News for Tuesday, 1 July 2008

Those who thought that it would take many long years before the SDD disks would fit in their budget, OCZ has announced products at a new price. The 32 GB will cost $169, the 64 GB $259 and the 128 GB will be at $479.
All these disks will only be in the 2.5" format with SATA. The announced transfer speeds go from 120 to 135 MB/s in reading and 80 to 93 MB/s in writing, that is to say more than any hard drive fitted in a laptop.
There do not remain any more than to hope that the availability starts with a bang and that the competition follows along this path.

There is no doubt in our minds that in a very short time, the hackers will succeed to 'desimlock' the iPhones.
Obviously, there is also no doubt at AT&T who have been burnt with the first generation iPhone. According to an internal note issued by the company, the employees are more than are highly encouraged to ensure that there is total activation of the iPhone at the store, which implies that the customer subscribes to a subscription and provides all the necessary paperwork.
Of course, under this new regime, it will greatly increase the time needed for each purchase. AT&T thus strongly encourages its employees to take a heavy load of overtime during the launching phase.
Note that to simplify the task, Apple provided to AT&T a version of iTunes that has been simplified to make only the activation of the iPhone.

Thanks to our readers for sending us the information. Hereafter are the prices of the iPhone 3G depending on the monthly subscription plan and on the iPhone 3G model.

As Switzerland is one of those countries where two carriers will offer iPhone 3G-based plans, one will have to wait for the prices to be unveiled by Orange CH, to see if customers can benefit from a competition between 2 carriers, or if it will not change a lot the prices currently applied in other countries where a exclusive carrier is owning a "iPhone 3G monopoly".

Apple released several updates, hereafter is a summary of them.

Time Capsule and AirPort Base Station (802.11n) Firmware 7.3.2
The Time Capsule, AirPort Extreme and AirPort Express Base Station with 802.11n* Firmware 7.3.2 updates include bug fixes.
Mac OS X Server Combo 10.5.4
The 10.5.4 update is recommended for all servers running Leopard Server.
Mac OS X 10.5.4 Update
The 10.5.4 Update is recommended for all users running Mac OS X Leopard and includes general operating system fixes that enhance the stability, compatibility and security of your Mac.
Safari 3.1.2 for Tiger
This update is recommended for all Safari Tiger users and includes stability improvements and the latest security updates.
Security Update 2008-004 (Intel)
Security Update 2008-004 is recommended for all Tiger users and improves the security of Mac OS X. Previous security updates have been incorporated into this security update.

In most cases, a PPC and or a Server version of the updates is also available from Apple Support Website

If ZDnet clock is indeed very simple to use, in reality it might not always provide the expected overclock experience expected.
Several reports we have collected from users and from the web indicate that it sometimes does not work at all. If it is too early to define rules, some users could achieve a substantial overclock while other could not even overclock the bus frequency by 1 MHz!
After performing several test, such variability seems to be linked to the RAM modules as we indicated yesterday it is the limiting factor. Some modules does simply not tolerate any change in working frequency, while others are more flexible and allow a substantial overclock as illustrated below: A 8-core Mac pro originally clocked at 3.2 GHz was pushed to 3.7 GHz and remain stable:

One should add that if the computer was stable, there were couple of small issues, audio output was slightly erratic, and the time clock was running faster! One can fix the problem on Mac Pro rev2 by simply rebooting, but this procedure does not work with Mac Pro rev1. however, in any case those issues are back if the computer wakes up after being in sleep mode.
Anyway, we want once more to congratulate ZDnet.de for such achievement, and we really expect that they will quickly expend the range of compatible CPUs to all Intel CPU which are used and have been used in Mac Intel.

An even more impressive aspect of Asus EEE PC than the price is their lifespan. The manufacturer continues to evolve their models at an unrestrained rate with the risk of confusing the buyers.
Thus, a new model of the EEE PC equipped with a 8.9" screen will soon arrive. It will use the same body as the 10" model in order to keep a larger keyboard. The preceding models, 900 and 901 are already considered at the end of life.
We suppose besides the will to give "pleasure" to its customers, ASUS spends most of its time finding the least expensive components in order to be able to gain the maximum money with these very cheap products.