74470 81182 1 2> - Computer Power User

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Spotlight 

48 ‘Tis The Season For Holiday PC-Gear Shopping 

Here’s Hoping You’ve Been Good Little Boys & Girls 

54 Spread The Cheer 

Holiday PCs That Aren’t Out Of Reach 

66 Hot Hardware For 2005/2006 

Looking Ahead At Next Winter’s Shopping List 

® 

Copyright 2004 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 

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Joan Wood 

Forward Slash 

page 88 

Kyle Bennett 

[H]ard Talk 

page 28 

Chris Pirillo 

Dialogue Box 

page 79 

Frontside 

6 What’s Happening 

12 Digital Economy 

14 The Saint 

Nerd Toys! 

The Experts 

December 2004 Vol 4 Issue 12 

Alex St. John 

The Saint 

page 14 

Anand Lal Shimpi 

Anand’s Corner 

page 25 

Mike Magee 

Shavings From 

The Rumour Mill 

page 102 

Alex “Sharky” Ross 

The Shark Tank 

page 26 

Rob “CmdrTaco” 

Malda 

The Department 

Of Stuff 

page 86 

Pete Loshin 

Open Sauce 

page 80 

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

Heavy Gear 

15 Dream Hardware 

16 NVIDIA nForce 4 

17 AMD FX-55 

18 NVIDIA GeForce 6200 

20 Tall With Curves: 

Dueling Full Towers Square Off 

Temjin TJ05 vs. Tsunami VA3000BWA 

21 D-Link DSM-320 Wireless Media Player 

Fujitsu-Siemens FutureClient 

22 iRobot Roomba Discovery 

HP L1955 LCD 

24 Bay Bonanza 

Three Fun Additions To Your Chassis 

25 Anand’s Corner 

Will Dual-Core Save Us? 

26 The Shark Tank 

Transmeta: Still Alive & Kicking 

28 [H]ard Talk 

This & That 

Hard Hat Area 

29 PC Modder 

Tips & Tutorials 

30 Uncross Those Wires 

Clean Up That Rat’s Nest & Better 

Your System’s Performance 

33 Mad Reader Mod 

Forget A Wall Calendar, 

This Beauty Has Outlook 

36 Advanced Q&A Corner 

40 X-ray Vision: LEDs 

Bright Idea For LCDs 

42 White Paper: Multi-Core Processors 

Processor Technologies Multiply 

Loading Zone 

68 The Bleeding Edge Of Software 

Inside The World Of Betas 

70 Up To Speed 

Upgrades That’ll Keep 

You Humming Along 

71 The Fix Is In 

A Focus On Photo-Imaging Editors 

76 Money vs. Quicken 

Managing Your Finances In 2005 

78 VCOM PowerDesk Pro 6 

Allume Systems StuffIt Deluxe 8.5 

79 Dialogue Box 

ID34U2C 

80 Open Sauce 

The Open-Source Empire Strikes Back 

Caught In The Web 

82 Masters Of Our Domains 

The Business Of Selling Domain Names 

84 Coder’s Corner: 

XML Schema, Part 6, Breaking Schemas 

Into Parts 

86 The Department Of Stuff 

notamyth.txt 

88 Forward Slash 

SharePointing 

Digital Living 

89 Road Warrior 

New palmOnes, 

Introducing The 

Nintendo DS, 

Samsung’s Built-In 

Hard Drive & More 

From The Mobile Front 

94 At Your Leisure 

Plug In, Sit Back & Fire Away With Our 

Holiday Gift Guide, Part I 

Tips & Tricks 

98 Software Tips & Projects 

Make SP2 Play Nice With Your PC 

100 Warm Up To Penguins 

Grab Web & FTP Content With Curl 

What’s Cooking 

102 Shavings From The Rumour Mill 

Intel Rips Its Roadmaps 

103 Technically Speaking 

An Interview With Robert Tansley, Lead 

Developer Of The DSpace Project 

106 Under Development 

A Peek At What’s 

Brewing In The 

Laboratory 

Back Door 

108 Q&A With Jeffrey Citron 

Vonage’s Lead Man Is On The Line 

Infinite Loops 

Strange stats and other 

oddball items from 

computing's periphery 

83, 88, 97, 99, 101

G R E E T I N G S F R O M S A M I T L A N D 

Welcome back to our annual holiday hardware gift guide. This issue will be 

in your hands well before the end of November, so you should have all 

sorts of time to get online or head into your local retail store for some holiday 

shopping—whether that's for a friend, loved one, or supreme loved one (aka you). 

The clock is ticking, so no more procrastinating! (And oh, I post shopping deals on the 

CPUmag.com home page daily, so that may come in handy, as well.) 

Are you looking for actual components to build your very own dream PC? Head over to 

page 48 for nine wholesome pages on the best components to suit your needs. We tried to 

go with hardware that will be available by the end of 

November so you can actually buy what you see. And if 

you have to pre-order, well hey, maybe that gift will end 

up being a post-holiday gift surprise. And if you're like 

me and are constantly looking to the future, check out 

our thoughts on the hardware we expect you’ll be lusting 

after at about this time next year (and beyond). 

Discussion on multi-core processor technology is all 

the rage these days, so make sure you stop by the 

White Paper (page 42), along with this month’s columns 

by Anand (page 25) and Mike (page 102). There's a lot 

more about this issue I'd like to brag about, but we're 

out of space. And it's time to get this issue off to the 

press, so I'll see you next month. BTW, I saw some comments 

on The Pixies on our forum at CPUmag.com 

awhile back; Blaine and I managed to see them locally. 

It was a great show and comes highly recommended. 

Samit G. Choudhuri, Publication Editor, CPU 

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Lindsay Anker / Kelli Lambertsen Newsstand: Garth Lienemann / Kelly 

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Ossenkop / Cindy Pieper / Brooke Wolzen / Eric Cobb / Emily Getzschman 

Marketing: Mark Peery / Marcy Gunn / Amber Coffin / Jen Clausen 

CORRECTIONS 

On page 40 of the Oct. issue, we mistakenly showed 

three images of the same board shrunken down instead 

of three different boards. Here’s the correct image; also, 

it’s updated online. 

Gotcha. 

Here it is.

What’s Happening Hardware 

Let Your Finger Do The Unlocking 

While you’re waiting for those really cool retinal security scanners to reach 

consumer devices, you can still get a taste of James Bond high-security 

sweetness. Select models of IBM’s popular Thinkpad T42 line of portables now 

include IBM Integrated Fingerprint Readers. The bundled software prompts the 

new owner to swipe his forefinger across the scanning bar on the T42’s palm rest 

several times to make an initial image of the print, which it stores as a biometric 

password to the system. Only you and your forefinger get back in. 

Of course, there is always the possibility that some arch-enemy 

will sever your digit and use it to unlock your laptop, but 

we’re guessing 

that this is beyond 

even the 

ruthlessness of 

most office weasels or 

suspicious spouses. ▲ 

Gateway Lets You Build 

Your Own . . . Again 

After a year of selling its PCs only in limited 

configurations, one of the innovators in directto-consumer 

computer sales is letting buyers customize 

their models again. Gateway released three new lines of 

fully configurable PCs in October, most using the Intel 

915G chipset. In addition to budget and midrange models, 

Gateway is targeting high enders like us with its 7200 

series, using the new BTX (Balanced Technology 

Extended) mobos. This replacement for the perennial ATX 

form factor is designed to dissipate heat from CPUs and 

graphics cards more effectively. 

Gateway says the 7200 uses extralarge 

fans rotating at slower speeds 

to create a wind tunnel effect 

within the case and 

achieve cooler and 

quieter operations. 

The 

3.2GHz 

Pentium 

models start 

at $1,249.99. ▲ 

6 December 2004 / www.computerpoweruser.com 

Whether you are paranoid or just risk-averse, the IBM Thinkpad T42 

with an integrated fingerprint reader is the ultimate in laptop security. 

A good 

Belkin Gets 

Way Ahead Of 

The N Standard 

Compiled by 

Steve Smith 

two years before the IEEE plans to certify 

a final version of the 802.11n next-generation 

standard of Wi-Fi, Belkin was scheduled to release in 

late October a line of Pre-N networking products 

that move beyond the current g/b standards without 

formally claiming future n compatibility. Belkin’s 

new wireless router (model F5D8230-4) and notebook 

card (F5D8010) are backward-compatible with 

the current Wi-Fi generations but also employ a 

MIMO (multiple input, multiple output) technology 

that Belkin says the IEEE is considering for the 

upcoming n standard. The Pre-N line promises 

800% wider coverage and 600% more speed than 

802.11g, as well as better handling of radio interference 

and mixed mode networking. ▲

Now Do You 

Want Your 

Web TV? 

M icrosoft’s 

original 1996 

deployment of Web TV 

put email and Internet browsing 

on a television in a format 

designed for tech-phobic 

Grandma to use. The problem 

was that Grandma wasn’t interested, 

and the format languished for 

years as MSN TV. With MSN 

TV 2 (www.msntv.com), however, 

Redmond is aiming higher with a 

$199.95 broadband-enabled settop 

box that also works as a media 

hub for serving digital photos and 

videos from your home PC to 

televisions around the house. The 

MSN TV 2 Internet & Media 

Player runs on a 733MHz Celeron 

CPU and Windows CE. Keyboard 

and remote control are included. 

With media hub connectivity 

built-in, Microsoft apparently 

wants to attract savvier users this 

time around, although the 

56Kbps modem is still in there, 

just in case Grandma wants to 

take a second look. ▲ 

The new and improved MSN TV 2 

combines TV-based Web access with 

a media hub that networks with digital 

content on your home PC. 

What’s Happening Hardware 

H a r d w a r e 

M o l e 

Got Coffee? Got Cigs? Then Boot Up! 

Got a free 5.25-inch drive bay? Then you have room for a cigarette 

lighter and drink holder on your PC. Thermaltake’s (www.thermaltake.com) 

Xray add-on has a retractable cup holder and a fully functional 

lighter that also supports standard car power adapters such as cell phone 

chargers. If you think this is really out there, then you haven’t been to any 

LAN parties lately, where 20-somethings smoke up a storm and suck down 

cups of energy drinks amid frenetic mouse movements. The Xray, which is 

designed to look like a car dashboard accessory, sells 

for less than $20. ▲ 

50 Million Hyper-Threaders Served 

Intel says that it has shipped over 50 million Pentium processors with 

Hyper-Threading in the past two years. HT Technology, which presents 

itself to Windows XP as two virtual processors, was Intel’s first effort 

to bring parallel processing principles to desktop computing, and it allows 

the CPU to work on a background task with less of a performance hit on 

foreground processing. In 2005, the world’s largest chipmaker will deploy 

new 65nm manufacturing techniques that will be making even more efficient 

designs and dual-core processors by 2006. (For more on the 65nm 

processing, see page 106.) ▲ 

The Big Oops: 

Dell Recalls Power Adapters 

P ower 

No joke. The Xray is a cigarette lighter 

and cup holder for your PC. 

adapters on 4.4 million Dell notebooks have been recalled by the 

Texas company over concerns about their overheating and causing fire 

or shock. The recall includes AC adapters on some of the most popular 

Inspiron and Latitude models issued between September 1998 and February 

2002, and they bear the Dell label and one of the following part numbers: 

P/N 9364U, P/N 7832D, or P/N 4983D. For the full list of models affected, 

go to www.dell.com. Dell purchased these parts from Delta Electronics, 

whose adapters have also been involved in recent recalls of IBM ThinkPad 

and Sony Ericsson phone products. ▲ 

CPU / December 2004 7

What’s Happening Chip Watch 

Intel Cancels Another Hot Chip 

Compiled by DeanTakahashi 

In another embarrassing moment in a year full of cancellations and delays, Intel said it 

was canceling its 4GHz Pentium 4 that it had originally promised by the end of 

2004. The company said it rethought its roadmap and decided instead to double the size 

of the caches throughout its Pentium 4 product line. It will replace the 4GHz model 

with a 3.8GHz chip that has 2MB of cache. Bill Kirby, director of platform marketing 

for Intel, said that that chip would actually have better performance than the 4GHz. 

One reason that Intel can do this is that it has too much capacity on hand due to slumping 

demand. The larger caches take up more space on a chip, driving up costs per chip. 

But they also allow Intel to put its capacity to good use because chip size directly relates 

to capacity usage. Analysts said that Intel couldn’t hit the 4GHz target because it was 

restrained by the excessive power consumption and excessive heat. ▲ 

Moore’s Law Is Getting Tougher 

The fastest new chips are also the hottest. Today’s top chips are throwing 

off more heat per square inch than a steam iron, says Bernie Meyerson, vice 

president and chief technologist at IBM’s Systems and Technology Group. Even 

when chips are on standby power, they are generating too much heat. This means 

that doubling chip performance every 18 months, a decades-old axiom known as 

Moore’s Law, won’t be practical unless chipmakers conquer power problems. 

Meyerson hopes that some new chip technologies will help ease the power problem. 

But he notes that semiconductor designers will have to keep the whole system in 

mind, including cooling technologies and architectural changes such as dual-core 

chips, if they expect to continue to turn out chips that have screaming performance 

but won’t melt the computer. An example of this? Meyerson points to IBM’s Blue 

Gene/L supercomputer, which he says will use more than 132,000 relatively simple 

dual-core PowerPC microprocessors. ▲ 

Cavium Crams 16 Processors On Single Chip 

Forget about putting two or 

four cores on a chip. Cavium 

Networks is putting 16 processors 

on a single Octeon chip for complicated 

network security processing 

tasks, as well as other kinds of 

communication-processing tasks. 

The network services chip 

includes 16 64-bit MIPS-based 

processor cores that include builtin 

hardware acceleration for 

networking tasks, as well as application-specific 

processors. The 

company, which started out making 

security coprocessors, 

contends that the effective performance 

is more than five times 

faster than other network processors 

on the market. These chips can be the heart of networking products including 

routers, switches, and network edge appliances such as firewalls. ▲ 


W a t c h i n g T h e 

C h i p s F a l l 

Here is pricing information for AMD and Intel CPUs. 

Released Original Last month's Current 

price price price 

AMD Athlon XP 3000+ 400MHz FSB 

5/26/2003 $280* $140 $147 

AMD Athlon XP 3200+ 400MHz FSB 

5/26/2003 $464** $127 $124 

AMD Athlon 64 2800+ 

1/6/2004 $193** $137 $135 


9/23/2003 $218** $165 $163 


9/23/2003 $417** $219* $210 


1/6/2004 $417** $278 $274 


6/1/2004 $500** $359 $320 


6/1/2004 $710** $496* $499* 


6/1/2004 $720** $630 $626 


10/19/2004 N/A N/A $729** 

AMD Athlon 64 FX-53 

3/18/2004 $733** $733 $599 

AMD Athlon FX-55 

10/19/2004 N/A N/A $827** 

Intel Pentium 4 3.06GHz 533MHz FSB 

11/14/2002 $658* $207 $180 

Intel Pentium 4 3GHz 800MHz FSB 

4/21/2003 $417** $184 $180 

Intel Pentium 4 3GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB cache 

2/2/2004 $218** $187 $179 


6/23/2003 $637** $226* $225 

Intel Pentium 4 3.2GHz 800MHz FSB 1MB cache 

2/2/2004 $278** $227 $213 


2/2/2004 $417** $320 $299 

Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.2GHz 2MB cache 

800MHz FSB 

11/3/2003 $925** $948 $814 

Intel Pentium 4 Extreme Edition 3.4GHz 2MB cache 

800MHz FSB 

2/2/2004 $999** $999 $999 

Intel Pentium 4 520 2.8GHz 1MB cache 800MHz FSB 

90nm 

6/27/2004 $178** $169* $169* 

Intel Pentium 4 530 3GHz 1MB cache 800MHz FSB 90nm 

6/27/2004 $218** $189* $189* 


90nm 

6/27/2004 $278** $229* $229* 


90nm 

6/27/2004 $417** $278* $278** 


90nm 

6/27/2004 $637** $417** $417** 

* Retail price 

** Manufacturer's price per 1,000 units 

Other current prices, if indicated, are lowest OEM 

prices available through Pricegrabber.com

What’s Happening Software 

Catch Fire By Getting Foxy 

Microsoft may be starting to sweat its browser 

monopoly just a bit as the open-source alternative 

to Internet Explorer from Mozilla, Firefox 1.0, 

screamed out of the starting 

gate with 4.3 million downloads 

in the first month of its 

release. A volunteer viral effort 

dubbed Spread Firefox, or SFX 

(www.spreadfirefox.com), has 

attracted more than 20,000 

users who refer others to the 

new software. SFX members 

get points for sending friends 

Mozilla’s Firefox may 

start making a dent 

in the long-standing 

IE monopoly. 

a custom URL link to download 

Firefox, although the 

points are not actually redeemable 

for anything except bragging 

rights to how many people 

you have helped get hooked on 

the new browser. ▲ 

Media Player 10 Goes 

Everywhere 

A long 

with its rollout of Windows XP Media 

Center Edition 2005 in October, Microsoft 

also extended the reach 

of its new and muchimproved 

WMP (Windows 

Media Player) 10. 

