Netbooks?

PC life after vista.

Solid state hard disk drives.

Graphics card roundup, Nvidia vs ATI.

Netbooks. What are they?

A netbook is a type of laptop computer "designed for wireless communication and access to the Internet". Netbooks are well-suited for accessing web-based applications and rich Internet applications, and are less appropriate for running complex or resource-intensive applications directly from the netbook itself.

Netbooks are becoming very popular with all the big manufacters such as Dell, HP, Acer, Asus, BenQ, just a few for example bringing new models into the market all competing for a share. The Asus N10 series are being reviewed very highly and are pitched for the power user as they can feature with a dedicated graphics card starting from $1199* http://www.asus.com.au/

At the middle of the road BenQ are now producing the Joybook U101 which like the Asus N10 comes with the new Intel Atom processor for better battery life, a huge 160GB Hard drive and other standard features starting out at low $699* http://www.benq.com.au/

PC life after vista.

Windows 7 (formerly known as Blackcomb and Vienna ) is the working name for the next major version of Microsoft Windows as the successor of Windows Vista. Microsoft has announced that it is scoping Windows 7 development to a three-year timeframe, and that the specific release date will ultimately be determined by meeting the quality bar.

Windows 7 is expected to be released sometime in 2010. The client versions of Windows 7 will ship in both 32-bit and 64-bit versions. A server variant, codenamed Windows Server 7, is also under development.

Here is a snippet from the Windows7 homepage, "Over the past few years, you've asked us to make some changes to Windows. We listened closely. Now it's time to share an early look at how we've used your feedback. Windows 7 is faster, more reliable, and makes it easier to do what you want. Both the everyday things and the killer "is that really possible?" things. Dig into this site to see what's coming." http://www.microsoft.com/windows/windows-7/

Solid state hard disk drives.

A solid state drive is a storage device that uses solid state memory to store data. While technically not a disk, a solid state drive will often be referred to as a solid state disk drive, or a solid state disk, in reference to the fact that, in some ways, it replaces the traditional hard disk drive.

They key peice of information to look out for with the solid state drives atm is the read and write speeds. Many solid state drives may have a write speed of 100+ mbps, while the read speed could be as low as 30+ mbps. Compared to a SATA HDD with an average read/write speed of 80+ mbps.

Intel has a great SSD on the market currently that will make most tech users drool;

SSD have been under heavy revision and now manufacturers are starting to really crank up the read & write speeds. But some have also been working on the size. Toshiba has only recently finished development of a 512GB SSD, advances from companies like Toshiba are going to change the speed at which we work. http://www.intel.com/

Graphics card roundup, Nvidia vs ATI.

Taxing Modern CPUs With Powerful Graphics - Nvidia has really shaken up the 3D market in the past couple of months. While the GeForce GTX260 and GTX 280 hold a number of speed records (simultaneously making the GeForce 9-series look geriatric) they have released their new GTX 295 further showing thier dominance in the gaming market.

Meanwhile AMDs Radeon HD4850 and HD 4870 provide good performance at aggressive prices thanks to recent price drops.

http://www.amd.com/us-en/
http://www.nvidia.com/

DCA can reccomend these cards;

Entry level Gaming:   ATI 4670 512MB $143* or Nvidia 9600GT 1GB $183*
Moderate Gaming:    ATI 4870 512MB $429* or Nvidia GTX 260 896MB $501*
High Level Gaming:  Nvidia GTX 280 $801* or ATI 4870X2 ATI 2GB $950*
Extreme Gaming:      GTX 295 $1055*