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October 2010 • Vol 10 Issue 10

50 Dream PCs
The Ultimate System Showdown

Frontside Heavy Gear 24 Logisys 2.4GHz Wireless 800/1600

DPI Switchable Mouse
8 What’s Happening 18 Dream Hardware Asus ENGTX460 DirectCU TOP
15 Digital Economy 20 Nvidia 3D Vision Surround 25 Intel Core i7-970
Three Monitors, Three Dimensions & Western Digital TV Live Plus
Big Bucks 28 Corsair Hydro Series H70
22 In Win Dragon Slayer NZXT Phantom
Sentey SS1-2422 30 Lian Li PC-T60
ViewSonic VG2428wm

Copyright 2010 by Sandhills Publishing Company. Computer Power User is a trademark of Sandhills Publishing Company. All rights reserved. Reproduction of material appearing in Computer Power User is
strictly prohibited without written permission. Printed in the U.S.A. GST # 123482788RT0001 (ISSN 1536-7568) CPU Computer Power User USPS 020-801 is published monthly for $29 per year by Sandhills
Publishing Company, 131 West Grand Drive, P.O. Box 82667, Lincoln, NE 68501. Subscriber Services: (800) 424-7900. Periodicals postage paid at Lincoln, NE. POSTMASTER: Send address changes to
Computer Power User, P.O. Box 82545, Lincoln, NE 68501.

Did you find the hidden CPU logo on our cover? Turn the page for the answer.
 PAGE 92

Hard Hat Area Loading Zone Digital Living

PC Modder 76 The Bleeding Edge Of Software 88 Hulu Plus
31 Solid-State Storage 101 Inside The World Of Betas Can Hulu Beat Itself At
SSD Tips, Tricks & Tweaks 78 Up To Speed Its Own Game?
34 Mad Reader Mod Upgrades That’ll Keep 92 At Your Leisure
Bench Racer You Humming Along PC & Console Games & Gear
36 Modders-Inc.com 79 Broadband Benchmarking 96 The Cutting Edge
Hot Rod Mod-Off Tools To Measure Your Mbps When Bigger Was Better
Four Men Enter, 82 Sony Vegas Movie Studio HD
One Man Leaves Platinum Production Suite
Immunet Protect Free 2.0.11.12 Tips & Tricks
40 Advanced Q&A Corner 84 soft Xpansion Perfect PDF 6
97 Software Tips & Projects
42 X-ray Vision: Micropelt’s Editor 6.3.9
Expand Your Windows 7
TE-Power Node Nitro PDF Reader 1 Beta
Bag Of Tricks
Creating “Green” Power 85 Open Sores
From Excess Heat Linux Helps Level The
44 White Paper: OASIS Technological Playing Field For What’s Cooking
Meet The World’s Developing Nations
Smartest Countertop 100 Shavings From The Rumour Mill
Real Competition Is Finally Coming
To CPU Market
102 Technically Speaking
An Interview With Airvana’s
Infinite Loop Josh Adelson
105 Under Development
Strange stats and other A Peek At What’s Brewing
oddball items from In The Laboratory
computing’s periphery.
pages 98
Back Door
110 Q&A With Mark Coker
Smashwords’ CEO Rewrites
The Book On Books
 E D I T O R ’ S N O T E

J
ust as we realize that we’ve endured about as much of the
blazing hot summer as we can possibly stand and autumn
is finally in view, our thoughts turn to new pursuits, such
as . . . . Well, OK, maybe our thoughts stay on many of the
same pursuits we’ve been focusing on all summer; building,
modding, tweaking, installing, and benchmarking.
This month in CPU, we have taken a look at 16 PCs from a
variety of builders in three price categories. We think you’ll find
the results interesting (starting on page 50) whether you’re in the
market for a new PC yourself, you have a friend or loved one
Customer Service
who needs a new PC, or you just love checking out the parts and (For questions about your subscription or
configs your favorite integrator uses and seeing how they fared to place an order or change an address.)
[email protected]
when put to a battery of benchmark tests. Toll Free: (800) 733-3809
Also in this issue, check out our look at Nvidia’s 3D Vision Fax: (402) 479-2193
Surround (page 20), our roundup of broadband testing tools To make a payment
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One last thing: If you’re a fan of immaculately and skillfully General inquiries
Computer Power User
modded PCs, be sure and stop by page 36, where we briefly P.O. Box 82545
introduce you to each of the staffers/admins Lincoln, NE 68501-9507
at Modders-inc.com, who are currently Hours
locked in a titanic struggle to create the Mon. - Fri.: 7 a.m. to 8 p.m. (CST)
Sat.: 8 a.m. to 4 p.m. (CST)
coolest hot rod-themed PC mod. We’ll Online Customer Service & Subscription
most likely have the results of that contest Center
for you via pictures and words in our www.cpumag.com

November issue, and we’ll be heading Web Services

back to one of our most popular cover (For questions about our Web site.)
[email protected]
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Until then, enjoy the cooler tempera- Authorization For Reprints
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Gotcha.
Here it is.
 Compiled by W H AT ’ S H A P P E N I N G • H A R D W A R E
Blaine Flamig

Bigfoot Networks Cozies Up To Aliens

Bigfoot Networks may not be a household name among general PC
consumers, but in hardcore gaming circles the company’s gaming net-
work cards have earned a solid reputation, including the company’s
latest effort, the Killer 2100. Unlike “dumb” NICs that cause “huge,
unpredictable latency spikes” during gameplay, Bigfoot states that the
Killer 2100 “has latency in microseconds” thanks to its NPU (Net-
work Processing Unit) that offloads game data from the CPU and Windows. The
card evidently impressed Alienware enough for the game system builder to announce
in mid-August that it’s offering the Killer 2100 in Aurora, Aurora ALX, Area-51, and Area-
51 ALX systems. Alienware’s Frank Azor stated the NIC-system combo “represents a lethal
combination—maximizing performance for more frags, faster leveling, and higher scores.” ▲

DARPA Introducing ExtremeScale Samsung Touts 3D First;

Supercomputing Should You Care?
You know about Moore’s Law and the power-consumption, pro- Samsung’s BD-C8000 ($499.99) may very well
gramming, and architectural roadblocks making it more difficult to be the “world’s first portable Blu-ray player with
double the number of transistors on an integrated circuit approxi- 3D capability,” but don’t get too excited just yet.
mately every two years. So does DARPA. Thus, the agency recently Although the netbook-looking BD-C8000 will
announced a UHPC (Ubiquitous High Performance Computing) give you 1080P HD video on its 10.3-inch
program that “directly addresses major priorities expressed by Pres- screen, what it won’t give you is 3D viewing while
ident Obama’s ‘Strategy for American Innovation,’” including the on the go. For that ability, you’ll need to connect
exascale supercomputing Century Grand Challenge, energy-efficient the player (HDMI 1.4a integrated) to a 3DTV.
computing, and worker productivity. With the goal to “reinvent On the plus side, the BD-C8000 does build in
computing,” UHPC will involve developing “radically new computer Wi-Fi and is Netflix-ready. It also includes 1GB
architectures and programming models that deliver 100 to 1,000 built-in storage and access to the various goodies
times more performance” but are easier to program than present sys- that make up Samsung Apps (YouTube, Twitter,
tems. Intel, Nvidia, MIT, and Sandia National Laboratory have been Flickr, Pandora, etc.). Battery life, meanwhile, is
tabbed to build UHPC prototypes by 2018. ▲ rated at three hours. ▲

Watching The Chips Fall

Here is the CPU Released Original Price June 2010 Company Pricing NewEgg.com Retail Price*
pricing AMD Phenom II X6 1090T (Black Edition) 4/27/2010 $295 $295** $295.99
information AMD Phenom II X6 1055T 4/27/2010 $199** $199** $199.99
for various AMD Phenom II X4 965 (Black Edition) 8/13/2009 $245 $165** $165.99
AMD and AMD Phenom II X4 955 (Black Edition) 4/23/2009 $245 $145** $152.99
Intel CPUs. AMD Phenom II X4 945 11/4/2009 $165** $145** $135.99
AMD Phenom II X2 555 (Black Edition) 1/25/2010 $105 $93** $92.99
AMD Phenom II X2 550 11/4/2009 $93 $93** $87.99
AMD Athlon II X4 Quad-Core 640 5/10/2010 $122** $99.99** $105.99
AMD Athlon II X4 Quad-Core 635 1/25/2010 $119 $99.99** $99
AMD Athlon II X3 Triple-Core 445 5/10/2010 $87** $76** $80.99
Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition 3/11/2010 $999** $999** $999.99
Intel Core i7-975 Extreme Edition 6/2/2009 $999** $999** $1,039.99
Intel Core i7-970 7/18/2010 $885** $885** $899.99
Intel Core i7-930 Q1 2010 $294** $294** $289.99
Intel Core i7-875K 5/28/2010 $342** $342** $329.99
Intel Core i5-760 7/18/2010 $205** $205** $209.99
* As of August 2010 Intel Core i5-750 9/8/2009 $196** $196** $194.99
Intel Core i5-655K 5/28/2010 $216** $216** $209.99
** Manufacturer's
estimated price Intel Core i3-550 Q2 2010 $138** $138** $149.99
per 1,000 Intel Core i3-540 Q1 2010 $133** $117** $124.99

8 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 W H AT ’ S H A P P E N I N G • H A R D W A R E

Swiftpoint Bypasses The Touchpad

New Zealand-based Swiftpoint promises that its itty, bitty 1,000dpi optical
mouse ($69.95) will “change the way you use your laptop forever,” and it
may be right. Designed to work on a notebook’s palmrest, the impish rodent
is said to be 30 to 40% more efficient than a touchpad and accurate enough
for graphic design and gaming tasks. Further, beyond providing a scroll
wheel (zooming and paging), the mouse magnetically docks to its USB
micro receiver during travel. Better, a 30-second charge provides an hour of
mousing, while a full charge gives you three weeks’ usage. The mouse’s best
feature, however, is arguably the pen-like grip you’ll use, which is both intu-
itive and wards off hand cramps, Swiftpoint claims. ▲

HARDWARE MOLE
Shure Grows Up With SRH240m+
We’re not shy about admitting our long-time love affair with the “sound
isolating” earbuds that Shure has turned out over the years. The company’s
midrange E3c buds have found a home in our ears for years, and for the
longest time, the nearly $500 E500PTH were the best buds our ears had ever
experienced. Although we’ve yet to slip on the company’s new SRH240m+
($79.99), we’re excited at the prospect for more reasons than one, including
that the SRH240m+ represent Shure’s first over-the-ear effort for mobile de-
vices and specifically those from Apple. Beyond integrating a three-button
remote-mic unit in the cord to handle calls and control volume, the cups
pack 40mm neodymium drivers for full bass, mids, and highs. The ear pads,
meanwhile, are conveniently replaceable. ▲

Will Apple Get

Lyric Sings Probability Processing Liquified?
Lyric Semiconductor “emerged from stealth mode” in mid-August to de- Apple inked a deal with Liquidmetal
tail its probability processing technology, which is “poised to deliver a Technologies recently that gives it “a per-
fundamental change in processing performance and power consump- petual, worldwide, fully paid, exclusive
tion.” Compared to digital computer principles that systems have been license to commercialize” Liquidmetal’s
based on for 60-plus years, Lyric states, its logic gate circuit “uses transis- “amorphous metal alloys” technology
tors as dimmer switches instead of as on/off switches.” Thus, circuits ac- “in the field of consumer electronic prod-
cept “inputs and calculate outputs that are between 0 and 1, directly ucts.” In other words, it’s possible that
representing prob- everything from MacBooks to iPod cases
abilities—levels could sport really cool-looking, super-
of certainty.” The hard cases. On its Web site, Liquidmetal
technology is avail- states that its “alloys represent the first
able in Lyric’s LEC enabling materials technology since the
(Lyric Error Cor- creation of thermoplastics and possess
rection) for flash characteristics that make them superior in
memory offering many ways to other commercially viable
“30X reduction in die size and 12X improvement in power consumption materials.” Some of those characteristics
all at higher throughput compared to today’s digital solutions.” A “gen- include high yield strength and hardness,
eral-purpose programmable probability processing platform” called GP5, a superior strength-to-weight ratio and
meanwhile, could enable performance gains of 1,000X over today’s x86- elastic limit, high wear-resistance, and
based systems. GP5 chip samples are expected in 2013. ▲ unique acoustical properties. ▲

CPU / October 2010 9

 W H AT ’ S H A P P E N I N G • S O F T W A R E

deviantART Celebrates Birthday With Muro

Do you own an iPad and have some artistic chops? Then let us introduce you to Muro, a IT Pros
new HTML5-powered Aren’t
online application from
deviantART that’s com- Following
patible with notebook The Rules
touchpads, Wacom
drawing tablets, and the “Employees will al-
iPad’s touchscreen. Muro most always take the
comes in free Basic and path of least resist-
Pro versions and includes ance, even if that un-
21 “standard and interac- intentionally means
tive brushes, full-blown violating company
layer capabilities, and the policies and breaking
ability to upload directly security protocols,”
to your deviantART ac- says Frank Kenney,
count.” deviantART says vice president of
it plans to continue ex- global strategy at
panding the app down the Ipswitch. You can
road. For the uninitiated, count IT profes-
deviantART bills itself as “the largest online social network for artists and art enthusiasts,” sionals among
totaling 13 million-plus registered users and hosting more than 100,000 uploads daily. those employees.
Muro’s Aug. 7 release coincided with the site’s 10th birthday. ▲ According to a
survey the com-
pany conducted of
roughly 130 IT pros,
Apple Tosses Grooveshark From Its Tank about 40% copped
to sending sensitive
First Apple ripped the beloved Lala.com from our clutches. Now, it’s pulled the hook or confidential data
on Grooveshark, another favorite music-streaming service. Actually, Apple kicked via personal email
Grooveshark’s iPhone app accounts in an effort
to the curb roughly a week to cover their tracks.
after its Aug. 8 App Store Elsewhere, about
debut reportedly after 70% admitted to
Universal Music Group sending payroll,
UK voiced its disapproval. customer data,
Grooveshark says it spent a financial informa-
year prior to the August tion, and other clas-
launch reworking the app sified goods via
after Apple initially re- unsecured email
jected it. Universal’s beef at least once
apparently revolved monthly; 34%
around copyrights tied to admitted doing it
its pre-1972 music cat- daily. Of companies
alog, which streaming with file-transfer-
tracks from Grooveshark ring policies (about
allegedly infringed upon. 62%), Ipswitch
Grooveshark blogged that found that 72%
Apple’s move “comes as an absolute surprise to us, and we are not sleeping until we figure don’t have the means
out exactly how to fix this—and get Grooveshark for iPhone back in the App Store.” It to see files coming
added that those who had already downloaded the app could “keep enjoying it.” ▲ in and out. ▲

12 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 W H AT ’ S H A P P E N I N G • S O F T W A R E

SOFTWARE SHORTS
“You Addicted Me
To Your Game”
We don’t know what’s more disturbing: the fact that
Hawaii resident Craig Smallwood reportedly played
20,000 hours of Lineage II between 2004 and 2009 or
that he’s filed a lawsuit in U.S. District Court against the
game’s Korean publisher, NCsoft, alleging he’s so ad-
dicted to the game that he’s “unable to function inde-
pendently in usual daily activities such as getting up,
getting dressed, bathing, or communicating with family
and friends.” Smallwood also alleges that if he’d known
his fate, he wouldn’t have started playing to begin with.
He’s seeking unspecified monetary damages based on
claims that NCsoft “acted negligently” by not warning or
instructing players of Lineage II’s “dangerous and defec-
tive characteristics.” NCsoft has asked the charges be dismissed, but in August, U.S. District Judge
Alan Kay refused to do as much for all of Smallwood’s claims, meaning a trial is possible. ▲

Time To Get Chatty, Linux Lovers

It took nearly two years, but Linux users can now get vocal “Hopelessly
via Gmail voice and video chat. Google’s Tristan Schmelcher Inadequate”
blogged that the Linux addition was “our top video chat re-
quest.” Just go to gmail.com/videochat and download the related That’s how computer scientists at Geor-
plug-in, which makes chats available also from iGoogle and gia Tech Research Institute characterize
orkut. Ubuntu and other Debian-based distros are supported, seven-character passwords, even when
and Justin Uberti of Google Realtime Communications blogged containing symbols and alphanumerical
that “for those of you using RedHat-based distros, we’re plan- characters. The BBC reported that’s due
ning on adding RPM support soon, as well.” Uberti added that to “the growing number of processors on
“significant engineering” went into developing “an all-new video- graphics cards” that will “soon make it
rendering solution and an all-new PulseAudio-based audio han- trivial for them to crack short passwords.”
dler.” Additionally, “work to support 64-bit and countless Web Georgia Tech’s Richard Boyd and others
cam compatibility tests” were required. ▲ have been studying possible effects that
modern graphics cards’ number-crunch-
ing abilities can have on cracking pass-
words. According to Boyd, modern cards’
number-crunching abilities are compa-
rable to multimillion-dollar supercom-
puters from a decade ago, and parallel
processing systems in such cards are very
good at executing brute-force attacks that
“effectively try every possible combination
of letters and numbers until the right one
is found.” Ultimately, the researchers sug-
gest we could be forced to use entire sen-
tences to access online services. ▲

CPU / October 2010 13

 W H AT ’ S H A P P E N I N G • I N T E R N E T

5 Billion & The Atomic Bomb

Counting Has Nothing On The Internet
By now, the 5 billionth device We knew that chain-smoking, authority-fighting classic rocker John Mellencamp
should have been connected to the leaned toward the cranky side. What we didn’t know was how deep his crankiness
Internet, according to IMS Research ran, however, particularly toward the Internet. “I think the Internet is the most dan-
data. The company states, however, gerous thing invented since the atomic bomb,” Mellencamp recently spewed. “It’s
that the “second wave of connected destroyed the music business. It’s going to destroy the movie business.” On the latter,
device growth is accelerating” and he may have a point there. We’re not so sure about the notion that “some smart
will be “followed by further growth people, the China-Russians or something” could bring America to its knees first by
waves in many new connected de- hacking our power grid or financial system. Mellencamp’s technological contempt
vice types.” By 2020, IMS forecasts coincided with the release of “No Better Than This,” his new album recorded in
that 22 billion devices will be In- mono with just one microphone and a 55-year-old Ampex tape recorder. ▲
ternet-connected, including the
majority of the 6 billion-plus cell “Your Wi-Fi Is Making My Kid Sick?”
phones predicted to be in use glob-
ally. Other areas with tremendous Such is the general claim of a group of Ontario parents who say their children have
growth potential, IMS stated, in- experienced headaches, dizziness, nausea, memory loss, insomnia, and other symp-
clude televisions, as many of the toms they believe the school district’s Wi-Fi network is causing. The Canadian
2.5 billion TVs now in use “will be Press reported that the parents claim the symptoms disappeared on the weekends
replaced with Internet-connected when the kids were away from school, pouring yet more fuel on the great “electro-
sets” directly or via set-top boxes. magnetic radiation” debate. “I’m not saying it’s because of the Wi-Fi because we
Elsewhere, “an increasing portion don’t know yet, but I’ve pretty much eliminated every other possible source,” says
of the world’s 1.1 billion cars will Rodney Palmer, a Simcoe County Safe School Committee member. Reportedly,
be replaced over time by models the parents offered to pay for a wired network to supplant the Wi-Fi network but
that have Internet connectivity.” ▲ have been “ignored” thus far. ▲

SITE SEEING
YouTube Videos You’ll Want To Devour
As the newly launched Devour.com states, “about 25 hours of video is up-
loaded to YouTube every minute.” To watch every bit of those you’d need
roughly 1,700 hours, “so good luck trying to find something worth watching
on your lunch break.” From the minds of Uncrate.com, Devour.com aims to
help filter out the junk by handpicking the best of the best every weekday. The
result is both stately and customizable. As Devour.com states, expect “fewer cute kittens” and “more awesome.” Quality-
wise, every video is in HD and iPad/iPhone compatible. What you won’t get are on-site comments (you can still add your
own at the video’s original YouTube residence); thus, you can “enjoy the peace and quiet of not having to wade through all
the brilliant critiques from this great nation’s junior high masterminds.” Now, that’s awesome. ▲

Big Think=Big Ideas

The brainiacs behind BigThink.com believe “that not all information is equal.” They also believe “that expertise is invalu-
able and should be shared.” For example, if you “owned a business and wanted to expand into China or Russia,” you’d want
to hear from people who had already done that.” To that end, the site launched in 2008 aims to put you in “contact with
the ideas of very smart people” via countless hours of video interviews conducted with more than 1,500 experts. We’re
talking heavyweights here. Interviews are sorted into Arts & Culture, Business & Economics, History, Life & Death,
Science & Tech, Media & Internet, and other categories. Although the vast amount of intelligence on tap is initially over-
whelming in a “where do I start learning?” sense, may we suggest the “Life In 2050” special series, daily Ideafeed offerings,
and excellent array of blogs. You’ll feel smarter for having clicked by. ▲

14 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 Job Of The Month
If you want to be part of the iPad and tablet computing revolution, you may
want to go work for Amazon; the retailer’s Kindle software strategy is more
agnostic in nature than is e-reader rival Apple’s. The Kindle app for tablets
is going head-to-head with Apple’s own iBook app and other bookstore
apps/readers on emerging platforms. Amazon wants a Kindle Tablet Engi-
neer to help the company “change the way people read books on tablet
computers.” You will be part of a team dedicated to building Kindle apps for
those other portable reading devices. You will get to target unreleased hard-
ware and leverage those object-oriented design skills. Expect to use a range
of programming languages, as well, as you help build apps that millions of 145,339,538
readers will use. Number of blogs
bit.ly/duPyKx on the Web
as of late August
Women Leading The Social Media Revolution BlogPulse

Social networking has been the fastest-growing Internet activity in recent years, and according to
comScore, women are at the front of the charge. The analytics company finds that 75.8% of all
women online worldwide visited social networks in May 2010 compared to 69.7% of men. And
when women get onto these sites they stay there, 5.5 hours per month vs. men who stick around
only 4 hours per month. In North America, social networks reach 91% of all women online, second
86%
Percent of Chinese
only to Latin America, where the social nets touch 94.1%. mobile subscribers
who use SMS
Nielsen

The Web Gets More Chrome

Until this year, the browser wars appeared to have gone to the trenches among U.S. users.
According to StatsCounter, Internet Explorer had been maintaining about a 55%
or greater share of the market, Mozilla’s Firefox hovered at just around
30%, and several others essentially shared a distant third place, di-
64%
Percent of U.S.
viding up the rest. But Google’s Chrome browser has made a mobile subscribers
strong showing this year, growing a 5.92% share in January to a who use SMS
9.48% share in August. Firefox remains popular at 27.51% of Nielsen
the market, and IE is still at 52.95%. On a worldwide basis,
Chrome is doing even better, with 10.6% of the market.
Curiously, Google may be grabbing share from Apple.
StatsCounter is reporting that despite rising sales of Macs,
Safari use peaked in the spring at only about 4% of the 56.7
world market and about 8% in North America.
million
Number of U.S.
mobile video viewers
projected in 2014
Top Ten Most Popular Twitter Users* eMarketer

Account Followers Following Tweets

ladygaga 5,775,977 148,313 447
britneyspears 5,715,365 419,552 433
aplusk (Ashton Kutcher) 5,586,475 597 6,135
TheEllenShow 5,087,050 43,029 2,575
BarackObama 5,079,169 716,565 873
justinbieber 4,728,68 381,942 4,699
KimKardashian 4,541,521 121 3,118
Oprah 4,075,69 919 99
taylorswift13 3,990,85 946 729
johncmayer 3,615,94 788 3,327

*TwitterCounter.com, as of August 24, 2010

CPU / October 2010 15

 ike a franchise reboot, dreamy tech is like the concept of Eternal Return with a $200 bonus for passing Go. All this has
L happened before and will happen again. Only kewler.

by Marty Sems

Innespace Seabreacher X
We’re not sure just how Rob Innes and Dan Piazza
(www.seabreacher.com) spent the mid-1970s, but we’d wager
that “Jaws,” “Star Wars,” and “Smokey and the Bandit” had a
lot to do with it. The mad shipwrights have surpassed their
earlier efforts (November 2005 and December 2009 issues) with this 50mph
monsterpiece. It’s a two-seater stuffed with a blown, intercooled, 260hp mill,
along with GPS, an iPod dock, and a snorkel-mounted videocam linked to
viewscreens in the cabin. Pricing for the Seabreacher X, limited to a school of
just 10 fish, could swim past $90,000. Oh, and do not miss the video on the
site. If you can’t have a good time driving your own personal shark, well,
you’re no chum of ours. ▲

Panasonic HDC-SDT750
If 3D is going to have any kind of success in the living room, we would
hope that home users will have a reasonable way to make their own 3D
content. Panasonic (panasonic.net)
could supply the missing link
with the HDC-SDT750
camcorder, currently
preselling at $1,399.95
online for October
delivery, plus a couple of
models already shipping
in Japan (HDC-TM650
and HDC-TM750).
Each of these SD
memory card
cams shoots 2D
AVCHD video at
1080/60p and in
5-channel Dolby
surround sound.
Hook up the
included VW-CLT1 lens attachment,
however, and you’ll record 3D video with two 960 x 1,080 frames side-by-side. You can enjoy the
footage on your 3D TV through connections such as HDMI, archive it to AVCHD DVD or
BD, and even edit it with the included HD Writer AE 2.6T 3D-compatible editing software. ▲

Pinel & Pinel Arcade 80’s Trunk

Much of French artisan Fred Pinel’s (www.pineletpinel.com) handbuilt output consists of boxes,
leather, and leather-wrapped boxes. It only makes the odd multimedia novelty stand out the
more. Peep this, a $17,200 steamer trunk straight outta the ’80s, a la Rick(y) Schroder’s “Silver
Spoons” or Richard Pryor’s “The Toy.” Also available in crocodile skin, this game cabinet throws
threescore arcade classics such as Pac-Man onto a 1080p screen. It’s also an iPod dock with
110dB of thunder—and why not? Elsewhere, Pinel sells a Movie Trunk. This self-enclosed
home theater on wheels comes with a Bang & Olufsen flatscreen, DVD player, and sound
system. Hard to believe it’s from the same firm that sells a dog collar/ladies’ bracelet. ▲

18 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 reviews | hardware

Nvidia 3D Vision Surround

Three Monitors, Three Dimensions & Big Bucks
D seems to be the buzzword for 2010, we’ve enjoyed playing a number of games to three GeForce GTX 480s in parallel.
3 thanks to “Avatar,” 3D Blu-ray, and
that huge push toward 3D-compatible
in stereo.
3D Vision Surround represents some-
So, we’re left with two critical questions:
How much will it cost, and is the stereo-
TVs at this year’s CES. But the hardware thing much more opulent: gaming across scopic experience worth what you pay?
used to watch your favorite games and three displays, in stereo. With the advent
movies in 3D is by no means new. In fact, of Nvidia’s GeForce GTX 480, we now Build A 3D Vision
back in 1999, Elsa launched its Relevator have a graphics processor with enough Surround Setup
glasses, which employed the same LCD muscle to drive a 5,760 x 1,080 resolu- As with the ATI Radeon HD 5870
shutter technology that Nvidia’s 3D Vision tion (three 24-inch displays side by side) Eyefinity 6 Edition, AMD’s six-output
product features today. at playable speeds. card capable of driving a sextet of LCDs,
A key difference, however, is that 10 There’s just one problem: The GeForce 3D Vision Surround is aimed squarely
years ago we were using big, power-hun- GTX 480 only comes equipped with two at power users with plenty of cash. It
gry CRT monitors. Now, it’s all about the display outputs. So, driving three mon- requires a pair of graphics cards, a trio
LCD, and we’ve only recently had access itors means running a pair of 480s in of 120Hz displays, and 3D glasses. We
to LCDs capable of refreshing at 120Hz. SLI. That’s probably for the best, though. strongly suggest investing in a stand, too.
Why the emphasis on 120Hz? You want After all, stereoscopic mode requires Now, the good news is that Nvidia isn’t
around 60 frames per second, overall, in rendering each frame twice—once for limiting this technology to its current-gen
order to maintain a flicker-free viewing each eye. The workload truly requires a GeForce GTX 400 series boards. Owners
experience. With shutter glasses alternately couple of GeForce GTX 480s for per- of GeForce GTX 260/275/280/285/295
blanking out your right and left eyes, it formance that’s good enough for today’s cards (in SLI, of course) can also enjoy
takes a 120Hz screen to deliver those 60 DirectX 11 titles. 3D stereoscopic gaming. The recent
frames. Conventional 60Hz screens would The parts you’ll need to build a solid GeForce 258.96 driver package enables
only give you 30 frames in each eye. 3D Vision Surround setup are readily 3D Vision Surround across both prod-
Those 120Hz screens first emerged available, and if you want to push even uct families.
in concert with Nvidia’s 3D Vision more horsepower, you’ll be happy to know The bad news, however, is that it turns
technology back in 2009. Since then, that 3D Vision Surround works with up out that rendering a frame for each eye at