The player is now compatible 

with more than 

30 music subscription 

services, along with 

MSN Music. A WMP 

The new WMP 10 lets you 

link directly into a collection 

of fee-based media download 

services, including Microsoft’s 

competitors. 

10 Mobile version runs 

on Smartphones and 

PocketPCs. In what is 

sure to be a theme for 

Microsoft as it makes a 

major push into the 

entertainment industry, 

the new WMP 10 lets users link directly into a host 

of other services such as CinemaNow and Audible. 

com and even Napster and MusicMatch, which compete 

directly with Microsoft’s own MSN Music. Even 

an old monopoly can learn new tricks. ▲ 

S o f t w a r e 

S h o r t s 

Ride The Magic Microsoft RV 

Forget the Good Humor Man. The Microsoft truck is coming! 

As part of its nationwide tour of free seminars on company 

software solutions, MS recently launched a fleet of seven RVs that 

will show up at events and offer live product demos. Local 

Microsoft-certified IT pros will participate in the demos and seminars, 

which is part of the software giant’s effort to penetrate the 

small-business sector. The tour will hit 250 cities by June 2005. 

You can find out when and where the tour will approach your area 

by going to www.microsoft.com/acrossamerica. ▲ 

Spyware Goes To Court 

Formerly known as the “spam king,” Webpreneur Sanford 

Wallace is likely to be the first person tried for spyware. The 

U.S. Federal Trade Commission is suing Wallace for planting a 

spyware program on users’ computers via a security hole in IE, littering 

their desktops with pop-up ads and then offering to sell them 

a $30 anti-spyware solution. Wallace says that he and his programs 

do nothing wrong. While some states and the federal government 

are starting to write spyware legislation, the FTC used existing 

deceptive business practices laws for the suit. Back in the 1990s, 

both AOL and CompuServe sued one of Wallace’s earlier companies 

for allegedly sending up to 30 million junk emails a day. ▲ 

64-Bit Gets Game 

Old tech meets 

new tech as the 

Microsoft Mobile Event 

Experience brings demos 

of its product line 

to cities across America. 

It’s time to see if that investment in AMD64 technology pays off 

where it counts . . . in better gaming. Atari’s new title, Shadow 

Ops: Red Mercury, includes a version enhanced and optimized to 

run on AMD64 processors using the prerelease version of 64-bit 

Windows. Atari and AMD promise better texture and overall quality, 

as well as enhanced performance from the optimized version. 

The 64-bit version of Red Mercury makes use of the larger addressable 

memory available in 64-bit systems to speed up many of the 

calculations necessary in the 3D FPS. ▲ 


What’s Happening Internet 

WanderPort President Inder 

Arya (left) and CEO Dennis 

Stacey (right) with their mobile 

hotspot, the WanderPod. 

Search Me! Yahoo!, 

Jeeves & A9 Get Personal 

S earch 

Wonderful World Of 

Wandering Wi-Fi 

Why search for the nearest Wi-Fi access area 

when the hotspot might come to you? The 

WanderPort company (www.wanderport.com) is now 

demonstrating a hotspot on wheels. Embedded in a 

large mobile unit or trailed behind a car or truck, the 

WanderPod includes a two-way satellite uplink, a 

power generator, Wi-Fi access to the Internet and 

VoIP telephony that can reach users in a 12.5 million 

square foot area. WanderPort demonstrated the 

apparatus in the Mojave desert at the launch site of 

SpaceShipOne, the first manned excursion into 

space by a private company. Because the WanderPort requires no local network, broadband connection, 

or even power, it is well-suited for use in disaster areas, where the company expects to see 

it deployed first when the pods launch by year’s end. This opens up a world of other possibilities, 

of course: Wi-Fi and VoIP access for remote construction or mining sites, campsites, filming locations, 

etc. Downside? Well, it could mean a whole new market for those wired Starbucks shops. 

Imagine traveling coffee vans with Wi-Fi access. As if the brand weren’t ubiquitous enough, consider 

a future in which Wi-Fi-enabled Starbucks shops actually come to you. ▲ 

engines are now aiming for narrower, more targeted 

results that relate specifically to our needs and inter- 

ests. Yahoo!, Ask Jeeves (www.ask.com), and Amazon-owned 

A9 (www.a9.com) all recently launched what they are calling 

personalized search capabilities. In most cases, these new services 

give you customized search pages that remember your 

recent search terms and let you save, organize, and email 

results. The My Yahoo! Search (mysearch.yahoo.com) also 

lets you annotate a saved search result with a note or block a 

site from future queries. The A9 service lets you work in 

multiple windows, makes site recommendations off of your 

recent search history, and lets you drag results into a list of 

bookmarks. Early 

critics argue that 

these services are 

just glorified bookmarks, 

but Google 

is looking in an 

Both familiar and new search engines want to 

get personal with customized search services. 

even more promising 

direction. In 

the experimental 

personalized search 

at Google Labs (labs.google.com/personalized), you fill out a 

profile of interests that Google saves and then uses to filter 

and prioritize future search results to best fit your needs. ▲ 


The Art Of Duh! 

How would the world’s most famous cubicle-dweller, 

Dilbert, design his dream house? Well, first of all, it 

would be virtual, which indeed it is at Dilbert.com. The 

comic’s creator, Scott Adams, naturally wanted an “opensource” 

project, so he solicited ideas from loyal strip readers 

about how Dilbert would want to live and received 3,000 suggestions. 

Some ideas were too impractical (drive-up window 

for pizza/FedEx deliveries, a riding vacuum, etc.), but he took 

the most envelope-pushing but do-able concepts to the 3D 

artists at Heartwood 

Studios to create the Webbased 

house. There are virtual 

tours of the oval layout, 

which includes a room 

dedicated to the cat and its 

litter box, a basement bas- 

ketball court, a urinal in 

the master bedroom, and a 

kids’ bathroom with a floor 

drain so that it can be 

quickly hosed down. Oh, 

An observatory with an oddly familiar 

shape and a dedicated cat room are 

part of Dilbert’s Ultimate House. 

and then, of course, there is the special Christmas closet where 

the ultimate office dweeb keeps his fake tree decorated all year 

so it can be rolled out simply once a year. Adams says, 

“Dilbert’s house turned out so well that I find myself envying 

an imaginary person.” Well, yeah, dude, did you notice that 

the house is also shaped like an oval donut? ▲

Top Cyber Cop 

Calls It Quits 

In a quick and unanticipated move that left many in 

the IT security world wondering, Amit Yoran suddenly 

quit his post as the director of the National 

Cyber Security Division of the Department of 

Homeland Security. The division oversees US-CERT 

(U.S. Computer Emergency Readiness Team), which 

works with private industry to issue alerts and respond 

to cyber attacks in the United States. Yoran, a former 

military officer and Symantec executive, had only 

been in the post for a year. According to reports, he 

had complained privately that the DHS did not take 

cyber-security issues seriously enough and that his 

post lacked authority. Security industry executives and 

some lawmakers recently urged 

Former Symantec executive Amit 

Yoran abruptly left his post as the 

cyber-security chief at the 

Department of Homeland Security. 

the department to elevate Yoran’s status, but by Sept. 

30, apparently Yoran had had enough and issued his 

resignation. Ironically, he resigned the day before 

National Cyber Security Awareness month began. 

The DHS says that it is considering a cybersecuirty 

post at the higher deputy assistant secretary level but 

has not committed to it yet. (The US-CERT.gov site 

is a remarkable, undiscovered resource that maintains 

alerts of the latest worm and virus threats, security 

holes, and detailed notes about vulnerabilities and the 

systems they affect.) ▲ 

What’s Happening Internet 

N e w O n T h e ’ N e t 

Finding Soul Mates & Pet Mates Online 

Online dating got granular this year with sites targeted to every 

imaginable taste. The spiritually committed can click over to 

Beliefnet’s new dating service, Soulmatch.com, where faith and values 

are key data points. Sectarian lovers have 

CatholicCupid.com or even Islamic- 

Personals.com. Vegetarians might find fellow 

kale-lovers at MeetYourGreens.com. But if you 

are a pet lover, boy is the Web a trove for you. 

There are DateMyPet.com and KissyKat 

(www.kissykat.com) where (we kid you not) you 

can find your alligator-owning dream lover. ▲ 

Search By The Clump 

Compiled by Kevin Savetz 

BIOS Upgrades Available Online 

Before you send another motherboard to the landfill, consider upgrading the BIOS and giving your PC a new outlook on life. Here 

are a few recently released upgrades. Readers can check out www.cpumag.com/cpudec04/bios to see our entire upgrade list. 

Motherboard Date Available URL 

ABIT IG80 10/05/2004 www.abit-usa.com/downloads/bios/bios_revision.php?categories=1&model=218 

AOpen EA65 10/07/2004 download.aopen.com.tw/userdownload_List.aspx?RecNo=8744&Model=EA65 

Biostar P4VMA-M 09/27/2004 www.biostar-usa.com/mbdownloads.asp?model=p4vma-m 

Chaintech MP4M266A 09/09/2004 www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/Download/dl_desc.asp?DCSNo=4&PISNo=278 

Chaintech SK8T800 09/08/2004 www.chaintechusa.com/tw/eng/Download/dl_desc.asp?DCSNo=4&PISNo=247 

EPoX 8RDA6+Pro/8RDA3+Pro 09/21/2004 www.epox.nl/english/support/bios/socketa.htm 

Gigabyte GA-K8NS Pro 10/07/2004 tw.giga-byte.com/Motherboard/Support/BIOS/BIOS_GA-K8NS%20Pro.htm 

Intel D925XBC 10/01/2004 www.intel.com/design/motherbd/bc/bc_bios.htm 

Intel D845PEMY 09/28/2004 www.intel.com/design/motherbd/my/my_bios.htm 

Soyo SY-P4I865PE Plus Dragon 2 09/23/2004 www.soyousa.com/downloads/filedesc.php?id=2304 

Tyan Thunder i7525 (S2676) 09/29/2004 www.tyan.com/support/html/b_s2676.html 

T he 

search engine wars are far from over as 

entrepreneurs everywhere try to mimic 

Google’s tech-driven success with innovative 

feature sets. Clusty (www.clusty.com) organizes your search results 

into topical folders or by their source URLs. It also polls blogs, the 

group-written Wikipedia reference content, celebrity gossip sources, 

eBay, and even Slashdot. Still in beta, Clusty also lets you customize 

these novel search tools to make your own tab-driven interface. ▲ 

Your Answer In The Form Of 

A Search Query, Please 

Love me, love my reptile, 

at KissyKat.com. 

Jeopardy meets Google in The Image Quiz (blog.outer-court.com 

/quiz), the site that asks the question, “What search term produced 

these image search results?” While not affiliated with Google, 

the site pulls its visuals from Google’s image search and awards you 

points for deducing the right search term used to get them. Wrong 

answers prompt a one letter hint. Only go there if you can kiss your 

afternoon good-bye. ▲ 


Compiled by Steve Smith 

You could be going to Vegas by 

way of Reno. WMS Gaming, 

the maker of video slot machines 

such as Don Ho’s 

Kahuna Kash and Milk Money, 

needs a Principal Software 

Engineer with five years of programming 

experience and background 

in UML (Unified 

Modeling Language) or Object 

Oriented techniques. Put those 

Visual Studio, .NET, and C# 

programming skills to work on 

new products. WMS makes 

video slots, Monopoly-brand 

gaming machines, and video 

poker machines, as well as the 

traditional mechanical onearmed 

bandits. You will oversee 

all aspects of software development 

and deployment, so be 

ready to ante up a full range of 

database and WAN skills. The 

big payoff is being able to say 

you were the guy who developed 

games such as Rich Little 

Piggies, Money Grab, and 

Keepin’ Up With The Joneses. 

As Donald Trump would hasten 

to say, “classy stuff.” ▲ 


R AW D ATA 

53 Million Chatters: IM Is The New Email 

As the overwhelming popularity of email has shown, 

person-to-person communication, not flashy content 

or services, is the Internet’s real killer app. Now, IM is 

starting to replace email in some people’s minds as 

42% of onliners use this platform, according to the latest 

survey from the Pew Internet & American Life 

Project. Of the 53 million IMers in the United States, 

24% say they use IM more than they do email. And it 

is not just teens gabbing about who committed what 

fashion felony at school today. Almost a third of senior 

citizen Webizens are chatting, as well, and about 40% 

of at-work IMing is done among co-workers. Chat is 

about to become a big business, and advertisers and 

content providers are trying to find ways to insert 

themselves into this national gabfest. 

* Percentage of online users in each age group who use IM

Alex St. John was one of 

the founding creators 

of Microsoft’s DirectX 

technology. He is 

the subject of the book 

“Renegades Of The 

Empire” about the 

creation of DirectX 

and Chromeffects, 

an early effort 

by Microsoft to create a 

multimedia browser. 

Today Alex is President 

and CEO of WildTangent 

Inc., a technology 

company devoted to 

delivering 

CD-ROM quality 

entertainment content 

over the Web. 


The Saint by Alex St. John 

Nerd Toys! 

Iwas in Borders Books yesterday shopping for 

the latest CPU mag when what did my wandering 

eyes behold? A genuine “Star Wars” 

lightsaber replica. The Master Replicas lightsaber 

has real tangible heft to it. The blade is formed by a 

plastic cylinder with a new kind of luminescent 

plastic core that lights up with an eerie lightsaber 

purple glow when you hit the switch. Better still 

the blade doesn’t just flicker on like a bad flashlight, 

it lights up starting from the base and climbing 

to the tip with a genuine lightsaber activation 

sound effect. It has two gyroscopes that track the 

blades acceleration so when you swing it around it 

hums just like it’s cutting the air, and if you hit 

something with it you get the genuine lightsaber 

contact cracking sound. Naturally, 

I bought their entire 

stock for Xmas presents, except 

for the one I intend to dissect 

when I get tired of playing with 

it. I found a Web site for the 

manufacturer which had other 

cool products on it for “Star 

Trek,” “Lord Of The Rings,” 

and “Predator” fans: www.mas 

terreplicas.com/home.aspx. 

A friend of mine recently 

came to stay with me to spend 

the weekend playing games. 

In the course of setting up our 

home network we had the usual problem of not 

having identical updated versions of the game we 

wanted to play. “Not a problem,” he said taking 

off his watch and pulling a USB cord from it. I 

lose my keychain thumb drives constantly, but a 

256MB thumb drive wrist watch solves that 

problem nicely. There are a number of cool models 

out there including ones that double as MP3 

players that store up to 1GB of data. I found that 

usb-watches.com was one of the better references 

for buying them. My friend had the Xonix 

XU-UB model. 

Another friend of mine has a company called 

Wildseed, which has developed a sci-fi mobile 

phone. Being a mad genius, his phone design is 

an interesting combination of extremely advanced 

mobile capabilities and features you never knew 

you needed until you got them. The phone is a 

GSM design based on an ARM processor and 

is the first mobile phone to use a Linux OS. 

