News for Wednesday, 6 October 2004

Apple has sent again a notification regarding a new delay for GeForce 6800 Ultra launch:

Thanks for your order on the Apple Store.
We hope that you have received our email regarding a change in the shipment date of your order. We unfortunately have to inform you that we have to delay one more time the shipment of your order due to huge demand over expectations that we are facing for this product. We are currently estimating that you should receive your order before October 15th 2004.

This story is seriously becoming a bad joke!! Apple should propose a big discount for users who have ordered this card, especially for those who have ordered both Apple 30" Cinema Display + nVIDIA 6800 Ultra.
Cette histoire vire en eau de boudin. Apple devrait faire une remise conséquente à ceux qui ont décidé de commander cette carte, plus encore s'ils ont commandé le couple 6800+ 30".
[Update] apparently some (rare and) lucky US Mac users have received their GF 6800 Ultra card.

Thanks to Alexandre for this info.
AT&T, the big American communication group, is currently evaluating several operating systems, including OSX, in order to find an alternative to Windows. They are looking for a OS which will be the most secure possible.
Final decision should be taken by the end of 2005 or early 2006. If Windows is trashed, and especially if OSX is chosen it will be an huge earthquake in the IT world...

Some people are ready to do anything to get famous...
On his website, http://www.cc.gatech.edu you will see how on a modified Xbox, Linux has been installed, then Pear PC and finally MacOSX on the top of that.
Of course performances are far away to be astonishing...

We published an article about installing an Arctic-Cooling VGA Silencer kit for Radeon 9800 Pro inside a G5. The outcome is both silence and performance, at the expense of 2 PCI slots. Click here.
[Trans: The article is still only in French , but every operation is illustrated by a picture. Make sure you have the right equipment to re-cut plastic and file metal, like a Dremel system]

The software PatchBurn is now available in its version 3. Just to remind you, PatchBurn brings support in Mac OSX and iApps to third-party burners. Version 3 adds one recognition level. There are 5 of them in OSX:
1) None: not supported
2) Unsupported: not supported, but the burning engine is going to try to use the burner.
3) VendorSupported: the burner has been tested successfully by the vendor, but not by Apple.
4) AppleSupported: the burner has been tested by Apple.
5) AppleShipping: the burner is present in some Apple computers.
PatchBurn Version 3 ups your level of compatibility by one, i.e. 3 instead of 2 in the previous version.
Nothing should be changed regarding the burner function, but info found in ASP should be more "understandable"
http://www.patchburn.de/

We welcome and praise all initiatives to help people with disabilities. http://macisigne.free.fr offers quicktime clips to introduce Apple products in sign language. Very cool stuff. Way to go guys ! :)

Source : Présence PC (in ze French language)

Id-Software has just released the necessary files to run Doom 3 on GNU/Linux. The files are readily available for download.
Not everything is fine and dandy, though, as ATI cards seem to have problems with the game.
Let's hope the OS X port is right around the corner...

Well, Pioneer is the 1st to introduce a slim slot-in 8x burner for laptops.

The DVR-K04 burns DVD+/-R at 8x, DVD +/-RW at 4x and even DVD +R9 at 2.4x. CD-R and -RW will be written at 24x.
Consuming 4.8w, the drive can stop a burning process and resume it at a later time, in case of overheating, for instance.
That's going to be a perfect candidate for Powerbooks, as soon as Apple will have updated its iApps to include DL support.

Short on cash ? in need of a printer that can print on CDs ? VideoHelp.com runs a "how to modify a Lexmark z25 so that you can print on CDs". For the record, this hack ain't for the faint hearted !