20 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 reviews | hardware

5,760 x 1,080 is a particularly demand- Most obviously, it’s incredibly expen- For the most Nvidia 3D
ing task. As a result, you can rule out sive. A pair of GTX 480s, three moni- part, games Vision-
reasonable performance from a pair of tors, a stand, and the glasses adds up to behave well in Compatible
last-generation cards in modern games. If more than $2,500—and that’s before stereo. A majority 120Hz LCDs
you’re going to spend the money on 3D building the rest of your gaming PC. requires one or
Vision Surround, you’ll really want a cou- Beyond sticker shock, the enjoyment of two specific fea- 1,920 x 1,080
ple of GeForce GTX 480s or 470s. gaming in 3D stereo is largely subjective. tures to be dis- Displays
To those two or three pricey graphics Some folks can’t see the depth effect at abled, but getting Acer GD235HQ
cards, you’ll need to attach a trio of 3D all, and others are bothered by it. If at all a suitable output Acer GD235HZ
Vision-compatible displays. There are cur- possible, find a friend with a 3D Vision isn’t particularly Alienware OptX
rently six LCDs capable of 1,920 x 1,080 setup and give it a try before dropping challenging, espe- AW2310
and three that run at 1,680 x 1,050 on the close to three large on your own. cially because Asus VG236
list, along with 15 different qualifying pro- In a more technical vein, there’s a seri- Nvidia’s driver LG W2363D
jectors. The options are clearly limited, and ous side effect of blanking out each eye 60 tells you the best LG W2363DB
to make matters worse, compatible LCDs times per second: the perceived brightness settings to use.
bear an onerous price premium. For exam- of a 3D Vision Surround setup is markedly It’s a little trou- 1,680 x 1,050
ple, Acer’s 23.6-inch GD235HZ, which reduced. In games with bright environ- bling to see rela- Displays
has average output quality, costs $400. ments, such as Just Cause 2, losing bright- tively new titles Samsung
Multiply by three and you’re looking at ness isn’t a problem. In darker titles, such like DiRT 2 and SyncMaster 233RZ
$1,200 for a 3D Surround configuration. as Left 4 Dead and Metro 2033, it’s more Aliens vs. Predator ViewSonic FuHzion
Of course, we can’t forget that 3D Vi- distracting. Consider the brightness reduc- completely un- VX2265wm
sion technology is dependent on LCD tion a necessary evil for now; we’ve yet to playable, though ViewSonic FuHzion
shutter glasses, which Nvidia sells for a cool be impressed by any of the other compet- Nvidia points to VX2268wm
$149 a set (after you’ve purchased the $199 ing stereoscopic technologies. AMD’s involve-
3D Vision kit that includes an IR emitter ment in the
and one pair of shades). At the very least, It’s Not All About development of
most gamers do their thing in solidarity, so Performance those games as
it’s unlikely you’ll need to sink a large sum When we talk about the merits of an the cause. The
into the active shutter glasses for spectators. expensive, high-end solution, its per- good news is that Nvidia tells you up
The final line item isn’t really mandato- formance takes center stage nine times front on its compatibility site whether
ry, but it does come highly recommended: out of 10. With 3D Vision Surround, your favorite software works well, helping
a stand. Lining up three displays side by you only need enough performance to you to make an informed decision.
side is difficult, and the desk space they play at your desired resolution and quali- With all of that said, Far Cry 2,
consume is substantial. Mounting the trio ty settings. Anything in excess of 60fps S.T.A.L.K.E.R., Battlefield: Bad Compa-
to a single frame, such as Ergotech’s Triple is overkill, because that’s where Nvidia’s ny 2, and Just Cause 2 all needed to run
LCD Desk Stand ($360), alleviates align- drivers cap speed. at 4,800 x 900 to stay above 40fps. Oth-
ment issues and minimizes the surface area More important than raw frame rate is erwise, our twin GeForce GTX 480s
monopolized by three displays. 3D Vision’s software compatibility story. couldn’t quite keep up. On the other
Titles that have received a lot of attention hand, the tandem of 480s handled Call
No Such Thing from Nvidia’s developer relations team, of Duty: Modern Warfare 2 at 5,760 x
As Perfect such as Battlefield: Bad Company 2 and 1,080 just fine, ranging from 50 to 60fps.
Despite the technological similarities, Just Cause 2, look amazing. They’re con-
stereoscopic gaming today is light years sidered 3D Vision-Ready, and the experi- The Future Of Gaming?
ahead of where it was a decade ago. The ence translates flawlessly to three displays. It’d be hard to give such an expensive
content is far more compelling, for starters. Those that came out before 3D Vision’s technology an enthusiastic recommendation,
Advances in graphics processing hardware time, or weren’t as influenced during especially with game compatibility varying
mitigate the performance penalty of ren- development, are subject to artifacts, on a case-by-case basis. Despite the issues
dering a unique frame for each eye, too. In resulting in ratings that range from it presents, though, 3D Vision Surround’s
fact, a pair of GeForce GTX 480s musters Excellent to Not Recommended, de- wow factor rivals seeing a game like
enough horsepower to drive many modern pending on the severity. You can check GLQuake rendered on a graphics accelerator
DX11-based titles in excess of 40 or 50 the relationship between 3D Vision for the first time. It’s a game-changer, to be
frames per second at native LCD resolu- Surround and your favorite titles at sure, and we hope to see it evolve further. ▲
tions. But 3D Vision Surround, for all of www.nvidia.com/object/3d-vision-3d-
its extravagance, is not perfect. games.html. by Paul Cross

CPU / October 2010 21

 reviews | hardware

In Win Dragon Slayer

eet an mATX minitower in the vein drives have twist locks Hi-Speed USB ports
M of Frank Frazetta. This Dragon
Slayer is just an airbrushed side-panel
that are color-coordinated
with the fan rotors, grom-
and the usual HD/AC97
jacks round out the
mural away from total awesomeness. meted drive rails, and front gallery.
In Win says that the hexagonally per- expansion card retainers. Slaying any dragon
forated steel motif is meant to evoke The consensus around requires adaptability,
chain mail. We see in it ye olde hex pa- the lab calls the hue and thus In Win allows
per, much beloved among turn-based matte neon yellow, if you to repurpose the
gaming nostalgists. not chartreuse. drive bays in a number
Breezy is the Dragon Slayer. Beyond its The front SuperSpeed of ways. Rest assured
quartet of included fans, its perforated and USB 3.0 connector termi- that if you need to
filtered side panel has rubber mounting nates in a long cable meant Dragon Slayer mount an SSD or prefer
grommets for up to four more 120mm to loop out the back $86.99 to use multiple burners,
blowers. There’s another paneled vent on through a rubber-lined In Win you’re covered. The
the floor to accommodate your bottom- hole, thence to mate with www.inwin-style.com hardware packet even
feeding power supply. an unattached and suitably includes several incon-
In Win pulls off a largely tool-less fast female port, such as on spicuous, peel-and-stick
design here. The pin brackets for the the motherboard or a daughtercard. Two cable tamers.
Pardon our meme-dropping, but this
Specs: Materials: Steel chassis, plastic and steel fascia; Motherboard support: microATX; In Win is full of, uh, win. ▲
Expansion slots: 5, 12.5 inches long; Bays (reconfigurable): 1 external 5.25-inch, 3 internal 3.5-
inch, 1 external 3.5-inch, 1 internal 2.5-inch; Dimensions: 16.9 x 7.7 x 16.8 inches (HxWxD); by Marty Sems
Fans: 1 front intake 140mm, 1 front intake 80mm, 1 rear exhaust 92mm; 1 top exhaust 140mm

Sentey SS1-2422
entey currently produces a series of threshold; you can also shortcoming: You’ll
S sleek, space-saving chassis, and the
classiest of them all might be the Sentey
set an alarm to beep
when the internal tem-
have to use low-profile
expansion cards and
SS1-2422. The smartly compact inte- perature exceeds your probably limit your
rior configuration, LCD, and plastic established value. cooling options,
bottom supports are a few of its useful The SS1-2422 avoiding tall, tower-
features. comes equipped with a type CPU heatsinks.
Though not necessarily geared toward 450W power supply On the other hand,
the builder with a penchant for water- that’s mounted on the the removable dual-
cooling and showy side panels, the SS1- anterior side of case, tray bay, designed to
2422 makes its presence known by its with the main power house the optical drive
piano black and maroon exterior and cable attached to the and a 3.5-inch drive,
interactive front panel. Occupying a third posterior AC connector. is convenient, giving
of the right-front panel, the blue-backlit The interior is slightly you easy access for
Sentey SS1-2422
LCD displays fan speed, speaker volume, cramped, but good installing drives.
$64.99
internal temperature, HDD activity, and cable organization is There’s another 3.5-
Sentey
power usage. The Set button locks an still very possible inch bay that could
www.sentey.com
internal temperature threshold and then thanks to a few pockets serve as an external or
ratchets the fan speed up to 100% if the of space throughout. internal bay; simply
internal temperature rises above that Clearly, the case’s narrow body is also its leave the corresponding maroon plastic
cover in place on the Sentey’s front panel
Specs: Case type: Slim tower; Materials: Steel, plastic; Motherboard compatibility: ITX, in the latter scenario. ▲
microATX; Bays: 1 5.25-inch external, 1 3.5-inch internal, 1 3.5-inch external/internal;
Slots: 4 low-profile; Dimensions: 12.79 x 4.09 x 15.74 inches (HxWxD); Fans: 1 80mm top; by Joanna Safford
Front ports: 2 USB 2.0, mic in, headphone; 450W PSU

22 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 reviews | hardware

the tiny, nickel-sized nano RF transceiver

Logisys 2.4GHz Wireless that makes wireless use possible.
A couple features worth noting include a
800/1600 DPI Switchable Mouse button on top to switch between 800dpi
and 1,600dpi. I preferred the 1,600dpi
pend just five minutes with the the mouse got lost in my largish hand when I option in all my usage. Elsewhere, although
S Switchable Mouse, and it’s apparent
that Logisys didn’t set out to do anything
used it for long stretches with a desktop PC.
The mouse is a looker, though. My
the scroll wheel lacks horizontal scrolling,
you can move between a Hyper-Fast mode
too fancy with this input device except give test unit was decked out in silver and for scrolling long documents and Web
users an attractive, affordable option that white trimmings complete with reflective pages and a Click-to-Click mode when you
will work as easily with a notebook as with chrome covering the backside. Models are need more precision.
a desktop PC. My guess is, however, you’ll also available in black/silver, green/white, If you desire more beyond this, you’ll
be more inclined to permanently match the and red/black. need to look elsewhere, as
mouse with your notebook. Overall, the Elsewhere, you’ll find what you’re getting here is a
rodent’s diminutive size lends itself far bet- padded, ridged grooves cut- basic mouse that’s ready to use
ter as an option during those times when ting into either side for the immediately upon plugging in
the prospect of using a touchpad for long thumb and pinky to rest. The the transceiver. ▲
periods just isn’t that appealing. mouse’s bottom, meanwhile,
Picture a baseball that’s been cut in half sports an appreciated on/off by Blaine Flamig
and you have a good idea about the Switch- switch to save battery power
able Mouse’s size and shape. Its light weight (one AA required), as well as a 2.4GHz Wireless 800/1600 DPI
makes it a great fit for a notebook bag, but slot inside the battery compartment to store Switchable Mouse
$20
Specs: 2.4GHz wireless; optical tracking; 800 or 1,600dpi; Hyper-Fast and Click-to-Click Logisys
scrolling; On/Off switch; low-power LED indicator www.logisyscomputer.com

Benchmark Stock Asus

Numbers GeForce ENGTX460

Asus ENGTX460 DirectCU TOP GTX 460 DirectCU TOP

3DMark Vantage Extreme (1,920 x 1,200)

he GeForce GTX 460 from Asus ENGTX460 DirectCU TOP Extreme
T came in too late to make it into last
month’s roundup, but we couldn’t pass up
$239
Asus
Overall
GPU Score
X6600
6337
X7590
7299
GPU1 20.06 23
the opportunity to get a closer look once usa.asus.com
GPU2 17.02 19.71
we saw the angular heatsink shroud paint- ●●●●
CPU Score 31307 31188
ed blue with white pinstripes, evoking the CPU1 (Plans/s) 4361.03 4356.75
iconic Shelby Cobra. CPU2 (Steps/s) 40.77 40.31
Under the hood, Asus overclocked the 1,920 x 1,200
GF104’s core clock to 775MHz, which is a Left 4 Dead 79.31 89.6
full 100MHz higher than the stock clock (8XAA, 16XAF)
of the 1GB GTX 460. The memory clock 460 is the twice removed second nephew Far Cry 2 (8XAA) 57.65 64.54

also got a boost from 1,800MHz to to the silicon-boiling big daddy that is the Dirt 2 (8XAA) 36.6 46.7
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: 20.8 23.8
2,000MHz. The shroud covers a substantial GF100 Fermi, heat is not an issue you need CoP (4XAA)
aluminum finned heatsink with three heat- to worry too much about. The backplane
pipes, and as we hinted above, it’s one of of this dual-slot card features a pair of DVI Asus’ overclocked GTX 460 managed to
the more attractive we’ve seen. However, ports and a mini HDMI port. Bundled score 5fps better than the stock GTX 460 in
because of its open design, some of the heat extras include a 4- to 6-pin PCI-E power 3DMark’s game tests, but Dirt 2 ran consis-
this card generates ends up circulating connector, a DVI-to-VGA adapter, a DVI- tently 10fps faster on the Asus card. Al-
throughout the case. But because the GTX to-HDMI adapter, and a CD wallet. though S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call Of Pripyat
showed just a 3fps bump at 1,920 x 1,200,
Specs: GPU: GF104; Core clock: 775MHz; Memory: 1GB GDDR5 (2,000MHz); 336 this card is one of the faster GTX 460s
CUDA Cores, 56 texture units, 32 ROPs we’ve seen, and the $10 premium feels like
a steal. ▲
Test system specs: CPU: 3.33GHz Intel Core i7-980X; Motherboard: MSI Big Bang
XPower; RAM: 6GB Crucial DDR3-1600; Hard drive: 128GB Patriot Zephyr SSD; Topower
1100-W PSU by Andrew Leibman

CPU RANKING ● 0 = ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS | ● ● ● 2.5 = ABSOLUTELY AVERAGE | ● ● ● ● ● 5 = ABSOLUTELY PERFECT

24 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 reviews | hardware

Also like the previous Core i7 six-core

Intel Core i7-970 release, this chip will drop into existing
Benchmark Results
SiSoft Sandra 2010
Intel Core i7-970

Socket LGA1366 motherboards, though Processor Arithmetic

ntil very recently, if you wanted a six- you might need to grab the latest BIOS CPU Dhrystone (GIPS) 146.2
U core Intel desktop processor, you had
only one speed bin and model to choose
update to support the new chip microcode.
From a performance standpoint, for single-
CPU Whetstone (GFLOPS)
Processor Multi-Media
105

Multimedia Integer (Mpixels/s) 273.6

from: the pricey 3.33GHz Core i7-980X or lightly threaded workloads, the Core i7-
Multimedia Float (Mpixels/s) 203.61
Extreme Edition. However, in the past 970 lines up slightly behind a quad-core
Memory Bandwidth
couple of months, Intel decided to intro- Core i7-975. However, in multithreaded
Integer Buffered iSSE2 (GBps) 22.35
duce a slightly more affordable six-core applications that make use of the chip’s Floating
chip, the Core i7-970. extra cores, the Core i7-970 is up to 50% Point-Buffered iSSE2 (GBps) 22.37
This new hexa-core beast, like the faster than its nearest quad-core counterpart PCMark Vantage
980X, is built on Intel’s new 32nm and within about 5 to 7% of the 980X. Overall 10257
process and clocks in not so far behind The Core i7-970 doesn’t carry such an Memories 7426
at 3.2GHz. Its top Turbo Boost speed extreme price, retailing around $885, mak- TV & Movies 6060
Gaming 11001
is 3.46GHz, compared to the 980X’s ing it a great “budget” chip if you want six
Music 7964
3.6GHz, and its QPI link speed is set to cores of Intel processing power. ▲
Communications 12660
4.8GTps vs. 6.4GTps for the 980X, the
Productivity 8481
latter of which won’t hamper performance by Dave Altavilla 3DMark Vantage
much, if at all. The 970 also has 12MB of CPU2 (fps) 38.3
shared L3 cache, just like its more expen- Core i7-970
sive six-core sibling. Built with Intel $885 Cinebench 11.5* 8.71
Hyper-Threading technology, the chip Intel
is able to offer 12 threads of processing www.intel.com POV-Ray 3.7**
resources to the OS. ●●●● Multi-Threaded 6135.04pps

Specs: 3.2GHz core clock (3.46GHz Turbo); 12MB L3 cache; Socket LGA1366, 130W TDP ET Quake Wars (low quality) 189.7
Crysis (low quality) 218

Test system specs: 3.2GHz Core i7-970; 6GB DDR3-1333; 150GB WD Raptor HD; *points **pixels per second
Nvidia GeForce GTX 280; Gigabyte EX58-Extreme; Windows 7 Ultimate 64-bit Games tested at 800 x 600.

ISO image of a DVD and use it like a

Western Digital TV Live Plus physical disc. Firsthand experience dic-
tates that moving all your physical DVD
e became fans of Western Digital’s USB 2.0 ports for USB flash or hard media from the TV room into the ga-
W second-generation TV Live shortly
after its Fall 2009 launch. It wouldn’t
drives with stored media. You can stream
content directly across your network if
rage will please your significant other,
create space, and provide instant access
play DRM content from Amazon Un- you choose not to use additional storage. to your film library.
box or the iTunes Store, but it handled We recommend an 802.11n or wired Overall, TV Live Plus is an incremen-
pretty much every video and audio file connection for streaming HD video. tal improvement over the prior, already
format in our collection. A tiny remote, Netflix streaming is the major new decent model. The quiet and very small
Ethernet port, HDMI 1.3, 1080p, feature on TV Live Plus. However, you hardware plays everything we care about
S/PDIF, component, and composite can also manage your Instant Queue with ease, and it’s reasonably priced.
support clinched the deal. The 10-foot without logging into a computer. The We’d like to see USB 3.0 support, a
UI was functional but Spartan. We liked other big feature gives you the ability to backlit remote, bundled 802.11n, Hulu
the support for media services, such as navigate DVD menus on ISO images of support, and a prettier UI in the next
Flickr, YouTube, and Pandora (with DVDs. That means you can mount an iteration, please. ▲
varying degrees of functionality), but
found the lack of Hulu and Netflix to by William Van Winkle
be obvious omissions.
WD’s new TV Live Plus model keeps
TV Live Plus
everything we loved about the original. It
$149.99
also has no storage, but it features two
Western Digital
wdc.com
Specs: Ports: 2 USB 2.0, HDMI, S/PDIF, component, composite A/V, Ethernet; remote
●●●●●
CPU RANKING ● 0 = ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS | ● ● ● 2.5 = ABSOLUTELY AVERAGE | ● ● ● ● ● 5 = ABSOLUTELY PERFECT

CPU / October 2010 25

 reviews | hardware

Corsair Hydro Series H70

orsair’s Hydro Series H50 has been The H70 includes similar mounting
C popular for those looking to test
the liquid-cooled waters, so to speak. Its
plates, so the installation process is about
the same as the H50’s. The radiator and
prefilled, closed-loop configuration, fan assembly attach to an available rear
good performance, ease of installation, 120mm fan mount. And after installing
and affordable price appealed to a broad the necessary retention plate for the par-
swath of users. With the new Hydro ticular socket, the cold plate/pump assem- Hydro
Series H70, Corsair aims to improve bly is screwed down securely. Series H70
upon the H50 in a few key areas while I tested the Corsair H70 (with its fans $109.99
maintaining the appealing aspects of running at full speed) with a Core i7-975 at Corsair
the original. stock and overclocked (4GHz) speeds. The www.corsair.com
Like the H50, the H70 is a prefilled, H70 decimated the i7-975’s stock cooler.
closed-loop liquid-cooler, compatible The Corsair Hydro Series H70 is a
with Intel’s and AMD’s modern desktop top-notch kit in almost every way, but the
processor sockets. The H70, however, improvements over the H50 come at a
features a thicker radiator with more price. The H70 will sell for about $110, Benchmark Corsair H70 Intel Core i7-975
surface area than the H50, dual fans putting a bigger dent in your budget than Results* Stock Cooler

arranged in a push-pull configuration, the H50. Still, we suspect enthusiasts who Stock
and an improved copper cold plate/ opt for the H70 will ultimately be pleased (idle/load) 35/51 40/67
pump assembly. The end result is a cooler by its performance. ▲
Overclocked
that’s as easy to install as the H50, but (idle/load) 37/59 42/88
with a superior ability to dissipate heat. by Marco Chiappetta
*All temperatures in degrees Celsius.

Test system specs: CPU: Intel Core i7-975,

Specs: Socket compatibility: LGA775/1156/1366, AM2/AM3; Materials: Cold plate: cop- Motherboard: Gigabyte EX58-UD5, RAM: 6GB
OCZ DDR3-1333, GPU: GeForce GTX 280,
per, Radiator: aluminum; Fans: 2 120mm
Storage: WD Raptor 150GB, Win7 Ultimate x64

NZXT Phantom
The NZXT Phantom is a full-tower to a switch that gives users the ability Overall, I really like the Phantom.
design that will be available in white, to toggle any case lighting on and off. Its aesthetics may not have universal
black, or red. Also note that the chosen The Phantom includes an array of fans appeal, but for the money, this case is
color covers both the exterior and interior ranging in size from 120 to 200mm. tough to beat. ▲
of the case. The Phantom has what I’d call Even with the fans running at their
an angular design: The front panel has a top speeds, the case remains relative- by Marco Chiappetta
triangular protrusion at the bottom, with ly quiet.
smoother curves up top. The case panels Because of its size and nearly tool-less
are littered with angular cutouts and design, working within the Phantom is a
metal-mesh perforations. breeze. All drives, with the exception of
At the top of the Phantom, users will 2.5-inch SSDs, which require a few Phantom
find a typical assortment of connectors, screws, can be mounted using tool-less $139
along with an excellent five-channel fan retention mechanisms or trays. Large NZXT
controller. The front of the Phantom has graphics cards will fit in the Phantom www.nzxt.com
a hinged door that hides five 5.25-inch easily, as will tall, tower-type CPU coolers
bays, and the back has all of the com- (provided the optional 200mm side-panel
mon elements of a full tower, in addition fan isn’t installed).

Specs: Motherboard compatibility: E-ATX, ATX, microATX, Baby AT; Materials: Plastic,
steel; Dimensions: 21.3 x 8.7 x 24.5 inches (HxWxD); Fans: 1 140mm front, 1 120mm
rear, 2 120mm side, 1 200mm top (LED); Fan mounts: 1 200/230mm side, 1 200mm top;
Bays: 5 5.25-inch external, 7 3.5-/2.5-inch internal; Slots: 7; Weight: 24.2 lbs

28 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 reviews | hardware

Lian-Li uses rubber grommets for the the clips, ties, and/or routing tunnels
Lian Li PC-T60 drives and power supply, but the chief to help with that? Although the T60’s
flaw here is an odd lack of tool-less de- build quality is up to Lian-Li’s habitual
onventional enclosures can make sign. With modern towers, we’re used to excellence, designers seem to have for-
C working with components tougher,
and unless we’re talking about something
clipping on a couple of rails on drives
and zipping them in and out of bays.
gotten how the chassis would be used
in the real world. ▲
wildly modded, it’s hard for a case to make That’s what you want on a “test bed.” Not
an impression these days. here. The T60 requires everything to be by William Van Winkle
Enter Lian-Li’s DIY Test Bench series. screwed down when spring-loaded pegs
These are open-air chassis built to hold might have served equally well in many
common form factor components in a spots. Also, the balance of the T60 is fine
way that’s efficient, accessible, and eye- if you have a relatively short CPU cooler.
catching. Lian-Li’s T60 for ATX and A large heatsink plus the tug of cables can
microATX boards may not have the sizzle tip the chassis back, causing you to shift
of Antec’s Skeleton, but it does have its the motherboard tray forward. But this
advantages, starting with color availability will put the cooler right under the handle;
in silver, black, and red. The red model if the cooler is too tall, the handle will have
costs $30 extra, but you do get black to come off.
standoff screws, whereas the silver model We also missed any sort of integrated
comes with silver standoffs. (We would cable management. Another idea behind
have preferred a pads-and-pegs approach a good test bench is to minimize foot-
to make board swapping easier.) print and improve tidiness. So where are PC-T60
$99.99
Specs: Material: Aluminum; Motherboard compatibility: ATX, microATX; Bays: 3 3.5-inch, Lian-Li
2 2.5-inch, 2 5.25-inch; 2 x optional 120/140 mm case fans; Slots: 8; I/O ports: 2 USB 3.0,
www.lian-li.com
1 eSATA, HD+AC97 audio; Dimensions: 15.75 x 13.82 x 12.99 inches (HxWxD)

Viewsonic VG2428wm VG2428wm

$369
Viewsonic
urrently available for about $270 and nothing out
C online, the VG2428wm is a scream-
ing deal if you want a top-end, 24-inch
of the ordinary
for a mainstream
www.viewsonic.com
●●●●

LCD but not the top-shelf price tag CCFL unit.

that’s often attached to such displays. The We’ve heard the default Win7
VG2428wm supports VGA and DVI-D from Viewsonic desktop, we meas-
ports but not HDMI. Instead, you get that the compa- ured 37.9W at
a two-port USB 2.0 hub and a 3.5mm ny is transition- 100% brightness, 27W at
stereo that feeds the 2W integrated stereo ing to LED backlighting 80%, and 22.5W at 50%, with
speakers. The speakers are sufficient for across its product line, and full-screen video maxing out at
voice and YouTube, but you wouldn’t we can see why. Despite excel- 41.2W. LED panels generally con-
want to game with them. lent color quality (that admittedly favors sume much less.
Using X-Rite’s i1Display2 package, reds a bit over blues before calibration), However, Viewsonic’s stand is bril-
we measured the VG2428wm out of the deep blacks, zero visible ghosting, and liant, allowing for a 90-degree pivot,
box with a 2.2 gamma, an already optimal excellent ability to preserve bright color 360-degree swiveling, almost effortless
6500K color temperature, a minimum grades without banding, the only weak- tilting from -5 to 20 degrees, and a
luminance of 0.3cd/m2, and a running ness in this model is its power consump- height adjustment spanning 5.3 inches,
luminance (at 100%) brightness of tion. With a solid black background on so you can be ergonomically comfort-
329cd/m2—a respectable 10% above the the Windows 7 desktop, we measured the able. The 0.75-inch bezel isn’t remark-
vendor’s specification. We observed only VG2428wm drawing 38.4W. A solid ably thin, but it’s svelte enough to escape
slight blooming around the bottom edge white background yielded 37.3W. With much notice. Overall, the VG2428wm
is one of the best monitor values we’ve
Specs: Size: 24-inch widescreen (23.6-inch viewable display area); Brightness: 300cd/m2;
tested recently. ▲
Contrast: 1,000:1 (static), 100,000:1 (dynamic); Viewing angles: 170 (H), 160 (V); Response
time: 5ms (typical); Warranty: Three-year limited by William Van Winkle

CPU RANKING ● 0 = ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS | ● ● ● 2.5 = ABSOLUTELY AVERAGE | ● ● ● ● ● 5 = ABSOLUTELY PERFECT

30 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 hard hat area | pc modder

Solid-State
Storage 101
SSD Tips, Tricks & Tweaks

S
olid-state drives are a hot com-
modity with enthusiasts these
days. Although SSDs are still
exponentially more expensive on a
cost-per-gigabyte basis than traditional
spinning platter-based hard drives,
competition in the segment has put the
drives within reach of many more
power users than was the case even just
a few months ago. It is now possible to
score an inexpensive SSD to use as a
boot volume for well under $100.
When paired with an inexpensive, stan-
dard hard drive, SSD users can have the
best of both worlds—ultra-low access
times and speedy transfer times from
the solid-state volume and cheap bulk
storage from the HDD. A fast SSD and
high-capacity hard drive have become
the preferred storage configuration for a
large percentage of power users. Right out of the box, modern solid-state drives like this OCZ Vertex 2 offer significant
The relative affordability of current- performance benefits over traditional hard drives. However, as is usually the case with a
gen SSDs is a definite boon to perform- relatively new technology, there are almost always modifications and tweaks that can be
ance-conscious users. It has been said performed to maximize performance and reliability.
many times before, but it bears repeating
here: Moving to solid-state storage is
arguably the most effective and percepti- copied to the drive. In particular, we rec- updating. Keep in mind, though, that
ble upgrade one could perform to a sys- ommend completing the following tasks some firmware updates are destructive
tem. And although simply installing and before actually using your new SSD: and will wipe all data from the drive,
using an SSD will result in increased per- update its firmware, secure-erase it, set the which is why new SSD owners should
formance under most circumstances, motherboard’s SATA ports to use AHCI check for firmware updates immediately.
there are still a multitude of system modi- (Advanced Host Controller Interface), Some will argue that secure-erasing an
fications and tweaks you can perform to and create any partitions using an SSD- SSD before using it is unnecessary, and,
further enhance the performance and aware tool, such as the one built into for the most part, they’d be correct. But
longevity of an SSD. Windows 7. we’ve encountered more than one SSD
Updating the drive’s firmware is self- that exhibited strange behavior and per-
Primped, Primed & Ready explanatory. New SSD firmware typically formance fresh out of the box, and secure-
A handful of SSD optimizations introduces additional features (such as erasing them resolved the issues. So take a
should be performed before an operating TRIM or garbage collection) or enhance minute and secure-erase the drive using a
system is installed or a single file is even performance, so it’s almost always worth tool like HDD Erase before installing

CPU / October 2010 31

 hard hat area | pc modder

anything to the drive. We explained how

to use HDD Erase in “Advanced Q&A
Corner” a few months back. (See page 40
in the May 2010 issue.)
We also recommend using AHCI
mode with any modern SSD because
legacy ATA specifications don’t have
accommodations for several new features,
including TRIM. Some SSDs have con-
trollers that won’t benefit from using
AHCI, but the latest drives that use
Marvell or SandForce controllers will,
and their performance will be increased
as a result. To use AHCI, you’ll have to
enable it in the motherboard’s system The TRIM command lets an operating system send instructions to a solid-state drive to
BIOS before installing the OS. AHCI is recover and erase blocks that are no longer in use due to a file being deleted, moved,
also necessary for TRIM to function; you modified, etc. But TRIM will only function under certain configurations, and it isn’t
should definitely be using AHCI to main- always enabled by default. To enable TRIM support, you must also enable AHCI, install
tain peak performance if your drive has the proper AHCI drivers, and enable TRIM within the OS.
TRIM support.
Finally, when setting up the drive for information, for the drive’s controller to take to wring out some additional per-
the first time, use an SSD-aware parti- reclaim as space for wear leveling, formance. As we mentioned earlier,
tion utility that will align the drive garbage collection, etc. Although SSD enabling AHCI is important. But it is
properly. Older partition tools from the manufacturers often do this to an extent equally important to use the right AHCI
pre-Vista era will likely create the first already, giving more space to the con- drivers to ensure TRIM is functional.
partition on an SSD at sector 63, which troller allows the drives to potentially The drivers included with Win7 are
is usually in the middle of an SSD page. recover from dirty state more rapidly usually all that is necessary, depending
A misaligned SSD could degrade per- and makes more blocks available for on your motherboard’s southbridge or
formance significantly and cause OS bad-block replacements. the SATA controller being used, but the
stuttering problems due to increased Manual overprovisioning is as easy as latest Intel Rapid Storage Technology
read-modify-write operations being per- creating a partition size that is smaller drivers support TRIM, too. This is an
formed. Proper SSD alignment requires than the total volume of your SSD. For area that is in a constant state of flux,
that the first partition start at sector example, if you have a 120GB SSD, cre- however, as newer drivers are released,
128. The partition tool built into Win7 ate a partition of 110GB and let the so check your chipset manufacturer’s
(or the latest versions of GParted) will drive’s controller reclaim the spare 10GB. Web site for the latest with regard to
create a partition on an SSD properly, so We acknowledge that storage space is AHCI drivers.
use the newer tools to ensure the drive is a limited commodity with SSDs, but if Even with the proper drivers installed,
configured properly. you can afford to overprovision some it may be necessary to manually enable
The final pre-OS installation tweak is space, the drive will usually recover from TRIM from within Windows. To check
manual overprovisioning, but before we dirty states faster and theoretically have that TRIM is functional, open a com-
dig into this technique, the procedure a longer life span. mand prompt with Administrator privi-
requires a bit of explanation. It is some- leges. At the prompt, type fsutil behavior
times mistakenly called “short stroking” Performance Optimizations query DisableDeleteNotify and press
an SSD. Basically, manual overprovi- Once the initial setup of your SSD is ENTER. The result “DisableDeleteNotify
sioning means leaving a portion of flash complete and Win7 is installed, there = 0” means that TRIM is already func-
memory blank, without any partition are a number of other steps you should tional. If the result is “1,” then you need

Manual overprovisioning is as easy as creating a partition size

that is smaller than the total volume of your SSD.