The phone is a 

GSM design based 

on an ARM 

processor and is 

the first mobile 

phone to use a 

Linux OS. 

Naturally it is also a camera, FM radio, USB 

thumb drive, and handheld game machine. 

The phone also sports a standard stereo headphone 

jack. 

Among the phone’s more exotic features are the 

strip of red LEDs along the edge which can be 

used to spell text in the air if you wave the phone 

at somebody in a dark room. This, as all nerds 

truly believe, is one of the most effective methods 

for impressing friends and attracting members of 

the opposite sex. The phones have RGB LEDs 

under each button that light up in various disco 

patterns when the phone rings. Wildseed phones 

support Smart Skins which, in addition to being 

decorative, program the phones with new content 

and features. WildSeed has a 

MP3 player skin, a Mortal 

Combat game pad skin, and a 

Bluetooth skin in development. 

I prefer the HR Geiger 

Alien skin myself. 

Wildseed made a tremendous 

investment in new power 

management technologies 

that cause the phone to have 

one of the longest lived batteries 

of any smart phone I’ve 

owned. Since I am privileged 

to have one of the first production 

phones made, not all 

of the “features” were finished when I purchased 

mine. Email support is still a work in progress. 

I’m informed that they will be for sale on the 

Wildseed.com Web site by the time this column 

goes to press. 

Of course the best Xmas presents are always 

free, and if you want something free and oddly 

amusing to give a friend, may I suggest going to 

www.wincustomize.com and downloading the 

Stardock desktop Tetra, which is nothing more 

than a little fish that swims around on your desktop 

while you try to work. I get the greatest joy 

from it when I let it swim around on my 

PowerPoint slides while I’m doing a public presentation, 

although this practice may be eclipsed 

in future presentations by my new “Star Wars” 

lightsaber pointer. ■ 

Be one with the force by emailing 

TheSaint@cpumag.com.

Peugeot Quark 

We’re not sure how this works in France, but we haven’t noticed too many environmentalists 

out a-four-wheelin’ lately. Peugeot (www.peugeot.com) thinks that it can 

entice more tree huggers to track up the landscape with its nonpolluting Quark concept. 

This four-wheeler spins its shell-patterned rubber with a quiet fuel cell, not a noisy, twostroke 

earsplitter. And its looks alone give us an adrenaline rush. Peugeot tells us it has 

no plans to commercialize the Quark, yada yada, but never say never. Now if we just tell 

ourselves that we’re really aerating the soil, not crushing a fragile ecosystem, we can put 

our Dr. Martens to real use. 

Winter’s chill won’t touch our 

hearts, just as long as the Perrier 

produced by our Quark’s fuel 

cell doesn’t freeze. And if the roads prove too 

treacherous, we’ll take to the air, VTOL style. In 

our Springtail, we’ll be in a position of strength 

to convince Santa that the 84-inch plasma 

screen does indeed go to our house. 

by Marty Sems 

Akira NeoDigm 84 PK-8401 

No, you can’t trade in four of the irritating hellions that congregate next door 

and get yourself an ideal 29-year-old. What you can do is get a jump on next-gen 

84-inch plasma screens with four 42-inchers grafted together. Multiscreen displays 

have long offered a stopgap in the wait for bigger screen sizes, but Akira 

tries to minimize the inevitable compromise with the NeoDigm 84 PK-8401 

($44,125; www.akiradisplay.com). The company fitted each display to within 

3mm of each other, so the windowpane lines between them are less noticeable. 

Meanwhile, the PK-8401’s 1,706 x 960 resolution and 2,500:1 contrast ratio will 

handle anything HDTV can throw at it. As for true big-screen plasmas, keep an 

eye out for LG’s 71-incher due out in Q4. 

Trek Aerospace Springtail EFV-4B 

Zoom! Scree-owwwww! Put some spring in your tail with your very own powered-lift VTOL 

personal aircraft. From the joysticks to the directional vanes, everything on the rotary engine-powered 

Springtail is fly-by-wire. Trek Aerospace (www.millenniumjet.com) says all that computer 

control means that goodies such as GPS control and collision avoidance can be built-in. The EFV- 

4B is a streamlined refinement of the “A” model that’s used for most of the company’s flight 

demonstrations. Trek tells us that the Springtail is a long way off from shipping or even pricing, 

but the military and government are first in line. Personally, we’re having a very “Starship 

Troopers” moment here—and we’re talking the book, not the movie. 


NVIDIA nForce4 

Some rather exciting news out of 

the NVIDIA camp this month 

comes in the size and shape of its 

upcoming nForce4 family of 

chipsets for the Athlon 64 

platform. Carrying over all 

of its predecessor’s goodies, 

the nForce4 platform is 

largely based on the previous 

nForce 3 250 chipset, which already 

has best-in-class performance and is currently 

doing the rounds in many a topend 

gamer’s Athlon 64 system. There will 

be three flavors ranging from the highend 

nForce4 SLI (Scalable Link Interface; 

more on those cool beans later) to the 

mainstream nForce4 Ultra and to the 

value-targeted nForce4. 

First and foremost, PCI Express, which 

is certainly being adopted at a slower rate 

than expected on the Intel side, will debut 

for the Athlon 64 with nForce4 and full 

support for 16-lane PCI-E. On top of 

that, on-chip GbE and NVIDIA’s excellent 

RAID suite are brought over, and the 

number of USB 2.0 ports has been 

bumped up to 10. New to 

the feature set, and common 

to all three, are the NVIDIA 

Firewall 2.0 and nTune 

performance suite. 

Most desirable to us 

gamers will no doubt be the 

nForce4 SLI chipset with its 

dual-graphics card capabilities. 

Using NVIDIA’s SLI 

technology and two NVIDIA PCI-E 

graphics boards, nForce4 SLI boards will 

sport programmable PCI-E graphics 

lanes. In normal mode, a single PCI-E 

video card can be used in x16 mode, but 

throw in a second GeForce 6600 connected 

with a small bridge card, and the 

board is able to run twin 6600s in two x8 

PCI-E lanes. During the briefing, we 

were given a quick demonstration of two 

GeForce 6600s running in SLI mode in 

Doom 3. The results were just as expected. 

With a single 6600 at 1,600 x 1,200, 

H A R D W A R E ▲ R E V I E W S 

we were only able to get 18fps, but when 

the second board kicked in with SLI, that 

frame rate became playable and hit the 

30fps mark—an excellent hike, indeed. 

This hike in performance can’t be expected 

in all games, but the ones that do benefit 

from SLI will do so at the very high 

resolutions. Don’t expect this level of fun 

to be cheap (we’d estimate ASUS boards 

at around $200) or available 

in large quantities even 

when it’s released at the end 

of the year. 

Although the mainstream 

nForce4 Ultra won’t be SLIcapable, 

it will still pack 

quite a punch for around the 

$150 mark. This is the 

board that will see the most 

play and introduce a couple of speed 

bumps with support for the upcoming 

3Gbps SATA II standard (Native Command 

Queuing, hot-swappable devices, 

and transfer rates up to 300MBps), the 

first chipset to do so. Both the SLI and 

Ultras will have two onboard SATA controllers 

allowing for two independent 

transfer paths to and from system memory. 

When used in conjunction with 

NVIDIA’s nifty RAID software, there are 

all sorts of new trinkets, such as the ability 

to warn you of drive failures with Disk 

Specs: SATA II 3Gbps capable; onboard RAID and GbE; PCI-E support 


Alert, which actually shows you an image 

of your board and the culprit drive. You 

can also morph one RAID array to another 

mode with easy-to-use wizards without 

ruining data. Speaking of neat software, 

we were also given a run through of 

NVIDIA’s ActiveArmor extended 

network security features implemented 

in hardware via the 

hardware firewall. Not only 

will it help prevent getting 

hacked, but because it performs 

its operations in hardware, 

it actually reduces the 

CPU overload, which we were shown 

whilst playing games and pinging other 

machines at the same time. The interface 

is especially friendly, and you can set up 

custom selections for closing ports dependant 

upon the application. 

At the $100 mark, however, the 

nForce4 will be stripped of SATA II and 

ActiveArmor suite goodies, and it will 

also be slower due to its more limited 

800MHz HyperTransport bus (the 

higher-end boards will be 1,000MHz 

HyperTransport capable). 

All of the chipsets will get a bump in 

performance thanks to nTune, which 

NVIDIA will package with its software 

suite. Intended as a performance tweak 

utility, those of you that shy away from 

the BIOS will now be able to tweak out 

your system based upon wizards and recommended 

settings instead of having to 

decipher the lingo in your BIOS. 

Clearly a lot of software engineering 

time and resources were poured into 

nForce4, and the results look ever-so 

promising, not only on paper but from 

the various benchmarks and demos we 

were shown in-house. ▲ 

by Alex “Sharky” Ross 

nForce4 

$100 to $200 

NVIDIA 

(408) 486-2000 

www.nvidia.com



& Athlon 64 4000+ 

It's been quiet on the CPU battlefront 

for a few months, at least in terms of the 

rat race at the top. Neither Intel nor AMD 

has recently released any top-end CPUs, 

but before the year is out, AMD obviously 

feels the need to go out with a bang. Enter 

two gamer-friendly Athlon 64s, which 

should hit the market in very limited quantities 

by the time you read this. 

For the Socket 939 platform is the 

2.6GHz Athlon 64 FX-55, a successor to 

the 2.4GHz FX-53, which really translates 

into a speed bump of 200MHz. The specs 

otherwise remain the same, being manufactured 

on a 0.13-micron process and still 

with 1MB of L2 cache. Even if 200MHz 

doesn't seem like much, the manufacturing 

involves some rather secretive strained 

silicon sauce. Although much of this 

information has not been made public, it 

should be much akin to what Intel and 

IBM have been doing for a couple of 

years. Strained silicon involves modifying 

the electrical properties of transistors in 

order to increase their performance as the 

atomic structure of the transistor's electrical 

path is strained into better alignment, 

which allows for improved electrical flow. 

Nobody says it's easy ramping up clock 

speeds. AMD's roadmap indicates that it 

will continue to research and develop this 

SOI process further to help ramp up even 

more in terms of clock speeds. Another 

aid, and perhaps more visibly obvious to 

being able to jump up the extra 200MHz, 

was my reference kit's heatsink/fan, which 

sported an oversized heatsink with integrated 

heatpipes, a first for reviewer kits. 

Without a doubt, this is the fastest CPU, 

especially for gamers, available, but it's 

also priced at a silly $827 in quantities of 

1,000. Unless you absolutely have to be 

the fastest bloke on your block for a minimum 

amount of time (you know there 

will be faster CPUs soon), then we don't 

recommend this one; it's just too pricey. 

Offering much better value for the 

money is the dual-memory channel Athlon 

64 4000+, a successor to the Athlon 

64 3800+. Unlike its predecessor, which 

sported 512K L2 cache, the 4000+ carries 

PCMark04 

CPU:Memory 

3DMark05 Doom 3 Far Cry UT2004 

FX-55 4950:5947 5142 116fps 110fps 104fps 

4000+ 4532:5782 4894 109fps 100fps 98fps 

FX-53 4533:5761 4899 111fps 101fps 100fps 

P4 560 5263:5639 5228 91fps 87fps 92fps 

P4 3.4EE 5259:5578 5203 93fps 92fps 93fps 

Athlon 64 FX-55: 2.6GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 0.13-micron 

Athlon 64 4000+: 2.4GHz, 1MB L2 cache, 0.13-micron 

a full 1MB worth, just like the FX-5x line. 

Interesting move, indeed. The fact that it 

also runs at 2.4GHz makes it look a lot 

like an FX-53—so much so that the only 

difference between the two is that the 

4000+ does not have an unlocked bus 

speed multiplier and, hence, is not as overclocker-friendly 

as the FX-53. At $729 (in 

Athlon 64 4000+ 

$729 

AMD 

(909) 674-4661 

www.amd.com 

Athlon 64 FX-55 

$827 

AMD 

(909) 674-4661 

www.amd.com 

quantities of 1,000), however, it makes 

slightly more sense than the FX-55, but 

then again, when has being at the top ever 

been about bargains (look no further than 

the Athlon 64 3400+)? With Intel having 

canned its release of the Pentium 4 4GHz, 

this year finishes with AMD on top. Next 

year won't be so much about who's faster 

with one CPU but more about dual-core 

processors and who's more efficient. 

Couple either of these CPUs with the 

new nForce 4 SLI (Scalable Link 

Interface) platform and a couple of 

PCI-E GeForce 6800 Ultras, and your 

appetite for destruction in Doom 3 will 

be like nothing yet seen. Neither of 

AMD's newest CPUs gets challenged in 

the benchmarks by Intel's Pentium 4 

560 or its Extreme Edition. It's a good 

time to be playing with an Athlon 64. 

Clearly the one to get this holiday season 

is the Athlon 64 4000+, seeing as 

it's really just an FX-53 in slightly less 

fancy clothing. ▲ 

by Alex "Sharky" Ross 



NVIDIA GeForce 6200 

Earlier this year, when NVIDIA introduced 

its NV40 at the high end, the 

company had promised to use the NV4x 

architecture from top to bottom. As of 

today, it has fulfilled that promise with 

the introduction of the GeForce 6200. 

Based on a derivative of the NV43 and on 

the same 0.11-micron process, there will 

be two versions, one with a 128-bit memory 

bus and another with a 64-bit (there 

goes that bandwidth). The chip itself is 

identical to that of the GeForce 6600, but 

the number of pixel pipelines 

has been slashed from eight 

down to four for the GeForce 

6200. The number of vertex 

shaders remains at three, 

however. Also removed on 

the 6200 hardware is color 

and z-compression support 

on the memory controller, 

which really helps NVIDIA’s 

higher-end chips perform so 

well under those memorytaxing 

antialiasing situations. 

As far as clock speeds go, 

NVIDIA has set the core clock to 

300MHz, which isn’t earth-shattering, 

but then again, we are dealing with entrylevel 

here. As far as the OEMs go, the 

clock speeds may indeed end up varying 

and being a little higher. The same can 

From top to bottom, NVIDIA now has parts 

be said for the memory, which will 

most likely be set by the DDR 1 standards 

(275MHz). 

In case you were thinking that the 

adoption to PCI-E has been somewhat 

slow, NVIDIA will not be releasing an 

AGP version of the GeForce 6200, which 

is surprising at the low end. NVIDIA 

expects to begin shipping these boards by 

mid-November, with prices being set at 

$129 to $149 for the 128-bit memory 

version and $99 for the 64-bit variant. 

Competition at that level will come from 

ATI’s X300 series of VPUs based on a 

0.11-micron, four-pipe version of the 

RV360 (a previous generation part). 

Although we’d expect the 6200 

to soundly beat the X300 in 

benchmarks (see chart), the price 

of ATI’s cards is somewhat more 

aggressive at $75. 

From top to bottom, 

NVIDIA now has parts that 

compete with and, in many 

cases, beat the competition. The 

turn-around from this time last 

year is certainly impressive. ▲ 

by Alex “Sharky” Ross 

that compete with and, in many cases, beat the competition. 

Benchmark Digits 

The GeForce 6200 goes against the Radeon X300. 

NVIDIA GeForce 6200 ATI Radeon X300 

Doom 3 61.7 32.4 

Far Cry 59.6 57.4 

UT2004 53.2 55.6 

Halo 42 37 

*All games ran at 800 x 600; results in fps 

Specs: 128-bit/64-bit memory interface; 1.2 billion texels per second fill rate; 4 pixel 

pipelines; 300MHz clock speed 


GeForce 6200 

$99/$129 to $149 

NVIDIA 

(408) 486-2000 

www.nvidia.com


Tall With Curves 

Dueling Full Towers Square Off 

Perhaps you’re anticipating a stack 

of new PC components over the 

holidays or you’re making a New Year’s 

resolution to build yourself the biggest, 

sweetest tower ever. You’ll need a tower 

to put it all in. We offer these two extraordinary 

contenders. 

