The ultimate gaming machines, such as Alienware or ASUS G-series, have always provoked amazement among gaming-oriented notebook amateurs. Top-notch gaming systems packed in a relatively small casing, easily transferrable from A to B (with A and B mostly being inside the same room), have constantly been rather expensive, though, and therefore reserved for a very thin target market. Although relatively new in the portable PC business at the time, ASUS managed to become one of Alienware’s greatest threats in the gaming notebook segment with its ROG series. The latest iteration, characterised by “5” in the second part of the numerical model name, comes packed with 3D capabilities, carries the name G75VW, and hides many interesting features under the hood.

Cooler Master updates its Hyper 412S cooler with two slim fans. This significantly increases performance and allows usage of memory on both sides, while keeping the advantages of the previous model. The Hyper 412 Slim is best suited for LGA 2011 systems due to its compact size. The Hyper 412 Slim is another of Cooler Master’s CPU coolers using the Continuous Direct Contact technology. This technology allows the heatpipes to directly touch all of the CPU’s hottest zones in order to reach the cooling performance in the places it matters most. The advantage of using dual fans for this cooler is a big increase in performance, something overclockers who bench on air certainly will appreciate. Another feature this adds is that the slim fans allow for usage of memory on both sides and keeping them properly cooled. Both fans can be attached to the cooler through a fan mount with quick-snap brackets. This method is much more time efficient than other solutions, to make sure that changing, adding or the cleaning of fans takes as little time as possible. The Hyper 412 Slim will be available in stores around the beginning of June for a recommended end user price of €39,95(included 19% VAT).

Internet search giant Google announced a major overhaul for its search engine on their official blog, bringing Knowledge Graph as well as more "human-like" search functions to provide answers to user queries directly on its search result pages. The changes will be rolled out to US-English users on desktops, tablets and smartphones first, spread out over the coming weeks, with the rest of the world to follow shortly.  It will offer users' wikipedia-like expandable boxes on result pages, covering a range of subjects relating to specific search terms from public sources, including the likes of Freebase, the CIA World Factbook and leading online reference encyclopedia, Wikipedia. "The Knowledge Graph enables you to search for things, people or places that Google knows about—landmarks, celebrities, cities, sports teams, buildings, geographical features, movies, celestial objects, works of art and more—and instantly get information that’s relevant to your query. This is a critical first step towards building the next generation of search, which taps into the collective intelligence of the web and understands the world a bit more like people do," said Amit Singhal, senior vice president of Engineering at Google. Singhal pointed out that Knowledge Graph can be programmed to provide deeper and broader results, using around 3.5 billion separate attributes to organize the results in way that makes it possible to answer the next question users might have, before even asking it. He says this is possible because "the facts [shown] are informed by what other people have searched for". For more obvious searches, such as prominent people for example, Google's search engine will automatically expand a summary box with key information on that topic. Moving forward, the internet search firm wants to expand the new functions to include the ability to answer more complex questions, such as "what are the 10 deepest lakes in Africa?"

Source: techspot

Say what you will about the Galaxy S III, but Samsung is going to sell mountains of phones. The Korea Economic Daily is reporting that the Samsung Galaxy S III has already amassed around 9 million pre-orders with over 100 global carriers. That’s made even more impressive by the fact that the phone isn’t even ready to go in the United States yet. Samsung revealed that 20 million Galaxy S IIs had been shipped worldwide back in February, so the sequel is firmly on track to break that number. In addition, the report notes that Samsung is producing the new phone at a rate of five million units a month. Samsung isn’t holding back then, and why should it with such a successful line of phones? Recent data from IHS iSuppli and Strategy Analytics recently showed that Samsung has overtaken Nokia as the world’s largest phone manufacturer, and the Galaxy S III will only help cement that position. The European version of the phone will come with a quad-core Exynos processor, while the American variants are expected to feature Qualcomm’s Snapdragon S4 chip thanks to its LTE compatibility. There’s no word yet on when the phone will launch in the United States. Other specs include a 4.8-inch Super AMOLED HD screen, 1GB of RAM, eight megapixel camera with 1080p video recording, 16/32/64GB of storage (plus microSD card slot), and a 2,100mAh battery.

Source: slashgear

NVIDIA is readying a high-performance mobile GPU for a Computex 2012 unveiling. Called the GeForce GTX 680M, the chip is based on its trusty 28 nm GK104 silicon, but with about half its streaming multiprocessors disabled, resulting in a CUDA core count of around 768. Reference MXM boards of the chip could ship with memory options as high as 4 GB, across a 256-bit wide memory interface. With the right craftsmanship on the part of NVIDIA, the GTX 680M could end up with a power draw of 100W. A Chinese source had the opportunity to picture the reference board qualification sample, and put it through 3DMark 11, in which it was found to be roughly 37% faster than the GF114-based GeForce GTX 670M, scoring 4905 points in Performance preset. The test bed was driven by Intel Core i7-3720QM quad-core mobile processor.