32 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 hard hat area | pc modder

to manually enable TRIM from the overprovisioned area. Having this over-
prompt. Type fsutil behavior set Maximize Longevity provisioned memory is not only one of
DisableDeleteNotify 0 and press ENTER. The fact that the NAND flash memo- the ways manufacturers extend the life of
If AHCI is enabled and the system’s ry used in today’s SSDs can only handle their drives, but also a method to main-
AHCI drivers are TRIM-capable (and the a finite number of writes before failing is tain peak performance during TRIM and
SSD has TRIM support, of course), the well known. To help minimize this limi- garbage collection operations.
feature should be enabled after entering tation, and also account for the in- With that in mind, taking steps to mini-
the aforementioned string. If TRIM does evitable bad blocks in some NAND mize writes to an SSD is a good idea. As
not work after making the change, how- flash memory chips, SSD manufacturers such, the next mod we’ll mention will help.
ever, it’s likely due to a driver or firmware typically provision additional memory Windows maintains a number of dif-
problem. Look to update the drivers and for wear leveling, garbage collection, bad ferent logs and updates them constantly
firmware where possible. whenever the OS and a given service(s) are
Another worthwhile SSD perform- running. Unfortunately, all of the updates
ance tweak is to disable Windows’ make tiny writes to the drive, which is a
indexing on the drive. By default, drive no-no with an SSD. Moving the logs to a
indexing is enabled within Windows to different drive, preferably the HDD you’re
speed searches, but SSDs have such low using for bulk storage, is somewhat tedious
access times that indexing is largely use- but very straightforward.
less. Indexing also makes many small First, create a new folder on the hard
writes to the drive to modify index drive and name it whatever you’d like.
results, which is detrimental to the Then navigate to the C:\Windows
longevity of the drive. \System32\winevt\Logs folder, highlight
Disabling indexing is quite easy, all of your log files, and drag them over to
thankfully. Simply click the Start Orb, go the new folder. Then, click the Start Orb,
to Computer, right-click the SSD, and type event viewer into the Search field, and
choose Properties from the menu. On the press ENTER, assuming you’re using
General Tab, remove the check mark Win7. (Event Viewer is available under
from the box labeled “Allow Files On Administrative Tools with other versions of
This Drive To Have Contents Indexed In Windows.) When Event Viewer opens,
Addition To File Properties.” Disabling expand Windows Logs and select the
index on a drive full of files can take a By default, Windows enables indexing on
Application and Event logs to see a list of
few minutes, but it’s worth the wait when all drives to speed searching. A side effect
all of the log files being maintained on the
using an SSD. of this indexing results in many small
system. Right-click each of the logs under
A couple of other quick SSD perform- writes to the drive when modifying results.
Windows Logos, select Properties, and, in
ance-related tweaks have to do with vir- Solid-state drives have such low access
the Log Path field, update the path with the
tual memory, namely the page file and times, however, that the indexing service
info for the new folder that you created.
ReadyBoost. SSD users should always set is rendered effectively useless. So, disable
Please note, the filename of the log must
the size of the page file manually (use the the indexing service to minimize drive
also be in the path, or the change will not
recommended value on the virtual mem- activity and writes.
take effect.
ory settings page) and keep it on the
SSD. Also, don’t use ReadyBoost. Ready- Solid State In A Solid State
Boost is a feature within Windows that block replacement, etc. The practice is There are reasons SSDs have become
essentially uses a USB flash drive as a known as overprovisioning, which is so popular with power users, namely per-
page file mirror, but there’s no USB flash what we did earlier while prepping our formance and reliability. And it is well
drive fast enough to match the speed of a SSD. Some SSDs sold as 100GB drives, within the power of savvy enthusiasts to
SATA SSD. for example, actually have 128GB of adjust both of these aspects of their SSDs.
flash memory; the additional 28GB is the This starter article should help you clear
some of the more common hurdles, but
Some SSDs sold as 100GB drives, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of other
SSD-related mods out there worth explor-
for example, actually have 128GB of flash memory; ing. Happy tweaking! ▲

the additional 28GB is the overprovisioned area. by Marco Chiappetta

CPU / October 2010 33

 hard hat area | pc modder

Give Us Your Mod

Have a computer mod that will bring tears to our eyes? Email photos and a
description to [email protected]. If we include your system in our
“Mad Reader Mod” section, we’ll send you $1,500 and a one-year subscription to CPU.

34 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 hard hat area | pc modder

Bench Racer
A s we’ve mentioned on several occasions in CPU, there is an incredibly robust
LAN community in the Pacific Northwest, and it contains a large number of
dedicated, skillful modders. One of the factors that helps make modding such a
big deal in the area is the presence and support of Danger Den, a company of PC
enthusiasts that started out just wanting better gear for their own rigs and ended
up turning that passion into a highly successful business.
The quality of Danger Den’s products and the impressive amount of work they
do in the local community haven’t gone unnoticed; massive, world-class PC compo-
nent manufacturer Asus is a fan of Danger Den’s people and products. The dialogue
between the companies recently led to a unique collaboration.
Asus’ Republic of Gamers brand of motherboards and graphics cards probably
needs no introduction at this point. RoG stuff started showing up in 2006 and
has been a fixture among gamers who build and upgrade their PCs ever since. The
newest motherboard to bear the RoG name, the Rampage III Extreme, is a full-tilt
gamer’s and overclocker’s board: Its standard configuration provides everything
you could ask for except 4-way SLI. Asus decided to balance the desire some RoG
customers had for full 64-lane PCI-E 2.0 support with affordability concerns and
came up with a unique solution: the RoG Xpander.
The Xpander is essentially a daughtercard for the RIII Extreme with four PCI-E
slots and two NF200 chips that gives the board full 4-way SLI support. The trade-
off is that an Xpander-enabled RIII Extreme won’t fit in a standard case. Asus was
looking for a cool way to showcase the board and the Xpander, talked to the guys at
Danger Den, and the Bench Racer was born.
Bench Racer consists of a Danger Den Black Series LDR Tower 29, the Asus RIII
Extreme with Xpander option, four Asus GeForce GTX 480s, an Intel Core i7-980X
Extreme Edition, Antec’s TPQ-1200 six-rail 1,200W power supply, a 100GB Inferno
SSD and a Sector 7 Edition 6GB 1800MHz Enhanced Latency DDR3 kit from
Patriot, and custom watercooling from Danger Den, including dual radiators, reser-
voirs, and pumps plus waterblocks and fittings for the board and graphics cards.
Danger Den’s Dennis Leach says that Bench Racer is the result of a conversa-
tion he had with Brian Jang of Asus prior to the rush of activity that leads into
PDXLAN. Jang had arranged for a custom Danger Den case to show off the RIII
Extreme, and Leach asked him if Asus planned on including the Xpander.
“Brian told me that it wasn’t really meant to be put in a case,” Leach says. “It
was for bench racing.” He told Jang that Danger Den’s cases are totally customiz-
able and that they’d love to build a case to fit the Xpander, and when Jang asked
if Danger Den could have it done in time for the LAN, Leach said yes, eager to
meet the challenge. When he hung up the phone, Leach says, he wondered briefly
if he’d bitten off more than Danger Den could chew.
“All I could think was, ‘You just shot yourself in the foot,’” he says.
We’re not sure how Leach’s feet are at this point, but as you can see, the Danger
Den Black Series LDR Tower 29 with Xpander Option turned out pretty well, and in
addition to wowing the crowd at PDX, also recently graced the floor at QuakeCon.
“The few days I had to build it were a blur, but it was really fun working with all
the different vendors and making this awesome machine a reality,” Leach says. ▲

CPU / October 2010 35

 I f you’re into modding, chances are pretty
good that you’re familiar with Modders-
Inc.com. The site is an invaluable resource
Now the guys have decided to put
their skills to the test in a contest that
will provide the winner with Modders-
and different with each mod to help him
learn new techniques. He doesn’t have a
favorite modder or mod outside of his
for everyone from beginners to seasoned Inc.com bragging rights while proving own work; he enjoys the variety of mods
modders, and it’s packed with how-to arti- that you don’t have to have a fully he sees posted at his site and at LAN
cles, worklogs, and modding-related prod- equipped machine shop and thousands events all over the country and says that
uct info. The guys behind the site and the of dollars to create a good-looking mod. every modder has his own style that makes
podcast are skilled modders themselves, and Thus, we are happy to present the them great. He admits, however, that he
we’ve been fans for years. In fact, several of Modders-Inc.com Hot Rod Mod-Off, admires Bill Owen of MNPCTech.com
the “Mad Reader Mod”-winning systems sponsored by Thermaltake, Asus, for building his passion into a business,
over the years have come from Modders- Crucial, OCZ, and Mad Catz. which most modders would probably
Inc.com staffers. The rules are simple: Each of the four love to do.
Modders-Inc staffers started off with the He advises anyone just getting started
same canvas, Thermaltake’s Element S, in modding not to get discouraged if
and will have to do all work on the mod things don’t turn out right the first time
themselves—no outside help with paint, (or the second time). “One of my favorite
metalwork, graphics, custom created quotes is, ‘I haven’t failed, I’ve found
parts, and so on is allowed. All work must 1,000 ways that don’t work,’” he says.
be done using basic tools that most peo- Carel is aware of the talent he is up
ple have at home, such as power drills, against, and he replied that he knew he’d
sanders, saws, pliers, and so on. As the have to turn up the heat a bit. “This case
name of the contest implies, any sort of mod will have the most painted graphics I
vehicle may provide the inspiration for have done so far, so I will have to make
the Hot Rod mods. sure that it’s perfect,” he said.
When the mods are done, the guys
will install components from the con- Craig “Tech-Daddy” Tate
test’s sponsors and will show them off If you’ve ever listened to the Modders-
both at Modders-Inc.com and here in Inc.com podcast, you’ve probably heard
the pages of CPU. A panel of judges the deep, “radio guy” voice of Craig Tate.
(Brian “Boddaker” Carter, Bill “Overkill Tate is a frequent sight at LAN events in
Bill” Owen, Ton “TiTON” Khowdee, the Dallas, Tex. area and an accomplished
and CPU editor Chris Trumble) will pick modder. He began experimenting with
the winning mod. Check back next mods in 2002 or so and has a flair for hot
month for more on the Mod-Off, but for rod-themed case mods that should serve
now, we thought we’d help you get to him well in this contest. In fact, Tate’s
Tony Day’s Green Flame mod. know a little more about the Modders- inspiration for this contest comes from
“I am sure Vic is gunning for me Inc contestants. the Ford GT-40. “It’s an amazing vehicle.
from the start, as usual,” Day I’m going to try and use some of the
says. “That’s OK, though, I know
Dewayne body’s style elements to influence this
where he lives and I can be there
“Americanfreak” Carel build,” he says.
in about 12 hours.” Dewayne has been modding for about Tate especially enjoys working with
10 years, and his favorite mod is always LED lights, due to their flexibility and
the one he’s currently working or has just size. “They consume very little electricity,
completed. He tries to do something new create little to no heat, and you can build

36 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 them on their own or get as complicated started thinking about how I could Vic’s favorite aspect of modding is the
as you want utilizing controller boards incorporate both of them into the mod,” paint process. “I really enjoy making
and programming,” Tate says. “They are he says. Day originally thought about rattle-can paint—well, any type of paint,
just a perfect tool to be used in modding.” using them as mufflers (exhaust fans) or actually—do things it wasn’t meant to
Tate’s best advice to aspiring modders: sticking them on the hood as air clean- do,” he says. “When things work out
“Patience is key. If you mod fast, chances ers (again, in an exhaust role), but real- right, I can turn out some unusual effects,
are you will not like the results. Also, start ized he’d be making less efficient use of with great results.”
with attainable goals; modding is about a them than they are designed for, so he McGuire knows he’s up against some
series of little victories along the way, so went back to the drawing board. “I’m tough competition, but says his process
don’t make your mod so complicated that still thinking about this setup, we’ll will largely stay the same, although he’ll
it defeats you and leaves a foul taste in just have to wait and see how I imple- push himself to share more of what he
your mouth toward modding.” ment them.” does in his worklogs. “Being a car nut, my
goals are to build a Hot Rod mod that I
Tony “Tazz” Day Vic “XcaliburFX” McGuire will enjoy looking at and using and to win
Day has been modding for nearly Vic McGuire’s modding career began Best in Show at the end of the Mod-Off,”
six years now and says he’s enjoyed each about five years ago when he created a McGuire says. ▲
and every project. “I must say, though, Tinkerbell-themed mod for his daughter.
that Green Flame is by far my favorite His mods frequently draw on themes
mod, which is probably why I still own related to family and friends for inspira-
it,” he says. tion, including one of his favorite recent
Day says it’s tough to pick a modder or projects, his Call of Duty mod.
a particular mod that he thinks of as his “It’s somewhat of a small tribute to my
favorite, as there are so many great ones to son, who is currently in Afghanistan, and
choose from, but says one of his favorites the many other soldiers who serve their
was definitely Defyant’s HP Resurrection country daily,” McGuire says.
II mod (you can see Defyant’s first HP
Resurrection mod on the cover of the
January 2007 issue of CPU).
“Give up World of Warcraft and
come back to modding, buddy, we all
miss you,” says Day.
Day has some ideas for his Hot
Rod Mod-Off build: “After seeing Vic McGuire has
that Thermaltake supplied us with done a number of military-
Spin-Q CPU coolers, I realized that themed mods, including this
I already had one on hand and one, inspired by Call of Duty.
“Me, talk smack? I am sure
Tazz will, so . . . just bring it!”

Craig Tate’s Deuce mod, featured

in the May 2010 issue of CPU.
(See page 107.) “You might as
well hand the ribbon to me . . . it’s
all over but the crying,” says Tate.

Dewayne Carel created this military radio backpack mod for Cooler
Master. His message to the other Mod-Off contestants: “My A-game will
be in full force on this one, and you guys will never know what hit you.”

38 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 Get informed answers to your advanced technical introduced a number of new GPUs. But there was a time when a
whole succession of chips from the company all performed some-
questions from CPU. Send your questions along what similarly. If you look back through launch articles for the
GeForce 8800 GTX, GeForce 9800 GTX/GTX+, and GeForce
with a phone and/or fax number, so we can call GTS 250, you’ll find that they all perform within a few percentage
points of one another. The GPUs on all of those cards feature 128
you if necessary, to q&[email protected]. Please
stream processors, although there is some variation in terms of
include all pertinent system information. clock speeds, ROP and texture unit configurations, and memory
bus width.
We don’t have exact head-to-head comparisons between all
Each month we dig deep into the CPU mailbag in an effort to answer three of those cards, using the same test system, drivers, etc., but
your most pressing technical questions. Want some advice on your next we can make some general observations based on the results we do
purchase or upgrade? Have a ghost in your machine? Are BSODs have. The GeForce GTS 250 scored 3,077 3DMarks in 3DMark
making your life miserable? CPU’s “Advanced Q&A Corner” is here Vantage at launch, compared to the GeForce 9800 GTX+’s 3,057
for you. and the GeForce 9800 GTX’s 2,864. Looking further back, the
GeForce 9800 GTX scored 13,882 3DMarks in 3DMark06, com-
Stephen C. asked: I’ve been looking at some of the newer hard- pared to the GeForce 8800 GTX’s 12,746. So, we’re talking about
ware specs for video cards and always have wondered how much bet- an approximate 7.4% advantage for the GTS 250 over the 9800
ter the mid- to high-level cards (obviously skipping the cutting-edge GTX, and about 8.9% advantage for the 9800 GTX over the 8800
cards) are in comparison to my current Asus EN8800GTX. Have you GTX. If we take a bit of a leap, we can say with some conviction
ever done comparisons between higher-end cards from yesteryear and that there’s about a 16% spread between the GTS 250 and the
today’s budget to midrange cards just to see how big the difference is 8800 GTX, give or take a few percentage points.
between both price . . . and bottom-line specs? With all of that said, the GeForce GTS 250, performs roughly
on par with the ATI Radeon HD 4850 (3,077 vs. 3,141, respective-
A: This is a question that comes up fairly often. Unfortunately, ly). And the Radeon HD 4850 offers about half of the performance
older hardware like the GeForce 8800 GTX you reference does of a modern Radeon HD 5870, to give you an idea of how every-
not have a perpetual place in the lab. As modern hardware thing fits together, so to speak, in the current landscape. In addition
arrives, older, more dated hardware is ushered out; it gradually to performing much lower, however, keep in mind that the older
disappears from the market, and we don’t typically test it again. cards also offer fewer features and lack support for DirectX 11.
The GeForce 8800 GTX is in an interesting case, however. As for price, finding a new 8800 GTX anywhere other than
Since the GeForce 8800 GTX’s initial release, Nvidia has obviously eBay is next to impossible, so it’s difficult to draw any solid con-
clusions. That being said, the bulk of GeForce GTS 250s retail
between $100 and $120, which should give you a rough idea of
what your 8800 GTX’s performance is worth today.

Betsy H. asked: My husband and I were recently given new

Windows 7 laptops. I got a new Acer machine, and he got a Toshiba.
Generally speaking, we’re both really happy, but we’re having a cou-
ple of annoying problems. We have an older WinXP machine in our
home office, connected to an HP LaserJet that we have shared over
the network. On my machine, I can see the shared printer, but I can-
not print to it. When I click Print, the office machine throws a “spool
32” error and nothing comes out of the printer.
How fast are older cards My husband’s problem is a little more confusing. His machine is on
such as the Asus EN88000GTX compared the network and has Internet access, but he can’t see any machines or
to modern offerings? (Hint: Not very fast at all.) printers on the network all at. Can you help?

40 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

A: Congrats on the new laptops, Betsy! And yes, we think we can
help with your problems. Let’s tackle your husband’s issue first.
Because his machine is on the network and getting Internet access,
his problem is most likely related to one of three things: the work-
group name, network discovery, or firewall settings. On your hus-
band’s machine, make sure his workgroup name matches yours
(and the WinXP machine’s) in the Advanced System Settings.
Also, be sure to enable network discovery in the Advanced Sharing
Settings. Finally, if his notebook came with a preinstalled third-
party security suite, try searching for the printer with the suite’s
firewall disabled. Having seen this issue many times in the past few
months, we’d bet that there’s an overly restrictive software firewall
running on your husband’s machine that needs to be tamed a bit.
The error you’re receiving when you try to print sounds like
some sort of incompatibility between Win7 and the printer’s dri-
vers or WinXP’s print spooler. The first thing to try to remedy
the situation is to install the latest drivers for your printer and Gigabyte’s GA-EX58-Extreme motherboard might need incremental
then reconnect to it on your laptop. If that doesn’t help, you can flash upgrades from earlier revisions of the BIOS before you can
try bypassing the spooler altogether and printing directly to the flash to the latest revision.
printer. On the WinXP machine, open the printer properties and
then click the Advanced tab. On the Advanced tab, you’ll see an
option labeled “Print Directly To Printer.” Select that option, Now, on to your motherboard issue. We’ve seen this many
apply the changes, restart your machine, and try printing from times over the years, when Intel or AMD release a new core
the new Win7 laptop again. revision, especially chips that have new power requirements,
like Intel’s new 32nm Gulftown core. Although Intel designs
Bob T. asks: I recently decided I’d upgrade my aging Core i7- many core migrations to be socket-compatible (though it’s not
920 quad-core chip (I know, just kidding: It’s not that old) to some- always the case), it’s up to motherboard manufacturers to
thing of the six-core variety from Intel. However, I’m having some ensure their power supply and regulation components on the
issues with my motherboard now, and I’m wondering if I’ll have to motherboard, along with the BIOS microcode that supports it,
rip that out since it might not support the new 32nm chips properly. are compatible with new chip requirements. In your case, the
I have a Gigabyte GA-EX58-Extreme motherboard, and it always good news is that your Gigabyte motherboard should work
has performed really well with my 920 chip. I recently purchased a with that Core i7-970 just fine.
Core i7-970, since it cost about $150 less and has only 133MHz Likely, what you need to do is go back to Gigabyte’s Web site
slower core clock than the Core i7-980X. Unfortunately, my GA-EX58 and download older revision BIOS images, perhaps as far back as
mobo won’t boot at all with it, but if I swap the chip back to the Core when Gigabyte introduced the first version that supported Intel’s
i7-920, it boots just fine. I tried grabbing the latest BIOS from the new six-core CPUs for that motherboard. Many times, trying to
Gigabyte site, but no matter what I do, I get a flash program error flash-upgrade with the most recent revision of a BIOS image will
saying it’s an “incompatible BIOS file,” or something like that. fail because, somewhere along the way, the BIOS image check
I’m stuck and not sure what to do. Any clues? I’d hate to have to routine of the flash upgrade program determined that your cur-
return the Core i7-970 or upgrade the motherboard. Also, did I go rent BIOS image was too old to be considered upgradable. So, in
wrong picking up the Core i7-970? Should I have sprung for the extra short, you need to perform at least one incremental upgrade from
money and got a 980X? Are there any other performance differences an older BIOS revision before you can move forward and flash-
in the new 970 chip I should know of? upgrade the BIOS to the latest revision. Once you flash to a
BIOS image that is compatible with the most current version,
A: Fear not, Bob. You can probably get that board to wake up you should be good to go.
just fine with your new Core i7-970. (By the way, we like your At the very least, you should be able to download an older
practical approach of choosing a new processor.) The Core i7- revision of the BIOS that fully supports your new Core i7-970
970, like the top-end Core i7-980X, has 12MB of shared L3 chip. Good luck! ▲
cache backing its six processing cores. Other than the clock speed
differences you mentioned, the only other difference between the
970 and 980X is the QPI interface speed, which is 4.8GTps for by Dave Altavilla and Marco Chiappetta,
the 970 vs. 6.4GTps for the 980X. You’re not going to see much, the experts over at HotHardware.com.
if any, difference in performance due to QPI speed, however. In
general your performance for lightly threaded or single-threaded For bonus material, subscribers can go to
apps should drop in just under a Core i7-975 quad core. www.cpumag.com/cpuoct10/q&a.

CPU / October 2010 41

 Micropelt’s TE-Power Node
Creating “Green” Power From Excess Heat

M
ost proposals and ideas for TE-Power Node doesn’t create a lot of initial research was with fiber-optic com-
“green” energy involve taking energy, but it is enough to power a wire- munication systems and micro-cooling
existing products and ideas, less sensor. devices for lasers. Energy harvesting
and figuring out ways to make them use became a research priority for the com-
less energy. CFL light bulbs provide the Energy Harvester: pany beginning in 2007.
same amount of light as traditional Micropelt Through its energy har vesting
incandescent light bulbs but use about Micropelt, a German company that research, Habbe says, the company
one-fourth the power, for example, while specializes in energy harvesting, could was able to develop a constant voltage
household appliances continue to make batteries obsolete in wireless sen- to supply the low-power wireless sys-
become more energy efficient. sors, thus making them virtually mainte- tems early in 2009. However, he says,
The next logical step for green tech- nance-free. Energy harvesting involves the market was skeptical that the tech-
nologies is not only to save energy, but collecting ambient or waste energies nology actually would work in a real-
also to create energy . . . something that from a system or product, and convert- world situation.
could power a device continuously, with- ing that waste energy to electrical energy “That made us decide for developing
out the need for a secondary power source. that can power a device, such as a wire- a wireless demonstration platform,
Micropelt has shown that such a less sensor, without the need for batteries which would also serve as a ‘harvesting
technology is possible, with its TE- or a permanent electrical power source. meter,’” Habbe says. “Our engineering
Power Node. The TE-Power Node is a Micropelt is a 2006 Infineon spin-off, team did a great job of making best use
unit that attaches to industrial devices, founded in Freiburg, Germany. Burkhard of off-the-shelf technology, and it took
converting the excess heat (which is Habbe, vice president of business devel- them less than three months to come
waste energy) into electrical power. The opment at Micropelt, says the company’s up with the first version of the TE-
Power Node.”
Micropelt has begun production of its
chips for the TE-Power Node in the sec-
Wireless Sensors Deployed Worldwide ond half of 2010. The TE-Power Node
currently is available in an evaluation kit.
Micropelt estimates that more than 1.4 billion wireless sensors are deployed Habbe says Micropelt plans to greatly
around the world every year, and the market is growing. Without some sort of increase production of TE-Power Nodes
ability to generate their own electrical power, each of those wireless sensors in 2011.
runs from battery power, and batteries require maintenance. The TE-Power Node According to Micropelt, 1.4 billion
potentially can operate for 10 or more years without the need for maintenance. wireless sensors were deployed worldwide
Source: Micropelt in 2009 in commercial, industrial, and
consumer applications, such as when
Total Market In Millions Of Units Of Wireless Sensors monitoring: commercial heating units,
HVAC units, the conditions of bearings,
pressure valves, and the structural condi-
Static devices and condition monitoring: tion of machines.
HVAC/machinery/ 375
Micropelt’s energy harvesting tech-
home appliances/medical nology can power most wireless sensor
networks (WSNs), as long as the unit
Smart sensors and measurement generating the heat is 10 degrees
systems: flow/temperature/ 350
Celsius (18 degrees Fahrenheit) higher
pressure/vibration than the temperature of the energy-
750
harvesting unit.
Mobile devices and tracking/tacking: “We just wanted to create enough
transport/logistics/RFID/cargo/ power to run the [wireless sensor],”
supply chain (SKUs) Habbe says. “We were surprised at how
much headroom we actually had. The

42 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 TE-Power Node Dissected
With TE-Power Node, the system converts the output from the thermoelectric gen-
erator (TEG) to a constant voltage.
Micropelt’s wireless sensor module works with a low-power microcontroller, the
MSP430 from TI, and a 2.4GHz transceiver chip from TI, the CC2500. An inter-
integrated circuit connects two digital temperature sensors to the MSP430. A USB
receiver connects the wireless sensor to a computer.
The other parts of the TE-Power Node include:
TE-Power Node did a brilliant job in
removing the basis of all skepticism that
our chips would not be able to power
wireless sensors.”
1 Micropelt’s MPG-D751 is a TEG
mounted on an aluminum base plate
with digital and analog temperature sen-
4.2 x 3.4mm TEG MPG-D751

Other Implementations sors. (The TEG measures 0.165 by

0.134 inches.) The aluminum base
Although you probably won’t see in
the near future an energy-harvesting
draws heat from the heat source, and 1
the TEG converts this waste energy to
device attached to your computer, mak-
electrical power.
ing use of the excess heat that the proces-
Sockets for the
sor generates, Habbe says the concept 2 x M1 thread

2 The heatsink base attaches to the module ONE and

Sockets for heatsink
should work with a variety of implemen- for radio
module PLUS
board above the TEG. The base of attachment
tations, both in the next few years and in module

3
the standard aluminum heat sink is 0.6
the distant future.
by 0.6 inches. However, the TE-Power
“The TE-Power Node concept itself
can be made much smaller and cheaper
Node can make use of a variety of 2
heatsinks, which allows the customer Magnets
by reducing it to a specific purpose,” he
to select the best one for each situa-
says. “A final product may look very
tion. The heatsink’s fins transmit the
similar or totally different. Essentially,
heat from the aluminum base to the
it has to implement a thermal path, Power management
ambient air. Radio
which provides, on average, sufficient
power to match the purpose of the sys-
tem and the duty cycle demanded by
the application.”
3 The bottom of the unit includes four
magnets for mounting the unit to the
heat source, along with two holes for 4
For example, Habbe says it’s possible
attaching the unit with screws, if the
to see this type of energy harvesting Adjustable voltage output
customer desires.
used in home heating and cooling sys-
tems in the near future, helping to
manage temperature fluctuations for
better energy efficiency with no battery
4 Additional boards attach to the main
board. They include a radio for
transmitting the wireless sensor data, a 5
maintenance required. 30mm
power management board for the fixed
Habbe says it’s exciting for Micropelt
output voltage, and an adjustable output
to be involved in research into this type
voltage board. 25mm
of energy technology. 60mm
“We have just begun to understand
the implications of wireless sensing in
5 Once the standard system is assem-
bled, it measures about 2.36 x 1.18
many areas of professional and person-
al life,” Habbe says. “A due paradigm
x 0.98 inches (60 x 30 x 25mm). 6 Convection stream

shift in maintenance alone . . . can

have a solid three-figure-billion-dollar
impact. [We] can stimulate energy sav-
6 Proper mounting of the TE-Power
Node will have the heat (convection
stream) move across the fins, and the
ings to an unforeseeable degree. It is
mounting is important to achieve the
very exciting for us to ride at the top
proper heat transfer. If the fins cannot
of this wave.” ▲
dissipate the heat, the overall system
will not be as efficient at generating
by Kyle Schurman
electrical power because the temperature differences will not be as large.

Source: Micropelt

CPU / October 2010 43

 hard hat area | white paper

White Paper: OASIS

Meet The World’s Smartest Countertop

uick quiz: Would you know objects and human gestures. They relevant information from local and

Q
or bok choy?
a cherimoya fruit if you saw
one? How about a sea bean
demonstrated OASIS for the first time in
the summer at the Research@Intel Day
2010, completing an intense several
Internet databases.

OASIS Research
If you wouldn’t know those fruits and months of research and development. Harrison has been looking at interac-
vegetables from an Ugli fruit, how would OASIS creates interactive surfaces— tive systems for more than a decade, and
you feel if your kitchen countertop what the researchers call “islands”—in technological advances have finally made
showed you up by identifying all of them everyday environments, such as kitchen a system such as OASIS a reality.
in less than a second? countertops. Using a combination of “I’ve been looking at combined virtual
Beverly Harrison, a senior scientist object- and gesture-recognition tools and and physical systems for more than 15
with Intel Labs Seattle, teamed with algorithms, depth cameras, and pico pro- years,” Harrison says. “Many things have
University of Washington graduate stu- jectors, OASIS can create an interactive changed from when I looked at it 15
dents Ryder Ziola and Nate Landes to display on almost any flat surface. The years ago. . . . Three to four years ago,
create OASIS (Object-Aware Situated system tracks physical and virtual objects, Intel started looking at these pico projec-
Interactive System), which is an interac- displays menus and content, tracks user tors, thinking they would be good for
tive display system that can recognize gestures, creates GUI buttons, and pulls this type of project.”

