I’ve got my second day CES coverage up at Tom’s Hardware.
One of the funnier bits I ran across was the dueling AMD / Nvidia booths in the North Hall foyer. I’m not sure if this was intentional, or an accident, but they’re almost right next to each other.
The potentially coolest thing I saw was Nvidia’s FG100 DX11 graphics card actually running in a PC. No word on final specs, pricing or power consumption, though. Now it’s off to CES Thursday and more meetings.
My first day coverage of CES has gone up at Tom’s Hardware.
CES is a strange show in some ways. It’s really a show for buyers, the people who decide what to order for store (and virtual store) shelves for the coming year. There are also classes, mostly targeted at those buyers. But it’s also a giant show for media. There are way too many journalists and bloggers trolling for too few stories.
Perhaps more accurately, there are too many journalists trolling the same ground. In some respects, that’s why blogging is great. A blogger who only cares about Internet connected fitness gear, for example, can just write about that.
On the other hand, if you’re a casual, but interested, reader, you’ll find vast numbers of articles on various web sites and newspapers about the same stuff. There is a definite herd mentality, particularly among the tech-focused, mainstream press. That’s the nature of the beast, though, so I’m not sure how it could change. Good writing makes up for this, and if I come across some really good articles, I’ll either post links here or in my twitter feed.
I’ll be at the Consumer Electronics Show, the annual confab for all things electronic, for the rest of this week, through Sunday, January 10th.
If you want to read my impressions, I’ll be posting daily reports at Tom’s Hardware. I’ll also be posting tweets from my twitter account, @loydcase.
I’ve got a busy schedule, mostly focused on enthusiast PC technologies. I’ll be talking to Intel, AMD, Asus, Gigabyte, MSI and many more. I’ve managed to squeeze in a little show floor time, too.
I’ve got some plans for Improbable Insights, too, but I’ll share those upon my return from Las Vegas.
We have Dish Network satellite TV service here at the Case House. The HD service costs a little less than the equivalent DirecTV or Comcast HD cable service, and I’ve really liked the DISH DVR functionality. (There is an ongoing patent dispute between Dish Network and TiVo regarding Dish’s DVR software, which has been dragging on in the courts for several years now, but that’s not what this is about.)
We’ve had a Dish Vip622 DVR running for several years now. The 622 is an HD DVR, which can record standard definition and high definition content. The day after Christmas, we were watching a DVD when the audio was almost completely drowned out fan noise. Have you ever heard a PC graphics card when its fan spun up to full speed? That’s similar to what we were hearing.
I paused the Blu-ray player and discovered that the Dish Vip622’s fan was spinning at full speed. Using the Logitech Harmony One to switch to TV mode revealed… nothing. No picture, no audio, nada. The Vip622 had bit the big one.
I’m not much of an online gamer. That’s not to say I don’t play online games. It’s just that, when I’m alone, I generally gravitate to single player games. On the other hand, I do like a good multiplayer game, and I get to indulge my desire for playing with others on a weekly basis.
The problem is, though, I’m spoiled.
So Intel and AMD settle their antitrust litigation for a cool $1.25 Billion. With a “B.”
The timing is certainly interesting, coming so soon on the heels of New York State’s recent filing against Intel on that same topic. Toss in the European Union judgment, and you get a picture of a beleaguered Intel, fighting a battle on multiple fronts.
What does the settlement really mean for consumers and OEMs? How will it affect AMD going forward?
And here’s a shot of the various Windows 7 upgrades. So far, I’ve installed several onto the five gaming systems I have set
up here. Some, of course, have already been running Windows 7, which I obtained from my Technet account, and have been using in articles on Windows 7.
There’s not really a lot I can add to the hoopla about Windows 7. Like any new OS release from Microsoft, there is good and bad. But for our weekly LAN party group, I’m looking forward to moving everyone to 64-bit Windows 7.
Four of five gaming rigs in the basement lab are now running Windows 7.
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I’ve been running the full release of Windows 7 since the RTM went up in August on TechNet, but today is the day that most users who are so inclined will pick up a copy of Windows 7 and attempt to install it.
Most of them will be successful. Windows 7 setup is remarkable forgiving, but some users will still have issues. Even I had a problem with one older laptop based on the original Core 2 Duo, in which Windows 7 installed fine, but the HD audio device refuses to work even though the driver reports itself as working normally.
Of course, there will be people who have issues, sometimes serious ones. That’s the nature of the PC.
It’s inevitable that whenever Microsoft does something, someone will complain about it.
That’s happening with Windows 7, with the actual official launch date still ten days off. The most visible slam against Windows was from my old boss, Jim Louderback, who wrote of his woes with Microsoft’s new OS, stating that Windows 7 is Vista all over again. Whoa, now that’s harsh.
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This is all kinds of awesome.
Yes, I’m being snarky. A little.
So the Windows 7 House Party Kit arrived. Now, I signed up through an email blast I received, well before that lame ”Hosting Your Party” video hit the street. Since I host our Friday Night Follies LAN party most weeks, I thought that having some weird theme like this to one of them might be mildly amusing.
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