Source: techpowerup

Less than a month removed from selling their Galaxy Nexus handset contract-free through the Google Play Store, the search giant is preparing to partner with multiple OEMs in an effort to have more than one pure Google device available at any given time. In fact, Google could market upwards of five Nexus handsets completely unlocked and running Android 5.0 Jelly Bean in the US, Asia and Europe. Multiple pure Google phones would provide customers with several options pertaining to selecting a wireless carrier. It will also ease fears that carriers might have about Google potentially favoring Motorola following their $12 billion acquisition. Furthermore, some believe the move could help to reduce carrier-induced bloatware and performance-robbing skinning. The strategy would be completely different for Google as they have only release three phones over the past three years: the HTC Nexus One, the Nexus S and the most recent Galaxy Nexus. Last month Google made a pure Galaxy Nexus phone available in the Google Play Store, free of contract for just $399. The phone was essentially identical to what users could buy through Sprint or Verizon with the exception of storage. The pure Nexus shipped with 16GB of storage rather than the 32GB option available through select carriers. Sources familiar with the situation say that Android 5.0 Jelly Bean should launch by Thanksgiving. In other words, it will be ready for Black Friday shopping and the ensuing lucrative holiday buying season. Google hasn't commented on the matter nor do we expect them to.

Source: techspot

When it comes to ensuring your sensitive data doesn't end up in the wrong hands, SSD maker RunCore has come up with the most extreme solution one could think of; a quick, easy and definitive way to eradicate any possibility of your data being retrieved for access by others. The company has just launched a new series of SSD dubbed InVincible (you'll soon see that there's a bit of irony in this name), which while providing nothing extraordinary in terms of the usual specs in line with what else is available on the SSD market these days, it has one feature in particular that stands right out; the ultimate in data security. Provided with one of these SSDs is a cable with a couple buttons on the end; red and green in color. Both are designed to ensure any existing data on the drive is wiped, with one ensuring the drive itself can never be used again. Pressing the green button instantly wipes all data on the drive and re-initializes it with random code right the way through to prevent data recovery procedures from being successful. The red one takes things several notches higher; it self destructs the drive on a physical level. Pressing this button sends a surge of additional voltage to the NAND chips and thus they are physically destroyed so as to eradicate all possibility of any data being retrieved off them thereafter. Of course, the drive is for the rubbish bin following a press of this button, but RunCore believes there are certain situations where the red button will provide the ultimate in peace of mind.

Source: vr-zone

Introducing the Samsung Omnia M – a new Windows Phone handset aimed at customers that prioritize social connectivity and entertainment features. After a quick look at its specs sheet it becomes evident that the Samsung Omnia M is but a mid-range smartphone. To start, it has a 1GHz single core processor backed up by 384MB of RAM. The device's Super AMOLED display with "reduced glare" measures 4 inches in diagonal and has a resolution of 480 by 800 pixels, which is standard for Windows Phone 7.5 devices. On its back resides a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash, and a VGA front-facing shooter enables video chats. Other features include 4GB of built-in storage, 1,500mAh battery, 7.2Mbps 3G HSPA radio, Wi-Fi and GPS. All of these goodies are contained within a 119 gram body that is only 10.5 millimeters thick. When it comes to software, Samsung has thrown in a few tricks of its own in there. Most notably, we see that the ChatON service is present allowing multi-platform IM-ing, along with Family Network, which is a cloud-based service from Samsung meant to facilitate communication between family members. Samsung AllShare for wireless media streaming is present as well. The Samsung Omnia M will be released in Europe first, after which a rollout in other regions will follow.

AMD has launched their second generation Accelerated Processing Units (APUs) for mainstream and ultrathin notebooks, traditional and all-in-one desktops, HTPCs and embedded designs. Codenamed “Trinity”, the new APUs are described as a ground-up improvement over first generation components with double the performance per watt of Llano parts. As before AMD is not targeting the performance market and Trinity is not meant to compete direclty with Ivy Bridge for the most part. On the mobile market, Trinity should present an interesting alternative for ultrabook-style laptops where a balance of features, low power consumption, and integrated graphics are the norm. Trinity features an AMD Piledriver CPU core that uses 3rd gen Turbo Core technology that shifts power between the CPU and GPU as needed. The technology can effectively ramp up the CPU core clock to 3.2GHz. Other key features include a dual channel DDR3 memory controller, an AMD HD Media Accelerator, a unified northbridge and up to four Piledriver CPU cores with 2MB L2 cache. Radeon HD 7000 graphics are said to provide up to 56 percent better performance that the previous generation. Notebooks featuring Trinity APUs will boast battery life up to 12 hours through CPU and GPU power enhancements. “Our 2nd Generation AMD A-Series APU is a major step forward in every performance and power dimension, allowing users to enjoy a stunning experience without having to give up the things that matter to them most. This experience doesn‘t stop at mainstream notebooks. It carries over into affordable ultrathin form factors featuring the latest in AMD Radeon graphics,” said Chris Cloran, corporate vice president and general manager of AMD’s client business unit. AMD has released three different APU models for mainstream notebooks: A10-4600M, A8-4500M and A6-4400M, all featuring a 35W TDP with varying CPU core counts and clock speeds. Ultrathins will see the quad-core A10-4655M clocked at 2.0GHz and carrying a 25W TDP while the dual-core A6-4455M will include a 17W TDP at 2.1GHz. AMD notes that desktop systems and component channel parts will be available later this year.

The HTC Desire C has been talked about in louder-than-whispered tones for the last few weeks, and has finally been made official. The new phone will be available in both black AND white and also has a 'durable metal frame with precision engineering'. The phone is packing a 3.5-inch HVGA display, 600MHz processor, 5MP camera and 4GB of internal storage. It's also going to be coming rocking Android 4.0 (Ice Cream Sandwich) and Beats Audio branding – so that paltry processor aside, it's looking like a fairly decent handset for the money. The HTC Desire C release date has been set for June.