The OASIS System Demonstration

In the system demonstrated at Research@Intel Day, all of the soft- Harrison, a senior scientist at Intel Labs Seattle, says both com-
ware required to run OASIS (Object-Aware Situated Interactive ponents were advanced prototypes.
System) worked on a 2GHz dual-core Dell Inspiron laptop (bot- “There are a bunch of pivotal components to make this sys-
tom-right corner of the photo). OASIS makes use of a variety of tem work,” Harrison says.
types of software, including rendering software, calibration soft- Eventually, Harrison says, the OASIS system will use laser pico
ware, computer-vision algorithms, and GUI software. The com- projectors because of their small size and because the system will
puter can be hidden behind the not need adjustable focus capa-
scenes while the user gestures bilities. When using a stationary
and interacts with the counter- surface, such as a kitchen coun-
top surface. tertop, the projector will require
The projector used for the only one plane of focus, allowing
output was a 170 lumen SVGA for less complex projectors.
LED projector along with a During the demonstration,
depth camera (shown at the top the projector and the camera
of the pole in this photo). Input both used approximately the
for the OASIS system involves same field of view on the
using a depth camera (some- countertop, about 24 x 36
times called an RGB+D camera). inches (LxW).
The camera collects the re- Finding projectors that were
quired input information for bright enough was a challenge,
object recognition and tracking, Harrison says. An average con-
as well as finger input detection. During the demonstration, the ference room projector provides about 1,200 lumens.
camera was mounted 30 inches above the counter. The 320 x “Clearly, over time, brightness and power consumption are
240-pixel depth camera captures both RGB data and depth data. competing as tradeoff issues,” Harrison says. ▲
Microvision provided the pico projector for the demonstra- Source: Intel Labs, Research@Intel Day
tion, while PrimeSense provided the depth camera. Beverly

44 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 hard hat area | white paper

She teamed with the University of learning techniques to people, objects, design affects object-aware interactive
Washington students late last year. and gestures.” systems; better predict how users would
“In the computer science department Harrison says recognition systems 15 interact with the system; and develop an
in general, we recruit graduate students,” years ago relied on reading bar codes on interactive system that can create the
Harrison says. “We’re very proactive products. Past projectors were large, leav- “islands” in everyday environments.
in trying to get students interested in ing them to be used primarily in confer- The key to the OASIS system is its
new technologies.” ence rooms for business applications and ability to blend physical objects with
Ziola is a graduate student in the white boards. Newer technologies have virtual actions, Harrison says, making
computer science department who had made a system like this finally possible, the interactions seem natural to users.
worked with an interactive projector pro- Harrison says. Additionally, the system must address
ject in the past before joining the OASIS “The size and form factor of the cam- how to create new objects, delete objects,
research team. Landes is a visual design eras, plus the advent of depth cameras create groups of objects, and save interac-
school student at Washington, and [are key],” she says. tions with certain objects for later use, all
Harrison says that before working with of which were part of the researchers’ sys-
Intel, the design school has worked with The OASIS System tem design plans. Users also must have
related projects in the past, such as The OASIS system makes use of depth the ability to recover from errors, either
designing a “home of the future.” cameras and pico projectors, which are by undoing an action or by “backing out”
“The three of us started last fall and very small projectors that can be about of a series of commands.
worked from about November to April,” the size of a digital still camera. The pico OASIS uses computer vision to identi-
Harrison says. “It was intense. . . . Both of projectors don’t use a lot of power. In fy physical objects. For example, when an
them had a great experience. In terms of fact, the OASIS system can draw power orange is placed on a kitchen counter—
the project, this [collaboration] produced from already-installed lighting circuits in the “island” for the OASIS system—the
a fantastic outcome.” a kitchen, for example. system uses its camera and software to
During the OASIS project, the team “This project is much cheaper than . . . recognize the object. It then projects a
was able to build on past research with Microsoft Surface . . . and much more virtual text label and interactive button
interactive systems. deployable,” Harrison says. next to the object.
“It reduced unknowns and risks,” Harrison says that the team had three For the demonstration, Harrison says,
Harrison says. “Our lab has also had a goals when they began work on OASIS: the OASIS system used a 3D representa-
long-term interest in applying machine develop an improved understanding of how tion of the counter with no objects on it as

Identifying Objects
The OASIS system recognizes objects as they’re placed on the countertop (A). The
projector displays a “button” along with the name of the object. The buttons—also B
called interaction points—usually appear less than a second after the object is placed
on the countertop (B). ▲
Source: Intel Labs, Research@Intel Day

Putting Objects To Work A

You have many options for using the objects that OASIS recognizes. In this example, the B
orange is placed on the countertop, and the system creates a button for it (A) and a text
label (not shown). By “pressing” the orange’s button, you’ll open a menu of options (B).
Menu options could include finding recipes that use oranges, finding related fruits and
ingredients, or finding more information on oranges through the Internet. All of the menu C D
options are related to the object in question. In this example, the user has selected the
grocery list button (marked with a large green circle in the C and D photos). The user can
add oranges to the grocery list by dragging the blue slider button (C), which turns orange
as the user slides it to add five oranges to the list (D). ▲
Source: Intel Labs, Research@Intel Day

46 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 hard hat area | white paper

a reference. Then, as users placed objects Object recognition. The OASIS sys- Windows desktop,” Harrison says. “It
on the counter, OASIS would compare the tem can make use of built-in databases should feel more like it’s centered around
original, empty 3D scene to the new scene. and can mine Internet databases to help it the task that it’s trying to accomplish.”
The system computes the depth of an recognize objects. The decision to include The design behind the applications
object using infrared light measurements. the capability to access a variety of data- needed to provide necessary feedback to
“Anything that appears becomes an bases was important, Harrison says, users while avoiding confusion.
object of interest, and the system starts because it adds another level of function- “There were lots of questions,” Har-
trying to recognize it or track it,” Harrison ality to OASIS. rison says. “‘How do you show when
says. “Because we have a 3D model of Finger tracking. Harrison calls the fin- something is recognized?’ ‘How do you
the background, it doesn’t have to be a ger tracking built into OASIS a simple put down an entry point?’
flat background.” version of gesture recognition. “A lot of discussion was about whether
The system works on almost any type of “What we’re mainly doing for the to launch things automatically or to make
surface, including highly polished granite or applications is to separate what is a ‘hover’ it all manual. How do you error-correct?
copper. Harrison says a strong wood grain versus a ‘touch’ point,” Harrison says. There has to be a graceful way of backing
in a surface can cause some problems with “It’s kind of like the stage zero of building out from an error.”
the system, such as showing legible text. a gesture recognition system.”
By using a depth camera, the OASIS The depth camera provides the key to Design Challenges
system is able to distinguish between a determining the hover versus a touch. Some of the challenges the OASIS sys-
finger hovering over the counter surface “Without a depth camera, you need tem might encounter when trying to read
and a finger that’s actually touching the to use some tricks [to distinguish objects include the following: interference
surface. The system does this by measur- between a touch and a hover],” Harrison from other sources of infrared light, sur-
ing the location of the fingertip in the 3D says. A depth camera “obviously greatly faces that don’t reflect infrared light,
space and then aligning it to a vector improves accuracy of determining the highly reflective surfaces with busy pat-
that’s perpendicular to the counter sur- user’s intent.” terns (such as detailed wood grains),
face. When that vector reaches a certain Building applications. Designing transparent objects (such as plastic water
point in the 3D space, the finger is regis- OASIS’ interactive feel was very impor- bottles), or gestures from hands with a lot
tered as touching the countertop. tant, Harrison says, because the system of jewelry. However, Harrison says
needs to be as easy to use—and as natural improved hardware and other advance-
Key Design Components to use—as possible. ments in OASIS’ underlying technologies
Harrison says three components were “We did not want to make it look like should help the system overcome these
central to the design of OASIS. we were using a projector to splash a challenges in the near future.

Virtual & Physical Objects Working Together

OASIS can use a mix B
A
of physical and virtual
objects on the counter-
top, and the physical
and virtual objects work
in the same fashion
whenever it makes logi-
cal sense to the sys-
tem. In other words,
you can perform the
same functions on an
object, whether it’s virtual or physical. C
After placing an orange on the counter (A), OASIS recognizes it. The user
can touch the physical orange’s button and drag and drop to make virtual
copies of it. When the physical orange is removed (B), the virtual oranges
remain available for performing menu tasks. To remove the virtual oranges,
you can place one in the virtual drawer (C), making it available later, or you can
simply use your finger to touch and drag it off the edge of the countertop. ▲
Source: Intel Labs, Research@Intel Day

CPU / October 2010 47

 hard hat area | white paper

Beverly Harrison demonstrates the

OASIS interactive system on a countertop.

Some of the other challenges for user has placed a stray object inside the demonstration, and the project may
OASIS have been controlled through the boundaries, the system will recognize it receive more attention after an additional,
design process. and create a button. However, if the user more detailed demonstration in October.
System boundaries. Most systems have takes no further action with the object, “We’ve had lots of press coverage,”
boundaries, such as the distance limitations the object’s button and virtual represen- Harrison says. “It tells a story everyday
of a Wi-Fi network or cellular phone net- tation will simply fade away after a cer- people can relate to.”
work. Those networks often use a system tain amount of time. Harrison says the researchers don’t
of signal strength bars to tell users when focus on the potential commercialization
they are close to the system’s boundary. Future Of OASIS of OASIS, and they don’t make predic-
With OASIS, the system projects lines Although the initial demonstration of tions about if or when the system could
on the counter that show the boundary OASIS used a laptop computer, Harrison appear in homes.
whenever the user initially interacts with says additional research work has included “Beyond the scope of our research, we
the system. Those lines fade away to avoid driving the system with a workstation, a don’t speculate on those cycles,” she says.
clutter on the countertop, unless the user set-top box, or even a cell phone with a Although the OASIS’ initial demon-
places an object near the boundary. The pico projector built into the phone. It’s stration focused on kitchen and food
lines will then reappear. possible that a 1GHz Atom processor applications, the system can work for
System startup. With OASIS, the sys- could power the system. many different types of applications that
tem goes into a “sleep” mode whenever it “We’ve experimented with different require a mix of physical and virtual
doesn’t detect any movement after a set form factors,” Harrison says. “The com- interactions. Any countertop would
period of time. Once it detects any move- ponents allow us to open the door to work, such as a kitchen, bathroom, or
ment of a physical object or hand gesture other applications. I [don’t] want to drive coffee table.
inside the system boundaries, the system it on high-end workstations. Eventually, I With OASIS, you have the chance to
immediately “wakes up” and begins track- want to use the Atom and a smartphone. . turn any surface into a “smart” counter-
ing. Users don’t have to use a particular . . It creates an environment where you top. Just don’t feel bad if it appears to
on/off gesture. can try a lot of new things. I think it will be smarter than you when it correctly
Ignoring the system. With the migrate to a lot of things. It’s a small step identifies the weird piece of fruit that
“always on” aspect of OASIS in mind, to get a phone with a projector.” your spouse brought home from the
how do users tell the system when they Harrison says the research team grocery store. ▲
don’t want it to track an object within has received quite a bit of attention
OASIS’ boundaries? With OASIS, if the and positive feedback since the initial by Kyle Schurman

48 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

50 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com
 nce a year, CPU drills deep into the heart of modern

O computing, takes a core sample, dissects and assesses, and

brings the results of our subsequent analysis to you in the
form of this article. For the top system vendors on the planet, it’s a
chance to size up the competition, hone their talents, and show off
before an audience of ardent computing enthusiasts. For the rest of us,
it’s a chance to exercise our salivary glands. Strap in and hold on tight,
because this year’s dream PCs go over the top and make last year’s
benchmark busters look like unwieldy iPads.

The Pulse Of The PC Industry

Asking the best PC engineers in the business to give us their best
shot also provides us with an expertly informed snapshot of the best
configurations money can buy. Even if you can’t afford one of these
visions in silicon, you can still use them as a blueprint for building your
own on a much more wallet-friendly scale. Performance and reliability are
what matter most, not the brands and logos of individual components.
In the category of processors, the chip that leads the pack is the Intel Core
i7-980X Extreme Edition, which showed up in seven of 16 systems, many of
which were liquid-cooled and featured overclocks above 4GHz. A pair of Intel
Xeon X5680s dominated at the top end, while “entry-level” systems (nowhere
else will a $3,000 system have an “entry-level” label) shipped with Intel Core
i7-875K, 930, and 970 processors. Only one system featured AMD’s Phenom II
X6 1090T. Seven of the systems’ motherboards came from Asus, six came from
Evga, and two each came from MSI and Gigabyte.
The graphics card of choice was overwhelmingly the Nvidia GeForce GTX
480 (most of which came from Evga); nine systems used it in 2-, 3-, and 4-way
SLI. Four systems shipped with one or two ATI Radeon HD 5970s. Three systems
bucked the flagship graphics trend with a pair of GTX 470s, GTX 460s, and
5870s, respectively.
For system memory, 6GB seemed to be the enthusiast sweet spot, as most
builders chose this amount. 12GB systems were also common, but a few systems
shipped with 4GB or 8GB. One even came with 24GB.

Tiered & True

For this round of Dream PCs, we solicited systems in three pricing categories, which
we’ll refer to as Tier I (up to $3,500), Tier II ($3,501 to $7,000), and Tier III ($7,001
and up). We benchmarked each system using the same suite of tests and applications, all
at the same resolutions and same settings, which let us compare them with similarly
priced systems, as well as make statements about their overall performance. Prices listed
were the configurations we tested, at press time. Without further ado, we bring you the
pinnacle of PCs for 2010. ▲

CPU / October 2010 51

 CyberPower Gamer Xtreme XT-K
t a hair under $3,000 and the in plenty of good components. The even surpassing some of them in several

A second-least expensive PC in
our roundup, the CyberPower
Gamer Xtreme XT-K is kind of a bargain,
Intel Core i7-875K is overclocked to a
solid 3.84GHz, and the dual Radeon
5970s in CrossFire provide excellent
tests including 3DMark Vantage,
PCMark Vantage, SiSoft Sandra Memory
tests, and Left 4 Dead 2. The system’s
holding its own against the competition. graphics horsepower. CyberPower kept few weaknesses did emerge in POV-Ray
CyberPower used the relatively pint- the storage setup simple but strong with 3.7 Beta, Aliens vs. Predator, and
sized and light Xion Predator 970 case a single 80GB Intel X-25M for the OS S.T.A.L.K.E.R., but on the whole it per-
for the Gamer Xtreme XT-K. Like most and 1TB of storage via the Western formed above its pay grade, so to speak.
of the Dream PC submissions this year, Digital Caviar Black drive. By including Although it’s a mite strange to say this
the case is plain-Jane black, but this one 8GB of Kingston HyperX RAM, Cyber- about a dream PC, the CyberPower
also features a big, bright touch panel on Power gave the Gamer Xtreme XT-K an Gamer Xtreme XT-K offers nice bang for
the front where you can adjust the extra bit of oomph. your buck. Nothing about it is especially
speeds of each fan (four total) and check Its benchmark scores certainly hold up pricey or gaudy; CyberPower seems to
temps. You can also toggle between to other, more expensive PCs in its tier, have chosen high-performing parts for the
viewing the temperatures in build without relying on the dou-
Fahrenheit or in Celsius, if bling or tripling of components
you’re into that sort of thing. (with the exception of the dual
The case also offers front graphics cards).
access to the hard drive bay, so At this price, perhaps this sys-
you can access up to two drives tem is a dream PC that may actu-
behind a small swinging door. ally come true for an enthusiast
The liquid-cooling setup is com- with a few Benjamins to spend
pact with thin tubing, which on a killer system. ▲
helps increase airflow and also
makes it easier to work inside the Gamer Xtreme XT-K
case if and when the need arises. $2,999
Despite its diminutive size, CyberPower
the Gamer Xtreme XT-K packs www.cyberpowerpc.com

Specs: CPU: Intel Core i7-875K @ 3.84GHz; Motherboard: Gigabyte P55A-UD4P (Intel P55); GPU: ATI Radeon 5970 (2-way CrossFire);
RAM: 8GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600; Storage: 80GB Intel X-25M, 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black; PSU: Corsair HX-1000W; ODD:
Asus BC-06B1ST; OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

52 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 Digital Storm Black OPS Assassin Edition
he Black OPS Assassin is a ver- For convenience, Digital Storm installed testing. Digital Storm indicated that the

T tically designed system, so the

motherboard’s rear I/O ports are
on the top of the case, though the case’s
the 1TB Hitachi Deskstar into the case’s
hot-swap bay, which gave us the ability
to switch storage drives in and out.
3D hardware can be configured as an
optional $1,478 add-on for the Black
OPS Assassin, so it’s not included in the
top panel conceals any external cabling and Digital Storm overclocked the Intel current configuration price.
routes it toward the back of the system. Core i7-930 from 2.8GHz to 4GHz Priced into our Tier I, the Black OPS
Natural heat convection—combined with using a Noctua NH-D14, which features Assassin provided some of the top scores
three 180mm fans at the bottom of the six heatpipes and dual fans. The two in 3DMark Vantage, PCMark Vantage,
case and a 120mm fan at the top—move graphics cards were Evga’s GTX 480 and in all the gaming tests. Some of the
hot air out of the top of the system. The Superclocked, which offer bumps to the Tier I competition opted to use the six-
end result is a system that’s excellent at core, memory, and shader clocks. For core Intel Core i7-970, which outshined
both pulling in cool air and pushing out quick boot and load times, Digital Storm the quad-core Intel Core i7-930 in our
hot air. When we put our hand above the installed the OS onto an 80GB Intel X- processor-based benchmarks. That being
top of the case, we could feel heat rising 25M. The Black OPS Assassin sent to us said, the Black OPS Assassin featured
from all along the metal mesh, not just also featured a BD/DVD player optical well-rounded component scores, as it was
over the GeForce GTX 480 graphics cards. drive and a second 24X DVD burner. top in Sandra 2010’s Memory Bandwidth
As you might guess from the system The system is designed to handle Nvidia’s and near the top in the Physical Disks
title, the BlackOPS is a black-clad sys- 3D Vision Surround setup, and Digital speed. The balanced design can be seen in
tem—both internally and externally. Storm sent in three 3D displays and 3D PCMark Vantage’s 14129 score.
The one exception is the silver Noctua glasses that worked great in our brief 3D We’ll give Digital Storm props for using
cooler and the silver Evga X58 FTW3 an ingenious airflow design and cool-look-
heatpipe on the motherboard. To light ing system lighting. The Black OPS
the interior, Digital Storm installed an Assassin also provided a lot of gaming pop
LED light strip that provided gentle for a Tier I performer, and when you com-
white illumination of the system interior. bine construction and performance results,
We preferred this lighting to harsh cold it’s top-notch for the price range. ▲
cathode lights. The power supply and
the storage drives are hidden away in Black OPS Assassin Edition
compartments inside the Silverstone FT- $3,226
02 case, which places your focus directly Digital Storm
on the hardware on the motherboard. www.digitalstormonline.com

Specs: CPU: Intel Core i7-930 @ 4GHz; Motherboard: Evga X58 FTW3 (Intel X58); GPU: Evga GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked (2x,
SLI); RAM: 6GB Mushkin DDR3-1600; Storage: 80GB Intel X-25M, 1TB Hitachi Deskstar; ODDs: Lite-On 109-29 BD Combo, Pioneer
DVR-218L; PSU: Corsair HX1000W; OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

54 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

iBuyPower Paladin XLC
BuyPower tells us that the Paladin XLC wires. The result was that even the visible benchmarks, including the top mark

i is designed for performance-oriented

buyers who are also focused on reliabili-
ty, aesthetic design, and value. In short, it’s
wires weren’t distracting to the eye.
The two 64GB Kingston SSDNow
VSeries SSDs set up in RAID 0 seemed to
among Tier I systems in Cinebench 11.5,
POV-Ray 3.7, and several of Sandra 2010’s
processor benchmarks. It also wasn’t a terri-
more of an all-around performer than a save us several seconds, in comparison to ble performer in games, with 136.05fps in
pure gaming beast. The Paladin XLC sent other systems, each time we loaded an Left 4 Dead 2, 32.9fps in Aliens vs.
to us featured Intel’s six-core Core i7-970 application. And combined with the over- Predator, and 44.1fps in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.:
overclocked to 4.04GHz, an OS volume clocked, six-core Intel Core i7-970, the Call of Pripyat. Those quick load times we
created with two 64GB Kingston SSDNow Paladin XLC was snappy to respond during experienced were backed by a 360MBps
V Series in RAID 0, and two Asus Matrix all our testing. Other speedy conveniences speed in Sandra 2010’s Physical Disks test.
5870 Platinums in CrossFire. inside this build included a 10X BD-ROM The Paladin XLC’s processor-centric design
The Paladin XLC is built in a red drive, a 22X DVD burner, and USB 3.0. is shown in 3DMark Vantage, where it
(both inside and out) NZXT Phantom As we expected, the Paladin XLC per- delivered a 36843 CPU score.
case, which we found to be plenty roomy. formed extremely well in our processor The iBuyPower Paladin XLC was one of
Two 120mm fans on the side of the case the few colorfully painted systems we saw
blow cold air over the graphics cards, this year. It also meets iBuyPower’s goals of
while a 360mm mesh opening in the side a value performance system with high
panel allows for heat to passively move benchmarks in our processor, memory, and
out of the system. There are two 200mm storage tests to deliver a system that’s good
fans at the top of the case, where in most areas and exceptional in a few. ▲
iBuyPower also installed the 240mm liq-
uid-cooling radiator for the Asetek Paladin XLC
570LC. The interior of the case looked $3,499
great. iBuyPower added cable harnesses iBuyPower
made of individually black-wrapped www.ibuypower.com

Specs: CPU: Intel Core i7-970 @ 4.04GHz; Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Formula (Intel X58); GPU: Asus Matrix 5870 Platinum (2x,
CrossFire); RAM: 6GB Corsair Dominator DDR3-1333; Storage: 64GB Kingston SSDNow VSeries (2x, RAID 0), 1TB Western Digital Caviar
Black; ODDs: Lite-On iHOS104-08, Samsung SH-S222L; PSU: Thermaltake TR2 RX 1,000W; OS: Windows 7 Home Ultimate (64-bit)

CPU / October 2010 55

 Puget Systems Serenity Mini
hen you buy a system from motherboard. A front 120mm fan pushes competition, but we’d be remiss if we

W Puget, the builder makes

sure that you know what
was done step by step when building your
air directly over the two GeForce GTX
460s, and a 230mm top fan pulls hot air
from the CPU cooler and memory.
didn’t point out that the system is priced
$500 to $1,000 lower than its competi-
tion. The main difference is the power of
custom PC. After we configured our Considering the limited space inside the the GeForce GTX 460s against higher-
Serenity Mini, Puget immediately began Serenity Mini, Puget did an excellent job powered graphics cards. For example, the
assembling it and provided us a Web link concealing the system cables. The one spot Serenity Mini’s frames per second results
where we could track the system’s progress where cables were visible was the drop- in our gaming tests (81.02fps in Left 4
in real time, including during the bench- down slots for the PCI-E power cords run- Dead 2, 36.8fps in Aliens vs. Predator,
marking process. And when the Serenity ning to the graphics cards. The interior of and 9.3fps in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call of
Mini was ready to be sent out, Puget sent the Serenity Mini has room for larger Pripyat), were 15 to 30fps lower than the
us photos of the finished product. graphics cards, but Puget wanted to keep other Tier I systems.
The Serenity Mini sent to us is de- both the price and weight of the gaming But in our processor-intensive bench-
signed to be a quiet, portable gaming system to a minimum. In total, the system marks, such as Cinebench 11.5 (6.3
system. To keep the system noise to a weighed a little under 34 pounds, which is points) and Sandra 2010’s Processor
minimum, Puget chose the Antec Mini around 15 to 20 pounds lighter than Arithmetic (106.2 GIPS), the Serenity
P180, which includes three-layer side many, if not all, of our other dream PCs. Mini is competitive.
panels to prevent noise from exiting the The Serenity Mini’s scores were gen- Puget definitely met its goals of quiet
interior. Puget also installed a Gelid erally lower than most of the Tier I and lightweight. And as long as we didn’t
Tranquillo air cooler that’s designed to plan on gaming at the highest resolution,
run silently, and it helped Puget push the we saw playable frame rates in our games.
Mini’s Intel Core i7-875K to 3.7GHz. The multiple additions to reduce system
There are two Evga GeForce GTX 460 noise also show us that Puget knows how
graphics cards in SLI stacked directly to select parts that achieve your custom
beneath the CPU cooler, but the dense build goals. ▲
design did not poorly impact the Serenity
Mini’s performance during our testing. Serenity Mini
Airflow to the components on the moth- $2,444
erboard was helped by the “floor” that Puget Systems
separates the power supply from the www.pugetsystems.com

Specs: CPU: Intel Core i7-875K @ 3.7GHz; Motherboard: Asus Maximus III Gene (Intel P55); GPU: Evga GeForce GTX 460 (2x, SLI);
RAM: 4GB Kingston ValueRam DDR3-1333; Storage: 80GB Intel X-25M, 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black; ODD: Pioneer DVR-218L;
PSU: Corsair TX 850W; OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

56 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

Smooth Creations Battlefield Prophet
f you’re a regular reader of CPU, then Cooler, which is an integrated CPU block Western Digital Caviar Black HDD for

I you’ve probably come to expect visual

delights from Smooth Creations, and
the Battlefield Prophet, even as one of the
and pump that circulates liquid through a
radiator in a closed loop. For the mother-
board, Smooth Creations chose the Asus
media files and mass storage. Presumably
in a bid to keep the system price down,
Smooth Creations installed an inexpensive
least expensive systems in this roundup, Crosshair IV Formula, which utilizes the Lite-On iHAS224 DVD±RW drive. The
fits that description better than most other AMD 890FX chipset. Due to the dual- system features a 1kW Cooler Master
systems here. The system utilizes a stock channel limitation of the processor’s Silent Pro M, so you can upgrade the sys-
Cooler Master ATCS 840 chassis wrapped memory controller, Smooth Creations tem with a second graphics card and sever-
in a Battlefield Bad Company 2-themed opted to install 8GB of Corsair XMS3 al additional peripherals without breaking
decal and topped off with a clear coat to DDR3-1333 memory. your power budget.
ensure a durable, long-lasting finish. On the graphics front, the Battlefield Although the aesthetics and AMD
There’s also a good amount of airbrushing Prophet is the only system in this roundup components made the Battlefield Prophet
on the top panel, front panel, and edges to to feature a single graphics card, the ATI stand apart, they didn’t do this system
make sure everything blends together well. Radeon HD 5970. For the storage sub- any favors against our suite of bench-
The end result is striking. We’ve seen glo- system, there’s a single 128GB Western marks. Overall, it didn’t break into the
rified stickers on PCs before, but this one Digital SiliconEdge Blue SSD for the top 10 in any single test, but when com-
is particularly good. The right side panel OS and applications and a single 2TB pared to the rest of the Tier I systems, it
has a large acrylic window that reveals a did manage to achieve third place for
clean interior and a tidy wiring job. On Sandra’s Processor Multi-Media bench-
the inside, the Battlefield Prophet features mark and third place for Cinebench 11.5
tons of open space to make sure heat has a and POV-Ray. With Smooth Creations,
quick path to all the exits. we like what we see, but other systems
Smooth Creations decided to put the managed to achieve better performance
brakes on the Intel love fest with a rival under similar budget constraints. ▲
suitor, namely AMD, in the form of the
Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition Battlefield Prophet
processor. Smooth Creations managed $3,150
to overclock the processor to 4GHz using Smooth Creations
the Corsair Hydro Series H50 CPU www.smoothcreations.com

Specs: AMD Phenom II X6 1090T Black Edition @ 4GHz; Motherboard: Asus Crosshair IV Formula (AMD 890FX); GPUs: ATI Radeon
HD 5970 2GB; RAM: 8GB Corsair XMS3 DDR3-1,333; Storage: 128GB Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue SSD, 2TB Western Digital
Caviar Black; ODD: Lite-On iHAS224 DVD±RW; PSU: Cooler Master Silent Pro M 1,000W

CPU / October 2010 57

 V3 Gaming Avenger
or $3,499, it’s hard to do much specifically 3D Vision Surround. The consists of a pair of 64GB Crucial

F better than the V3 Avenger, a PC

at the price ceiling of its tier with
specs and scores to match. In fact, in
Intel Core i7-930 is overclocked from
2.8GHz to 3.8GHz, courtesy of V3’s free
V3 Launch Cool overclocking service,
RealSSD C300s, with 2TB of storage
courtesy of two 1TB Hitachi Deskstars. It
also features a 10X Blu-ray reader and
some benchmarks, it kept pace with and the Tri-SLI Zotac GeForce GTX DVD-RW combo drive.
much more expensive systems. 480s certainly contribute to the system’s The V3 Avenger had good but slightly
V3 opted for a vinyl overwrap as performance, as well, with more than inconsistent benchmark scores, taking
opposed to a paint job to save costs (the ample graphics firepower to support top marks in its tier in Left 4 Dead 2,
former was $150 while V3 states the latter 3D Vision Surround. The OS volume Aliens vs. Predator, SiSoft Sandra’s
runs closer to $500). It’s also Physical Disks test, and the over-
designed to be more durable than all 3DMark Vantage and PCMark
paint, but if you have some extra Vantage scores. However, it didn’t
cash to spare, you might want to do especially well compared to
opt for a slick paint job as opposed the competition in Cinebench
to the all-black vinyl design. 11.5, POV-Ray 3.7 Beta, and sev-
Inside the case, the custom eral of SiSoft Sandra’s other tests.
Asetek LCLC liquid-cooling rig The V3 Avenger is a solid per-
uses tubing that is small, black, former with plenty of headroom
and subdued—a nice feature that to spare in the graphics and hard
delivers the benefits of liquid drive departments. ▲
cooling without being obnoxious
or taking up much space. Avenger
V3 specifically designed the $3,499
Avenger system in anticipation of V3 Gaming
Nvidia’s 3D Vision technology, www.v3gamingpc.com

Specs: CPU: Intel Core i7-930 @ 3.8GHz; Motherboard: MSI X58A-GD65 (Intel X58); GPU: Zotac GeForce GTX 480 (3x, 3-way SLI);
RAM: 6GB Patriot Viper II DDR3-2000; Storage: 64GB Crucial RealSSD C300 (2x; RAID 0), 1TB Hitachi Deskstar (2x, RAID 0); PSU:
Corsair HX1000W; ODD: 10x Blu-ray reader and DVD-RW combo drive; OS: Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)

58 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 Velocity Micro Edge Z55
n this roundup, it’s easy to consider pair of Evga GeForce GTX 470s in SLI. and everything else you want to load up

I Velocity Micro’s Edge Z55 the “value”

system, especially in light of the
pimped out Overdrive PC BigBlock GTR
The processor here is the Intel Core i7-
970, and the CoolIT Systems ECO
A.L.C. (Advanced Liquid Cooler) helped
on this system. The optical drive installed
in the topmost 5.25-inch bay is an LG
WH10LS30 Super Multi Blue Blu-ray
(Velocity Micro is OPC’s parent company) Velocity Micro crank the core speed from Writer, which should handle all the media
and the stratospherically-spec’d Velocity 3.2GHz to 4GHz. Velocity certainly formats you use. The PSU powering it all
Micro Raptor Signature Edition. But don’t didn’t skimp when it came to the mother- is a 1,200-watt unit from Velocity Micro.
underestimate it for a second. The Gx2-W board: Here you’ll find the same Evga Compared to other systems in the same
solid aluminum chassis looks nearly identi- X58 FTW3 board featured in many of tier, the Velocity Micro Edge Z55’s com-
cal to that of the Raptor, save the front the more pricey systems. posite score tied for fourth place with
panel, which favors individual optical drive Velocity Micro installed 6GB Patriot CyberPower’s Gamer Xtreme XT-K.
bay doors to maintain the neutral unified Viper II DDR3-1600 memory and relied Among its similarly priced fellows, this
appearance. There’s a media reader and on two 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black system shined in Sandra’s Processor
large back-lit slotted grille in the front of hard drives in a RAID 0 array for the OS Arithmetic and Multi-Media tests and the
the system. The side panel features a large CPU-centric portion of 3DMark Vantage.
window that provides a good view of the It’s no slouch in gaming either, ranking
sparse-looking interior. Remarking on the third out of seven Tier I systems in Left 4
interior of the Edge Z55, another contrib- Dead 2 and Aliens vs. Predator. Although
utor to this article, Seth Colaner, said it The Edge Z55 didn’t show up in the over-
looks like a serial killer’s apartment. The all rankings, it is a solidly built system that
same meticulous wiring you’ll see in the we’d be proud to call our own. ▲
Raptor and BigBlock GTR is on display
here, as well, at no extra charge. Edge Z55
With the side panel off, the first thing $3,499
we noticed was the same GPU fan that Velocity Micro
the Raptor has, but this one is relieving a www.velocitymicro.com

