News for Wednesday, 31 March 2004

Martin Björnström, from 99mac, sent us a message to tell us he put online a hundred pictures of the Cebitwhich ended last week-end.
Here's a G5 clone.

There are brand new products or others that weren't released yet.
To see them:
http://media.99mac.se/bildreportage/com/cebit2004/

Copland, the Mac Operating System which was meant to replace OS 9 as been the most expected and delayed OS of the History of computing.
But it might be beaten by Longhorn, the successor of Windows XP.
Bill Gates himslef acknowledged that 2006 as a release date was a "probably valid speculation".
At this point, we will already be running OS X 10.6 or OS XI...

As in the title. We still wondered if last week Refurb trend would go on. It seems to be the case!
refurb store.

Philippe, one of our readers has sent us a mini test of the Eye TV 200.

EyeTv is available with USB and FireWire 200. I have been enjoying the USB version since one year. The USB version allows you to burn 7 hours of video mpeg1 on a DVD using Toast 6.03. The quality of recordings performed with the FireWire version using mpeg2 is superior. But it is required to remove the USB version preferences before installing the new 1.3.4 version in order to have a proper installation. You will also have to select the 2 option Satellite + tuner. The last version 1.3.4 of EyeTV is available in French and other languages, and common to all El Gato models. Image quality is noticeably improved, in addition it is now possible to use a S-video cable. There are menu to setup satellite and VCR options (composite, RVB, Pal/secam, S-VHS). In DVD standard mode, you can burn 2h20' of video (1.8GB/h, 4 Mbps VBR 6 maxi audio 48 khz 224 kbps (mp2), the generated mpeg file is automatically recognized by Toast without changes required. Regarding satellite recording, the quality is lower, so it is possible to create smaller file (480x576 2,5 Mbps VBR, (4 Mbps max) Audio 48.0 kHz, 224 kbps) such as 1.1GB/h in mpeg2, so a bit less than 4 hours of video /DVD; this will allow you to record 2 movies without eye-astonishing differences in terms of image quality. Toast is re-encoding the files, so you will need to use Sizzle, the last version (0.5) even allows you to burn on the same DVD, mpeg files having non standard size without encoding. Do not forget to select the option in the main menu which will allow you to visualize tracks info and menu. Finally, with the price of DVD media going down, 2h20 or 3h45 of recording capacity for one DVD, it is reasonable interesting.

ElGato

Sometimes you're under the impression that the computer world wants to revive the myth of the computer you can speak to. (him ?? her?? it?? oh well, to each his own ;))
- Apple recently announced that Mac OS X 10.4 would feature a spoken interface (http://www.apple.com/)
- Opera Software, makers of the Opera web-browser, aquired a "Via Voice" license from IBM, to enable a future version of its software to respond to vocal commands.
- According to Mac Observer, Apple patented a new voice print password system in replacement of keyboard input passwords.
So the latest trend seems to be using the voice as a new mean of interaction with the computer. Indeed nowadays, processing power is less of an issue compared to the time of the first attempts to voice recognition.
However we believe that the next step is visual commands. A few products are already available for disabled persons. The idea is to use sensors that detect eye movements and translate this data into, say, mouse cursor movements.
When you think about it, it can get way less messy than a few people in the same room talking to their computers at the same time :)

TT Hardware tested the 2,5" Hitachi 7k60. This 60GB drive spins 7500 times per minute, what is exceptional for a hard drive of this size. Furthermore it is extremely silencious, don't get too warm, and is the fastest...
To read the test (realized on a PC):
http://www.tt-hardware.com/
PS: Ewok should soon write a test of this drive installed into a Firewire 800 case. If you find it's not happening quickly enough, send him a mail (but don't flood him, be nice) to remember it... [trad: and if you find the translation isn't realized fastly enough, then send US a mail :) ]

Jean-Noël contacted us with the following info :

I was a bit annoyed by the iPod mini of my Significant Other appearing in blue in iSync but wearing its silver outfit when mounted on the desktop... So, from the standard silver icon I made a blue icon. Then, well, since I was on a roll, I completed the whole set of color ;)

Since the archive is small, here it is... It might not be usefull to a lot of people outside the United States at the moment, but who knows, sometime in July it might come in handy...

Icônes_iPod_mini.sit

Pioneer just released version 1.12 of the 107D firmware.
It allows to burn at 8x on a wider range of media.
http://www.pioneerelectronics.com
If you already had flashed your burner with the unlocked/unleashed 1.10, no need to rush on that update, it won't change much.

At last, a serious study on the impact of P2P on CD sales. It concludes that music files swapping actually does INCREASED CD sales by around 600 000 units: for each track downloaded 150 times, 1 extra CD is sold...
Quick quick, somebody wakes up MM. Nègre and Fourtou and tell them the good news! They should jump with joy knowing that all those teenage pirates actually increase their profit ;-) unless... all those IP laws and taxes are just a way to earn more money and keep the music business well under control?
Note: the music industry already uses P2P networks to compute statistics on the popularity of singles and albums, and they get that FOR FREE...