Temjin TJ05 

$165 

SilverStone 

(909) 605-1023 

www.silver 

stonetek.com 

When the forklift 

set this 30pound 

behemoth 

on our bench, we knew we were in for a 

treat. Curiously, SilverStone elected to 

fashion the symmetrically wavy front 

panel from brushed aluminum while the 

rest of the structure is steel. As such, the 

Temjin TJ05 feels like a tank. 

This box is filled with features. We’re 

not bothered by the lack of a slide-out 

mobo tray because the Extended ATX 

design is plenty spacious. A swinging, 

removable panel covers roughly the bottom 

third of the chassis above the mobo. 

Attached to the underside of this panel 

are adjustable-height, rubber-tipped bars 

that can press on to your add-in cards to 

keep them snugly in their slots. Additionally 

you can screw either two hard 

drives or two 80mm case fans into the 

panel, and the left exterior panel is vented 

over this area for either occasion. 

To the right of the panel is a five-bay, 

removable hard drive cage, above which 

is a fixed drive cage with one internal 3.5inch 

bay, two external 3.5-inch bays, and 

four external 5.25-inch bays. Everything 

in this case is toolless, and the snap-on 

drive rails are stored in a covered carrier 

mounted to the case’s floor. 

There are two 120mm fans built into 

the chassis, one in the rear under the 

PSU bay for exhaust and a filtered one in 

the front next to the HDD cage for 

intake. There also is a filtered 80mm hole 

behind the HDD cage in the right exterior 

panel built such that you can simply 

snap an optional case fan. 

On the outside, a hinged door covers 

the external bays and a lock secures the 

entire hinged front panel. A blue-lit 

LCD display offers information on time, 

temperature, and system activity, and a 

temperature-based alarm. Compared to 

similar readouts we’ve seen, this Silver- 

Stone is surprisingly simple and comprehensive. 

We also applaud the sidemounting 

of the audio, FireWire, and 

four USB ports behind the fascia. Our 

only complaints with this case are that 

the bay door isn’t easily removable and 

sliding components tend to stick a bit. 

Stylish, rugged, brimming with awesome 

features, and very well-priced, the 

Temjin TJ05 is a legend in the making. 

SilverStone’s Temjin TJ05 is a stunning 

blend of form and function, 

offering tons of expansion and ease-ofuse 

features. 

Tsunami VA3000BWA 

$149.99 

Thermaltake 

(800) 988-1088 

www.thermaltake.com 

After team lifting the 

Temjin TJ05, Thermaltake’s 

nearly all-aluminum, 13pound 

Tsunami VA3000BWA 

Temjin TJ05 Specs: 19.8 h x 8.38 w x 24.3 d (inches); 29.65 pounds; 4 x 5.25-inch 

external, 2 x 3.5-inch external, 8 x 3.5-inch internal; ATX, Extended ATX, Micro ATX; 2 

x 120mm fans (21dBA) 

Tsunami VA3000BWA Specs: 18.8 h x 8.3 w x 19.5 d (inches); 13 pounds; 4 x 5.25-inch 

external, 2 x 3.5-inch external, 5 x 3.5-inch internal; ATX, Extended ATX, Micro ATX; 2 x 

120mm fans, 1 x 90mm fan (all three rated 21dBA) 


felt feathery. This black-and-clear-windowed 

version of the VA3000BWA uses 

a black mirror finish. On such thin aluminum 

paneling, the overall effect struck 

us as slightly flimsy, but the case remains 

attractive and has almost no bend to it. 

Thermaltake also throws in a dust cloth 

to keep fingerprints at bay. 

On the outside, two blue LEDs hide 

behind the handle for the hinged front 

door. This opens to reveal a black plastic 

fascia that also swings open when 

unlocked. The outer door has some 

venting near the bottom followed by a 

larger, filtered vent in the fascia, and 

this sits in front of a 120mm intake fan 

next to the 3.5-inch removable drive 

cage. The problem here is that the vents 

don’t line up well with the fan, and the 

air path is so choked that we question 

whether the intake fan can match the 

blue LED-lit, 120mm exhaust fan’s airflow, 

yielding negative pressure within 

the case and unnecessary turbulence 

through the vents. However, as with 

Cooler Master’s Wave Master, we like 

the top-mounted, stealthed audio, 

FireWire, and two USB ports. 

Most aspects of Thermaltake’s Extended 

ATX design are excellent. Everything 

is toolless save for the 3.5-inch 

hard drive cage bays, which use rubber 

grommets to reduce vibration noise. The 

VA-3000BWA lacks SilverStone’s integrated 

parts storage locker, but the rail 

system is a literal snap, and we like having 

a 90mm case fan built into the clear 

panel over the CPU. For external bays, 

you get four 5.25-inch and seven 

3.5-inch (five internal). 

Lighter, less expensive, and 

more modded, the Tsunami 

VA3000BWA definitely has 

some advantages over Silver- 

Stone, but it lacks its competitor’s 

overall refinement and 

attention to detail. 

Designed for capacity and 

quiet, the Thermaltake Tsunami 

VA3000 will appeal to those who want 

fancy looks without compromising on 

structural quality. ▲ 

by William Van Winkle

D-Link DSM-320 

Wireless Media Player 

With its slim profile and silver styling, 

the DSM-320 looks fabulous. In 

addition to 802.11b/g connectivity, the 

back of the unit sports 10/100 Ethernet, 

composite and component video, S-Video, 

RCA audio, and both coax and optical 

SPDIF. On the outside, this unit is golden. 

Setup was a snap: Install D-Link’s 

client app on your PC, select the folders 

to share, and then help the DSM-320 

talk with your router. 

The “home” screen offers four areas: 

music, photo, video, and online media. 

The player did a fine job with all the MP3, 

WAV, and WMA files I threw at it, although 

audio playback would hiccup when 

I momentarily spiked CPU utilization on 

my 2.4GHz test system by starting a new 

app. Video playback 

was spotty. Low bit 

rate MPEGs played flawlessly. AVIs, which 

D-Link claims to support, would not play 

at all. A high bit rate MPEG-2 file I made 

at first would not play, then played perfectly. 

And why support XviD and not DivX? 

One of my biggest gripes was with the 

remote control. IR reception quality was 

poor, and shouldn’t these devices come 

with RF remotes now? I also thought that 

the button layout was relatively unintuitive. 

The firmware update adds support for 

Rhapsody and Napster on top of the 

built-in AOL Radio support, but there is 

no provision (yet) for other subscription 

services or the many free online radio stations. 

Still photo playback looked great, 

Fujitsu-Siemens FutureClient 

Few PCs can masquerade as a CE 

device, but that’s what people want. 

No bulk, flashing lights, or noise. Fujitsu- 

Siemens’ FutureClient is a new box that 

remedies these problems. 

I received one of the first U.S. samples 

and was taken by its sleek looks. Clad all 

in black extruded aluminum, the top 

panel over the mobo is almost entirely 

vented, and the left and right sides are 

deeply finned heatsinks. The front features 

only a slim-line ODD, floppy drive 

slot, a red LED-rimmed steel reset/HDD 


Specs: 1.5 h x 11.25 w x 16.75 d (inches); 5.5 lb; 802.11b/g with 2 dBi gain antenna; RCA 

audio and video, S-Video, component video, coax and optical SPDIF; MP3, WMA, WAV, 

JPEG, JPEG2000, BMP, PNG, TIFF, GIF, MPEG-1/2/4, XviD, AVI, M3U, and PLS playlists 

The Numbers 

Here’s a quick take on the FutureClient’s numbers. 

activity button, and a matching 

blue-rimmed power button. 

The fanless 180W PSU sits 

below the 2.5-inch hard drive and floppy 

drive and is bonded with thermal adhesive 

to the left chassis wall. On the right, the 

aluminum CPU heatsink has a fluid-filled 

heatpipe passing through it and bending to 

rest flush against the right chassis wall. All 

of this sits over an 865G-based FS D1562 

Micro ATX mobo. With one 512MB stick 

of DDR400 memory and a 3.4GHz P4 

Northwood (well beyond the stated limit of 

3DMark2001 Quake III PCMark2002 WinAce 

(640 x 480 x 16) (640 x 480) (CPU:mem) 200MB folder 

FutureClient 4272 119.8 8242:6590 3:49 

Intel 

D865GBF 

2839 136.7 7389:7456 3:47 

Specs: 3.07 h x 14.17 w x 13.18 d (inches); F-S D1562-C mobo (865G chipset, 1 AGP, 3 

PCI, 4 DIMM slots, SPDIF header, Intel GbE, 4 USB 2.0 ports, 2 USB 2.0 headers); 

180W PSU; 2 PCI risers 

DSM-320 Wireless 

Media Player 

$199 

D-Link 

(800) 326-1688 

www.dlink.com 

but the time to advance to the next image 

could be frustratingly slow. 

The UI is also hit and miss. The music 

player, for example, shows you the next 

track ready to play—that’s good. However, 

you can’t start playing a song, then hop 

out, say, to view photos, then jump back 

into the music player interface for the track 

you’re playing. If you try, the song will start 

over from the beginning. 

The DSM-320 is great at the macro 

level but still under development at the 

micro level. For $160 ESP ($199 MSRP), 

we shouldn’t expect miracles, but I’d 

gladly pay another $40 or $50 for some 

extra refinement. ▲ 

by William Van Winkle 

FutureClient 

$990 

Fujitsu-Siemens 

(734) 214-5820 

www.fsc-america.com 

2.8GHz), our handful of tests show the 

FutureClient performing right in line 

against Intel’s reference 865G board with a 

3GHz Northwood and two 256MB modules 

in dual-channel mode. 

The FS board offers one 8X AGP and 

three PCI slots, but the case only allows 

for half-height cards unless you employ 

the optional two-PCI or one-PCI/one- 

AGP riser cards. A revamp planned for 

early in 2005 will update the Future- 

Client to PCI-Express and DDR2. 

FS wants the FutureClient to be a 

media center product, but it’s not ready 

yet. We’d give it two CPUs as a multimedia 

system. For productivity apps, quiet 

computing, strength, and style, it easily 

garners four CPUs. Thus we’ll compromise 

in the middle. ▲ 



iRobot Roomba Discovery 

It's easy to develop high expectations 

when it comes to robotics. "What? You 

mean this thing vacuums the floor, and all 

I have to do is hit a button? Adios Eureka 

BOSS!" But don't toss that portly upright 

just yet; the current generation of robotic 

vacuums is designed to supplement, not 

replace, your own cleaning efforts. 

The Roomba Discovery represents the 

latest advancements from iRobot's Consumer 

Robotics Division. It builds on its 

predecessor's feature set and includes a 

one-button Clean mode, where Roomba 

sizes up your room with new algorithms 

and calculates the amount of time needed 

to clean. A Dirt Detect feature senses particularly 

soiled areas, prompting Roomba 

to spend extra time cleaning. iRobot 

claims that Roomba Discovery is more 

powerful, too—a relative claim I'm sure 

HP L1955 

Billed as a "large-screen CRT 

replacement for workstation and 

business users," the HP L1955 is a 19inch 

flat-panel LCD that boasts an enviable 

spec sheet. 

Weighing 16 ½ pounds, the L1955 

isn't the lightest 19-inch LCD on the 

block, but it does include an integrated 

power supply and a self-powered USB 

2.0 hub with one upstream and four 

downstream ports. The height-adjustable 

base also has a 90-degree pivot capability, 

enabling either portrait or landscape 

viewing. This feature is appearing on several 

new monitors, and it's good that HP 

has jumped on board. 

With a 1,000:1 contrast ratio and a 

16ms response rate (1,280 x 1,024 at 

60Hz), the L1955 certainly looks good on 

paper. I tested the L1955 to determine if 

it truly deserved these bragging rights. 

The L1955 performed well on Display- 

Mate's Multimedia Edition software, 


because it can't touch the 

suction of a manually 

operated upright. 

A common complaint 

about the original Roomba 

was that its battery didn't 

last long enough, didn't charge 

fast enough, and would often die 

completely months after purchase. The 

Roomba Discovery addresses all of those 

concerns with a beefier battery, a longer 

product warranty, and a halved charging 

time. The vacuum's dust bin is also larger, 

resulting in less time you'll spend 

maintaining Roomba. 

Overall, Roomba works very well 

cleaning tile, linoleum, and wood floors. 

On low-pile carpet, it tends to drag its 

cleaning brush and, depending on its 

direction, may hop across the carpet 

Specs: One-button Clean mode, active dirt-response system, cliff sensor, larger dust bin 

than predecessor, up to 120-minute run-time, includes a home docking station, remote 

control, 2 Virtual Wall units, and a wall mount 

Specs: 19-inch max viewable area; 250 nits; 1,000:1 contrast ratio;


Bay Bonanza 

Three Fun Additions To Your Chassis 

If you have a tower chassis, odds are 

you’ve also got some empty 5.25-inch 

drive bays with nothing but a blank plate 

to hide their loneliness. What are you 

waiting for? The market has plenty of 

sweet bay devices that can jazz up your 

system and enhance your PC’s functionality. 

Here are three of our favorites. 

Musketeer 

LLC-U01 

$29.95 

Cooler Master 

(510) 770-8566 

www.coolermaster.com 

I liked the Musketeer LLC-U01 fan 

controller at first glance, but I quickly grew 

to love it while integrating it into one of 

the Media Center platforms I’m prepping 

for next month’s Spotlight topic. See, our 

MCE machine in question is going into a 

bookshelf cabinet in a home theater—an 

environment where consumer electronics 

boxes still dominate and retro analog looks 

right at home. 

The LLC-U01 fits in beautifully with its 

three blue-backlit needle meters, one each 

for a system fan voltmeter, an audio VU 

meter, and a temperature indicator that 

works with the bundled probe. Sandwiched 

between these three circles are two vertical 

sliders, one for controlling fan voltage 

(from 0 to 12V), and the other for adjusting 

the VU meter’s sensitivity. 

Most fan controllers won’t dip all 

the way to 0V, which turns the fan 

off. This gives you much better control 

over sound output than the majority 

of controllers. 

We ran the LLC-U01 from a motherboard 

using Intel HD Audio based on a 

Realtek codec chip. Having that VU sensitivity 

lever turned out to be a good thing 

because the needle barely moved out of 

the box because we needed to keep our 

system’s volume down most of the time. 

Jacking up the sensitivity helped to keep 

the meter active. 


When you get down to it, the silver 

LLC-U02 and its black LLC-U01 counterpart 

are predominantly $39 of eye 

candy. You could just as easily control 

these things on-screen. But modding is 

about looks, and we feel that for the right 

user in the right environment, this is 

money enjoyably spent. 

BayOne EXTREME 

$39.99 

SOYO 

(909) 292-2500 

www.soyousa.com 

The BayOne EXTREME is essentially 

a 9-in-1 flash card reader on steroids. 

There are four card slots (MS, SD/MMC, 

CF/Microdrive, and SM) accompanied by 

two activity LEDs. The single coolest feature 

of this product is that the card reader 

has an eject button. Just pop it out and slip 

it in your pocket. The portable reader has a 

USB 2.0 Type A connector on the back 

(so you’ll need to buy a male-to-male cable 

if you want to use this on the road) and 

even has four 

rubber feet on its bottom. 

Additionally, below the card reader 

are microphone, line-in and line-out 1/8inch 

jacks, and three USB 2.0 ports. This is 

pretty generous for a bay device, but, then 

again, you’re definitely paying for it. 

The BayOne EXTREME has two 

strikes against it, though. Although the 

unit is easy to set up and includes attractive, 

silver mesh-wrapped internal USB 

cabling, the device is largely fashioned 

from cheap-feeling, beige plastic. Worse, 

the 5.25-inch frame was obviously built to 

accommodate multiple configurations. 

There are punch-outs for two FireWire 

ports, but no 1394 functionality is included 

on the circuit board. Two panels to 

the right of the eject 

button look like they 

should allow for 

additional ports 

to be integrated, 

a la the FRONTX, 

but SOYO ignores 

this possibility. 

We like the BayOne Extreme for being 

more than just another flash card reader or 

extra set of USB ports. The overall design, 

however, needs some help. 

