Judge Backs EU Antitrust Case Against Microsoft

Landmark antitrust sanctions imposed by the European Commission against Microsoft were upheld by a senior European judge on Wednesday, dealing a further blow to the US software giant in its long-running feud with the Brussels regulator. After the March decision, the company was fined a record ?497 million ($664 million) and told to change its business practices. It was ordered to offer a version of Windows without the MediaPlayer software to PC makers and consumers. It will also have to license information to rivals making it easier for them to design servers that can inter-operate with Windows-driven PCs. More details are available at Financial Times.

Memory

Viperlair.com advices not to give up on DDR memory just yet. The web-site has reviewed Ultra Dual Channel 512MB PC4000 Premium memory module kit rated to function at 500MHz clock-speed with CL3 4-4-8 latency settings. After reading this article you may decide that there is no need to move to the DDR2 memory, at least for now.

Storage

Bjorn3D.com has posted an article covering the Seagate Baracuda 7200.7 hard disk drive. This drive is a native 3.5?Serial ATA-150 HDD with Native Command Queuing technology; it spins at 7200rpm, boasts with 8MB of cache and access time of 8.5ms. The author investigates how does this drive performs in RAID 0 setup, as well as the performance of the drive with the Native Command Queuing enabled.

Foxconn Withdraws Legal Action Against Taiwanese Journalist

Foxconn Electronics and the Commercial Times published a joint statement earlier this week, saying that Foxconn will withdraw its legal action against Commercial Times reporter Joyce (Wen-chi) Kuang. The statement came after the Association of Taiwan Journalists (ATJ) on December 16, 2004, threatened an international boycott campaign against Foxconn, which had taken legal action over Kuang's April 29, 2004, report about the company's prospects of capitalizing on the launch of Intel's LGA775 platform.

Graphics cards

Hexus.net has issued a report containing an investigation of performance provided by the by the latest CATALYST 4.12 drivers set for ATI RADEON VPUs based graphics cards. With the arrival of such feature as CATALYST A.I. ATI promised an unseen performance growth in different applications. The author compares the performance numbers obtained with this latest version of drivers set to earlier releases of the CATALYST graphics card drivers.

Displays

Overclocker.com has released an interesting and unusual article about how to make use of an old notebook. The author explains how you can recycle your old notebook display and make yourself a nice digital picture for a plain wall.

Multimedia

Gamer's-Depot.com has reviewed Logitech Z-5500 speakers. This 5.1 speaker system features Digital SoundTouch control centre and boasts with total system power of 500W with 62W going to the satellite speakers, 69W to the central speaker and 188W going to the subwoofer. Total peak power is 1010W.

Dev Hardware has reviewed Creative Labs Audigy2 NX external sound card. This notebook audio solution brings the entire desktop PC feature set to laptop gamers and audio enthusiasts. It brings such technologies as EAX 4.0, DTS, Dolby Digital, THX, and DVD-Audio to the laptop market.  This is something no other mobile audio solution has done.

Overclockers Club has taken a look at Samsung Yepp 780V MP3 player. With the smaller size, greater capacity, vastly improved case and ability to create playlists, the Samsung Yepp 780V deserves a glance in case you are looking for an MP3 player. It comes complete with a very handy touchpad instead of ordinary buttons. The size versus capacity and a number of features available in this unit make the 780V an excellent choice for those people who are looking for a ?below HDD-based?price range MP3 players.

Next-gen VMware Software to Get Memory Boost

VMware, whose software lets a single workstation run multiple operating systems, has begun testing a version of software that uses memory more efficiently. The number of independent operating systems VMware Workstation currently can run is limited by how much memory a computer has, because each copy called a virtual machine needs as much memory as a regular standalone computer. VMware Workstation 5, however, will employ technology that lets the same memory be shared by similar virtual machines. For feather information on the matter read an article at CNET News.com.