Specs: Intel Core i7-970 @ 4GHz; Motherboard: Evga X58 FTW3 (Intel X58); GPUs: Nvidia GeForce GTX 470 (2x, SLI); RAM: 6GB
Patriot Viper II DDR3-1600; Storage: 1TB Western Digital Caviar Black (2x; RAID 0); ODD: LG WH10LS30 Super Multi Blue Blu-ray
Writer; PSU: Top Power 1,200W

60 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

CyberPower Xtreme XLC
nitially, I was surprised to see Cooler the Asus Rampage III Extreme mother- 2TB RAID 1 setup for a storage drive is

I Master’s HAF (high airflow) X case

combined with an XSPC watercooling
kit that was running through the CPU and
board. Any cables not run behind the
motherboard were zip-tied together to
maintain a neat appearance.
also handy for protecting our media.
Among the Tier II systems, Cyber-
Power’s Xtreme XLC produced the high-
three GeForce GTX 480 graphics cards, The Xtreme XLC sent to us featured est frames per second in all three of our
because I imagined the HAF X’s design hardware that’s top-notch, as are Cyber- gaming benchmarks. It was also in the top
would best suit air-cooled components. But Power’s overclocks. It’s no small feat to three in nearly every other test—highlights
liquid-cooling radiators need plenty of air, push the Core i7-980X up to 4.4GHz. include a 27700 Overall Score in 3DMark
too, and CyberPower took advantage of the CyberPower opted to let Evga handle the Vantage (second among Tier II PCs),
HAF X’s 230mm top fans to pull heat GPU overclocking: The GeForce GTX 11.28 points in Cinebench 11.5 (third),
from the XSPC 360mm radiator, which 480 Hydro Copper graphics cards’ facto- 26Gbps in Sandra 2010’s Memory Band-
also had three 120mm fans attached to the ry-overclocked settings are unchanged. We width (second), and 513MBps in Sandra
underside that further help to push heat like that CyberPower opted to create a 2010’s Physical Disk test (first). In short,
out of the radiator. The Xtreme XLC’s sin- RAID 0 configuration using two 160GB the Xtreme XLC did well on all our gam-
gle cooling loop helped CyberPower reach Intel X-25M’s, as opposed to one with ing and synthetic benchmarks.
a 4.4GHz clock speed on the Intel Core i7- lower-capacity SSDs, to give us plenty of If performance per dollar is your goal,
980X and keep all three Evga 480 Hydro room to install games and applications. A CyberPower’s Xtreme XLC is your sys-
Copper FTW graphics cards cool. tem. We also like that Xtreme XLC deliv-
The exterior of the Xtreme XLC is fair- ered high scores in all our benchmarks, so
ly plain, as the only visible modifications the Xtreme XLC works as well with prac-
to the stock HAF X are the fan controls at tical tasks as it does when gaming. The
the front of the system, the visible liquid- exterior side-panel window and internal
cooling block, and the clear side-panel LEDs give you a way to showcase the
window. Bright red LEDs in the 120mm powerful hardware to friends. ▲
rear exhaust fan and the blue LEDs in the
memory cooler make the system compo- Xtreme XLC
nents clearly visible through the side- $6,499
panel windows. You can also clearly see CyberPower
the glowing Republic of Gamers logo on www.cyperpowerpc.com

Specs: CPU: Intel Core i7-980X @ 4.4GHz; Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Extreme (Intel X58); GPU: Evga GeForce GTX 480 Hydro
Copper (3x, 3-way SLI); RAM: 12GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1800; Storage: 160GB Intel X-25M (2x, RAID 0), 2TB Hitachi Deskstar (2x,
RAID 1); ODD: LG CH10LS20; PSU: Silverstone SST-ST1500; OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

CPU / October 2010 61

 iBuyPower Level 10
magine filling Thermaltake’s Level 10 Inside the motherboard compartment, the inclusion of Radeon HD5970s as

I case with today’s highest-performing

components, setting up RAID config-
urations, and adding all the connectivity
iBuyPower installed an Intel Core i7-
980X. For graphics power, the Level 10
sent to us featured dual ATI Radeon HD
opposed to GTX 480s in 3-way SLI, put
the Level 10 benchmarks behind many of
the Tier II dream PCs. That being said,
features you can think of. The result is 5970s in CrossFire. iBuyPower shipped the Level 10 comes in around $500 to
iBuyPower’s Level 10 dream PC submis- the cards in a separate box to keep them $1,000 less than most of the competition.
sion. iBuyPower tells us that the Level safe during the shipping process. Power One test where the Level 10 excelled was
10’s cooling capabilities allowed them to users will also appreciate the 12GB of 3DMark Vantage, where it delivered an
produce a system built for long-term reli- Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600 memory, overall score of 24736, a GPU score of
ability, stability, and quality. and an OS drive that consists of two 24348, and a CPU score of 35480. The
The compartmental design of the Level 128GB Kingston SSDNow! VSeries in Level 10 also produced an impressive
10 case makes it a very quiet system; RAID 0. Your personal data can be stored speed of 333.12MBps in the Sandra
iBuyPower further lowered noise levels by on the two 2TB Seagate Barracudas that 2010’s Physical Disk test.
installing Enermax fans with high-perfor- are set up in RAID 1 to provide redun- We have no doubt that iBuyPower’s
mance magnetic bearings. The iBuyPower dancy. A 1,200-watt Thermaltake power Level 10 is a well-designed build, but
Level 10 was nearly silent, even during supply and 10X BD-ROM/DVD burner we’d have liked to see iBuyPower cus-
our intensive gaming benchmarks. combo drive round out the system. tomize the exterior of the PC to match
There’s not much glitz on the outside of The lack of a CPU overclock, due to the quality parts hidden inside. Imagine
the case, but inclusion of Creative’s iBuyPower’s focus on reliability, and how imposing the Level 10 would look
Sound Blaster X-Fi Titanium Fatal1ty with some artwork on the side panels
Champion Series sound controller and a or a clear panel that shows off its
12-in-1 memory card reader draw your high-end components.
attention to the top compartment. Since Nevertheless, the focus on reliability
all the components are hidden in com- and stability is something that people
partments, there’s no need for any fancy wanting a well-rounded gaming machine
lighting. To make the interior clean, should take into consideration. ▲
iBuyPower replaced the system’s visible
power cables with extensions made of Level 10
individually wrapped wires. The all-black, $5,999
mesh-sheathed cables add a touch of class iBuyPower
to the inside of the case. www.ibuypower.com

Specs: CPU: Intel Core i7-980X @ 3.33GHz; Motherboard: Gigabyte X58A-UD7 (Intel X58); GPU: Sapphire 5970 (2x, CrossFire); RAM:
12GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-1600; Storage: 128GB Kingston SSDNow VSeries (2x, RAID 0), 2TB Seagate Barracuda (2x, RAID 1);
ODD: LG CH10LS20 BD Combo; PSU: Thermaltake TR2 TRX-1200; OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

62 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 Basing fan effectiveness solely on diverted by 90 degrees before it can exit the power supply, which cre-
fan size is an inaccurate assessment. ates turbulence and in turn dramatically reduces cooling efficiency.
In reality, there are a number of fac- Smaller PSU fans tend to be used in horizontal pull or push-pull con-
tors involved, a few of which are discussed below. figurations where the fans are mounted in the back of the PSU. This
allows air to travel unimpeded through the PSU’s casing, thus in-
Fan and PSU design impact creasing cooling effectiveness.
PSU performance.
Larger PSU fans are almost always mounted at the top of The type of bearing used is very important.
a PSU’s casing. Airflow in this type of configuration is The two most common types of bearings used in PSU fans are sleeve
bearings, which use two lubricated surfaces that rub together, and
ball bearings, which use metal
spheres that roll between the two
surfaces. Sleeve bearings tend to
have higher friction (thus generat-
ing more heat) and a shorter life-
span than ball bearings.
Ball bearing Sleeve bearing

Higher temperatures reduce the lifespan

of PSU components.
For example, if a PSU’s lifespan is specified at 25 degrees C, that lifes-
pan is cut in half with every additional 10 degrees C. The challenge is
to strike a balance between optimizing cooling and minimizing noise.

Pulse Width Modulation (PWM) fans, featured on select Antec

PSUs, are able to efficiently cool PSU components while decreasing
rpm to a level that virtually eliminates noise. In fact, the noise pro-
duced by a PWM 80mm fan at low CFM is comparable to that of a
larger 120mm fan.

Ultimately, whether a small or large fan is better depends upon a com-

plex set of factors and is not as simple as just saying one size is better
than the other. ■
 Origin Genesis
lthough a tier down pricewise 4.38GHz on this particular build (with quick OS volume, and the two 1.5TB

A from Origin’s other Dream PC

entry, the Big O, the Origin
Genesis is hardly a compromise.
Turbo Boost, it scales up to 4.52GHz).
Origin filled the graphics and memory
order in triplicate, with triple GeForce
WD Caviar Black hard drives combine
to offer 3TB of storage. A 12X Blu-ray
player and 40-in-1 media card reader
The Corsair Obsidian 800D case is GTX 480 Hydro Copper FTW graphics round out the list of media components.
steel, with one large clear window in the cards and three 2GB sticks of Crucial The best way to describe the Genesis’
side panel so you can gaze at your killer DDR3-1600 memory. performance in testing is “consistent.”
components while they work. As with A pair of 50GB OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs Although other systems in its tier had a
many of our Dream PC cases this time in a RAID 0 configuration provide a noticeable spike or dip in this or that
around, it’s an understated black case, but score, this system was at or near the top in
with a bit of panache, such as the brushed each test. It didn’t blow away the compe-
aluminum front panel, spring-loaded tition, but it most certainly wasn’t out-
doors for the ODD and front-loading gunned, either.
HDD bays, and the four Lamptron FC3 If the price tag of the Big O system is
fan controller knobs. a little steep for you but you like the
Inside, the cabling is nice and tidy, Origin brand and craftsmanship, the
with everything neatly tucked away out of Genesis will make you very happy. It’s
sight, and the red liquid-cooling tubes less flashy than its big brother, far more
with black rings add a bit of eye candy. affordable at $6,951 (as configured), but
As with all Origin PCs, if there’s a part still packs a wallop. ▲
you want for your custom build that
Origin doesn’t have, the builder will go Genesis
get it, but you probably won’t want much $6,951
more than what’s already inside. The six- Origin
core Intel Core i7-980X is overclocked to www.originpc.com

Specs: CPU: Intel Core i7-980X @ 4.38GHz; Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Extreme (Intel X58); GPU: Evga GeForce GTX 480 Hydro
Copper FTW (3x, 3-way SLI); RAM: 6GB Crucial Ballistix Tracer DDR3-1600; Storage: 50GB OCZ Vertex 2 (2x, RAID 0), 1.5TB Western
Digital Caviar Black (2x, RAID 0); PSU: Silverstone Strider 1500W; ODD: Pioneer BDR-205BK; OS: Windows 7 Home Premium (64-bit)

64 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

Overdrive PC BigBlock GTR
verdrive PC has gained a repu- FTW3 motherboard is the foundation of occupied by a pair of 128GB Adata S599

O tation for thinking outside the

box when it comes to compo-
nent choices, and that thinking garnered
the system, to which OPC added three
Evga GeForce GTX 480s in Tri-SLI and
a whopping 12GB of Patriot DDR3-
SSDs inside Icy Dock enclosures and con-
figured in a RAID 0 array. A second pair
of bays houses a couple of 2TB Hitachi
OPC top marks in games two years ago 1600 memory. Deskstar 7K2000 drives in a RAID 0
when it was the lone builder to send us a Another feature OPC carried over array, which quickens any storage-centric
dual-core CPU. This year, OPC sent us a from last year to this is the modular hot- operations you’ll perform. OPC installed
refresh of the BigBlock GTR in an swappable HDD bay that resides where two optical drives in the BigBlock GTR,
unpainted black anodized aluminum you typically find the top three 5.25-inch an LG WH10LS30 Super Multi Blue
Lian-Li case (built custom for OPC), optical drives. The first two slots are Blu-ray Writer and an LG GH22NS50
though painted exteriors are available DVD±RW drive, which let you write and
starting at $345. This case (with the read whatever disc format you throw at it.
wheel-kit option) is the same one OPC The power supply feeding this beast is a
has used for the previous BigBlock GTRs 1,500-watt Velocity Micro-branded unit.
we’ve tested, so there’s nothing new here. The OPC BigBlock GTR performed
The predominant feature of this case is a admirably in our benchmarks, snagging
spacious and simple interior that lets the the No. 2 spot in Futuremark’s PCMark
builder banish any and all things hot and Vantage among all systems tested and the
ugly, including the system heat, the PSU, No. 1 spot for that suite among Tier II
wires, and data cables. OPC also made systems. It also garnered the third-best
silence a priority here with sound-damp- performance in Left 4 Dead 2 and Aliens
ening material on both side panels and a vs. Predator when compared to other Tier
pair of low-velocity blue LED-lit fans in II systems. Although the BigBlock GTR’s
lieu of a window. performance didn’t blow us away, it did
Forgoing the phase-change cooler of score better than average overall. ▲
last year’s model in favor of CoolIT
Systems Vantage A.L.C. (Advanced Liq- BigBlock GTR
uid Cooler), OPC was able to “Hyper- $6,799
Clock” the Intel Core i7-980X inside the Overdrive PC
BigBlock GTR to 4.3GHz. Evga’s X58 www.overdrivepc.com

Specs: Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition @ 4.3GHz; Motherboard: Evga X58 FTW3 (Intel X58); GPUs: Nvidia GeForce GTX 480 (3x,
3-way SLI); RAM: 12GB Patriot DDR3-1600 Premium Memory; Storage: 128GB Adata S599 SSDs (2x; RAID 0), 2TB Hitachi Deskstar
7K2000 (2x; RAID 0); ODDs: LG WH10LS30 Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Writer, LG GH22NS50 DVD±RW; PSU: Top Power 1,500W

CPU / October 2010 65

 Smooth Creations Goliath Extreme
f the Battlefield Prophet was Smooth thing. Here you’ll find an Intel Core i7- For the system memory, Smooth

I Creations’ appetizer, then the Goliath

Extreme is the main course and des-
sert all rolled into one very large and eye-
980X Extreme Edition CPU overclocked
to 4.5GHz, the X58-based Asus Rampage
III Extreme, and two ATI Radeon HD
Creations installed 12GB Corsair Dom-
inator GT DDR3-2000. The storage
array consists of a pair of 256GB Western
pleasing package. Smooth Creations is 5970 graphics cards in CrossFireX, all liq- Digital SiliconEdge Blue SSDs in RAID 0
where PCs meet art, and adorned with a uid-cooled by a massive dual-loop system, and two 2TB Western Digital Caviar
hand-painted and airbrushed “Gear with components courtesy of Koolance. Green hard drives. Other highlights
Driven” theme, this system doesn’t have The CPU and chipset are running blue liq- include an AeroCool V12XT touchscreen
an ugly side to it. In fact, we had a hard uid, and the graphics cards are running fan controller, a multiformat media read-
time deciding our favorite angle. pink. Both loops draw from twin twisting er, a Lite-On DH-4B1S Blu-ray Disc
By boldly utilizing Danger Den’s clear reservoirs mounted behind the mother- Triple Writer, and a Corsair Professional
acrylic Double Wide Tower 21, Smooth board. Two massive radiators on the front Series Gold AX1200 power supply.
Creations left itself very few places to hide of the case cool the liquid with the help of a In the benchmarks, the Goliath
wires. Even the systems we single out as bank of six 120mm fans. The back side of Extreme achieved the No. 3 spot for
having some of the best wiring jobs are the system has a further seven fans. Cinebench, POV-Ray, and all of Sandra’s
ugly as sin when you take off the second tests save the HDD-based test, largely
side panel, but here the wiring is very thanks to the Core i7-980X’s impressive
inconspicuous. Smooth Creations also 4.5GHz overclock. Compared to other
strategically applied diamond board systems within Tier II, the Goliath
decals and airbrushed rust accents to some Extreme dominated any test that relied
of the interior components and frame, heavily on the CPU. The Smooth Cre-
which gives the system the decrepit indus- ations Goliath Extreme is one of those
trial look so common to videogame set- rare circumstances where beauty and
tings. This builder prides itself on having brains come standard. ▲
an in-house paint shop and design team,
as they should; it is unparalleled. Goliath Extreme
If the paint job is the best thing about a $6,990
Smooth Creations system, then elaborate Smooth Creations
liquid-cooling systems are the second-best www.smoothcreations.com

Specs: Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition @ 4.5GHz; Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Extreme (Intel X58); GPUs: ATI Radeon HD 5970
2GB (2x, CrossFireX); RAM: 12GB Corsair Dominator GT DDR3-2,000; HDDs: 256GB Western Digital SiliconEdge Blue SSD (2x, RAID 0),
2TB Western Digital Caviar Green (2x); ODDs: Lite-On DH-4B1S Blu-ray Disc Triple Writer; PSU: Corsair Professional Series Gold AX1200

66 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 AVA Direct Custom Gaming PC
VA Direct’s Custom Gaming PC the system. The Custom Gaming PC has We had to disable Hyper-Threading

A was a pleasant surprise. Although

we assumed the builder’s sub-
mission would be solid, this system was a
four 2TB Seagate Barracuda XTs for an
unbelievable amount of storage, but the
lack of an SSD for the OS volume deliv-
for 3DMark Vantage and PCMark,
because the system’s 24 threads outpaced
the 16 threads supported by those bench-
real hoss. ered relatively paltry PCMark Vantage and marks. Futuremark tells us that the sys-
The Lian Li Armorsuit PC-P80 case is SiSoft Sandra Physical Disk scores. We tem’s scores would not be markedly
rather plain, but it’s nevertheless stately were also a little surprised that the CPUs affected by disabling Hyper-Threading
with an all-black brushed aluminum exte- weren’t overclocked and that there was no and also that support for more than 16
rior. When you pop open the side panel, liquid-cooling system. threads is coming soon.
though, the unpainted aluminum interi- The AVA Direct system boasted high As part of the package deal, you also get
or, crisp cabling, and black and chrome scores in 3DMark Vantage, SiSoft Sandra’s a three-button Kingwin 3D optical mouse
color scheme with yellow highlights of the Memory tests, and all three gaming bench- (800dpi), Microsoft Wired Keyboard 200,
components and cables (how’d they do marks, taking the top score in Aliens vs. and Napoleon: Total War.
that?) make it seem as though you’re Predator at 82.3fps. Although a bit understated on its
looking into the chest cavity of a face, the AVA Direct Custom PC
fastidious Terminator. Gaming system is a raging beast of
The front panel, which houses a speed and power. We’d like to see
fan speed controller knob, opens to a few more tweaks to get the most
reveal the LG 10X Blu-ray player out of the system’s considerable
and Samsung Super-WriteMaster capabilities, but, then again, that
24X DVD player/burner, as well could bump the price past the
as the 75-in-1 Rosewill RCR- $10,000 mark. ▲
IM5001 media card reader.
The dual Intel Xeon X5680s, Custom Gaming PC
Quad-SLI Evga GTX 480s, and $9,224.94
12GB of RAM blasted through AVA Direct
most of our benchmarks; the storage www.avadirect.com
configuration, however, hamstrung
Specs: CPU: Dual Intel Xeon X5680 @ 3.33GHz; Motherboard: Evga SR-2 (Intel 5520); GPU: Evga GeForce GTX 480 SuperClocked
(4x, 4-way SLI); RAM: 12GB Mushkin Blackline DDR3-1600; Storage: 2TB Seagate Barracuda XT (4x, RAID 10); PSU: Silverstone Strider
1500W; ODDs: LG WH10LS30, Samsung SH-S243N; OS: Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)

68 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

Maingear Shift
e’ve learned to expect Main- CPU block, keeps temperatures manage- CD formats, and a top panel-mounted

W gear to send us a competent

performer with that extra bit
of polish that only comes with deep experi-
able for the Asus Rampage III Extreme
and the Intel Core i7-980X processor,
the latter of which is overclocked to
media reader covers pretty much every
popular media format. This dream
machine also came with three 3D
ence. Maingear’s offering this year is no dif- 4.36GHz. Maingear left the trio of Evga Vision-capable 23-inch Asus displays
ferent; it’s called the Shift, and ours came GeForce GTX 480s to air cooling. The and matching Nvidia 3D Vision glasses,
with the SuperStock options. system also features 6GB of Kingston which literally add a new dimension to
Let us be clear: The case used for the HyperX DDR3-2000 memory and a stor- gaming experiences and another $2,000
Shift is beautiful. Maingear tells us that age array that consists of two 256GB to the price of the Shift that we tested.
Silverstone makes it for them custom Crucial RealSSD C300s in RAID 0 and a The Shift SuperStock ships with lifetime
(sadly, Silverstone will not sell you one), 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black HDD service labor and phone support and a
which is a departure from the staid for media. Powering everything is a three-year hardware warranty.
Silverstone TJ10 they used for the Ephex 1,500-watt Silverstone Strider PSU. The Shift achieved the second-best
they sent us the two previous years. The A pair of optical drives will handle memory bandwidth score overall in
slick case features brushed black anodized reading and writing for BD, DVD, and Sandra. In CPU-centric benchmarks
aluminum with thick front and back pan- and the games, the Shift ranked third of
els, a wedge-shaped beveled top panel with the four Tier III systems. The Shift
a unique offset rectangle aesthetic, and a ranked fourth overall in Aliens vs.
windowed side panel that provides a view Predator and Left 4 Dead 2, and sev-
of the unconventional interior. If you’re enth overall in S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: Call
familiar with Silverstone’s Raven, then of Pripyat. The enthusiast community
you’ll recognize the 90-degree motherboard has come to expect to be impressed by
layout, which lets heat rise more naturally this storied builder, and the Shift cer-
past the graphics cards for a cooler and tainly scores big on aesthetics and build
more component-friendly environment. quality, if slightly less so in the perfor-
Inside, Maingear applied “Pursuit Red” mance category. ▲
paint to the frame and interior and lit
everything with revealing white LEDs. Shift
The Maingear X120 liquid-cooling sys- $7,995
tem, with two radiators, a reservoir etched Maingear
with Maingear’s logo, and a Koolance www.maingear.com

Specs: Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition @ 4.36GHz; Motherboard: Asus Rampage III Extreme (Intel X58); GPUs: Nvidia GeForce GTX
480 (3x, 3-way SLI); RAM: 6GB Kingston HyperX DDR3-2000; Storage: 256GB Crucial RealSSD C300 SSDs (2x; RAID 0), 2TB Western
Digital Caviar Black; ODDs: LG WH10LS20 Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Writer, Lite-On iHAS424 DVD±RW; PSU: Silverstone Strider 1,500W

CPU / October 2010 69

 Origin Big O
he “O” in Origin’s Big O sys- Origin went above and beyond by inte- including the consummate HTPC. It’s not

T tem may as well stand for “Oh

my gosh, that computer is a
beast!” This double-wide tank is easily
grating a liquid-cooled Xbox 360 into the
case. Origin didn’t just buy an Xbox 360
and cram it in there, though. The builder
exactly going to fit in your living room, but
if you’re dropping almost $17,000 on it,
chances are your home has a mighty fine
one of the fastest, most powerful con- disassembled the Xbox and then mounted dedicated entertainment room.
sumer PCs available. the various ports in logical places, so the The Big O rocked our benchmarks,
The case is a customized Danger Den front ports are accessible from the front of taking top scores overall for 3DMark
Tower 29 designed to show off the Big the case while the rear ones are seated nicely Vantage, Cinebench 11.5, POV-Ray 3.7
O’s internals. Its side panels are made of in the back. And because it runs separately Beta, and most of the SiSoft Sandra scores
clear acrylic, while the front and back from the Big O’s computer components, (by a long shot), but it’s worth noting that
panels are a translucent red aside from the you can game on the Xbox while the com- we had to disable Hyper-Threading in
custom nameplate adorning the front. puter itself is performing other operations. order for 3DMark Vantage and PCMark
The liquid-cooling system is green and Origin wants to position the Big O Vantage to run properly, as the two
burnt orange and well-made, with nary a as the ultimate everything computer, benchmarks currently only support 16
hint of kinking to be found. threads. The good folks at Futuremark
The Big O sports a pair of over- note that by virtue of the benchmark
clocked six-core Intel Xeon X5680 design this wouldn’t appreciably affect the
processors, 12GB of RAM, and four scores, though, and support for more
Evga GTX 480 graphics cards. It burned threads is forthcoming.
through the Left 4 Dead 2 benchmark at If you want the ultimate PC, the Big O
an incredible 200.87fps. In other words, is it. Good luck finding an application or
yes, it can run Crysis. set of processes that can completely max
The OS drive consists of four 50GB out this system. ▲
OCZ Vertex 2 SSDs in RAID 0, and the
two 2TB WD Caviar Black drives supply Big O
more than ample storage. Other goodies $16,999
include a Pioneer 12X Blu-ray player and Origin
a Rosewill media card reader. www.originpc.com

Specs: CPU: Dual Intel Xeon X5680 @ 4.3GHz; Motherboard: Evga SR2 (Intel 5520); GPU: Evga GTX 480 Hydro Copper FTW (4x, 4-
way SLI); RAM: 12GB Corsair GT DDR3-2000; Storage: 50GB OCZ Vertex2 (4x; RAID 0), 2TB Western Digital Caviar Black (2x); PSU:
Enermax Revolution85+ ERV1050EWT(2x); ODD: Pioneer BDR-205BK; OS: Windows 7 Ultimate (64-bit)

70 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 Velocity Micro Raptor Signature Edition
elocity Micro is Overdrive PC’s integrated waterblock and pump module. the front of the case, features a pair of

V parent company, so much of the

design philosophy we saw in the
BigBlock GTR is also apparent in the
With the device, the builder managed to
achieve a “HyperClock” of 4.2GHz. The
MSI Big Bang XPower motherboard is
LG WH10LS30 Super Multi Blue Blu-
ray Writer optical drives and an all-in-
one media reader. The lower front panel
Raptor Signature Edition. Having seen this the core of the Raptor, and Velocity door conceals a large fan that relieves
PC in previous Dream PC roundups, we Micro took a decidedly workstation the internal HDD bay. The storage
were not surprised when we opened the approach to the system by saddling it subsystem of the Raptor consists of
box to find the refresh comes in the same with an unheard of 24GB of Patriot an impressive four 128GB ADATA
modified Velocity Micro Flagship LXe-W Viper II DDR3-1600 memory. S599 SSDs in a RAID 0 array and a
case, which is a thick-walled aluminum case The front panel, hidden behind a 2TB Hitachi Deskstar 7K2000 drive.
from Lian-Li that dissipates heat like a door that shields the top two-thirds of The PSU powering it all is a 1,500W
heatsink. The bare aluminum silver finish Velocity Micro-branded model.
puts the focus on the large, windowed side Compared to other systems in its price
panel. Clean straight lines characterize the tier and overall, the Raptor Signature
case exterior and dual-door front panel, Edition achieved second and first place in
while just a single tidy column of wires Sandra’s HDD test and Futuremark’s
snakes from the graphics cards to the 24- PCMark Vantage, respectively. Consider,
pin ATX power connector up and into the though, the Raptor scored those wins
shadows where the PSU lurks. You can tell, while competing against two systems
looking through the window at the Raptor equipped with dual Xeon CPUs and
Signature Edition’s guts, the guys who Quad-SLI graphics subsystems. Although
assembled this know what they’re doing. it’s not in the same league as some of the
With the side panel off, you’ll find an other top systems, it does outperform
LED-lit GPU fan designed to help move most systems here, and its build quality is
heat away from the hottest part of the sys- among the best we saw. ▲
tem, a trio of Nvidia GeForce GTX 480s
in 3-way SLI. The CPU in this system Raptor Signature Edition
is the Intel Core i7-980X, which Velo- $7,899
city Micro cools with CoolIT Systems’ Velocity Micro
ECO A.L.C. (Advanced Liquid Cooling) www.velocitymicro.com

Specs: Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition @ 4.2GHz; Motherboard: MSI Big Bang XPower (Intel X58); GPUs: Nvidia GeForce GTX 480
(3x, 3-way SLI); RAM: 24GB Patriot Viper II DDR3-1600; Storage: 128GB ADATA S599 SSDs (4x; RAID 0), 2TB Hitachi Deskstar
7K2000; ODDs: LG WH10LS30 Super Multi Blue Blu-ray Writer (2x); PSU: Top Power 1,500W

72 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 By The Numbers
We ran each system through our set of real-world and synthetic benchmarks, which gives you an idea of how the PCs would do with your power
user tasks and applications. For example, if a PC got top scores in SiSoftware Sandra 2010 Lite but lower scores in our game tests and 3DMark
Vantage, it’ll be more of an all-around performer than an extreme gamer. Of course, relatively speaking, none of these systems should leave you
wanting in any application.

