 pages of love from WonderBoi
HardOCP Via
P4X266 review
Via Hardware Via P4X266
review
We can expect P4X266 motherboards to appear over the next few months.
Some motherboard manufacturers are afraid of "upsetting" Intel
by manufacturing P4X266 based motherboards, so expect motherboards from
smaller manufacturers to appear first. We'll have to see how this plays
out...
I have yet to receive my P4X266 sample for review... Perhaps it got lost
in the mail... yeah...
CNet is also
reporting that Microsoft will incorporate a new privacy standard,
P3P (Platform for Privacy Preferences)
into Internet Explorer 6:
Microsoft executives said on Wednesday that
the company's Passport authentication service will soon support an emerging
privacy standard called Platform for Privacy Preferences, or P3P. The
standard is advocated by the World Wide Web Consortium, a Web standards
body and was adopted by Microsoft in June for use in its software.
On TechTV yesterday, a researcher
raised some concerns about how when Microsoft automatically creates Passport
accounts from HotMail accounts, it usese the same password for both. That's
a concern because many people don't have a very secure password for Hotmail
and consider it 'low security' but now that same login and password will
let someone make purchases.
I think this privacy initiative is a step in the right direction, but
I'm afraid that people who violate users' privacy will continue to do
so: they seem to have a "take it or leave it" attitude. For
example, if you choose to disable cookies in your browser and go to a
site that "requires" cookies, they redirect you to a page that
says, "In order to use this web site, you must enable cookies."
That's just my two cents...
Sorry for the lack of updates, but there hasn't been much news and I haven't
decided how to redo the site...
In the first kinda tweak-related news, CNet
is reporting that Microsoft
has announced it's "Must list" for its upcoming operating system
Windows XP (formerly codenamed Whistler). For those who don't know
the "Must list" are the icons that MUST appear on the desktop.
So if you're selling computers Microsoft requires that you sign an agreement
and not change certain aspects of Windows on the computers you sell. (I
used to be a reseller, I know this stuff).
I suppose since there isn't much news going on, the fake news is the battle
between Microsoft and certain 3rd party vendors such as AOL and Kodak
over what goes into WinXP. This is the same argument people have always
had with Microsoft. Third-party software vendors say Microsoft is "bundling,"
taking away from their sales (... etc) while Microsoft says, people want
it, we'll stick it in Windows. Old habits die hard I guess...
 Related links:
Paul Thurrott's Windows SuperSite
- want to know more about the different 'flavors' (yuck) of Windows?
Sorry for the lack of updates, but there hasn't been much news and I haven't
decided how to redo the site...
In more unrelated news, I picked up 3 new fans today. The neighbors have
been complaining that my computer fans are too loud. They're loud. They
sound like damn helicopters. The new fans should make them a little quieter
and let the neighbors get some sleep while allowing me to continue my
late night haX0rings(....maybe not.
Need a fan? or an HSF? I'm very happy with the guys at Heatsink
Factory.
|
New CPU
source: Mom and dad
|
|
I just upgraded my home machine, for anyone who cares...
My "1GHz" chip wasn't stable enough to run DiabloII
so I had to bump it down to 850MHz. That was a big enough reason for me
to buy a new chip (do you need a reason?). I opted for the 1.33GHz AMD
Athlon processor (cus it's fast and cheap). Unfortunately, my old Asus
A7V motherboard doesn't do much above 100MHz for the fsb, so I had to
eek by with 13x 110MHz for a measley 1.43GHz. Oh well... I'll get a new
motherboard soon... Perhaps the A7V266?
Actually, this probably won't be very stable, so I'll probably
end up bumping it down to 1.2 or 1.3GHz.
On a related note: Hardware (components) are really affordable these days,
so if you're "fixin" to upgrade, perhaps now is a good time.
RAM is so cheap these days, if you use your pc very much at all, pick
up some RAM...
btw - I'm running 1.85V vCore and weenie cooling with an Alpha
PAL6035 hsf.
 Back
to Top
 Back
(Previous)
 Archive
index
 Back
Home
|
|
|
information
Best tweak sites