Nexus NXP-301 

Fan & Light Controller 

$39.99 

Vantec 

(510) 668-0368 

www.vantecusa.com 

Simple and slick, the NXP-301 is a gray 

bay panel punctuated by four green LEDrimmed 

knobs. The first three control 

voltage (from 0 to 12 volts) for connected 

fans. The fourth controls the two included 

blue cold-cathode tubes. The left knob 

position is off, the center is sound activated, 

and the right is always on. 

The NXP-301 comes with all the cables 

and double-sided tape you need. Installation 

is a snap, and we were pleased to see 

that the cathode tube wires are just long 

enough to reach the back of the tower. You 

might run short if you position the Nexus 

in a top bay of a full tower and want to lay 

the tubes along the chassis floor, though. 

On the right side of the controller are 

two small holes behind which sits a microphone. 

This is how the device is able to 

regulate the cold-cathode tube activity 

according to ambient noise. However, the 

microphone on our model came out of the 

box pointed upward at about a 45-degree 

angle. For best results, check that your mic 

is aimed at the panel opening. 

For midtowers, we think the NXP- 

301 is a stellar add-on. The documentation 

is well-illustrated, and the pricing is 

reasonable. We wish that the green knob 

lighting matched the blue cold-cathode 

tubes, but you can’t have everything. ▲ 

by William Van Winkle

Anand Lal Shimpi has 

turned a fledgling personal 

page on GeoCities.com 

into one of the world’s 

most visited and trusted 

PC hardware sites. Anand 

started his site in 1997 at 

just 14 years old and has 

since been featured in 

USA Today, CBS’ 48 

Hours and Fortune. 

His site— 

www.anandtech.com— 

receives more than 55 

million page views and is 

read by more than 

2 million readers 

per month. 

Anand’s Corner by Anand Lal Shimpi 

Will Dual-Core Save Us? 

The move to 90nm has been tough for everyone, 

although some companies made it 

more difficult on themselves than others. 

But adventurous architectural improvements aside 

(*cough* Prescott *cough*), there is a growing problem 

with moving to smaller and smaller manufacturing 

processes: It’s called thermal density. While 

smaller transistors can switch faster and run at lower 

voltages, thus drawing less power and dissipating less 

heat than their predecessors, they also have to be 

crammed into a smaller area. From a manufacturing 

standpoint, you want to cram as many transistors 

into as small of an area as possible, however there is a 

definite drawback to doing so: With upwards of 

twice as many transistors in less area than a 130nm 

chip, each square millimeter of the die ends up producing 

comparatively more heat. The problem now 

becomes not cramming that 

many transistors into a small 

space, but removing more heat, 

more quickly, from such a 

small space. 

With OEMs still very hesitant 

to touch watercooling 

(although Apple recently shipped 

a dual 90nm G5 system 

with an integrated watercooling 

system), the present day 

solutions are limited. If you 

haven’t noticed, the clock 

speed wars have slowed down 

considerably, almost to a halt, 

over the past year thanks to the 

issue of growing thermal densities. 

And with the transition 

to 65nm cores planned for as 

early as the end of 2005, how 

on earth are we ever supposed to get around this 

problem of having wonderfully low voltage, small 

chips, but with no way of adequately cooling them? 

The solution would seem to be in the dual-core 

processors that both AMD and Intel are announcing 

will be made available in 2005/2006. But there 

are mostly half-truths in that statement; while multiple 

cores may have the answer to the power density 

problem, the first revisions of those cores are 

most likely not doing any of that, and here’s why. 

The dual-core proposition seems wonderful; throw 

two cores onto a single piece of silicon and everyone, 

including desktop users, gets instant performance 

. . . it’s no surprise 

to look at what’s 

coming down the 

pipe and note that 

the first dual-core 

CPUs will run at 

noticeably lower 

clock speeds than 

the fastest singlecore 

CPUs. 

gain. Two pieces of information that aren’t shared, 

however, are clock speed and application support. 

The reality of clock speed is simple: If a single 90nm 

core isn’t able to run at extremely high clock speeds 

due to thermal issues, two 90nm cores aren’t going 

to be able to either. Thus, it’s no surprise to look at 

what’s coming down the pipe and note that the first 

dual-core CPUs will run at noticeably lower clock 

speeds than the fastest single-core CPUs. 

The next issue is a big one, especially for desktop 

users. You don’t need anything special to get dualcore 

CPUs to work; OS support has been there 

since Windows NT/2000. To the OS you’re just 

running two processors, it doesn’t care how many 

sockets they occupy. But in order to get an actual 

performance boost from the CPUs, you need multithreaded 

software, and today, over two years after 

Intel launched Hyper-Threading, 

the amount of multi- 

threaded desktop applications 

is still at dangerously low levels. 

Without more multithreaded 

application support, dualcore 

CPUs will be interesting 

and will make some aspects of 

multitasking much smoother, 

but overall performance won’t 

actually be a step forward for 

desktop users. The same does 

not apply for server and workstation 

folks, but those guys 

have other concerns, as well, 

which I’ll save for another time. 

So if the first incarnations of 

dual-core on the desktop won’t 

be anything to get excited 

about, then why even bother 

with dual-core on the desktop? For starters, mass 

software support will eventually come, and when it 

does it will be good. But the next point involves a 

little more thinking outside of the box. What if we 

could have two cores that would dynamically share 

their workload based on temperature. If one core got 

too hot, the other core would take over until things 

cooled down. Spread out the distribution of heat 

over a larger area, while continuing to increase performance. 

Thermal density becomes less of an issue. 

Just something to think about. . . . ■ 

Talk back to Anand@cpumag.com. 


Disrupting Reuters’ 

newswire with a cheery 

Christmas greeting at age 

six, Alex “Sharky” Ross 

became an avid computer 

user/abuser, eventually 

founding popular hardware 

testing/review Web site 

SharkyExtreme.com. 

Exposing shoddy manufacturing 

practices and 

rubbish-spouting marketing 

weasels while championing 

innovative products, illuminating 

new technology, and 

pioneering real-world 

testing methods was just a 

front for playing with the 

best toys. The site acquired, 

he left in 2001. A London 

native and London School 

of Economics graduate, Alex 

currently overclocks/tunes 

Porsche 996 Turbos with 

www.akkuratpgi.com when 

he’s not tweaking PCs. 


The Shark Tank by Alex “Sharky” Ross 

Transmeta: 

Still Alive & Kicking 

I’ve never been one to swear by pokey little 

PDAs, past or present. No matter how many 

times I’ve tried to adopt and use them, and no 

matter what kind of package they end up being in, 

I’ve ended up shying away from them in favor of a 

notebook. Even in my new venture of overclocking 

Porsches and having to tune them on the fly, I still 

don’t want to use a slow PDA for data logging, 

and thus I end up using a bulky laptop instead. 

But in Sharp’s Actius MM20, I think I’ve finally 

found my compromise. 

It’s the smallest, lightest, and longest-lasting 

notebook I’ve ever had the pleasure of “playing” 

with. I use that term loosely, of 

course—just to make a note: 

This machine is in no way 

intended for heavy 3D gaming 

in any shape or form. Powered 

by Transmeta’s latest Efficeon 

TM8600 processor, this little 

gem is meant for word processing, 

emailing, and general 

working purposes only. Did I 

mention that the battery life is 

lengthy? (You get upwards of 

7 ½ hours with the optional 

extended battery.) Or that it’s all packaged up 

smartly in a quiet, fanless design? That is mobility 

at its finest. . . . 

Weighing around 2 pounds, the MM20 still 

sports a few goodies, including internal 802.11g 

Wi-Fi, a LAN port, a couple of USB 2.0 ports, 

a headphone jack, and a connector for external 

monitors. If you need dial-up or other PCMCIA 

functions, there is a single slot reserved for those 

functions. With a notebook this thin (just over ½ 

inch) and light, there’s obviously no room for an 

optical drive, but you can still connect a USB 2.0 

DVD/CD-RW drive from Sharp for another $99. 

With the DVD drive, you can actually watch a 

movie (or two). 

As far as the hardware goes, you’re stuck with a 

nonupgradeable 20GB hard drive and 512MB of 

system memory, but general WinXP performance 

was far from slow. The Efficeon TM8600 won’t 

win any benchmarks against a more powerful 

It’s the smallest, 

lightest, and 

longest-lasting 

notebook I’ve ever 

had the pleasure of 

“playing” with. 

1.6GHz Centrino, but it does outperform in 

terms of battery life. Similar to Intel’s battery-saving 

downclocking feature, the TM8600 can be 

used in a 533MHz mode where it dims the monitor 

and saves battery life. Speaking of the monitor, 

the 10.4-inch display uses a 1,024 x 768 

native resolution, which more than suffices. 

Couple that with a surprisingly useable keyboard 

(especially when considering its diminutive size), 

and I don’t think I’ll ever go back to using those 

pokey PDAs again. 

One of the neatest features is when you 

return to a power source and/or your desktop 

PC, the MM20 slides into a 

USB 2.0 docking cradle. It 

then begins to communicate 

with the host’s Explorer window 

and pops up as another 

external drive so you can 

freely drag and drop all of 

your files. You can also use 

Sharp’s SharpSync software 

to keep your data (.PST files 

for example) all up-to-date. 

The last time I was excited 

by and/or used a Transmetabased 

product was some four years ago: a little 

Sony notebook with a Crusoe processor. After a 

somewhat auspicious start, things went a little 

quiet during the rather lengthy and unpleasant 

recession that hit Silicon Valley when many 

companies folded. But not Transmeta, it seems. 

They are still plugging away, and if the MM20 

is anything to go by, long may it continue. This 

is one small device that has actually taken my 

fancy, and I’m off to do some more AFR 

(air/fuel ratio) data logging—if only it had an 

onboard radar and laser jammer. Maybe if 

Transmeta can catch me they’ll even get it back. 

I’m putting my order in for one anyway, for 

$1,499 it’s actually affordable, too. ■ 

Email me your AFRs to sharky@cpumag.com and 

I’ll fine tune them with a Transmeta.

Kyle Bennett is 

editor-in-chief 

of HardOCP.com 

(hardocp.com), one 

of the largest and 

most outspoken 

PC-enthusiast sites 

on the Web. 

HardOCP.com is geared 

toward users with a 

passion for PCs and those 

who want to get 

cutting-edge performance 

from their systems. 

Beware, though, Kyle is 

known for his strong 

opinions and stating 

them in a no-nonsense 

manner while delivering 

some of the most in-depth 

reviews and PC hardware 

news on the 'Net. 


[H]ard Talk by Kyle Bennett 

This & That 

It’s one of those months where the topics I 

could talk about would each fill 10 pages, but 

I am limited to just one page. So let’s talk 

about a few different things that might be 

impacting the computer hardware enthusiast. In 

other words, let’s ramble and see what happens. 

What happened to all the high-end video cards? 

For a while there, I was wondering if NVIDIA 

and ATI really were going to sell any of their flagship 

cards. NVIDIA’s GPUs finally started hitting 

the shelves pretty strongly in the last month, but 

many users are still looking around for supply on 

upper-end Radeon products. On the flip side, we 

are already seeing some Radeon X700 video cards 

in retail, which will interest you folks that don’t 

like to spend $500 on a video card. The X700 

from ATI and 6600GT from NVIDIA look to 

both be excellent mainstream cards checking in 

around the $200 mark. 

Interestingly enough, though, the X700s we’ve 

seen have been of the PCI-Express variety. And 

from what we can tell on the enthusiast end of 

the spectrum, PCI-Express boards haven’t been 

in that much demand. Right 

now, to have a PCI-Express 

slot means investing in an 

Intel-based system with the 

new 915 or 925 chipsets. And 

quite frankly, the older i875 

systems have been just as fast 

or faster in terms of performance. 

So let’s review: You 

have to have a new Intel system 

that’s no faster than your 

last Intel system (considering 

equally clocked CPUs) to take advantage of PCI- 

Express video cards, which are currently no faster 

than AGP cards (because the current high-end 

games don’t need the wider PCI-E bus) and then 

you’re likely to have trouble finding the PCI- 

Express graphics card you really want because 

there’s no supply. Whew. 

And what about current DDR2-533 showing no 

advantages over DDR400? The higher DDR2 

latencies are crippling compared to low-latency 

DDR400. This will all work itself out as DDR 

reaches much higher frequencies, and that will start 

to move forward this year on newer, unannounced 

Pentium 4 processors. If you’re putting off a major 

upgrade, we totally understand why. 

If you’re putting 

off a major 

upgrade, 

we totally 

understand why. 

VIA Technologies did show up the other 

day and gave us a PCI-Express board that used 

a Socket 939 Athlon 64 CPU. That was certainly 

exciting to see, but early sample boards 

from retail board makers aren’t ready yet, 

although they should be by the time you read 

this. All of this means that we should have 

AMD and PCI-E before Christmas. Maybe 

there will be video cards to stick in those slots 

by then. 

Speaking of AMD, there are some very exciting 

things happening there. Right now we have 

two 90nm-process AMD Athlon 64 CPUs running 

on our test benches. These new processors 

don’t bring anything new to the table in terms 

of performance or pipeline architecture, but 

they do have some advantages. The smaller 

process will allow for lower-powered CPUs that 

will run cooler. The hope with this is that we 

will see better overclocks on the enthusiast 

front. HardOCP.com will have coverage of this 

by the time you read this article, so make sure to 

check us out. 

The other exciting thing 

on the AMD front is that 

AMD is now selling lowerclocked 

CPUs using the 

90nm process for the socket 

939 motherboards on the 

market. Basically what this 

means is that you now can 

buy a 939-pin processor for 

less than $200 or so, where 

it used to be tough to find 

one for under $350. Will 

these new 90nm CPUs be good OCers? We 

have to think so. Combine them with a VIA 

K8T800Pro motherboard that has working 

PCI/AGP lock and you will likely have a great 

platform for gaming and hardware tweaking fun. 

One thing for sure is that the really smart, 

current upgrade path for this year may not be 

fully evident yet. It may be a current Intel system 

or future Intel system. It may be the nextgen 

AMD system. If you are looking for a 

bargain for gaming, we still suggest you check 

into a Socket 754 ABIT KV8Pro coupled with 

an inexpensive Athlon 64. ■ 

You can talk with Kyle at kyle@cpumag.com.

Tips & Tutorials 

Modding does the body good. A PC’s body anyway, inside and out. Here you’ll find 

hardware, firmware, tools, tips, and tutorials for modding your rig’s performance and 

appearance. Send us your own mod-related tips and ideas at modding@cpumag.com. 

Modding enthusiasts have a 

penchant for the latest toys. 

Fast processors, powerful 

video cards, silent SFF enclosures, and radically 

lit motherboards are all fair game 

when it comes to a modder’s creative 

mind. Recognizing the appeal of unconventional 

customization, an entire industry 

has emerged to support the community. 

Mods & Ends 

Startech.com Mutant Mods 

If you’re looking to set your system 

apart but don’t necessarily have the time 

or money for a full-blown modding project, 

Startech.com offers a complete family 

of aesthetic additions that don’t cost 

much and are simple to install. 

The lineup ($6 to $30) includes skull 

thumbscrews, illuminated cables, lighting 

kits, LED fans, and more. None of the 

Mutant Mods products are particularly 

innovative, and the dedicated modding 

crowd may not even find anything of real 

interest. But those who are just discovering 

the satisfaction of customizing their computer 

case might be interested in a lighted 

fan guard or a sound control module for 

sound-sensitive lighting. We used an illuminated 

USB cable to add flair to an otherwise 

blasé external hard drive. 

Ultra Products X-Connect 500W Modular 

Power Supply 

Want to add some bling to your boring 

beige box? The X-Connect 500W ATX 

PSU supply ($99) is available in highgloss 

black or a chrome-like finish. Both 

Don’t let its 

suave appearance 

fool you; 

the X-Connect 

packs 500W of 

power delivery. 

are incredibly snazzy and have identical 

features. In addition, after recognizing the 

demand for modular power supplies modified 

and sold by a handful of third-party 

vendors, Ultra Products designed its own 

modular system with even cleaner lines 

and a one-year manufacturer warranty. 