OPS Assassin Edition

CyberPower Gamer

CyberPower Gamer
Digital Storm Black

Battlefield Prophet
Smooth Creations

Origin Genesis
Velocity Micro
Serenity Mini
Xtreme XT-K

Paladin XLC

Xtreme XLC
V3 Gaming
iBuyPower

iBuyPower
Edge Z55
Avenger

Level 10
Puget
CATEGORY TIER I ($0 - $3,500) TIER II ($3,501 - $7,000)
Price $2,999 $3,226 $3,499 $2,444 $3,150 $3,499 $3,499 $6,499 $5,999 $6,951
Warranty 1/Lifetime 1/Lifetime 3/Lifetime 1/Lifetime 1/Lifetime 3/Lifetime 1/1 1/Lifetime 3/Lifetime 1/Lifetime
(parts/support; years)
3DMark Vantage Extreme 1,920 x 1,200 1,920 x 1,200
Overall Score 24149 19055 16134 13132 13290 24382 16623 27700 24736 27997
GPU Score 24189 18831 15670 11923 13059 24414 16163 27265 24348 27550
GPU1 (fps) 75.74 58.88 51.22 34.77 42.07 73.66 51.14 82.61 76.23 83.56
GPU2 (fps) 65.8 51.31 40.44 29.72 34.31 69.3 43.42 77.02 66.24 77.74
CPU Score 23416 24612 36843 22585 19996 23778 36171 39779 35480 40454
CPU1 (Plans/s) 3284.52 3451.05 5193.71 3158.19 2570.82 3360.19 5081.52 5559.93 5022.02 5720.61
CPU2 (Steps/s) 29.92 31.31 45.83 29.11 31.43 29.76 46.03 51.33 44.21 50.54
PCMark Vantage Pro 1.1 1,600 x 1,200 1,600 x 1,200
Overall 17683 14129 12121 12589 13096 17910 13875 24015 18502 24422
Memories 11681 10903 10976 8968 10162 12852 8545 13704 19422 13885
TV And Movies 6581 6476 7973 6030 6056 7124 7038 8417 7952 8535
Gaming 21797 17887 17646 16625 15033 21812 10804 24750 19234 23437
Music 19722 10207 16575 17155 16493 19204 11377 23674 15781 23587
Communications 13113 11693 11011 10293 12228 13088 16312 24054 12782 24585
Productivity 22705 18187 17162 19305 17536 24102 10902 30973 16455 27601
HDD 29609 15441 14868 25619 21996 35994 6582 47734 14277 41478
Cinebench 11.5 CPU (points) 6.55 6.93 10.32 6.3 7.03 6.62 10.11 11.28 9.82 11.3
POV-Ray 3.7 Beta (pixels/s) 4971.63 5234.92 7707.17 4772.5 5690.49 4946.77 7697.67 8444.27 7402.69 8406.36
SiSoft Sandra 2010 Lite
Processor Arithmetic
Dhrystone iSSE4.2 (GIPS) 110 117.83 171.73 106.2 94.63 112 172.5 188 139.25 193.85
Whetstone iSSE3 (GFLOPS) 73.55 83.83 125.22 71 69.83 79.12 125 137.42 100.71 136.81
Processor Multi-Media
Integer x16 iSSE4.1 (Mpixels/s) 208.58 217.7 324.23 201 281 207.38 323.89 355.25 261.13 357
Floating Point x8 155.17 162.25 242.51 149.59 169.16 154.33 242.75 266.48 195.79 265.64
iSSE2 (Mpixels/s)
Double x4 iSSE2 (Mpixels/s) 84.28 88 132 81.35 93.45 83.5 131.66 144.72 106.23 144
Memory Bandwidth
Integer Buffered iSSE2 (GBps) 19.8 25 21.82 15.27 12.4 13.74 19.5 26 22 25.27
Floating Point Buffered 19.85 25 21.82 15.3 12.4 13.75 19.63 26 21.8 25.31
iSSE2 (GBps)
Physical Disks
Drive Score (MB/s on OS drive) 224.32 249.18 360.41 243.3 225.9 526.32 201.3 513 333.12 430.55
Games 2,560 x 1,600 2,560 x 1,600
Left 4 Dead 2 (8X MSAA, 16XAF) 165.23 142.42 136.05 81.02 107.73 169.73 162.77 195.73 162.93 187.2
Aliens vs. Predator (8XAA) 28 44.5 32.9 36.8 28.3 61.5 39.3 66.5 28 58.4
S.T.A.L.K.E.R.: 23.7 62.6 44.1 9.3 22.5 59.2 35.2 93.2 67 64.5
Call of Pripyat (4XAA)

74 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

Dream A Little Dream
his year’s 16 dream PC systems accounted for $97,672 extravagant PC. Opulence aside, “Dream PCs” is designed to

T worth of high-end parts and boutique builders’ expert

labor. And if you think those numbers are eye-open-
ing, you should have seen our eyes as we benchmarked each
let the custom builders show off what they can do using their
overclocking, modding, and design expertise. This year, we
provided an additional challenge by allowing them to compete
within price ranges.
Among the Tier I computers, there was no clear perfor-

Velocity Micro Raptor

AVA Direct Custom

mance champion, because the $3,500 maximum budget forced

Smooth Creations

Signature Edition
Goliath Extreme

builders to focus their builds on specific capabilities. For exam-

Maingear Shift
BigBlock GTR
Overdrive PC

Origin Big O

ple, the V3 Gaming Avenger and Digital Storm Black OPS

Gaming PC

Assassin were top performers in games and graphics-based

benchmarks, because they opted to use GeForce GTX 480s in
SLI. On the flip side, the Velocity Micro Edge Z55 and
TIER III ($7,001 AND UP)
iBuyPower Paladin XLC were generally tops in processor-based
$6,799 $6,990 $9,225 $7,995 $16,999 $7,899
benchmarks, because the builders opted to build systems with
1/Lifetime 1/Lifetime 3/Lifetime 3/Lifetime 3/Lifetime 1/1
an Intel Core i7-970. For design props in Tier I, we liked the
1,920 x 1,200 exterior of Smooth Creations Battlefield Prophet, which show-
19101 26359 31574 27214 34169 19059 cases artwork from Battlefield Bad Company 2. In interior
18597 25861 30764 26762 33452 18565 lighting, we’ll give props to Digital Storm’s Black OPS
58.45 81.58 89.17 81.87 97.61 58.42 Assassin for the LED light strip that illuminates the interior
50.36 69.73 91.09 74.79 98.38 50.2 components in a soft white glow.
39361 41576 63172 40100 57637 38571 The performance kings among the Tier II systems were
5580.44 5879.28 10217.2 5699.8 8179.22 5423.6
Origin’s Genesis and CyberPower’s Gamer Xtreme XLC. Both
48.81 51.94 46.68 49.36 71.28 48.96
builds were among the top three in almost every benchmark.
1,600 x 1,200
24741 22668 12349 23039 22428 25804
Smooth Creations’ Goliath Extreme wins for best exterior in Tier
14814 12734 7992 13863 13045 15874
II for its Gear Driven paint job that exceeded our lofty expecta-
8878 8013 7962 7857 8136 9151 tions of Smooth Creations.
25084 23170 8827 26780 19294 25014 As you might imagine, there’s a lot to like about the Tier III
24583 21051 9200 22212 23365 25684 systems (over $7,000). Both Origin’s Big O and AVA Direct’s
25490 23101 14753 23480 21761 24958 Custom Gaming PC packed dual Intel Xeon X5680s and
31420 23700 10490 26106 27818 33057 GeForce GTX 480s set up in 4-way SLI, which make them
56665 25642 5687 35091 37388 70084 pretty much the fastest computers we’ve ever seen. The inclu-
10.95 11.51 18.73 11.24 20.92 10.83 sion of an Xbox 360 into Origin’s Big O is also noteworthy,
8339.5 8644.2 11428.87 8381.1 15321.99 8149.47
and something that gave us great joy to test while we were
benchmarking the dream PCs. An immaculate interior is pret-
186.46 194.16 299 187.42 386.81 182.7
ty much a given with the Tier III systems, but Velocity
135.6 140.8 229.63 136.46 272.82 132.56
Micro’s Raptor Signature Edition’s extreme tidiness stands
above the rest. We also like the brushed metal, color matched
350 364.22 576 351.73 715.69 343 parts, and overall classy look of AVA Direct’s Custom Gaming
262.4 272.18 381.5 263 530.44 256.7 PC. The Maingear Shift features a cool case with a vertical
design that provides great airflow, and Maingear installed LED
142.48 148.25 200 143.18 288.2 139.42 light strips to provide a glowy system interior.
We know that many, if not all, of these builds are outside
24 27.22 35 27.67 20.64 24.55
the budget of the normal consumer, but keep in mind that
24 27.15 34.84 27.88 21 24.54
these dream PCs are about showing off what the builder can
offer. If any of the builds here intrigue you, we’re sure that
205.8 437.27 70 316 727.9 583.35 boutique vendor can work with you to create the customized
2,560 x 1,600 system of your dreams. ▲
183.66 159.9 196.07 190.08 200.87 184.27
47.1 27.3 82.3 65.7 77.3 46.3 by Andrew Leibman, Nathan Lake, and Seth Colaner
44.8 27.3 79.5 62.5 87 44.6

CPU / October 2010 75

 The Bleeding Edge Of Software
Inside The World Of Betas

Kaspersky Rescue Disk 10.0.23.19 Beta

leaning an infected Windows com-
C puter is sometimes a catch-22: The
viruses running on the infected PC can
Kaspersky Rescue Disk
10.0.23.19 Beta
Publisher and URL: Kaspersky
prevent antivirus software (or other Labs, www.kaspersky.com
cleaners) from running to clean the ETA: Ongoing
viruses. The classic workarounds for this Why You Should Care: It’s among the
problem are themselves sometimes prob- better virus removal bootable CDs
lematic. Not all cleaning tools are com- from a reputable security vendor.
patible with Safe Mode, and removing
the infected drive to scan it requires a
second computer. Another workaround is mounts NTFS and FAT32 hard drives Linux-friendly SDA and SDB drives) and
a good rescue boot disc, and the Kasper- (another typical problem—many rescue click the Scan button, and off it goes. The
sky Rescue Disk has enough good fea- discs require you to manually mount second is that Kaspersky is experienced at
tures that it’s worth checking out. drives), so it can write the definition file making good retail antivirus products, con-
Most rescue discs typically have draw- to your infected hard drive for later use. sistently scoring well in our tests over the
backs, too, but KRD manages to get And, of course, this means it can scan years. Further proof: KRD successfully lo-
around most of the major ones. The first your Windows drives for malware. cated the infected files on our test machines.
is that rescue discs are usually out of date, Kaspersky’s experience with the retail an- A good security product that can block
but KRD’s Linux environment has hun- tivirus market shows up as two big advan- and delete viruses before they get in is re-
dreds of network drivers, enabling it to tages in KRD. The first is that the GUI is ally the best way to roll, but Kaspersky
get a network address and access the In- usable and straightforward: Select the hard Rescue Disk makes a great Plan B. ▲
ternet to download the latest definition drive(s) you want to scan (listed as Win-
files from Kaspersky. KRD automatically dows-friendly C: and D: drives as well as by Warren Ernst

Mozilla Firefox 4.0 Beta 3

nce you’ve wrestled almost 25% of
O the Web browsing world away from
Internet Explorer, what do you do for an
Mozilla Firefox 4 Beta 3
Publisher and URL: www.mozilla.com
ETA: Q4 2010
encore? If you’re Mozilla and your baby is Why You Should Care: The best Web
Firefox, then perhaps the next step is adding browser gets better and faster with age.
some of the latest browsing technologies.
This pretty much sums up what you can ex-
pect from the most recent Firefox 4 beta. “Start Menu” replaces the standard support, which allows for multitouch in-
This being the last beta before final release, Menu bar at the upper-left corner of the teraction with specific Web site elements
things are quick and stable, too, meaning browser window, but this design change (though the site needs special CSS coding
the beta might do a good job as your pri- is also reversible. to make the magic happen).
mary browser. There are several advances under the A surprising number of Firefox add-
The first thing that leaps out at you with hood. The first is an optimized JavaScript ons, such as AdBlock, are already com-
Firefox 4 is the new default location of the engine that Mozilla claims is between 5% patible with Firefox 4, so even if your
Tab Bar, which, like Google Chrome’s, is and 20% faster than Firefox 3.6. There’s current Firefox installation is tricked out,
now at the top of the window, just below support for the HTML5 video tag and the you can still check out the beta and enjoy
the Title Bar. (A quick visit to the Prefer- new WebM video format, but right now your indispensible customizations. ▲
ences dialog box lets you move it back to there are few Web sites that actually use
its familiar location.) An Office 2007-like them. Also new is in-browser multitouch by Warren Ernst

76 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 software | upgrades

badge, her Winamp player will open and

automatically play the associated station.
www.winamp.com

Piriform CCleaner 2.34.1200

The favorite donationware system scrubber
now extends cookie cleaning to include
HTML5 Web storage. The new version
A number of old favorite programs such as CCleaner, Winamp, SmartFTP, also improves cleaning Index.dat files,
and VLC are refreshed this month. Mozilla updates Firefox as it marches detection of install dates in the Uninstall
toward the upcoming 4.0 release. Tool, and removal of Recycle Bin files. It
also improves its support of Jump Lists and
squashes a series of small bugs.
www.piriform.com/ccleaner
Software Updates TV, Google Video, etc. This version fixes
compatibility issues with Google Chrome, SmartSoft SmartFTP 4.0 Build 1133
Apple iTunes 9.2.1 as well as other browsers. The latest build of this popular FTP
Hot on the heels of the iPhone 4 release www.internetdownloadmanager.com client adds an auto-link option in the
and the recent 9.2 version, Apple tweaks Local dialog box. Build 1131 introduced
and fixes its media library and storefront. Macecraft Software jv16 PowerTools the ability to link several browsers togeth-
Version 9.2.1 disables older versions of 2010 2.0.0.963 er, and build 1129 patched a drag-and-
incompatible third-party plug-ins. It also Macecraft’s longstanding tweak and sys- drop issue in Windows 7 that involves
corrects some small problems with drag- tem maintenance suite recently received a moving items from the Temporary Queue
ging and dropping items. refresh to the new 2010 version. There are to the Local Browser.
support.apple.com several performance-related bug fixes to www.smartftp.com
the Registry Cleaner. To increase safety,
Check Point Software Technologies the utility now skips files associated with VideoLAN VLC 1.1.1
Zone Alarm Free Firewall 92.057.000 Symantec antivirus products by default. The compact and extremely format-friend-
The Zone Alarm firewall is updated to ac- Finally, uninstalling jv16 PowerTools ly media player receives an incremental fix
commodate two recent Microsoft patches should now be easier, with the inclusion of for the recent larger 1.1 update, which
to Windows 7 x64. The update also auto- an uninstall shortcut in the directory folder. notably added GPU decoding in Win7
matically detects wired or wireless network www.macecraft.com and Vista, using DxVA (DirectX Video
connections, improves IPv6 support, and Acceleration) for H.264, VC-1, and
fixes a bug that occasionally slowed Inter- Mozilla Firefox 3.6.8 MPEG-2. The 1.1 release also added sup-
net Explorer 8 startups. Another month, another incremental fix port for several codecs, including Blu-ray
www.zonealarm.com to Mozilla’s browser. This version address- subtitles, MPEG-4 lossless, and VP8.
es a stability problem that occurred on Version 1.1.1 specifically fixes a number of
Google Chrome 5.0.375.125 some pages containing plug-ins. This errors and crashes, along with assorted
The increasingly popular browser plugs a change comes after the 3.6.7 release earlier decoder/demuxer issues.
series of security holes that users identified. in the month, which corrected a number www.videolan.org/vlc/
In particular, two industrious contributors of security and stability issues.
received a $1,337 reward (get it?) for creat- www.mozilla.com/firefox/ Driver Bay
ing a workaround to a Windows kernel
bug. The update also fixes problems with Nullsoft Winamp 5.58 Razer Lycosa 3.00
memory corruption and memory contents The latest release of this classic media play- For the Razer high-performance gaming
being revealed in the layout code. er revamps the app’s podcast directory; the keyboard, this driver update is for WinXP/
www.google.com/chrome directory now boasts 30,000+ podcasts, Vista/7 (32-bit and 64-bit versions). The
which are updated in real time. Another driver update supports in-game macro play-
Internet Download Manager 6.01 Beta big change is the addition of WebM video back in games that otherwise are protected
The major revision of the venerable down- file format support. Version 5.58 also ex- from out-of-game shortcuts, and it lets you
load manager and accelerator includes pands the recently added 7digital music assign macros to arrow keys.
enhancements to the FLV file grabber store into Europe. Web radio stations can www.razersupport.com
for better direct video downloading from now embed promotional badges on their
Web players such as YouTube, MySpace sites; when a site visitor clicks such a by Steve Smith

78 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 reviews | software

Broadband
Benchmarking
Tools To Measure Your Mbps
ow fast is “fast”? That’s Broadband Tests And Tools
H the question many peo-
ple ask themselves when they
DSLReports
www.dslreports.com
set up a broadband connec- ●●●●
tion. If you’re spending a pile
of money every month on a
high-speed hookup, you’ll Most of the tests are avail-
want to find out exactly how able to everyone, but some
high that speed is. And the are restricted to members only
best way to find out isn’t to (site registration is free) or
take your provider’s word for require you to queue up for
it; test it yourself. use. Among the other tests
A whole slew of Web sites DSLReports.com offers is a
and end-user utilities claim packet-loss/line-quality test,
to test and report your although it requires that your
bandwidth. We’ve taken a IP address respond to a ping.
close look at them and rounded up This might require some configuration of
the best and most useful of the bunch. DSLReports.com your router or firewall, since either of these
Each of the sites and utilities tested Broadband Tests likely block ping by default. Less useful in
had to satisfy at least three of the fol- And Tools my opinion are a couple of network-stack
lowing criteria: The broadband news-and-reviews site tweak tests (Doctor TCP and Tweak Test),
DSLReports.com sports both a friendly, if only because recent OSes have heavily
• Was it easy to run multiple tests tight-knit community of users and an self-tuning network subsystems.
(for example, at different times of impressive palette of tests. The site is one One of the tools DSLReports offers,
day) and aggregate the results? of the oldest of its kind and can trace its “Doctor Ping,” can test your connection’s
• Was it possible to test from multi- roots back to the birth of consumer broad- latency against other ISPs. This isn’t a site-
ple servers in different geographic band in the United States. DSLReports based tool; it runs from the desktop and
locations? offers not only speed tests but also news, then posts the results remotely to the
• Was it easy to see the results at reviews, and comparisons of different ISPs. DSLReports’ server. You also need a
a glance? The most basic and useful test DSL- DSLReports account to see the results.
• Was it possible to compare our Reports offers is the two-way Speed Test, Another nice feature of DSLReports is
results against others’ (according which runs in Flash or Java. (The tests are the site itself. When you go to DSLReports’
to geographic area, ISP, etc.)? also available in a couple of phone-friendly home page, it automatically detects your
incarnations.) You pick a server that’s as ISP and brings up the most popular threads
At the end of our testing, we found geographically close to you as possible, and posted on the message board devoted to
one rather surprising discovery: The Speed Test generates a graph of the results that ISP.
number of Web sites that met these cri- (download/upload speeds, latency). These
teria was far greater than the number of results are plotted against an array of other Ookla Speedtest
standalone desktop applications. To that results from the same ISP or can be cross- A product of the network metrics com-
end, you can start your online broad- plotted against results from other ISPs or pany Ookla (www.ookla.com), the Flash-
band time trials right now by simply filtered by ZIP code as a way of seeing how driven online version of Speedtest has some
opening a Web browser. speeds vary by geography. of the same features as DSLReports tests.

CPU RANKING ● 0 = ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS | ● ● ● 2.5 = ABSOLUTELY AVERAGE | ● ● ● ● ● 5 = ABSOLUTELY PERFECT

CPU / October 2010 79

 reviews | software

test doesn’t provide you with the same

degree of interactive feedback as the down-
load test. Also, because the tests are run
entirely in-browser, they seem to be limited
by the browser’s own design: Chrome 6
yielded an average of 526Kbps uploads,
while Firefox 3.6.6 barely broke 80Kbps.
If you’re looking for a quick test, you
don’t need to create an account on the site
to access your statistics. When you run any
of Testmy.net’s tests, the site generates a
unique machine ID for you, which you can
then use to download all your test results.
These stats expire after 60 days for non-
members, though; members can keep stats
for a year and get access to the site’s forums.
Another feature I liked a great deal is
Speedtest You won’t find all your own ISP in the form of a star rating, the ability to automatically retest your
Ookla of the communi- and the average rating for your own ISP, connection at regular intervals, which is
www.speedtest.net ty-centric features based on other users’ votes, is displayed useful if you want to run speed tests in
●●●● of DSLReports, automatically before you start the test. the background over a period of time and
as the site (www Another sister site, Net Index (www see how the connection varies. Note that
.speedtest.net) is mostly a free extension .netindex.com), displays cumulative world- in order to do this you need to leave a
of Ookla’s paid services—but the tests are wide trends for upload/download speeds browser window open, because this fea-
well-designed and have a slick interface. and line quality, based on the data submit- ture works by periodically refreshing the
Speedtest.net sports basic speed and ping ted by Speedtest.net and Pingtest.net. If window in question to rerun the test.
tests (the latter of which is hosted on sister you’re curious how your city or state stacks
site Pingtest.net), and Ookla.com’s own site up against others, click around on the site. VisualWare
also has a stripped-down version of the more You may be surprised what countries and MyConnection PC
advanced Line Quality Test (www.ookla cities are at the top of the list. There are scores of desktop applica-
.com/demo-lq.php) that also includes the tions that are little more than bandwidth
speed and ping tests. The latter takes longer Testmy.net usage gauges. The one desktop applica-
to run than both of the former, so you can Another site organized around a thriv- tion that stands out from the bunch is
choose either a quick-and-dirty or a long- ing, tight-knit community of users, VisualWare’s MyConnection PC, which
and-thorough checkup. The Line Quality Testmy.net claims more accurate testing is an actual test suite on the order of the
Test checks for the presence of a firewall results than other sites due to its testing sites described here. VisualWare offers
and can run on either port 5060 or port methodology. Even if that’s a spurious online versions of the same tests, as well
8080, in the event one is blocked. assertion, I did like the way
As with DSLReports’ speed test, you the tools were presented and
start by choosing a server that’s close to you. managed, and I obtained
Speedtest.net has dozens of servers across useful results with them.
both the continental United States and the The tests are pretty basic.
rest of the world, so it’s far easier to find The site has upload and
one that’s close by. The end results can be download tests, but no line
saved as an image or downloaded in a CSV quality or other auxiliary
table, so you can tabulate the results of tests. When you run the
multiple tests offline if you’re inclined. tests, your browser automat-
Pingtest.net works in much the same ically downloads several files
manner as Speedtest.net. You pick a site of varying sizes as a way to
(typically one close to you) from a graphical gauge the speed of the line.
map in Flash. The test measures packet The upload portion of the
loss, ping time, and jitter and then displays
the results after a few moments. As with Testmy.net
SpeedTest, you can leave feedback about ●●●

CPU RANKING ● 0 = ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS | ● ● ● 2.5 = ABSOLUTELY AVERAGE | ● ● ● ● ● 5 = ABSOLUTELY PERFECT

80 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 reviews | software

MyConnection PC
Free
VisualWare
www.visualware.com
●●●●

(at www.myconnectiontest.com), and

a couple of other sites out there have
reused the same connection test in its
online incarnation. That said, the PC
version is a little more polished.
MyConnection PC tests your connec-
tion against one of four servers—three in
the continental United States and one in
England. MyConnection PC is capable of
reporting the results in up to six categories:
application speed (the real download/
upload speed available to programs),
capacity speed (the sustained data rate for
a connection), VoIP quality, routing speed,
forced idle (a measurement of how many
applications can efficiently use the connec-
tion at the same time), and time variation Guidelines For Testing
(whether your ISP moderates connection
traffic over time). Categories vary depend- Testing your bandwidth If your router also doesn’t always ensure that
ing on what version of the program you’ve seems like a snap if all serves as a wireless certain settings are cleared.
purchased, but you can run all editions that’s involved is visiting a access point, disable this If you must go through
of the program as 15-day trials. MyCon- Web site and clicking a function. It’s best to do your router, disable any
nection lets users repeat tests over time and couple of links. The speed testing over a wired QoS functions your router
aggregates the results into tables or graphs. process is that simple in connection anyway. Turning may have. These can
It can also email you results. theory, but in practice it’s off the wireless also re- interfere with traffic and
The same company also makes Visual- all too easy to end up with duces the number of vari- create anomalies in the
Route 2010 (www.visualroute.com), a speed readings that don’t ables that could complicate measurements.
graphical traceroute program. Instead of match up at all with reality. testing (for example, some- Run multiple tests.
testing your connection’s bandwidth, it can Here are a few best prac- one else unwittingly con- Tests run at daytime peak,
help determine if the route to or from a par- tices to keep in mind nects to the base station off-peak, nighttime, and
ticular Internet host is giving you trouble. before running any tests. during the test). weekend hours may all
Disconnect all other If you have a router yield different results
Better Broadband
networked devices and plugged into your cable depending on the total
There’s no question the availability of close all applications that modem, try directly con- amount of traffic in your
broadband is on the rise. What’s also on the might be using the net- necting the cable modem network neighborhood.
rise is skepticism about how fast any given work. This way you won’t to your PC’s LAN port to Use different browsers
connection actually is, or how sustained the have anything else con- see if that affects any for browser-based tests
speed can be under real-world conditions. founding the test results, speed test results. (Note that use the browser di-
It’s up to us to figure those things out for whether it’s a chat client that most cable modems rectly instead of running
ourselves—and to keep a constant eye on or a Netflix video stream. will need to be reset or as a Flash plug-in. Chrome
them lest they change. Sites and apps like Likewise, if you’re run- power-cycled if you change and Firefox, for example,
these are a good start, but we’re looking for- ning a test from within a the device plugged directly can generate radically dif-
ward to how they’ll be revised to accurately Web browser, close any into it.) If your router dou- ferent results, most likely
test the multimegabit speeds that might tabs and/or browser win- bles as your cable modem, due to each browser’s
become prevalent in the next decade. ▲ dows that don’t need to reset it using its reset JavaScript engines. ▲
be open. switch. Unplugging it
by Serdar Yegulalp

CPU RANKING ● 0 = ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS | ● ● ● 2.5 = ABSOLUTELY AVERAGE | ● ● ● ● ● 5 = ABSOLUTELY PERFECT

CPU / October 2010 81

 reviews | software

Sony Vegas Movie Studio

HD Platinum Production Suite
lthough Adobe Premiere rules the hundreds of effects, transitions, or A/V
A roost of high-end video-editing soft-
ware, the high end normally calls for pro-
filters. If you’re unsure what to do, either
view the included DVD tutorial (which
fessional-level experience and talent to use is very good), or click the Show Me
it effectively. Adobe’s “prosumer”–level How toolbar button and watch Vegas
product is Premiere Elements, but anyone itself prompt you to select this, click
considering it would do well to check out that, and choose the other option to get Vegas Movie Studio HD Platinum
Sony’s (take a deep breath) Vegas Movie the desired effect. Production Suite
Studio HD Platinum Production Suite. Despite being only 32-bit, Vegas is re- $124.95
Both ultimately do similar things, but markably speedy both in GUI responsive- Sony
Vegas’ workflow is different and in some ness and rendering, the latter due in part to www.sony.com
ways better, and the bundled programs not reprocessing unnecessary bits, which ●●●●
that come with the suite are powerful Premiere Elements always seems to do.
tools you’ll really want to use. Vegas is also remarkably glitch-free, which Forge Audio Studio 10 (best described
Vegas itself breaks your video project can’t always be said of its competition. as a well-dressed cousin of Audacity),
down with up to 10 tracks, up from the Vegas offers dozens of file-type/codec which includes a Vocal Eraser plug-in
previous version’s four, meaning you now exporting options (including H.264- that can scrub, isolate, or pull out vocals
have elbow room to lay down sufficient encoded MP4s), but DVD/Blu-ray from tracks.
layers of video, audio, and effects to make authoring/burning duties are handled by Overall, Vegas is a well-rounded suite
a truly impressive video. Just drag and drop DVD Architect Studio 5. The handoff is for advanced video-editing hobbyists or
imported videos and audio files onto the seamless, however, and although it’s a new entry-level professional work. ▲
tracks, lay them out and line them up, interface to learn, it is both simple yet
crop as necessary, and then drag one of option-packed. Also included is Sound by Warren Ernst

Immunet Protect Free 2.0.11.12

ero-day threats are traditionally the We admit there’s potential here. Im-
Z most troublesome for antivirus prod-
ucts, since these threats are likely to infect
munet offers free telephone tech support
for this free product, which is basically
your system before your antivirus product unheard of these days. It starts up fast, con-
has had a chance to download its daily sumes less than 30MB of RAM, and has
definition file update. Many security ven- a reasonably attractive and simple GUI.
dors are turning to “cloud-based” tech- There’s very little system slowdown when
nologies to help stop zero-day outbreaks, it’s installed, and it doesn’t interfere with Immunet Protect Free 2.0.11.12
on the theory that millions of computers Norton, McAfee, or about 30 other security Free
looking closely at potential threats can tools. It performs scans relatively quickly, Immunet
spot them quicker than researchers work- too. It also offers tools to make it easy to www.immunet.com
ing at an AV company. recommend it and provide download links ●●
To that end, Immunet Protect employs to your online friends with just a few clicks.
cloud-based technology to explicitly tar- Because Immunet’s Web site promotes the scamware generating numerous pop-up
get zero-day malware, either working by Immunet Protect as an extra layer of pro- windows, which is embarrassing.
itself or in conjunction with your existing tection against online threats, yet also states These threats are the kind of malware
security software. And while we’re pretty it can work by itself, we dutifully installed it our top-rated security tools have been
sure “the cloud” is being used to distrib- by itself and surfed to known infected Web able to successfully block for more than a
ute security information in this case, sites, which then promptly installed poly- year, and we see no need to “augment”
Immunet Protect does a poor job actual- morphic scamware to our test system with their abilities with Immunet Protect,
ly blocking zero-day malware in prac- nary a complaint or hindrance from Im- regardless of its price or ease of use. ▲
tice, making it hard to recommend, even munet. Then more malware arrived. Re-
as free software. peated scans turned up nothing, even with by Warren Ernst

CPU RANKING ● 0 = ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS | ● ● ● 2.5 = ABSOLUTELY AVERAGE | ● ● ● ● ● 5 = ABSOLUTELY PERFECT

82 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 reviews | software

soft Xpansion Perfect PDF 6 Editor 6.3.9

DF files are a double-edged sword. Perfect PDF 6 Editor 6.3.9
P They’re supposed to be uneditable
documents, sort of like digital paper.
$35
soft Xpansion
This is great when you want a “per- www.soft-xpansion.com
manent” online document that some ●●●●
yahoo isn’t going to change on you.
But on the other hand, it means when create bookmarks and hypertext links;
you spot an error in your own PDF or even embed multimedia files.
files you can’t “go in” and fix it with- The biggest problem is speed.
out specialized and expensive software There just isn’t any. Even scrolling
tools such as Adobe Acrobat 9 Pro- though lengthy PDF documents caus-
fessional ($449). One alternative is es pauses every few pages, and you
Perfect PDF 6 Editor, which runs about logically organized and look professional. can practically hear gears grinding when
$35 (based on a late-July euro-to-dollar Falling right to hand are the tools necessary editing complex PDFs. There’s a View
exchange rate) and begs the question: “Is to really edit text in a PDF file: add and File In Adobe Acrobat button in the
Acrobat 9 Pro really 13 times better than remove words, sentences, or paragraphs as Ribbon of Perfect PDF Editor, and we
Perfect PDF Editor?” If all you need is an you see fit, though formatting basically suspect you’ll be using it a lot.
occasional PDF editor that really works, remains as it is in the original PDF. Ditto So for occasional minor changes to
then the answer is “No,” but is that really for images. Don’t count on any degree of existing PDF files, PP6E is a worthwhile
all you need? text-reflowing or page-layout precision, but tool, but don’t count on it replacing Acro-
Sporting an Office 2007-esque Ribbon for making corrections, it works well. You bat for daily PDF reading. ▲
interface, Perfect PDF Editor looks slick. can also change document attributes, such
Common and uncommon commands are as paper size; add headers and footers; by Warren Ernst

