Software, Hardware, Gadgets and Mods
The Raden 4850 is now avaliable for $200. Benchmarks show that this card could help bring competition back to the graphics card market. Hopefully we will see prices begin to rapidly drop on all graphics cards these next couple months. The card itself looks to be a large improvement over the previous generation of cards from ATI. Pictured below is a Sapphire Radeon 4850, very similiar to the Radeon 3850 in appearance:
From Cooliris, developers of the popular Cooliris Previews browser add-on, comes the amazing 3D media browsing add-on PicLens*. With PicLens, users can search, and then browse results from sites such as Facebook, Youtube, flickr, Google, and deviantART all in a stunning (and easy to use) 3D environment. Below you can view a video I made of the add-on, and its capabilities (music by Winterwind-NS):
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*Update: the addon is now referred to as simply “Cooliris”
New from Western Digital comes the VelociRaptor, 300GB at 10,000 RPM. Benchmarks show this drive has up to a 30% speed increase over the previous generation of Raptor drives. At $300 retail this drive may be a bit too pricey for some. Hopefully, we’ll see some big price drops on the VelociRaptor in the future, but until then, it will remain an enthusiast drive.