The X-Connect ships disassembled, with 

the main power supply housing separate 

from the individual cables. Ultra includes a 

20-pin ATX cable, the 4-pin auxiliary connector 

Pentium 4 platforms require, one 6pin 

cable for delivering power to certain 

Xeon motherboards, six 4-pin connectors 

for large peripherals, and a single floppy 

connector. The X-Connect does lack SATA 

power headers and doesn’t come with the 

6-pin cable high-end PCI Express graphics 

cards require. Ultra reps say a more recent 

version does have SATA power cables (we 

were still waiting for a review unit at press 

time to verify this), and you can purchase a 

24-pin power adapter optionally. 

Nevertheless, Ultra Products does a 

good job dressing up a robust 500W 

power source with an attractive cover and 

ingenious cable-management system. The 

price is reasonable, and when you consider 

the UV-reactive cable sleeves and dual 

80mm cooling fans, the X-Connect has 

plenty of modder appeal. 

Thermaltake BigWater Cooling System 

Years ago, watercooling was to computers 

what street luge is to sports: dangerous, 

verging on lunatic fringe. Now it seems 

almost every peripheral company has its 

own watercooling kit, each with some 

unique feature thrown in for differentiation. 

Thermaltake has plenty of experience 

with heatsinks, flashy light kits, cases, and 

power supplies, but it’s a relative newcomer 

to watercooling. You wouldn’t be able to 

tell by looking at the BigWater kit, though. 

Bundled with a 12cm aluminum radiator, 

adjustable fan, modest 120 liter per hour 

water pump, copper water block inlaid with 

blue LED lighting, and UV-reactive tubing, 

it comes with everything necessary to dabble 

in watercooling. Best of all, it fits LGA775, 

Socket 478, Athlon 64, and Sempron interfaces, 

provided the motherboard mounting 

holes are available. At $120, the BigWater 

system is priced reasonably enough for even 

mainstream enthusiasts. 

Fashionably Fresh Firmware 

Apple Power Mac G5 Uniprocessor 

Firmware 5.1.5f1 

This firmware improves overall system 

reliability and restores sleep functionality. 

www.apple.com/support/downloads 

Plextor PX-712A, PX-712SA, or PC-712UF 

Plextor Firmware 1.05 

If you own one of Plextor’s 12X 

DVD+R/RW drives, version 1.05 improves 

write performance on +R and -R media. 

www.plextor.com 

Neuston Virtuoso MC-500 Media Center 

Neuston recently updated the firmware 

for its unique media player to support 

1,080i HDTV support, an OSD toggle, 

and displaying v.2 .mp3 ID tags. 

www.neuston.comD-Link 624 Rev. C 

Dlink Firmware 2.45 Beta 

This beta firmware fixes a DHCP security 

hole, adds an option for multicasting, 

fixes an L2TP bug, and adds an XR mode 

for extended range. 

support.dlink.com/products/view.asp? 

productid=DI%2D624%5FrevC 

by Chris Angelini 


Headline goes in this space 

(use Photoshop document to make it look like the “PC Modder text on page 1) 

Clean Up That Rat’s Nest & Better Your System’s Performance 

Passionate PC enthusiasts are a 

finicky bunch, especially when it 

comes to their computers. They 

like things done a certain way, and nothing 

else will do. Take us, for example. The 

first thing we did when we recently took 

home a new Compaq laptop was reformat 

the hard drive and reinstall Windows XP 

our way, just so we knew it was done 

“right.” This same mindset permeates 

other aspects of computing, as well. 

The inside of the Apple Power Mac G5 is as clean and sleek as 

the outside, thanks in part to great wire management. 

Crack open a computer system, and 

eight out of 10 times you’re likely to find a 

rat’s nest of cables and enough dust bunnies 

to start a breeding farm. Not only is this a 

virtual slap in the face to enthusiasts who 

really take pride in their systems, but it’s 

simply unsafe. Unsecured cabling is much 

more likely to come loose in transit, messy 

cables block airflow and hinder cooling 

efforts, and poorly placed cables can result 


in dust build-up, excessive vibration, and 

increased noise. Plus, a system with clean 

wiring simply looks better. Ask any Wintel 

fan if he likes the new Power Mac G5s, and 

you’ll likely be bombarded with a vehement 

argument belittling the Macintosh. However, 

that same Wintel fan probably drools 

over the G5’s immaculate internals. 

To take a page from Apple’s playbook 

and properly wire a computer system for 

cleanliness and cooling performance, each 

individual cable requires your 

attention. There are also some 

basic tools necessary to fasten, 

secure, and bundle cables in 

strategic locations throughout 

your case. Consider nylon or 

Velcro wire ties, double-sided 

tape, and adhesive wire tie 

mounts absolute necessities. 

These are inexpensive, and 

you can find them in any 

decent electronics store. You 

may even find them in your 

local supermarket, pharmacy, 

or hardware store. Split-wire 

loom tubing, cable sheathing, 

and heat-shrink tubing are 

also useful tools that you can 

use not only to neaten the 

cables inside a system, but to 

increase their aesthetic value, 

as well. The most important 

tool of all is patience. Wiring a case properly 

is a relatively slow and painstaking 

process that requires some trial and error 

and a lot of planning. But the end result is 

well worth the effort. 

Before you begin rewiring a system or 

building a system from scratch, it’s best to 

start with a clean slate. Remove all the 

components from the case, except the 

motherboard, if any have been installed, 

Cable sheathing, heat-shrink tubing, wire ties, 

and adhesive wire tie mounts are some of the 

tools you can use to properly wire a case for 

cleanliness and maximum airflow. 

You can thread wire ties through an adhesive 

wire tie mount to produce a loop that’s great 

for keeping cables securely in place. 

disconnect every cable, and remove all of 

the drives. Then, after some initial preparation, 

you can begin installing each 

component, one at a time, paying special 

attention to their placement and position 

with respect to the wires coming from the 

power supply and the data cables that will 

connect to the motherboard. 

The Power Supply 

The horde of cables coming from the 

power supply is arguably the toughest to 

maintain. There are so many wires of varying 

lengths and sizes that stem from a PSU

that keeping them neat and secure can be 

tough. Start by untangling each individual 

strand of cables coming from the PSU. 

Then, starting from one end of the cable, 

use small wire ties placed about 1 to 2 

inches apart to tightly bundle the individual 

groups of wires together. Doing so 

makes each strand leading from the power 

supply much more rigid, and it cleans up 

the wiring immensely. With each strand 

A little cable sheathing and heat-shrink tubing 

goes a long way to cleaning up the multitude 

of wires that lead to an ATX power connector. 

securely bundled, they are much easier to 

route throughout the case because they’ll 

conform to their bends much more readily, 

and they’ll look neater, too. 

For a more finished look, a great alternative 

to wire tires is colored cable sheathing. 

Cable sheathing comes in a variety of colors 

and sizes and gives each individual cable a 

very clean look. It can be a bit difficult to 

install, however. Traditional cable sheathing 

requires the use of some specialized 

tools to remove the pins housed in each 

Molex connector and in the ATX power 

connectors coming from the PSU. Heatshrink 

tubing shrunken over each end of 

the sheath holds the sheathing in place. 

You use the pin-removal tool to dislodge 

each individual pin from the connectors on 

a cable. With the connectors removed, you 

can slide pieces of heat-shrink tubing into 

place, followed by a length of sheathing, 

and then another piece of heat-shrink tubing. 

Then, using a heat gun or torch, you 

apply heat to the heat-shrink tubing to 

secure the ends of the sheathing. 

If you attempt this process, make sure to 

keep track of each pin you remove from a 

connector and to put it back in its proper 

location. If you put a pin in the incorrect 

location, it could seriously damage your 

hardware when power is applied. We were 

lucky enough to have a presheathed PSU 

for our system build, but it may be worth 

the effort for systems that have a case window 

where the internals are exposed. 

Once all of the wires coming from the 

PSU have been bundled or covered in 

sheathing, we find it’s best to route each 

cable individually, following the shortest 

path along the edge of the case as possible. 

We also like to use the space behind 

the PSU to hide excess cabling. 

Lights, Switches & Ports 

Another group of unruly cables are the 

ones that lead to front-mounted ports, case 

lights, and switches. Generally, these are 

thin and relatively unobtrusive, but they 

need some attention to keep the inside of a 

system looking clean. Just about every case 

has leads for a power switch, a reset switch, 

a speaker, an IDE activity LED, and a 

power LED. To neaten these cables, start 

at the far end of the cable closest to the 

motherboard and use a wire tie to bundle 

the wires together and keep the small connectors 

in a tight bunch. Then, install wire 

ties about an inch apart, pulling the wires 

straight until you’ve worked your way 

through the entire length. Now route the 

bundled cables through your case so 

they’re out of the way and aren’t obstructing 

any components or fans. It’s sometimes 

helpful to use adhesive wire tie mounts 

to hold the cables in place. In our system 

we routed them along one corner and the 

The tiny wires leading to an ATX case’s power 

switch, power LED, reset switch, IDE activity LED, 

and speaker look terrible when they’re not tied 

up neatly. Use small wire ties placed about an 

inch apart to create a clean, rigid bundle of wires 

that’s easy to route along the edge of your case. 

bottom of the case so only a few inches of 

wire were clearly visible. 

The cables leading from front-mounted 

ports also pose somewhat of a problem 

because the motherboard headers they 

connect to are usually located near the 

center of a motherboard and it’s difficult 

to keep them out of sight. Luckily, they’re 

usually equipped with a rubber sheath 

and are quite malleable. To keep these 

cables in check, a few wire ties and adhesive 

wire tie mounts will do. If you can’t 

hide these cables along the edge of your 

case, it is usually best to create as few 

“lines” as possible. For example, we connected 

the cable for our front-mounted 

USB ports and secured it in place so it 

formed a parallel line with the bottom of 

the case. Having as few intersecting lines 

as possible in plain view helps keep the 

overall impression of cleanliness intact. 

Component Placement 

Just as important as where a cable is 

routed is where a component is placed. 

For example, don’t mount a CD/DVD 

drive in a bay that leaves no slack in the 

data cable to route it neatly through the 

case. The same holds true for floppy and 

hard drives. Before mounting them permanently, 

temporarily slide them into a 

bay and try to visualize the paths where 

you can route the data and power cables. 

You’ll find that certain drive bays are 

much more desirable because they’ll let 

you fold data cables in such a way that the 

connectors at each end will line up with 

the motherboard and drive easier. Also 

remember that strategic placement of a 

drive can help keep some cables out of 

sight. In our system, for example, the hard 

drive hides a large portion of the frontmounted 

USB cable and the small wires 

coming from the case LEDs and switches. 

Dealing With Data Cables 

The data cables that connect your drives 

to the motherboard require the most creativity 

to route neatly and out of the way. 

And a few lessons in the art of Japanese 

origami couldn’t hurt. To keep your data 

cables in check, you’ll need a few strategically 

placed strips of double-sided tape and 

some perfectly placed folds. We find it’s 


Tools Of The Trade 

To properly wire a case, an assortment of 

tools will make the job much easier and 

ultimately make the end results look much 

better. Most tools listed here are available at 

a local RadioShack or similar electronics 

supply store or even an auto parts store. 

They’re also available online from multiple 

retailers. We’ve compiled a list of the most 

useful items to save you some time. Stock 

up on a few of them and you’ll be prepared 

to rewire dozens of systems. 

Double-adhesive tape. Double-adhesive 

tape is very useful for securing flat 

ribbon cables in place and for mounting 

small decorative items to a system. (3M; 

$5; www.3m.com) 

Wire ties. Wire ties are perfect for tidying 

up a nest of wires. They’re available 

in a wide assortment of sizes and colors. 

(RadioShack; $7.99 [pack of 300]; 

www.radioshack.com) 

Adhesive wire tie mounts. You can 

use adhesive wire tie mounts to attach 

wire ties to almost any flat surface 

best to work with ribbon cables folded in 

multiple right angles leading from the 

motherboard to a drive. Think of each fold 

in three dimensions. Use one fold to point 

the cable in the right direction and another 

to lift the cable off the motherboard tray to 

align the connector with your drive. Use 

double-sided tape to secure the cables to 

the motherboard tray or side of the case, 

and they’ll hold their shape and stay in 

place. In our build we were able to keep 

three ribbon cables (one floppy, two IDE) 

routed flat against the motherboard tray, 

which is ideal for optimal airflow. 


within your case. (RadioShack; $2.29; 

www.radioshack.com) 

Cable sheathing. Flexible cable sheathing 

is a great way to neaten your system’s 

internal wiring while adding a bit 

of color. (CrazyPC; $1.25 per foot; 

www.crazypc.com) 

Molex/ATX pin remover. To replace 

Molex or ATX power connectors, or to 

properly install cable sheathing, you’ll 

need a pin removal tool to get the job 

done right. (CrazyPC; $6.99; www 

.crazypc.com) 

Velcro straps. Velcro straps are a 

reusable alternative to nylon wire ties. 

They are available in a wide assortment 

of colors and sizes. (ThinkGeek; $3.49; 

www.thinkgeek.com) 

Split-wire loom. You can slip split-wire 

loom over a bundle of wires to keep 

them neat and organized. It’s available 

in numerous colors and sizes. (Xoxide; 

$2 per foot; www.xoxide.com) 

Which cable do you think would be easier 

to route neatly in a cramped midtower case, 

the bulky rounded cable or the easy-to-fold 

ribbon cable to the right? 

Rounded cables, in some circumstances, 

could also help clean up a system’s 

internals, but only when they’re 

stretched out and don’t need to be hidden. 

Bundling the excess length of a 

rounded cable is difficult because there 

are limits to how they can bend and 

remain properly connected to a motherboard 

or drive. We find the flat, 80-wire 

ribbon cables are far easier to work with 

and manage in most cases. 

This Antec Sonata is equipped with a single hard 

drive, a DVD burner, a floppy drive, and an MSI 

GeForce FX 5900 XT that requires a supplemental 

power connector. The case’s front-mounted 

USB ports are also connected to the motherboard. 

With all of the power and data cables 

neatly folded and properly routed, the wiring is 

clean and doesn’t obstruct airflow at all. 

The Finished Product 

The effort put into properly wiring a 

system really pays off. The cabling is 

more rigid, and it will remain secured 

in place when the system is in transit. 

In addition, air can move more freely 

throughout the case, making each component 

run cooler and more reliably, 

while keeping dust buildup within the 

system at a minimum. Replacing or 

adding expansion cards or drives also 

becomes much easier because everything 

within the system is wide open and free 

from obstructions. The only downsides 

are the time and monetary investments, 

but the return far outweighs those investments 

in our opinion. 

by Marco Chiappetta

y Joshua Gulick 

Forget A Wall Calendar, This Beauty Has Outlook 

We love aesthetic mods as much as the next Dremel-wielding artist, but when a mod looks cool and fits a need, all the better. 

You can bask in the appreciation of the like-minded and still justify it to those who don’t share your passion. 

After cramming a file cabinet, desk, and chair into his tiny office, William Shaw, aka ZeusEnergy, discovered that he no longer 

had the floor space for his computer. Thus, Shaw snagged a computer design that had been floating around his head, and a few 

months later, form met function—on his office wall. Meet Framed 8.0, one of the largest space-saving systems we’ve seen. 

Shaw hung the massive upper portion of Framed 8.0 for the first time in December 2003, but it soon became apparent that his 

second rig and its monitor also ate up too much space. Shaw converted this system, too, and by June 2004 his Callisto mod, which 

includes both computer and LCD, turned Framed 8.0 into a dual-system work of art. 

Framed 8.0, which includes a 1.7GHz P4, ATI All-In-Wonder 9600, and two 60GB hard drives, remains Shaw’s primary 

machine. Callisto handles lighter tasks. The smaller system, which gets by on a 400MHz Pentium II, can’t handle much heavy lifting, 

but it’s no slouch: The rig dual boots Windows and Mandrake 10 and provides MP3 playback via an add-on sound card. And 

thanks to the LCD, Callisto lets Shaw Web surf while the larger system burns CDs or tackles games. 