Nitro PDF Reader 1 Beta

lthough there are many PDF Nitro PDF Reader 1 Beta
A readers that don’t bear an
Adobe label, they still generally fall
Free
Nitro PDF Software
into two categories: free but light www.nitroreader.com
on features, or full-featured but not ●●●●
free. True, even the most expensive
alternative PDF viewers are sig- offering all the tools you need
nificantly cheaper than Adobe’s to work with PDF files with-
Acrobat Professional, but some- out burying you under menus
times it can be hard to justify and buttons.
spending anything on a product But as great as this seems,
you’ll really only use once sporadi- there’s a catch: PDFs look terri-
cally at most. Nitro PDF Reader, ble in Nitro. It occasionally dis-
on the other hand, combines a plays text using unusual fonts,
wide array of high-end features with a low Nitro uses two methods to create PDF and its font-smoothing algorithm tends
price of nothing. files. The first is a fairly typical “PDF print to make text appear muddy. Attempts
Nitro isn’t simply a PDF reader. It can driver.” Select the Nitro PDF Creator at antialiasing lines make some look
fill in forms, retain form data, and even printer in your program and print, and out extra sharp and thin while others look
“make” a form out of a scanned PDF that comes a PDF. Alternatively, just drag a file fat and blurry. We hope this is a result
lacks traditional form fields. There’s a full on top of the Nitro Desktop shortcut, and of the beta status of the software and
suite of commenting tools (sticky notes, it converts the file to PDF automatically. will be fixed soon. But for now it’s a
text comments, and highlighting) and a Nitro has fully embraced the Office potential deal breaker, even when the
signature tool for signing digital docu- 2007-style ribbon interface. This inter- deal is free. ▲
ments. Plus, Nitro can save PDFs with face doesn’t always work for all programs,
these additions. but it does work surprisingly well here, by Warren Ernst

CPU RANKING ● 0 = ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS | ● ● ● 2.5 = ABSOLUTELY AVERAGE | ● ● ● ● ● 5 = ABSOLUTELY PERFECT

84 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 reviews | software

Open Sores
Linux Helps Level The Technological Playing Field
For Developing Nations
o often, the tech world is overrun address any other issues that
S with sniping, fanboyism, malicious
security threats, the rise and fall of tech
arise with the computers.
There is little information
Kapil Sibal of India’s Ministry of
Human Resource Development
shows off the prototype of a
empires, the skewering of famous CEOs, presently available regarding
$35 tablet computer
schadenfreude over failed products, exact specs. According to an
being developed for
Internet trolls, endless speculating on the Indian TV newscast, the tablet
Indian students.
Next Big Thing, spending unbelievable features a touchscreen, 2GB of
amounts of money on hot new products, RAM, Wi-Fi capabilities, and
labor issues in countries manufacturing USB ports. The motherboard
our pricey gizmos, and on and on. was homegrown by university
Even those of us who are enthusiastic students (overseen by profes-
about technology can get worn out by the sors). There is no word yet
constant din and all-too-frequent negativ- concerning an operating sys-
ity. Every now and then, though, we’re tem or software, but it’s a good
reminded why technology is important, bet that one of the many light-
why we care about it, and how it has the weight Linux OSes currently
power to change things for the better. in development could deliver. insurmountable; many of the target children
worldwide live in grass huts or equivalent
The $35 Tablet The OLPC Project domiciles. Many go to school outdoors.
Recently, the Indian government’s Imagine a $10 tablet that could con- Many have no electricity anywhere nearby.
Ministry of Human Resource Develop- nect to the Internet and run a few decent And, of course, they’re all children, and
ment announced that it will be selling applications . . . it’s kind of unbelievable, one thing all kids have in common no
tablets to students at the triple-take-wor- especially considering another desirable, matter which continent they live on is that
thy cost of $35. If that weren’t inexpen- low-cost computing option for the devel- they tend to be rather destructive.
sive enough, the Union Minister of HRD, oping world is the $199 XO laptop from Thus, this little laptop had to be vir-
Kapil Sibal, announced in an official the One Laptop Per Child project. tually indestructible, resistant to drops
government press release that eventually, The brainchild and enduring passion as well as impermeable to dirt and water.
the Ministry planned to get the cost down of Nicholas Negroponte and a gang from It needed to draw very little power, and
to $20, then $10 per computer. The MIT’s Media Lab, the OLPC Project has it somehow needed to be able to con-
ambitious project is designed to get tech- been around for a few years, offering the nect to the ’Net. The display needed to
nology into the hands of more people in relatively low-cost, durable XO laptop to be visible in direct sunlight. Oh, and its
rural India. children in developing nations and other components needed to be incredibly
The Indian government is working areas where kids want for access to com- inexpensive; Negroponte’s original target
with R&D teams from Indian technical puters because of the expense. price was $100.
institutions of higher learning to develop The issues the group faced in terms of In the end, although the XO ended up
technology to achieve those low costs and design are both fascinating and seemingly costing nearly twice that much, the team

Imagine a $10 tablet that could connect to the Internet

and run a few decent applications . . .
it’s kind of unbelievable.
CPU RANKING ● 0 = ABSOLUTELY WORTHLESS | ● ● ● 2.5 = ABSOLUTELY AVERAGE | ● ● ● ● ● 5 = ABSOLUTELY PERFECT

CPU / October 2010 85

 reviews | software

managed to produce a laptop that met the little more than vaporware. This exciting
other criteria. announcement from India may turn On Hardware
The current XO has a high-resolution into the same. Even the OLPC project It’s impossible to think about India’s
(1200 × 900, 200dpi) monochrome dis- has had its share of critics and failures proposed $35 tablets and not compare
play that rotates for different usage sce- along the way. (A $199 laptop may them to their exponentially more expen-
narios and is indeed readable in sunlight. have seemed unbelievable a few years sive lookalike, the iPad, produced by one
Under the hood, the XO is powered by ago, for example, but now cheapie lap- of the growing behemoths of the comput-
AMD’s Geode LX-700 (I had to Google tops are everywhere.) ing industry that is essentially the antithe-
it, too) clocked at 433MHz with sis of open-source anything.
embedded graphics. Instead of a hard Although the iPad is on a different
drive, the XO is equipped with 1GB plane in terms of capabilities than
of flash storage and sports DDR333 these inexpensive machines, they’re
(166 MHz) RAM. all essentially the same basic device.
Additional features include built- Is the iPad really so many times
in speakers and microphone, micro- better than the OLPC or this prom-
phone and headphone jacks, a video ised $35 tablet? Probably not, and
camera (640 × 480 resolution at that highlights the disparity between
30fps), three USB ports, an the for-profit world and the non-
MMC/SD card slot, and a dual profit one.
capacitance/resistive touchpad. For However, although it would be
connectivity, the XO has easy to snarl and wag a finger at
802.11b/g, as well as 802.11s for Steve Jobs and his expensive toys
mesh networking. On top of all that only the richest people in the
that, the bright white and green world can afford, I think it would be
case is kind of cute. a mistake. So what if Apple rakes in
The hardware is cleverly designed, money hand over fist on its prod-
but the OS and software is where ucts? It’s allowed to; that’s how capi-
open source steps in to help deliver talism goes.
low cost with sufficient features. The Further, how much of the technol-
OS and software are the Sugar ogy developed by companies trying
Learning Platform and the GNOME The XO laptop is the flagship product of the One to get rich eventually becomes inex-
Desktop, and the tools therein are Laptop Per Child project. pensive yet effective for projects like
rather impressive. the ones above? Would the cost of
Sugar offers a way to connect those components plummet so low if
with other users via a mesh network, Maybe these products are pipe dreams those companies didn’t develop better and
browse the Web, draw and paint, work and changing the world through inex- faster components to replace them and
math problems, learn basic programming pensive computers is overly optimistic. keep pace in the competitive market? One
skills, play games, read e-books, create As some critics have pointed out, who man’s trash, you know . . . .
and edit video, create music and software cares if you can create a software synthe- To be clear: No one is saying that you
instruments, and more. sizer on your cool tablet if your belly is should pat yourself on the back for subsi-
The OLPC folks continue to press on empty and your throat is dry? On the dizing a computing revolution for the
and innovate. The group’s next comput- other hand, maybe inexpensive comput- developing world by buying a new (insert
er, the XO 1.75, is slated to appear in ers really can help change things for the expensive device) to replace your (insert
2011 and will purportedly have some better; the answer to this question is far one-year-old expensive device). But it’s
performance enhancements over the from certain. important to remember that this year’s
original XO yet will cost closer to $150. What is certain, however, is that cutting edge is next year’s quaintly nostal-
A $75 super-thin tablet called the XO increasingly, open-source operating sys- gic technology, and in that sweet spot
3.0 is also in the works. tems and software are delivering excellent where the technology is still relevant but
features while requiring fewer and fewer costs next to nothing, it can change the
Reality Bytes hardware resources. If there’s a bottleneck, world when the right people get involved.
Granted, there have been announce- it’s elsewhere, both in terms of cost and Especially when the OS and software cost
ments in the past about fantastically functionality. After all, a $100, $75, $35, nothing to begin with. ▲
inexpensive computers for developing or $10 computer would be quite impossi-
nations and poor kids that turned into ble if the OS cost $80. by Seth Colaner

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86 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 digital living | gen net

Hulu Plus
Can Hulu Beat Itself At Its Own Game?

fter months of rumor and

A speculation about a coming

subscription model, the
wildly popular TV site Hulu
launched its premium subscription
service early this summer on an in-
vitation-only basis. But will people
pay for this brand of TV?
Following almost two years of
building its audience through free,
ad-supported access to recent and
older full episodes of prime time
broadcast shows, this joint venture
of NBC Universal, News Corp.,
and The Walt Disney Company ap-
peared to be following a trend
among media companies of making
users pay directly for certain content. episodes in the Plus library, and Hulu is For critics and analysts who have been
regularly adding new material. urging the major broadcasters to extract
Fee Joins Free But in addition to pouring on the con- more value from their online properties,
Hulu quickly became one of the most tent, Hulu Plus is trying to define “pre- the arrival of Hulu Plus is a sure sign that
popular online video destinations by mium” value as ubiquitous access to major media are working to go beyond
giving users free access to recently aired content. Unlike the core Hulu product, free-only models online. “I think it is a
episodes of programs such as “Family which is available only on PCs in a browser great idea,” says Laura Martin, managing
Guy,” “Lost,” and select episodes from or the Media Center, Hulu Plus is also ac- director and senior analyst of Enter-
TV history. The model worked. In May cessible via discrete apps on the iPhone, tainment, Cable & Media at investment
2010, Hulu served over 1 billion video iPod touch, and iPad and on a TV screen bank Needham & Co. Even with ads
streams, second only to Google proper- via the Sony PS3 as well as select Internet- wrapped around their TV content, the
ties, mainly YouTube, and was attracting enabled TVs and BD players. Each of these broadcasters are realizing a fraction of the
43 million unique users. interfaces is slightly different, but they ac- revenue from the Web that they draw
Dubbed “Hulu Plus,” the new project is cess similar content and maintain a user’s from on-air viewings, and this model
a $9.99 per month service that distin- viewing history and Queue of content cannot survive, she argues.
guishes itself from the continuing free Hulu across the platforms. The clean and simple “Television programmers should pro-
site with added content, video quality, and Hulu interface is apparent throughout. A tect the value of their entire distribution
accessibility. Hulu Plus offers a deeper trove catalog of TV episodes and a narrower col- ecosystem. Therefore, no one platform
of content, including the full run of current lection of older and obscure films is avail- and no one delivery mechanism should be
season programming for top shows such as able for streaming. The PC interface lets vastly cheaper than everything else.
“House” and “Friday Night Lights.” Many you subscribe to shows so that new Putting your long-form content on the
of these shows can be streamed at 720p episodes show up in your Queue. Hulu Internet for free destroys the value.”
HD quality. Even more impressive, the pre- Plus also tracks across the platforms what Other media providers such as Pandora
mium service has complete back catalogs of you have watched most recently. When we and eMusic generally succeed in con-
several legendary series, including “The X- started watching a show on our iPhone, verting up to 10% of their base of free
Files” and “Law and Order: SVU.” There stopped in the middle, and loaded Hulu users into premium customers, according
are 10 years of full “Saturday Night Live” Plus on our iPad, the program asked us if to Martin’s research. Although live TV
episodes, plus piles of individual clips of the we wanted to continue what we had episodes are still free on network TV, back
variety show. In total, there are over 2,000 paused on the other platform. catalogs and easy access to TV libraries are

88 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 digital living | gen net

extras that usually come at a old media onto a new plat-

cost, through pay-per-view or form really is what consumers
DVDs. When putting these want most.
wares online, Martin con- “From a consumer per-
tends, media companies have spective, it’s the same show,
to assign some value to them. the same advertisers, the same
“You shouldn’t be retraining business model, the same ex-
the consumer that he can get a perience. There’s not a lot of
price discount [online].” innovation there.”
Short-form video hubs like
And Now, More Words Metacafe were born on the
From Our Sponsors Internet and are creating new
But is Hulu Plus, a big, al- models for consuming video.
ways-on vault of prime time’s Unlike the classic “lean-back”
past and present, something method of media consump-
we all want to pay for? “I tion that TV invented, the
think it is an open question short-form video phenom-
whether consumers will pay enon is a new and highly
$10 a month for a subscrip- interactive activity, whereby
Hulu Plus piles on the value, including full runs of series such as
tion service that is primarily users assemble their own
Saturday Night Live, going back to the first episodes in the mid-1970s.
about broadcast TV pro- video experiences through
grams,” says Will Richmond, search and discovery.
president of Broadband Directions. advertising as the free service. In fact, the “On the Internet, you define your
Although Richmond praises Hulu Plus’ company defines Hulu Plus as a “new, pathway every two to three minutes,”
presentation, usability, and video quality, revolutionary ad-supported subscription Hachenberg says. The coming of Hulu and
he says the overall focus on TV is limited. product.” Richmond argues that this hy- the other networks to the Web has raised
“It is a new concept for consumers to brid model is a mistake, even though the expectations for video quality and
pay for broadcast TV,” Richmond says, cable TV is both ad-supported and sub- moved companies like Metacafe toward
adding, “the content offering is relatively scription-based. new models that involve more professional
narrow when you compare Hulu Plus to “I think [a hybrid model] is more trou- content. For example, Metacafe now fo-
what is available on Netflix or cable bling with Hulu. You can’t skip the ads. cuses on channels of content related to TV,
TV subscriptions.” Most people will say Hulu is a free Web site movies, and gaming that give the visitor
But the most surprising aspect of the where you have ads, but wait a second— quick updates, trailers, and news on what
Hulu Plus model may be the presence of now they are charging $10 a month and is going on in each sector. The Web allows
advertising. Hulu Free has been famously they still want to send me the ads? Most publishers to specialize and focus on niches
effective in bringing major brand adver- people would feel that’s not appropriate.” in ways the big TV networks can’t.
tisers into online video. Even competitors, “Nobody controls it,” he says. “In the
such as Erick Hachenberg, CEO of short- In Search Of New TV end, Hulu is owned and controlled by the
form video hub Metacafe, credit Hulu While the major networks, Hulu, and TV networks. It’s the same business.”
with invigorating the entire market. some cable companies are moving toward
“Hulu has been very positive for the a model of putting “TV everywhere,” the TV 2.0
industry. It brings credibility to adver- majority of online video involves shorter But if the TV networks themselves
tisers about where the industry is going. It clips from a variety of sources. Metacafe’s have their way, both the Web and other
shows them that this is the future.” Hachenberg applauds Hulu’s success in technical innovations will help remake
Despite the addition of premium con- raising the profile and legitimacy of on- that old lean-back medium into a dif-
tent, Hulu Plus will have just as much line video but questions whether porting ferent sort of business that is more inter-
active. “Mobile and the iPad are game
changers,” says Martin. “Presence,” or

“ Hulu has been very positive for the industry. It brings the ability for content to follow you
credibility to advertisers about where the industry is across devices and places, is a very pow-
erful draw, she says. TV will be on de-
going. It shows them that this is the future.
”
Erick Hachenberg, CEO of Metacafe
mand everywhere and in a seamless way
that lets users pause, switch devices, and
pick up where they left off.

CPU / October 2010 89

 digital living | gen net

For the networks, however, mo- Available on the PC, PS3, iPhone,
bile devices are not only opportuni- and iPad, Hulu Plus tracks where
ties for more broadcasting but also your viewing of a show left off on
for audience interactivity and one platform and invites you to
sharing. Nick Johnson, NBC resume when you log in to your ac-
Universal’s VP of Digital Media count on one of its other platforms.
Sales, says that TV viewing working
in tandem with the Web or mobile
devices takes television viewing into drive incremental ratings points
a new communal level. on air.”
As TV moves to the Web, the Despite this, one of the lessons of
viral multiplier effect kicks in. “Not the Web economy is that success is
only are [audiences] talking to fleeting. AOL and MySpace seemed
other participants, but everyone in indomitable in their time. Martin
their social graph is seeing the con- warns that the days of mega-corpo-
versation happen through Twitter rations like TV networks and their
or Facebook.” NBC’s Oxygen and 50-year reign may be over.
Bravo cable networks have been “The concept of a clear winner
running Web-based real-time chats in the Internet isn’t so clear. When
during the live broadcasts to gen- you win online, it may only be for
erate more interest in shows. “We’re 10 years.” ▲
literally seeing that a show is able to
leverage the dialogue online to by Steve Smith

The Peacock, Digitized

O ne of the primary part-

ners in the Hulu joint ven-
ture, NBC Universal, has its
growth is happening is that it
is very much complementary
to our on-air viewing. A lot of
them and when they seek out
and find content they are pas-
sionate about, they will sit
“Chuck” and “Friday Night
Lights,” where I think our
audience has been able to
own popular suite of sites the behavior about online through a full episode. In fact, leverage the Internet to help
where tens of millions of visi- [viewing] is about people that they will sit through multiple amplify their voice. I think that
tors come for full episodes of are discovering new shows episodes. The conclusion rates certainly is true in the case of
recently aired shows. We they haven’t watched on-air or on our streams are very, very “Chuck,” which is pretty well
asked Nick Johnson, NBC haven’t thought to DVR. “The high, and we love that. documented. The fan base
Universal VP of Digital Media Office” is a show that people was pretty important in at
Sales, how people are using will come and watch multi- CPU: Where and when are least making sure that NBC
the Web as a DVR, and how ple times even though they people tuning in? heard that there were a lot of
the TV business is using the watched it on-air. But we find Johnson: At work is big. Lunch people that cared about the
Web to keep in closer touch most people are either coming tends to be big. And then there show and characters.
with viewers’ tastes. NBC to NBC.com to watch shows a is a good correlation rolling
Universal runs recently aired second time or catch up on out after prime time where CPU: Would you ever have a
shows from NBC, Bravo, Syfy, episodes they missed. people are catching up on paid model at NBC.com?
Oxygen, and USA on Hulu, of shows as they conclude on-air. Johnson: TV online is ad-
which it is part owner. CPU: How long are people supported. I am certain that
staying? Are they really CPU: Are there instances people are always trying
CPU: How has TV viewing on watching full episodes? where online loyalty to a pro- to think about how to make
the Web grown for NBC, and Johnson: The thing that we love gram is keeping a program on the experience better and to
how does it affect TV viewing? about our full episodes in dig- air even though it might have make sure that ultimately
Johnson: The growth has been ital is that we really do have a been canceled otherwise? they are contemplating many
very, very strong online over very engaged consumer. They Johnson: In the last couple of models. But the past for us
the last three or four years. are in lean-forward mode. They years, there have been strong has been ad-supported full
And what we found as this have a computer in front of movements for shows like episodes online. ▲

90 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 $59.99 (PC, Mac) • ESRB: (T)een
Blizzard Entertainment
starcraft2.com

multiplayer game from a

single purchased copy
onto several PCs. Unfor-
Twelve Years In The Making—by Dr. Malaprop tunately, StarCraft II
here’s little in the way of then all hell breaks loose. The StarCraft’s multiplayer eschews spawning and
T explanation needed for a
game like StarCraft II, called
Wings Of Liberty’s narrative
drops off more abruptly than
mode. Jumping into
multiplayer matches is re-
requires a copy of the
game for each player.
Wings Of Liberty in its first iter- we‘d like at the end game— warding, but it can be in- Adding insult to injury is
ation. Revolving around a very even with the expectation that timidating for the casual the lack of a LAN multi-
human storyline, there are two the storyline is going to be player. That’s why we en- player mode. Those of us
main components in StarCraft doled out in two additional joyed Blizzard’s match- who enjoyed two-player
II: the epic campaign and the games focusing on the other making via the mandatory vs. games with a single
deep multiplayer game. The two races. Not having other Battle.net system, where you copy of StarCraft are going
nonlinear campaign brings races to play in the campaign is are matched to similarly to be forced to purchase
29 missions interspersed with a minor complaint because the skilled players. two copies of the game and
top-notch and fully acted CGI game mixes up the mission The game features 50 un- play through Battle.net even
scenes to tell the story. Further- styles and objectives constantly ranked matches, where you if we’re in the same house.
more, there are branching re- to keep gameplay fresh. The can play risk-free as you We‘ve nitpicked on a few is-
search trees where you have varied mission design keeps find your multiplayer legs. sues, but if you like RTS games,
to choose one technology you interested from start to Additionally, you can StarCraft II is a no-brainer pur-
path while forgoing another. finish. However, you do get a play co-op with a friend chase. The title’s ambitious
Between missions, you return very brief opportunity to play against the AI and Challenges character and polished game-
to a central base, meet different as another race, which whet that will help you hone skills. play experience provides
characters, and generally get our appetite for the next two These become necessary to much bang for the buck even
a little break between the in- games in the StarCraft II trilogy. enter more competitive multi- if you don’t delve into the
tense missions. Fortunately, multiplayer player levels. Anyone that has multiplayer component.
As Jim Raynor, you’re a rebel matchups let you play as experience with the original’s Those on the fence about
fighting the Dominion, regret- Terran, Zerg, or Protoss. Much multiplayer modes will recall RTSes should also give the
ting the death of Kerrigan, and has been made of the original being able to spawn the game a chance. Remember,
StarCraft II is going to be re-
membered as one of the best
in the genre. ▲

92 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 $59.99 (X360, PS3); $49.99 (Wii); $39.99 (PS2, PSP)
ESRB: (E)veryone • EA Sports • www.maddennfl.easports.com

The Only Game In Town—by Josh Compton

he Madden franchise has been around for The controls have
T 20 years and has seen varying degrees of in-
novation between titles with some years pro-
changed so that while run-
ning, you only need to use
viding more changes than others. In Madden the two sticks to move the
NFL 11, EA Sports attempts to shorten game ball forward and execute
length while improving presentation, play jukes and spins. The com-
calling, and gameplay; and for the most part, puter handles any sprint
it succeeds. moves. A new mechanic
The Franchise and Superstar modes are rela- called GameFlow lets you
tively untouched, though. There are still exhi- choose to have the coach
bition games and Madden Moments, but call the plays for you while giving you insight over the
EA also added the option of playing Super headset. You can turn off or ignore these features using the
Bowl XLIV with unique presentation ele- customizable settings. Game designers moved hot routes
ments that make it a cool experience. The to the D-pad, which is jarring at first but only takes a game
best game mode addition is 3-on-3 online or two to get used to. Player models, stadiums, and anima-
multiplayer. In this mode, you can control the tions continue to get better. The addition of Gus Johnson
QB, RBs, or WRs/TEs on offense and the LBs, brings new energy, but the commentary is still lacking. The
D-Line, or DBs on defense, which allows for in- new additions and lack of significant flaws makes Madden
stant accountability. NFL 11 one of the best iterations in the series. ▲

$49.99 (PC); $59.99 (X360, PS3) • ESRB: (M)ature

2K Games • www.mafia2game.com

Beauty & The Beasts—by Chris Trumble

mericans have had a strange fascination with robbery as a way to make ends meet. After get-
A criminals in general and old-school mafiosos
in particular for a long, long time. One need look
ting caught robbing a store, Vito is given a choice:
He can either go to prison for a long time or he
no further than the popularity of such films as can serve his country in Europe, where World
“The Godfather,” “Goodfellas,” “Casino,” and War II is raging. Vito chooses the army, gets
others to see that despite the abhorrent wounded in action, and is soon home, where his
nature of organized crime’s methods, we friend Joe introduces him to organized crime.
can’t help admiring the way mobsters The simple act of walking down a back street
make their own rules and lead lives of ex- in Empire Bay as Vito returns home is a surpris-
citement and privilege—real or imagined. ingly rich experience. Snow is falling gently, pass-
2K Games has done an incredible job ersby are chatting, and you can hear Sinatra
of bringing that excitement to the sequel playing nearby. The game isn’t always this peace-
of Gathering’s 2002 hit, Mafia; the game ful and picturesque, to be sure, but it is always
is violent but drips with nostalgia and, this compelling and constantly draws you into
dare we say it, romance. In the game, Vito’s story.
you play the role of Vito Scaletta, whose The action is fast and fun, the graphics and
family leaves Sicily for the United States sound are exemplary, and the story is a richly
when he is a boy. Vito grows up in pov- told tale of one man’s rise to wealth and power
erty, and he and his friend Joe turn to through his intellect, his will, and his skill with a
gun. Mafia II will undoubt-
edly go down as one of the
best games of 2010. ▲

CPU / October 2010 93

 Neither Here Nor There—by Josh Compton
mmediately after beginning our first playthrough, we knew we make it through the puzzles that become progressively harder as
I were about to experience something special. Limbo, a trial and
error, puzzle/platforming game from Playdead, has only a sem-
you move forward. The sound design is fantastic with musical
cues and sound effects used sparingly to create an atmosphere
blance of a story that comes from the game’s description: “Un- of curiosity but also dread.
certain of his sister’s fate, a boy enters Limbo.” With that, you are The sheer imagination and creativity on display in
dropped into a black and white world filled with light, shadows, and Limbo, coupled with the sense of accomplishment
a menagerie of creatures and contraptions out to prevent you from after completing the more difficult puzzles, is more
reaching the end (and whatever may wait for you there). than enough to warrant a purchase. Limbo is an ex-
The setting is beautifully crafted as a forest filled with bear perience you can’t miss and one of the few
traps gives way to an industrialized site made up of metal and truly original offerings available in the Xbox
machines. The controls are simple and responsive with buttons Live Arcade. ▲
for movement, jumping, and actions (activating a switch, pulling 1,200 MSP ($15) (Xbox Live Arcade)
a crate), but it takes great timing and quite a bit of thought to ESRB: (T)een • Playdead • www.limbogame.org

Humorist
Twist On Diablo
—by Dr. Malaprop Elite Space Combat Experience
$15 (X360, PS3) • ESRB: (T)een —by Dr. Malaprop
Hothead Games • deathspank.com

hat name could possibly be better for a true hero than irst-person space combat games are quite rare on consoles.
W DeathSpank? Indeed, as DeathSpank, you will be called upon
to seek out a powerful ancient artifact known as, um, “The Artifact.”
F DarkStar One follows in the flight path of Elite (an early fa-
vorite of ours from 1984), Privateer, and Freelancer. As Kayron
You’ll quickly notice DeathSpank is a self-aware game and provides Jarvis, you start as a novice pilot with a uniquely upgradable ship
ample optional dialogue that should keep you smiling as you play. called DarkStar One. While the game progresses, you learn that
The game’s sense of PG-13 humor comes courtesy of Ron Gilbert, your father died under mysterious circumstances when you
the writer from classic LucasArts adventure games, including the were a child, and naturally you must investigate. Along the way
first two Monkey Islands. you’ll spend your time smuggling cargo, trading commodities,
Anyone that’s played Diablo or Torchlight will recognize the escorting ships, collecting bounties, and liberating planets. The
third-person, isometric, Diablo-style view with quest-based RPG missions earn funds and uncover artifacts you can use to upgrade
gameplay. Visuals benefit greatly from the quirky and cartoony art. your ship. The dozens of star systems provide many hours of
We also felt that the audio, especially DeathSpank‘s voice, fit well open-ended play.
into the game’s tone. Outdated cutscene visuals coupled with poor voice acting
As a game that’s exclusively available via the Xbox Live Market- don’t enhance the storyline. However, the lack of polish doesn’t
place and PlayStation Network, you’d be forgiven for thinking that $15 affect how well the space combat gameplay holds up. When
buys you a less robust game. This time, you’d be wrong. The budget starting out, keep the manual handy until you‘re acclimated to
price will give novice and advanced players plenty to do for about 10 the controls. DarkStar was released for the PC in 2006 and up-
hours. DeathSpank features adventure game-style puzzles but mostly graded for 1080p with improved console control. It played
focuses on hack and slash gameplay. You can also have a friend play better on the PC, but the developer did a good job with this
along in a limited co-op mode. ▲ recent console port. ▲

$49.99 (X360) • ESRB: (T)een

Kalypso Media • darkstar-one.com

94 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 When Bigger Was Better
Imetfrom
is axiomatic that no generation recognizes the benefits it’s reaped
recent innovations that have become the norm. This amazed
once again when my wife and I gathered a bunch of CDs we own
7,200 crystal diodes, and 1,500 relays, all connected via roughly 5 mil-
lion hand-soldered joints.
ENIAC was the U.S. Army’s baby. By comparison, the U.S. Navy
last week and transferred them to an MP3 player for a long vacation in financed its own computer, Mark I, built by IBM and operated at
Hungary. It’s a Lilliputian medium we take for granted today, but con- Harvard starting in 1944. It was a lightweight compared to ENIAC,
sider: Back in the 1930s, if there had been a complete recording of, say, just 5 tons, but required a 50-foot shaft driven by a 4kw electric motor
Wagner’s four-opera, 15-hour-long work, Der Ring des Nibelungen, it to synchronize the machine’s calculating units. Where ENIAC was pro-
would have required roughly 120 78rpm grammed and controlled by an unwieldy
shellac records, weighing approximately combination of punch cards, patch cords,
60 pounds in all. After the industry made and 3,000 switches, Mark I used 24 input
the jump to 33 1/3rpm vinyl records in channels for paper tape—and because its
the 1950s, the whole thing could have logic didn’t employ conditional branching,
been encompassed in a box of less than those tapes tended to get very long. At the
20 pounds—and was, when the first time, both computers were heralded for
Ring Cycle (as it’s often called) was com- their ability to crunch numbers far faster
mercially released in the mid-60s. A than humans. As is often the case when
much smaller box is needed to hold the enthusiasm, the military, and government
operas on 12 to 15 CDs, and a single, meet, there were many successors.
feather-light MP3 chip can easily manage EDVAC, the Electronic Discrete Vari-
multiple versions of the entire thing, able Automatic Computer, was able to
depending upon storage capacity. store programs, unlike its predecessors. It
Miniaturization is amazing. Still, the was delivered to the Ballistics Research
illustration I’ve provided doesn’t impress Laboratory at the Aberdeen Proving
teens that have only seen a phonograph if Ground in Maryland in 1949. ORDVAC
their parents keep one in the attic, and was yet another computer built for the
usually refer to it as “a museum piece.” BRL, this time at the University of Illinois,
Speaking as a museum piece myself, I and followed by a series titled ILLIAC.
find that the best way to impress the Then there was the RAND Corporation’s
youth of today is with a two-by-four. I JOHNNIAC, or John v. Neumann Nu-
mean that figuratively rather than literally merical Integrator and Automatic Comput-
(in case you were wondering), through exam- Barry Brenesal has written more er, which ran from 1953 to 1966 with over
ples a lot less subtle than those involving than 1,000 published articles and 50,000 operational hours, or slightly more than
records and hence easier to imagine. reviews on electronic technology since the average undergrad spends in total on an
In other words, computers. Consider your 1987. His first personal computer MMO game. Nor must we forget MANIAC,
laptop, or better still, your smartphone if you was a Radio Shack TRS-80 model 100. the Mathematical Analyzer, Numerical Integra-
have one. Now, envision another computer It was last seen functioning tor, and Computer, designed by Nicholas Me-
with less than 1/100,000th of its power, weigh- as a boat anchor. tropolis and built at Los Alamos. Metropolis,
ing 30 tons and consisting of 30 separated 8- whose own name sounds as though it came
foot-high dorm locker-like units plus a power from a Barbarella comic book, acknowledged
supply, all dumped in a 20- x 40-foot room— the name was chosen in hopes of stopping all
one cooled with its own industrial-strength air- the silly –IAC names of the big mainframes.
conditioning unit, since this monster produces There pastured the behemoths, now extinct.
174kw of waste heat. That was ENIAC, the They were the pioneering computers, and the
Electronic Numerical Integrator and Calcula- most potent comparative examples I can think
tor. It was developed by a team at the Universi- of to show the hidden force of miniaturization
ty of Pennsylvania between 1943 and 1945, acting upon our modern lives. ▲
then unveiled in 1946. It had no chips, but
employed a mix of almost 18,000 vacuum Wax nostalgic with Barry at
tubes, 70,000 resistors, 10,000 capacitors, [email protected]

96 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 tips & tricks

time in two additional time zones. If you

are working with a European or Asian
partner, this is much easier than doing
the math in your head every time you
want to make a call. Click the date/time
in the notification area of the Taskbar
and then click Change Date And Time
Settings. In the open dialog box, click the
Additional Clocks tab and designate the
time zones for your second and third
clocks. (You can also give them custom
names.) Mousing over date/time the icon
Expand Your Windows 7 Bag Of Tricks will pop up all three times.

Disable Mobility Center

fter a couple of months dril- windows of that program to the fore- If the Mobility Center tool is just

A ling into the workings of

Windows 7’s WinXP Mode,
let’s look at more straightfor-
ward, general tips for tweaking Win7 to
our personal computing habits. We are
ground in succession.
In addition to simply
being handy, Jump Lists, a
feature built into the Task-
bar, are also customizable.
another annoyance that acci-
dentally pops up when you
press Win-X (often instead
of CTRL-X to cut something
to the Clipboard), then here
coming up on the first anniversary of the To do this, open Windows is a quick Registry hack that
new operating system’s release, and many Explorer, right-click its disables the tool altogether.
of us have settled into the OS’s many Taskbar icon, and click In Registry Editor, navigate
foibles. This month, we take control. Pin This Program To The to the HKEY_CURRENT_
Taskbar. Now you have a USER\Software\Microsoft\
Taskbar Tools permanent Explorer icon, Windows\CurrentVersion\
We’re all still getting used to the new and this can turn this into Policies key. Add a new key
functionality and quirks of the Win7 a mass of shortcuts. With named “MobilityCenter.”
Taskbar. There’s so much going on in the Explorer open, you can drag Highlight the new Key and
A Windows Explorer
Taskbar now that we found having a few any of the navigation short- add a new DWORD (32-bit)
folder pinned to your
shortcuts and tweaks may make life easi- cuts (Favorites, Documents, named “NoMobilityCenter.”
Taskbar can itself
er. First off, keyboard devotees can mini- Videos, etc.) onto the Win- Give this entry a value of
become a repository
mize their mouse use by using the Win-T dows Explorer Taskbar icon, 1 and say goodbye to Mo-
of additional shortcuts
combo to navigate the Taskbar icon with and it will be pinned to the bility Center inadvertent-
you can add to its
the arrow keys. Highlighting each icon icon’s Jump List. In fact, ly opening.
Jump List.
will bring up the thumbnail(s) of open you can drag and drop any
windows. Simply press the Up arrow to folder from the Desktop Super Send To
highlight the thumbnails and press onto this Explorer icon to pin it into the As most of you already know, holding
ENTER to switch to that window. Jump List. down SHIFT when right-clicking a
Another great Taskbar shortcut will Desktop icon calls up an expanded menu
instead cycle through the open iterations Time After Time After Time of options. But one place where this
of a given program. By pressing CTRL For those of you who work with super-sizing is useful is in the Send To
and clicking on the Taskbar icon of remote offices around the world, Win7 submenu. With a standard right-click,
a program, you will bring the open gives you the ability to display the current the Send To command lets you move a

We’re all still getting used to the new functionality and quirks
of the Win7 Taskbar.
There’s so much going on in the Taskbar now that we found having
a few shortcuts and tweaks may make life easier.

CPU / October 2010 97

 tips & tricks

file or folder directly to your Documents drag and drop onto the
folder, major drives, etc. But if you press USB drive will now
SHIFT and then right-click the file/ be encrypted and pass-
folder, the Send To submenu mush- word-protected.
rooms to include Favorites, My Music, Right-click the same
My Pictures, and a number of other USB drive and find the
common destinations. Manage BitLocker com-
Need more? You can also customize mand, which lets you
the targets in the Send To context menu. remove or change the
In the Start Search box, type shell:sendto password, tell the cur-
to open the folder of the same name. rent PC to automatical-
Then, simply create shortcuts to specific ly unlock this drive
folders and drop them into this folder; when it’s inserted, or
this adds them to the list of basic destina- save and print the recov- The Send To command in the context menu is really a simple
tions for the Send To context menu. ery key for the drive. folder of shortcuts to which you can add new destinations.
The recovery key is a
Use (& Recover From) BitLocker To Go text file that contains a long string key the text file, which you can copy and
We’ve lost more USB thumbdrives that will unlock the drive—critical if you paste into the open field in the BitLocker
than we can count, and who knows who happen to forget the password. window. This key will only give you tem-
now has access to the many files that At the login screen for the drive, click- porary access to the files on the drive; the
were stored on them. Win7 Ultimate has ing I Forgot My Password will initiate the password will be enforced again when
protection built into the BitLocker tool, recovery procedure. The next screen will you reconnect the drive. ▲
which encrypts and password-protects give you the first eight digits of a longer
data written to an external drive. Insert a key identification number that is unique by Steve Smith
USB drive, right-click it, and click to the drive you inserted. The BitLocker
Enable BitLocker. This will walk you Recovery Key filename will include the
through a password-creation tool and full ID number of the matched drive. In
then encrypt the drive. Anything you that file, you will find the BitLocker
Recovery Key number at the bottom of
A Coffee Table Fit
Windows Tip Of The Month For An Old-School
If super hi-res displays are making it tougher and tougher to see your Desktop icons, or,
Gamer
conversely, if you want to shrink them down to reveal more of your wallpaper, remember
that the CTRL-Mouse wheel zoom shortcut works in many contexts. On the Desktop,
Step aside, IKEA. You got nothin’ on this
holding CTRL and scrolling the mouse wheel will enlarge or shrink your icons on the fly.
fine home furnishing. This coffee table is
The combo has the same effect in a folder.
the spitting image of the iconic NES con-
Registry Tip Of The Month troller and capable of really tying a room
File cleanup is one of those necessary chores that’s easy to overlook because it together to a degree not seen since the
requires drilling into the Control Panel or the Properties of a given drive. An old rug of one Jeff “The Dude” Lebowski. But
Registry hack is still one of the best ways to keep desk cleanup tasks more ac- the awesome does not stop there, oh 8-
cessible in the right-click context menu for any drive. To do this in Regedit, go bit aficionados. This particular piece of
to the HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell and make a new key. Name the key furniture doubles as fully functional con-
“diskcleanup.” Right-click this new key and create another new key beneath it troller, adding a new, sadistic twist to fin-
called “command.” Double-click the Default Value this new key creates in the right- ishing Battletoads with a friend.
hand pane and enter “cleanmgr.exe /d %1” in the Value data area. Now, right-click
a drive letter in Windows Explorer, and you will see a new Disk Cleanup option.
Clicking the new item will run Disk Cleanup immediately on that drive.

Keep in mind there are two different states to the right-click menu, the standard right-click
Source: bit.ly/9x3OSE

context menu and the “extended” context menu that appears with special commands when
you hold down SHIFT when you right-click. If you want to stow the Clean Up command only
in that extended menu, highlight the new HKEY_CLASSES_ROOT\Drive\shell\diskcleanup
key you made, right-click it, and add a new string value named “Extended.” This change
will force the Disk Cleanup tool to appear in the extended right-click context menu only.

98 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

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 Real Competition Is Finally Coming
To CPU Market
MD is much closer to creating its Fusion processors than Intel Intel’s great hope rests on its technology called Sandy Bridge, a scal-
A expected, and that appears to have caused the chip giant to re- able successor to the current generation of Nehalem that is set to
assess the threat from the smaller chip player. launch in Q4 and will put both the graphics processor and the CPU
Intel was well aware of the threat a few years ago and started on one die. My sources indicate that Intel will improve Sandy Bridge’s
work on its Larrabee project to counter the impact a Fusion proces- internal interconnects to match the speeds it suspects Llano will be
sor might have on its own technology. But it was forced to can Larr- capable of. It is also likely, according to several leaks, that Sandy
abee, hatched in Intel’s R&D division, even though elements of it Bridge will have an integrated graphics core that buzzes along at over
were still being developed. 1GHz. Real-life performance figures aren’t
However, recent Intel roadmaps yet available, but Intel will most likely
leaked to the Web suggest that its reveal most of its key metrics around the
Sandy Bridge technology is likely to time you’re reading this article.
contain some surprises for AMD—no One of the advantages that Intel has
doubt Intel hopes that they will be always had over AMD has been its abili-
unpleasant surprises. ty to migrate to newer shrink technolo-
Currently, AMD has two Fusion gies at good yields. Put quite simply,
processors on the starting blocks. On- Intel’s process technology is the gold
tario, which is being manufactured by standard, while other semiconductor
semiconductor foundry TSMC, is a companies—and I don’t mean just
low-power product that is already sam- AMD—lag behind in migrating to
pling and is aimed at the netbook and smaller line sizes.
small-form-factor markets. As of press But AMD is now a different kind of
time, some of my contacts have already creature than it was before it absorbed
received samples, and initial bench- ATI. Although ex-CEO Hector Ruiz
marks we’ve seen show very impressive came under a lot of criticism for buying
results. The other processor, Llano, is ATI (including from yours truly), in
delayed by a couple of months. It will hindsight this was probably the best
be built by GlobalFoundries, the AMD move the company made since coming
spin-off financed by Abu Dhabi inves- out with the original Opteron/Athlon
tor ATIC. Llano, we understand, is a designs, which left Intel in the dust.
far more impressive combination of CPU One ex-AMD employee, and there are
and GPU. Mike Magee is an industry veteran. plenty of those around these days, described
The problems with Llano have come He cut his teeth on ancient products his old company as ATI under a different
about because it will be built using Glo- like the Dragon and the Japanese PC name. The ATI technologists, put baldly,
balFoundries’ 32nm process. Sources tell platforms long before the IBM-PC won. really know their graphics processors while
me that AMD had set a very aggressive He worked for a corporate reseller in Intel has always had something of a prob-
target for Llano that couldn’t be met be- the mid-’80s and saw the Compaq 386 lem attempting to put its ideas into silicon.
cause it wasn’t a simple shrink of an exist- sandwich box and every GUI known I suspect that it will have trouble keeping
ing die; Fusion Llano is an entirely new to humankind. Mike decided that the up with Fusion, too, although AMD must
kind of processor and it’s the combination way to go was the Interweb around not be judged by its first Ontario chip. It
of new process and new design that caused 1994 after editing PC mags in the late will be judged by Llano, which we presume
the delay. ’80s and ’90s. A co-founder of The is slated for release in the first quarter of
More sources, this time from inside Intel, Register, Mike started the chip-driven 2011, if everything goes right.
suggest it is very worried about this type of INQUIRER (www.theinquirer.net) in In the meantime, and at long last, it
technology, too, although probably not 2001. Mike recently started his own Web looks like we’ll have some real competition
nearly as worried as Nvidia. After all, there site, www.techeye.net. He continues to between the traditional CPU rivals. Person-
now seems to be a fight brewing between large it up for tgdaily.com, too. ally, I can’t wait. ▲
Intel and AMD that leaves Nvidia on the
sidelines, watching helplessly as the game is Send rumours to “Mad Mike” Magee
played out over the next year or so. at [email protected]

100 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 What’s Cooking

Technically
Speaking
An Interview With Airvana’s Josh Adelson

J osh Adelson is director of product marketing for Airvana, a leading provider of

mobile broadband network infrastructure systems and femtocells. He’s also editor
of the Femto Hub, a comprehensive source of news and insight for the femtocell in-
dustry. He has an MBA from MIT’s Sloan School of Management and a BA from
Brown University.

by Barry Brenesal

CPU: Let’s start out with a definition CPU: What sort of equipment changes Adelson: We usually think of a femtocell
of femtocells, and then get to a few of are required to get a home system up and as carrier-specific. If you buy a Sprint
the basics. running on a femtocell? Airave femtocell, it will work with your
Sprint phone. It won’t work with your
Adelson: A femtocell is a miniature, cel- Adelson: Just the femtocell: That’s it. The Verizon or AT&T phone. Likewise, if you
lular base station, about the size of a Wi- femtocell plugs in your home broadband buy from those other operators. If you
Fi router. It provides excellent cellular connection, such as cable or DSL. But then think about it from an operator perspective,
service, including signal for voice and 3G it works with your standard mobile phone. it’s a mini-tower onto their network.
data downloads inside a building, such as
your home. CPU: Isn’t there a requirement for a GPS CPU: Are the lack of good deals for cus-
receiver to run with femtocells? tomers among the reasons that femtocells
CPU: Would that be the main advantage have been touted as the coming tech-
to a home user? Adelson: There is in some instances. It nology, every year for the last five or six
varies by technology and also by country. In years, without actually arriving? These
Adelson: Cellular networks were not the U.S., there are two regulatory motiva- may be old figures, but Sprint has charged
designed to provide service inside build- tions. One is for E911 service. The GPS al- $100 for its femtocell, and mandates a $5
ings. A lot of people have the experience lows the E911 systems to know the origin of per month fee for simply using it, plus
where, when they go indoors, they find a the call. The other—which I don’t believe is $10 to $20 per month for an unlimited
very poor or inconsistent cell phone a regulatory requirement, but it’s something calling plan, over and above your current
signal. So with a femtocell, you can get the mobile operators are more comfortable calling plan. So Sprint customers end up
consistent, four-to-five bar experience with—allows the operator to be sure that the paying almost $160 that first year for im-
throughout your home. You don’t need to femtocell does not get deployed in an area proved voice coverage at home.
lean out the window, or perform unnat- where they don’t hold license for the spec-
ural contortions. trum it’s operating in. Take an operator that Adelson: I think your numbers are cor-
The other advantage to femtocells is may have a license for 1,900MHz in Dallas, rect, but you have to look at a few things.
they provide you with a much better mo- Texas. If they move to northern Minnesota, Even at $160 per year, if you consider
bile data experience. Airvana has con- perhaps they won’t have that portion of the what somebody’s overall mobile phone
ducted tests on this, and we found that, spectrum in the area. bill is during that same period of time, it
on average, with a femtocell you get a could easily be 10 times that amount.
fivefold increase in data speed vs. the CPU: What happens if a femtocell user This is something that allows your mobile
macro network alone. decides to switch carriers? phone service to work better.

102 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 What’s Cooking

The other thing is that, like any new provided a price, anywhere from $20 to growth we’ll see in the near term for fem-
technology, prices of products start high, $200. Most consumers seem to accept the tocell use?
and then they come down. I think we’re al- fact that to acquire this premium level of
ready seeing that with femtocells. When service, essentially a private cell within their Adelson: One way to look at it is the
Sprint first announced their femtocells, own home, is worth some investment. pace of operator launches. It’s really accel-
they cost approximately $250. We’re seeing erated. Sprint was the first operator in the
others that have come down, as well. It’s CPU: Does the survey show that they’re world to launch a femtocell. That was
just part of a natural market progression. happy with the femtocell offers that are back in the summer of 2008. A year later,
being presented at this time? there were only perhaps three or four more
CPU: In your opinion, is there any truth launches. Verizon launched—although as
to the argument that one of the problems Adelson: What we saw is that most U.S. you note, they’re kind of quiet about it.
with getting general acceptance for femto- consumers don’t have a high awareness of Vodafone launched in the UK. AT&T
cells has been poor marketing? femtocells. They were asked to score their launched, and an operator in Singapore
awareness of femtocells on a scale of 1 to called StarHub. So in that first year, there
Adelson: I would half agree with that 7, and most people were down at 1 or 2. were only four more launches. Since the
statement. If you look at the marketing The interesting thing was that those who summer of 2009, there have been six to
that’s been done by operators around fem- were aware of femtocells liked the concept eight, and now there are close to 15 opera-
tocells, you actually see some excellent ex- even if they didn’t own one, and liked tors who have either commercially
amples and some less aggressive ones. them better than those consumers who launched femtocells or have made a public
This is a completely new product cate- had only heard about them only because announcement that they plan to do so.
gory, even on the residential side. I think of the survey. They also showed a willing- The number of operator launches has
operators are being naturally a bit conser- ness to pay a higher price for femtocells. really accelerated.
vative, and perhaps wisely so. They want Another point is that some things
to see people get comfortable with femto- CPU: Are there any results of surveys or happen in clusters. For example, in Japan,
cells, and then factor that into more ag- focus groups indicating how people in Softbank launched, then Docomo and
gressive launches and marketing plans. possession of femtocells rate the product? KDDI. There’s some evidence that there’s
a competitive dynamic going on here. If a
single operator in a region launches, then
What we saw is that most U.S. consumers the others feel like they need to. We’re
seeing some of that.
don’t have a high awareness of femtocells.
—Josh Adelson CPU: What technological developments
are underway as far as improving the
quality of the service?

CPU: But how does one respond when Adelson: The survey that I mentioned Adelson: A lot of development—and you
Verizon says that a coverage expansion didn’t specifically address that, but I’ve alluded to this before, in your questions
plan for $250 will improve your home re- heard operators at industry conferences concerning cost—is just a matter of silicon
ception, and the potential customer re- discussing surveys they’ve done among integration. Once you’ve got something
sponds, “Well, why didn’t you offer me their own users. The data I’ve seen indi- working, you want to cost reduce it, and
improved reception all along?” cates that the rate at which femtocell make it more mass producible. There’s also
users defect from their carrier drops some really interesting work going on to
Adelson: The Femto Forum and Parks markedly, suggesting femtocells consid- develop femtocell APIs. In order to have
Associates just announced the results of a erably increase satisfaction with the op- successful applications, you want to have
very extensive U.S. consumer survey. We erator. At a recent conference, a speaker industry-standard APIs; Airvana and other
hear—and I see it all the time, reading from AT&T said that “How can I get a companies in the industry are working to
product reviews, articles, and blogs—this femtocell?” was one of the more fre- build these so that application developers
very complaint: “Why should I have to pay quent calls into their call centers. Oper- can use these to create new services using
the operator again for something I’ve al- ators are tracking this, and the anecdotal femtocells. This means you’ll be able to
ready paid for?” But what’s interesting that evidence that I’ve heard is very positive have applications that are femtocell-aware,
they discovered in the survey is that the about femtocells. and take advantage of the femtocell to
majority of people are actually willing to trigger things such as presence-related
pay something for a femtocell when it’s de- CPU: So much for the present. Are you events, or to communicate between the
scribed to them with stated benefits. They willing to speculate on what kind of mobile phone and the home network. ▲

104 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

 What’s Cooking . . .
by Anastasia Poland

Under Development
A Peek At What’s Brewing In The Laboratory

The Living Earth

Simulator, part of a large
10-year EU project, will
utilize supercomputers
similar to this cluster in
order to mine global
techno-socio-econo-
enviro data and create
simulations of those
systems in order to study
and forecast potential
global crises.

Life On Earth,
Super Simulated

S econd Life doesn’t have a thing on it. None of the Sims can
touch it. Why? Because the Living Earth Simulator is
bigger and better . . . and real.
“In these ‘parallel worlds,’ it could be tested in advance, whether
the policies have the expected effects or not.” These “games” could
reveal unanticipated solutions or shoot holes in expected results.
One arm of FuturIcT, a far-reaching, 10-year, 1 billion euro- “After this testing stage, the results of the different computer
funded European Union program that will bring together “hun- scenarios and Second Life parallel world experiments would be
dreds of the best scientists in Europe to explore social life on presented to decision makers in a Decision Theater,” explains
earth and everything it relates to,” the Living Earth Simulator will Helbing. “Based on political priorities and considering norma-
gank our data to create ginormous simulations of our technolog- tive/moral issues, they could take a better-substantiated decision.”
ical, sociological, economic, and environmental systems. The Living Earth Simulator will work hand in hand with
“The realization of the project will be based on supercomputing the two other branches of FuturIcT ’s directive—Crisis
(most likely cloud or grid computing) and on reality mining, using Observatories and an Innovation Accelerator. Helbing explains
new data sources (the Free Our Data initiative [www.free the two: “Crisis Observatories [are] for financial instabilities,
ourdata.org.uk], Internet, sensor network data, experiments on the scarcity of resources, evacuation scenarios, emerging risks and
Web and in the lab, etc.),” explains lead scientist and coordinator of conflicts, epidemics, etc.” whereas the Innovation Accelerator
FuturIcT, Dr. Dirk Helbing. “It will also require new interaction works on “identifying innovations early on, evaluating them
and co-creation tools, including social/serious/multiparticipant across disciplines and supporting co-creation projects between
game-like environments (similar to Second Life, but with serious different scientific disciplines, business, and governance.” In the
and useful applications that cannot be otherwise realized).” end, the program hopes to provide holistic, integrated views of
Once data is gathered and turned into simulations exploring global systems issues and their impact on the environment, with
many possible scenarios, say, of a global financial crisis, the trou- workable, tested, and proven solutions.
bling outcomes that float to the top could be presented to policy The layers of the project, and the potential global impact, are
makers. Once these experts have hashed through the issues and cre- massive. With more than 200 teams in EU and branches of re-
ated policies designed to mitigate a crisis, those policies can “be im- search clusters reaching across the globe, 10 years may seem like a
plemented first in massive online multiplayer games,” Helbing says. very short time to accomplish their goals. ▲

CPU / October 2010 105

 What’s Cooking . . . Under Development

Carbon Nanotubes
Transform Paper Into Fuel Virtual ViroLab Drives Data To
Infectious Disease Doctors

I n these extreme tech times, new electronics are flowing to the

market in a fast and furious fashion, yet one thing still stymies
scientists in new product development—and that is having an en- I nfectious diseases are a quandary for the medical com-
munity—personalizing, if you will, as they leap from
ergy source that can keep up with their inventions. Neither batteries host to host, making treatment intensely time-consuming
nor fuel storage has been able to meet the needs of the increasingly and leaving researchers mired in guesswork. HIV, for ex-
demanding electronics market. ample, is particularly difficult as the muta-
Researchers at Stanford University are working on tions can be swift and treatment hindered
meeting that need with their latest creation, a paper due to rapid drug resistance.
supercapacitor. Simply coating paper with a solution
of single-walled, “conductive, porous carbon nan- ViroLab Virtual Laboratory opens up huge
channels of data for those working on
otubes” and silver nanowires, the researchers have
infectious diseases, allowing for more
been able to store an electrical charge on the paper,
informed decision-making and treatment.
explains postdoctoral fellow Liangbing Hu, one of
the leads on the project.
“We take the combinational advantage of nanotech- Peter Sloot, professor of computational sci-
nology (carbon nanotubes), and old technology ence at the University of Amsterdam, was
(paper), to make a porous structure for charge storage. struck by this challenge 10 years ago, talking
The amount of charge stored is proportional to the sur- to a virologist at a conference about the mul-
face area of the porous structure,” he says. The carbon tifold issues dealing with the combination of
nanotubes contain all the elements needed to create an efficient, antiretroviral drugs, patients’ medical particulars, and innu-
low-cost, closed system for electrical storage. merable strains of the virus. His epiphanic solution appeared
The beauty of supercapacitors is that they have a very long life, in the form of the ViroLab Virtual Laboratory, an online tool
have high rates of charge and discharge, are safer than batteries be- that lets medical researchers, doctors, computer scientists, and
cause of their low voltage, charge easily, and can’t be overcharged. organizations access broad and deep streams of data for con-
The team has tested the durability of their invention by crumpling sultation purposes.
the paper, folding it, and dipping it in liquids of both acidic and The vision is to have “easy access to distributed resources as
basic nature; the supercapacitor kept on ticking. well as sharing, processing and analyzing virological, immuno-
The potential uses for the device are varied, explains Hu. “These logical, clinical and experimental data,” according to the mis-
paper supercapacitors can be sion statement. The end product will be informed support for
used to power up consumer decision-making that clinicians and researchers have not had up
electronic devices, such as until this time.
paper displays or sensors. ViroLab is set up to spider through masses of open databases,
When it is combined with drawing information from scientific journals plus data on
pseudocapacitor materials [in viruses, immunities, clinical studies, genetics, and scientific trial
this instance, Hu and the re- results across the planet. For a particular patient, the system will
search team used manganese sort through all the data above, combined with the patient’s
dioxide because of its low medical history, sociological information, and current disease
cost and effective perform- profile. The system will then issue a ranked list of drugs appli-
ance], the paper supercapac- cable to the patient’s needs, including the estimated success rate
itor can also be used for of the drug and possible impact on the patient. The system will
large-scale energy storage, for also track doctors’ research and drug therapy recommendation
example, for grid energy for an individual step-by-step, along with the system’s own
Stanford University researchers
storage applications.” Hu’s pathway in delivering recommendations.
have coated common paper with a
carbon nanotube-infused solution
professor, Yi Cui, notes that ViroLab’s prototype currently focuses on personalized HIV
to create supercapacitors that walls could be painted with treatment (specializing in drug resistance) because of the depth
efficiently store charges. the carbon nanotubes to and availability of data. However, ViroLab is built to scale up
power devices, and that and host all infectious diseases. The team plans to develop tools
wind farms and solar energy developers may be interested in his in the future that will assist users in their statistical analyses and
team’s simple, yet efficient, storage system. Hu mentions that the in modeling and simulating a disease’s sophisticated mutations,
team has also made batteries by a similar process. with an eye on predicting how viruses might respond to a va-
The team has filed for a patent and continues to work on riety of drug therapies. ▲
improving the performance of the supercapacitor. ▲

106 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com

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 CPU LAN listings Sponsored by:

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Give us a call at 1.800.733.3809 or visit our LAN Yard site at www.computerpoweruser.com/LanYard
to input your own information and see your LAN party name in our upcoming issues.

We'll be glad to consider your event!

108 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com
 back door | q&a

Q&A With Mark Coker

Smashwords’ CEO Rewrites
The Book On Books
In July, Amazon announced that books for its Kindle ereader platform were finally outselling hardcovers.
After years of big promises and market frustration, ebooks seem to be taking hold at last, led by Amazon,
Apple, Sony, Barnes & Noble, and others. One ebook retailer you might not have encountered is
Smashwords (www.smashwords.com), which not only sells ebooks but also distributes
them to the larger retailers. Smashwords CEO Mark Coker stands near the eye of the
ebook storm and has an intimate view of how this transition to digital will be the
biggest change in reading since the invention of the printing press.

Q Should old-school publishing com-

panies be worried about ebooks?
any ebook device. Then, let authors
set the price. Let them own their
books. We pay them 85% of the

MC All media should be wor-

ried, but maybe “worried”
isn’t the right word. These new formats
net. That was the idea, and that’s
what we launched a little over two
years ago.
represent both a threat and an opportunity
to existing media. You know they’re a
threat if existing media takes a bunker men-
tality and tries to avoid facing these new
Q Where does the name
“Smashwords” come from?

formats. They’re an opportunity if publish-

ers jump on them. It’s all about finding
new ways to reach and satisfy readers.
MC Writing is a very destruc-
tive process. You write,
you edit, you cut/paste/delete. You wres-
launched the Kindle, it’s been at the
center of their home page, right in front
of all these people who are used to buy-
tle with those words until you get them to ing books online. With Amazon’s suc-

Q Why did you start Smashwords? behave as you want. That’s part of it, the
violence of writing. So that’s the inspira-
tion behind “smash.” There’s also the
cess, you’ve seen a lot more players
come in with new devices, practically
every week. And the more readers you

MC My wife and I wrote a

novel called “Boob Tube”
and got represented by one of the top lit-
other side of the word, like “smash hit,”
the idea of success.
have, the more people are going to be
interested in ebooks.

erary agencies in New York City. That

agency shopped the book around for two
years and was unable to sell it. That was
Q Why did ebooks and ereaders
always seem to struggle until
recently?
Q How are ebooks going to change
the world?

pretty upsetting to us after investing thou-

sands of hours in this book. We felt, “How
dare a publisher stand in the way between MC Well, ebooks came on the
scene in a big way about 10
MC Print is too expensive for
the vast majority of the
world’s literate population. The growth of
us and our audience?” Let the readers de- years ago and failed to live up to expecta- literacy is happening in developing coun-
cide if this book is worth reading, not some tions for a bunch of different reasons. The tries, not the United States. These folks are
lemming in a New York office tower. screen technology was not very good, so only surviving on $2 or $3 per day, but
It was the experience with “Boob paper remained a much more pleasant they have a cell phone . . . an e-reading
Tube” that made me think something reading experience. The books were over- device. Soon there will be billions of ebook-
is fundamentally broken here in the priced. Publishers were charging full print ready devices in everyone’s hands, and all of
industry. So I came up with the idea of prices. The ebooks themselves were sad- those people are potential readers. Ebooks
Smashwords, where we would let any dled with really cumbersome DRM. The are going to push forward this virtuous
author in the world upload a finished amount of content was also limited. So cycle: more books, more knowledge, better
manuscript as a Microsoft Word docu- people wrote off ebooks, even though sales cross-cultural understanding. ▲
ment. Our technology would automati- continued to grow every year.
cally convert that into multiple ebook All of that started to change as the For bonus content, subscribers can go to
formats so that the book can be read on technology improved. Ever since Amazon www.cpumag.com/cpuoct/coker.

110 October 2010 / www.computerpoweruser.com