All told, Shaw spent more then 150 hours on this beast, but the work paid off. “I got two machines merged into a very useful and 

powerful arrangement for multitasking,” he says. Shaw adds that “they look pimp, too.” 


(Above)This NewQ seven-band graphic equalizer has “been modified to mount in a way that still 

shows off the circuit board, and it faces forward at the same time,” says Shaw. “PCB exposure was 

the name of the game.” (Upper right) The black bar near the water tube shields one of the system’s 

cold-cathode lights. Shaw used the shield and another bar near the other water tube to 

direct light to the center of Framed 8.0. The shields also bear symbols for Shaw and his wife. 

(Below) Callisto is small and weak, but it handles Web surfing and MP3 playback without any 

trouble thanks to a six-channel soundcard. (Lower right) Shaw spent more than 10 hours on the 

PSU. “It’s windowed, lighted, has custom switches and indicators, custom soldered cables, and the 

air pump is wired to the 115 VAC house current inside the power supply, too,” Shaw says. 

Have a computer mod that will bring tears to our eyes? Email photos and a description to madreadermod@cpumag.com. If we include 

your system in our “Mad Reader Mod” section, we’ll send you a $1,500 Newegg.com gift certificate and a one-year subscription to CPU. 

34 December 2004 / www.computerpoweruser.com

Each month we dig deep into the mailbag here at CPU in an effort 

to answer your most pressing technical questions. Want some advice 

on your next purchase or upgrade? Have a ghost in your machine? 

Are BSODs making your life miserable? CPU’s “Advanced Q&A 

Corner” is here for you. 

Christopher D. asked: When modding, sometimes hard drives 

can be a good distance away from the motherboard. What is the recommended 

maximum length of parallel ATA and Serial ATA cables? 

And is there any performance drop, or other problems, associated with 

using longer cables? 

SATA cables, such as the red one pictured here, can be much 

longer than PATA ribbon cables before suffering from problems 

due to poor signal integrity. 

A: According to the ATA (Advanced Technology Attachment) 

specifications, the maximum recommended length for a PATA 

(parallel ATA) ribbon cable is 18 inches from one end to the 

other. There are longer cables available that usually won’t 

cause a problem, but generally speaking, the longer the cable, 

the greater the chance for electrical noise, signal degradation, 

and interference. And if the data signal degrades beyond a certain 

threshold it will hinder performance, potentially corrupt 

data, and cause random errors. With that said, we have used 

24-inch cables on many occasions and have never had a problem. 

In fact, one manufacturer of SFF systems, Biostar, ships a 

few of its SFF systems with longer cables preinstalled, and 

cables up to 36 inches long are available at multiple online 

retailers. The 18-inch recommendation was part of an aged set 

of specifications used to define the original ATA standard in 

the mid-1980s. Today’s higher-quality 80-wire Ultra ATA 

cables can be much longer than 18 inches, but the specification 


doesn’t seem to have been updated. To be safe though, we 

wouldn’t recommend using PATA cables that are much longer 

than 24 to 28 inches. SATA (Serial ATA) cables, however, are 

a different story. Due to the nature of the serial connection, 

and the inherent qualities of the SATA cables, they can be up 

to 1 meter in length before suffering problems. 

Dominique Savy asked: I just built a computer for my friend, and 

he wants to get into audio recording and making his own music. He is 

new to the audio-recording scene but wants to pursue it as a career. I 

haven’t installed one yet, but I was wondering what sound card I should 

put in his computer. I am planning on putting a Creative Labs Sound 

Blaster Audigy 2 ZS Platinum Pro in there, but I wasn’t sure if there was 

something that would better suit his needs. He wants to be able to plug 

in and record. Also, if you knew the general price of what he would 

need, that would help greatly. 

A: Trusting your first instincts on this one wouldn’t be a bad 

idea actually, Dominique. Creative Lab’s Audigy 2 series of 

cards are certainly more than capable when it comes to the latest 

technologies in high-fidelity PC audio, recording, and content 

creation. You noted the Audigy 2 Platinum Pro here, and 

we would recommend this card over the non-Pro version, 

without question. The Pro card is the only one in the Audigy 

lineup that currently supports full ASIO 2.0 Low Latency 

Multi-Track (24-bit/96KHz) Recording. The ASIO (Audio 

Stream Input/Output) standard, developed by Steinberg Media 

M-Audio’s Omni Studio comes with a VIA Envy24-based sound card 

and an I/O break-out box that has just about any connection a budding 

musician or digital music producer could ever want.

M-Audio’s Delta 1010LT card comes with a multitude of input and 

output connectors, including standard 3-pin analog cable jacks and 

SPDIF connections. 

Technologies, connects audio hardware with audio applications 

at minimal CPU load, with more reliable synchronization 

and lower latency. 

Another option would be a VIA Envy24 chipset-based card 

and setup such as M-Audio’s (www.m-audio.com) Delta 1010LT 

or Omni Studio product or ST Audio’s (www.staudio.com) 

DSP24 Media 7.1. The VIA Envy24 chipset used on these cards 

not only supports 24-bit/192KHz playback like the Audigy 2 but 

supports 24-bit/192KHz recording, as well. Incidentally, VIA 

and its third-party board vendors also have drivers that support 

ASIO 2.0 standards. 

Then there is the option of Intel’s new High Definition 

Audio specification that is integrated into its 915G/GV/P and 

925X chipsets for the Pentium 4 LGA775 platform. This technology 

promises 32-bit/192KHz fidelity, but that all depends 

on the quality of the codec that is utilized by the motherboard 

manufacturer. This solution is more focused on the playback 

side of things, however, and the I/O connectors on these integrated 

solutions are sure to be lacking with respect to input 

connections required for most serious musicians. 

From a software standpoint, check out Propellerhead 

Software’s Reason suite of virtual studio rack software 

(www.propellerheads.se/products/reason). Talk about bells 

and whistles; this sound board software package has knobs that 

may even go to “11.” 

Max Muller asked: I read the article in the September 2004 issue 

of CPU that explained how to volt mod and overclock a Radeon 9800 

Pro, and I would like to know if this mod also applies to ATI’s All-In- 

Wonder series of cards? I have an AIW 9800 Pro and have been thinking 

about upgrading to an X800, but if I can increase the performance of my 

current card, keep the TV capabilities, and save some money in the 

process, then it’s a no-brainer. Any guidance you could give me would 

be greatly appreciated. 

A: An All-In-Wonder 9800 Pro can be volt modded, but the 

process won’t be exactly the same as the one described in the 

magazine. The voltage regulators used on the AIW 9800 Pro 

will likely be the same as the vanilla Radeon 9800 Pro we used, 

but because the board layout is different, you’ll have to find the 

correct voltage checkpoints to verify the before and after GPU 

and memory voltages. If you solder a variable resistor to the 

same leads we highlighted in that article to the GPU and memory 

voltage regulators on your AIW and then to any available 

ground point, you will increase the voltage being supplied to 

each component, and they should overclock higher. But without 

checking your before and after voltages, you could end up supplying 

too much voltage to either the GPU or memory and 

could end up irreparably damaging your card. 

Unfortunately, we didn’t have an AIW 9800 Pro at our disposal 

to find the voltage checkpoints for you, but if you’re 

comfortable probing your card with a voltmeter, it probably 

won’t be too hard to find the voltage checkpoints. It wouldn’t 

ATI recently announced the All-In-Wonder Radeon X800 XT. It has superior 

TV/Vivo capabilities than previous All-In-Wonders, with the 3D performance 

of a 16-pipeline Radeon X800 XT. 

hurt to scour the Web either to see if anyone has already 

detailed the process. We didn’t have any luck finding instructions 

that explained how to volt mod an AIW 9800 Pro, but 

we’d bet they’re out there somewhere. Should you decide 

against the mod, and an upgrade is definitely in your future, 

check out ATI’s Web site. In early September, ATI announced 

the All-In-Wonder X800 XT. It has all of the TV/Vivo capabilities 

you’re used to, with the same 3D performance of a 

Radeon X800 XT. 

Warren Hunter asked: I just purchased a Dell Inspiron 9100 laptop 

with a 3GHz 800MHz FSB P4, 60GB 7,200rpm hard drive, ATI 

Mobility Radeon 9700 video card with 128MB of RAM, and 512MB 

PC3200 memory. I bought this computer so I could play some of the 

new games such as Half-Life 2 and Doom 3 on the road, but after about 

30 minutes into Doom, the laptop locks up. I reboot and it locks up 

again right away. Can you please tell me why it is doing this, as Dell 

doesn’t have a clue? 


A: Warren, my friend, welcome to the dark, evil world of 

Doom 3, the game engine that eats 3D graphics subsystems for 

lunch. You aren’t the first gamer to have their otherwise stable 

graphics accelerator get a serious case of a ghost in the machine 

while rendering the sinister worlds of John Carmack’s latest 

creation. The Doom 3 game engine stresses modern graphics 

cards like no other game engine on the market today. With 

that in mind, there are two possible root causes of your lockups: 

graphics drivers or heat. 

Because we can safely assume that Dell knows how to build a 

laptop that manages heat well and is rock-solid stable, you might 

want to check for other issues that could be leading to heat 

buildup with your new Inspiron. Has one of the vent fans inside 

the case failed? Are any of the vents in the chassis clogged with 

lint or dust? Make sure you check for issues like this that could be 

leading to heat buildup inside the laptop, ultimately causing the 

Mobility Radeon 9700 to lock up. 

Drivers, on the other hand, are a more likely candidate for 

what is causing the interruption. ATI recently released a 

Catalyst driver update that was designated a hotfix for Doom 3 

bugs. Since then, that hotfix has made it into ATI’s WHQL 

certified 4.9 version of the Catalyst drivers. However, because 

you are running a Dell laptop, chances are the base drivers Dell 

is using are of an older release version, prior to ATI’s Doom 3 

hotfix. Additionally, you won’t be able to just install ATI’s 

new drivers from its site on your laptop because the drivers 

won’t have the signature of the Mobility Radeon 9700 chip in 

the .INF file. Do a search on the ’Net for a utility called 

Mobility Modder. This handy little application lets you modify 

ATI’s latest Catalyst driver signature files so your laptop can 

recognize and install them. Once you’ve installed ATI’s Cat 

4.9 drivers, we’re willing to bet those lockups go away. 

Farmer asked: I currently have a generic 400W power supply in 

my system that powers my 128MB GeForce FX 5700 Ultra nicely. 

However, I just purchased a GeForce 6800 GT with 256MB of GDDR3 

memory. I was curious if my new GeForce 6800 GT will need more 

power than my 5700 Ultra? A friend of mine tells me it won’t, but I 

want a professional opinion. And if the GT does need more power, 

will I need to buy a new power supply? 

A: It seems like your friend hasn’t been on top of the 3D GPU 

scene for a while. Not all video cards are created equal, especially 

when it comes to power consumption. The GeForce 6800 GT 

has four times the number of pixel pipelines as the 5700 Ultra 

(four vs. 16), and your new card has double the amount of 

onboard memory. The GeForce 6800 GT GPU itself is also 

composed of millions more transistors than the 5700 Ultra. The 

combination of all of these factors results in a card that draws 

much more power. We don’t have any exact figures, but the 

GeForce 6800 GT probably consumes roughly 20% to 30% 

more power than your GeForce FX 5700 Ultra. 

Even though your new card does require more power than 

your old one, you probably won’t need a new power supply. 

NVIDIA recommends a 350W power supply for use with the 


NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 GT requires more power than a GeForce FX 

5700 Ultra, as is evident by the heatsink and large capacitors in its 

voltage regulator module. 

GeForce 6800 GT. Unless your system is currently overloaded 

with multiple drives, fans, and accessories, your existing 400W 

PSU should be fine. 

Sykotic1 asked: I’m a little ashamed to be asking about this, seeing 

as how I’m a designer and long-time gamer, but I am curious as to just 

what is happening, technically speaking, when an LCD resizes out of its 

native resolution. For example, I’m running 1,024 x 768, and when I 

change to 800 x 600, I notice the blur. I’ve read up on this before that 

some pixels may actually be taking up more than one true pixel to be 

displayed. Can you maybe clarify for me just what is happening in this 

case and why a higher resolution (the LCD’s native resolution) looks fine 

but going to 800 x 600 blurs? 

A: You’re absolutely right. LCD displays look great at their native 

resolutions, but when you try to scale them down, things get a bit 

muddy. LCD monitors have a fixed number of cells or pixels that 

are displayed horizontally or vertically across the screen. As a 

result, electronics in the monitor must scale the image down when 

the resolution is changed to something below its native setup. 

Some LCD monitors are much better at this than others, but 

unfortunately there are very few scaling examples that work perfectly 

and look as good as native res. The scaling algorithm that is 

used in the display circuitry is subject to rounding errors that simply 

render most images just plain fuzzy. With Desktop screen 

fonts, your eyes are more likely to be offended by scaling distortion. 

However, in gaming situations, especially where there’s lots 

of movement and action, you are less likely to notice it. We game 

on 1,600 x 1,200 native resolution LCDs at HotHardware.com 

all the time. At 1,280 x 1,024 and 1,024 x 768, the image quality 

is fine but not as crisp as native res. When we’re working on the 

Desktop though, it’s native res or nothing at all. As a designer, 

you probably notice scaling issues mostly in your professional 

apps. Perhaps it’s time to take a look around at some higher-end 

displays, but again, some are better at resolution scaling than others, 

so make sure you demo them up front and personal. ▲ 

by Dave Altavilla and Marco Chiappetta, the experts over at 

HotHardware.com.

HARD HAT AREA - X-ray Vision— — 

What’s to like about using 

large LCDs for televisions 

and PC monitors? For 

starters, they weigh less than traditional 

CRTs and televisions. They don’t 

require as much desk space, either. 

They offer nice, colorful images, and 

they just look cool. (Every reason doesn’t 

have to be practical, OK?) 

If LCD images were always as sharp 

and viewable as CRT images, they’d be 

perfect for every application. However, 

those users requiring precise color 

depth often prefer CRTs. For one 

thing, the refresh rates on LCD screens 

aren’t as fast as CRTs, which can cause 

shadowing or ghosting on the LCD. 

Also, viewing LCDs in bright daylight 

is a huge problem. Even the fluorescent 

bulbs used to backlight LCDs cannot 

overcome bright sunlight. 

Lumileds Lighting (www.lumileds 

.com), a San Jose, Calif., company, 

thinks it has the solution to most of the 

LCD’s problems: adding LEDs to the 

mix. Lumileds has teamed with Sony and 

NEC-Mitsubishi to integrate LEDs with 

LCDs for large televisions and PC monitors, 

creating an extremely bright screen 

that yields brighter colors and sharper 

images. These LEDs take the place of the 

fluorescent bulbs used to backlight 

LCDs, which leads to the improvements 

in image brightness, sharpness, and vividness. 

This technology could be the key to 

making the performance level of LCDs 

surpass CRTs. 

Anatomy Of LCDs 

LCDs, especially those more than 3 

inches, traditionally use CCFL (coldcathode 

fluorescent lamp) for back 

illumination. The fluorescent lights 

usually consist of long, narrow glass 

tubes, which are placed behind and on 

the edges of the screen. Inside the 

tubes are a coating of phosphor, a 


LEDs 

Bright Idea For LCDs 

sealed inert gas, and a small amount of 

mercury. Also inside is an electrode 

that sends electrical current through 

the length of the tube, causing some of 

the mercury to change from a liquid to 

a gas. These mercury atoms collide 

with the atoms in the inert gas, creating 

ultraviolet light energy, which 

humans cannot see. These ultraviolet 

light waves strike the phosphors, causing 

them to emit visible light. 

Diffuse Light 

Between the CCFL tubes and the 

screen, manufacturers insert a white 

diffusion panel, which distributes the 

light from the CCFL tubes evenly 

across the screen. 

CCFL tubes don’t generate a large 

amount of heat while in operation, 

which makes them work well in an 

LCD, where excessive heat could damage 

the screen. However, the light from 

CCFL tubes usually isn’t bright enough 

Within the individual LEDs that make up the Luxeon technology, most of the light is 

deflected to the sides. This makes it easier to diffuse the light throughout the LCD 

and create complete coverage. Because LEDs can emit light in a specific direction, they 

have a major advantage over CCFLs. Manufacturers using LEDs in their LCDs don’t need to 

worry about light leakage, which is a common problem with CCFLs. 

Source: Lumileds 

Traditional LED 

light extends 

directly from 

the LED with 

no diffusion 

With the Luxeon LED, a reflector redirects the light 

downward, eventually bouncing it outward 

The majority of the light from the LED is 

diffused throughout the LCD screen 

As the light reflects, it moves 

toward the sides of the LED

to make LCDs easily visible in bright 

sunlight. Manufacturers could increase 

the brightness of an LCD by adding 

more CCFL tubes, but that would 

increase the amount of power required 

for backlighting, which is not desirable 

in a battery-powered notebook computer. 

It also could cause the CCFL’s heat 

generation to exceed acceptable levels. 

LEDs Enter The Picture 

LEDs provide several advantages 

over other backlighting technologies for 

LCDs, including a longer life span, 

more vivid colors, less energy use, and 

higher reliability. LEDs also are friendlier 

to the environment—for instance, 

they don’t use a toxin, such as mercury—and 

they can turn on and off 

LEDs In LCDs 

quickly (in about 20 nanoseconds), giving 

the user more control over the 

LCD’s image and eliminating ghosting. 

Lumileds markets its LEDs under 

the brand name Luxeon. Although 

Lumileds has made Luxeon LEDs 

available for a wide variety of products, 

it has made the biggest splash through 

its partnerships with Sony, which is 

offering 40- and 46-inch LCD televisions 

using the LEDs, and NEC- 

Mitsubishi, which plans to offer a 

21.3-inch LCD monitor. 

Users should begin seeing LCDs 

using Luxeon near the end of 2004, but 

initially they’ll probably be double or 

triple the price of LCDs using CCFL 

tubes. Sony’s 46-inch LED/LCD televisions, 

which will carry the QUALIA 

X-ray Vision—- HARD HAT AREA 

brand name, carried a price tag equal to 

about $10,000 when Sony released it in 

Japan earlier this year. Sony plans to sell 

the televisions globally late in 2004 and 

throughout 2005. 

As you can see, the LED/LCD combination 

will carry a price premium, at 

least at first. Experts expect prices to 

begin dropping next year as the technologies 

become easier to implement. 

Hopefully it won’t be long before the 

price of the LED/LCD combinations 

looks as good as the monitors and 

televisions themselves. 

by Kyle Schurman 

For bonus content, subscribers can go 

to www.cpumag.com/cpudec04/led. 

When creating a field of LEDs to backlight an LCD, the LEDs typically appear in rows behind the screen. In this example of Luxeon LED 

technology, the RGB (red, green, and blue) combination of LEDs creates a bright white light for backlighting. The layout of the LEDs 

and the diffuse screen spread the light. To overcome the natural domination of light from red and blue LEDs over the green LEDs, Luxeon 

includes two green LEDs for every one red and blue LED. Even though LEDs don’t generate much heat, the spaces between the LEDs (about 

12 to 16mm between the centers of each LED) allow air to circulate and carry heat out of the case efficiently. 

Air Out 

Air In 

Side View Front View 

LEDs 

LCD Screen 

Diffuse 

Screen 

Air In 

Air Out 

Close-up Of 

Individual LEDs 

Overall View Of LED Layout 

Graphics & Design: Carrie Benes & Jason Codr 


HARD HAT AREA - WHITE PAPER 

Multi-Core Processors 

Processor Technologies Multiply 

When it comes to the world of 

computers, two is almost 

always better than one. Two 

players working in tandem on the latest 

FPS almost always can do more damage 

than one. Dual monitors let you do twice 

the work of one monitor (unless one is 

displaying a solitaire game). A twoprocessor 

computing system is far more 

powerful than a single-processor system. 

Unfortunately, there's the cost issue. 

Not many of us have several hundred dollars 

lying around for a system with an 

extra processor. Fortunately, processor 

manufacturers are helping us solve this 

problem with plans for dual-core and 

multi-core processors. 

Even though dual-core processors 

probably won't offer double the power of 

a single-core processor, they will provide 

Intel Multi-Core Roadmap 

Intel's shift toward multi-core processors will begin with its 90nm 

dual-core Itanium processor (code-named Montecito), which will 

contain about 1.7 billion transistors. 

2005 (Second Half) 

Montecito. Dual-core 90nm Itanium processor, 2MB of L2 cache, 

and 24MB of L3 cache. 

Cedar Mill. 65nm processor as successor to Prescott, will start as 

single-core before becoming dual-core. 

Smithfield. Workstation/desktop 90nm dual-core processor that 

may be based on Pentium 4 architecture and may replace the canceled 

Tejas project. 

Yonah. Mobile 65nm dual-core processor. 

2006 

Tulsa. Server processor that will feature dual-core technology 

based on Xeon architecture. 

Merom. Mobile processor built on 65nm manufacturing process 

and may be a multi-core architecture. 

Conroe. Desktop 65nm processor that will use many features also 

built into Merom. 


significant improvements in power, especially 

for high-end users who multitask. 

Multi-Core Moves Forward 

A multi-core processor is one of those 

rare technology terms that actually 

describes itself well: It has multiple processing 

cores on a single die. Each core 

contains its own processing circuitry. A 

dual-core processor has two processing 

cores per die; a quad-core processor has 

four processing cores per die. Multi-core 

processors differ from multi-processor 

setups, which contain more than one die. 

Because of the architecture used to create 

dual-core processors—the multiple 

cores share much of the circuitry on the 

chip—they're less expensive to develop 

and manufacture and consume less power 

than two single-core processors. 

While dual-core processors are similar 

to single-core, dual-processor setups, they 

also share characteristics with single-core, 

single-processor setups. Unlike dualprocessor 

setups, dual-core processors 

share some system architecture, such as a 

memory controller and system bus. 

Solving Problems 

Due to the excessive heat and electron 

leakage associated with shrinking the 

size of the circuitry in microprocessors, 

multi-core processors have moved to the 

forefront among processor designers. As 

processor clock speeds increase, these 

problems become more noticeable. 

Multi-core processing will let CPU 

makers provide additional processing 

power without increasing clock speeds 

as quickly. And the overall performance 

Dempsey. Dual-core processor that replaces Tejas project; some 

analysts call it Intel's first true dual-core architecture. 

Montvale. 65nm Itanium processor that will enhance Montecito. 

Whitefield. Multi-core 65nm server processor, will enhance Tulsa. 

Blue Pressler. Dual-core 65nm workstation processor, will replace 

Smithfield. 

2007 

Tanglewood/Tukwila. A 16-core IA-64 processor with as much as 

32MB of cache, will replace Montecito. 

Intel also has plans to continue shrinking the manufacturing 

process (also called lithography) in the next few years, according to 

a company roadmap. 

Year Lithography Gate Length Wafer Size 

2003 90nm 50nm 300mm 

2005 65nm 35nm 300mm 

2007 45nm 25nm 300mm 

2009 32nm 18nm 300mm 

Sources: Intel, Endian.net

Dual-Core Processing 

With Hyper-Threading 

Single-Core Intel Processor 

Thread 1 

Thread 2 

Dual-Core Intel Processor 

Thread 1 

Thread 2 

Source: Intel 

The idea of multi-core 

processors has existed 

for several years. And 

the process of sharing 

processing duties among 

more than one processor—using 

a virtual 

processor—has existed 

for a few years at Intel in 

the form of Hyper- 

Threading technology. 

Intel estimates 90% of 

those using Xeon processors 

operate using 

Hyper-Threading. (Hyper- 

Threading is the process 

of having one microprocessor 

handle two different 

threads or data 

instruction sets.) 

of multi-core processors is higher than 

that of single-core processors. 

Ultimately, this shift to multi-core 

processors may be a result of manufacturers 

looking to save money in manufacturing 

and research costs. By switching to 

multi-core processors, manufacturers 

The success of Hyper- 

Threading has helped 

pave the way for dualcore 

processors because 

software engineers have 

built support for two 

threads into their software 

codes. It won’t take a 

major coding adjustment 

to implement support for 

dual-core processors. 

Intel will combine its 

dual-core processors with 

Hyper-Threading technology 

to allow each processor 

to handle its own 

thread (as shown in the 

lower image). Also, both 

CPU cores will be able 

to handle more data 

core 1 

core 2 

can offer more power while limiting 

the high cost of chasing faster clock 

speeds, which also reduces the costs 

of dealing with heat generation and electron 

leakage. Excessive heat and electron 

leakage cause several problems with 

microprocessors, especially computation 

WHITE PAPER - HARD HAT AREA 

individually than a single 

core could handle using 

Hyper-Threading alone. 

With a single-core 

CPU, Hyper-Threading 

comes close to achieving 

parallel execution by 

switching between 

threads every few 

nanoseconds, but the 

one thread still ends up 

with more processing 

time than a second 

thread (as shown in the 

upper image) at any 

given time. 

For more information on 

Hyper-Threading, see the 

February 2002 issue of CPU 

magazine, page 45. ▲ 

errors because of corrupted data. For 

example, heat and leakage from one data 

pathway can interfere with data in 

another pathway. 

Analysts expect problems with electron 

leakage to continue as processor 

designers attempt to further shrink the 

manufacturing process. Intel's Tejas 

chip design reportedly was canceled 

early in 2004 because of major problems 

with electron leakage, power requirements, 

and excessive heat generation. 

Some analysts say current methods for 

making continually shrinking CPUs 

from silicon may be nearing their physical 

limitations. Without significant 

changes, such as multi-core technologies, 

these problems will grow exponentially 

with future microprocessors. 

Both Intel and AMD see multi-core 

processors as the next step in improving 

processor performance. For almost two 

decades, Intel and AMD have focused 

their efforts on improving the clock 

speed for processors—resulting in a 

numbers race for more megahertz and 

gigahertz. However, the rate of speed 

enhancements for silicon chips has 

slowed recently and will continue to 

slow in the next few years because of the 

problems detailed earlier. 

Intel's Plans 

At the recent fall Intel Developer Forum, 

Intel executives strongly touted the 

potential of multi-core technologies. Intel 

President and COO Paul Otellini predicted 

that the technologies could lead to 

a Moore's Law-type expansion in data 

availability. (Moore's Law says the number 

of transistors on a CPU roughly will 

double every 18 to 24 months, and it has 

guided plans for CPU improvements for 

decades.) The emphasis on multi-core 

technologies most likely signals Intel's 

plans to begin focusing its engineering 

and development more on the efficient 

use of chips and less on solely ramping up 

the speed of the chips. 

However, the core of Moore's Law (the 

doubling of the transistors on the chip) 

doesn't appear to be in danger of failing 

anytime soon. By doubling the on-chip 

cache size and shrinking the manufacturing 


HARD HAT AREA - WHITE PAPER 

AMD Dual-Core Opteron Design 

Source: AMD 

Direct Connect Architecture 

process every couple of years, manufacturers 

can squeeze many more transistors onto 

the chip, continuing to fulfill Moore's Law. 

Intel demonstrated a dual-core processor 

at IDF. Its immediate plans for multicore 

processors include placing two cores 

within a single chip for all of its markets, 

including the desktop, server, and mobile. 

Intel expects to have the majority of its 

processors offering dual-core capabilities in 

2006. Otellini says 40% of desktop chips, 

70% of notebook chips, and 85% of server 

chips will be dual-core by the end of 2006. 

Intel expects its on-chip caches for its 

dual-core desktop CPUs will surpass the 

2MB commonly found today. In its 

upcoming dual-core Montecito chip for the 

server market, for example, Intel reportedly 

will pack 26MB in an on-chip cache. 


Keep in mind that Intel's two cores 

will have to share one system bus, which 

could lead to miniscule processing delays 

while the cores sort out the traffic congestion 

on the bus. Analysts say a complete 

redesign of the bus system isn't 

expected until 2007. 

AMD's Plans 

In late August, AMD demonstrated its 

first x86 64-bit dual-core processor, which 

uses a 90nm manufacturing process. This 

demonstration showed four dual-core 

Opteron processors running a server. 

AMD plans to sell a dual-core processor 

by mid-2005, with the first batch running 

in servers and workstations. Later in 2005, 

AMD will offer Athlon 64 dual-core 

processors for the desktop market. 

Because AMD designed its Opteron processor with 

dual-core technologies in mind, the company’s transition 

to two CPU cores on one die should be smooth. 

The die’s System Request Interface/Crossbar Switch 

included a second port for adding a second core from its 

initial design. Each core in the dual-core Opteron will 

have its own L2 cache area, as well. 

Within the dual-core architecture, the two cores will 

share all memory and HT (HyperTransport) resources. 

Those resources will not change from single-core 

Opteron processors. 

AMD also carries over its Direct Connect Architecture 

from multi-processor setups into its dual-core Opteron. 

Direct Connect Architecture connects the two cores, 

reducing latency and bottlenecks. 

Finally, because the die itself won’t change to accommodate 

the second core, the dual-core 90nm Opteron 

will continue to use a 940-pin socket, allowing users to 

swap single-core processors for dual-core processors. A 

BIOS update is required to make the system recognize 

the dual-core chip. ▲ 

Most analysts say AMD has taken the 

early market lead on dual-core processing, 

thanks largely to the architecture of 

its chips. 

940-pin. AMD plans to have its dualcore 

90nm processors use the same 940pin 

socket that AMD's single-core 90nm 

Opteron processors currently use. This 

feature will allow some customers to swap 

single-core processors for dual-core 

processors next year. 

Dual-core design. AMD says it initially 

designed its AMD64 platform several 

years ago to accommodate dual-core 

architecture in the future. This feature 

allows AMD's dual-core chips to run with 

full dual-core features immediately. 

Direct Connect Architecture. AMD's 

Direct Connect Architecture has appeared 

in two- and four-socket architectures 

in the past, but it also will work with 

multi-core processors. Direct Connect 

Archi-tecture will make a direct connection 

between the cores on the die, reducing 

any latency between the cores. Direct 

Connect Architecture also directly connects 

each CPU to memory and I/O and

AMD Multi-Core Roadmap 

With its recent successful demonstration of dualcore 

processors, AMD has released an aggressive 

schedule of bringing dual-core processors to the market, 

beginning in mid-2005. 

2005 (Second Half) 

Toledo. Dual-core 90nm processor for the desktop with 

1MB of L2 cache using Athlon and Athlon 64 architectures. 

AMD K9. Dual-core 90nm processor as successor to 

Hammer and Opteron architectures. 

Egypt. Dual-core 90nm processor for server/workstation 

market, will replace Athens. 

Italy. Dual-core 90nm processor for server/workstation 

market, will replace Troy. 

Denmark. Dual-core 90nm processor for server/workstation 

market, will replace Venus. 

2006 to 2007 

Name unknown. Analysts say AMD may be planning a 

quad-core processor. 

Sources: AMD, Endian.net 

two or more CPUs to each other in a 

multi-processor setup. 

Unfortunately, AMD's dual-core chips 

will not include a second memory bus (at 

least initially), which could lead to some 

It's obvious that multi-core processors will help processor manufacturers 

deal with problems in creating smaller and faster 

chips. The benefits to consumers might not be as obvious initially, 

but there will be plenty of them. For one, users who multitask— 

burn a DVD while playing Madden 2005—will have good success 

because each core can focus on a different task. 

The biggest change probably will come with the use of virtual 

computers. Users will be able to run more than one operating system 

simultaneously by running several virtual computers on a single 

machine. One virtual computer could run business software on 

Windows; another could be dedicated to DVD playback. Microsoft is 

expected to build support for multi-core processors in the next version 

of Windows (code-named Longhorn) that's due in 2006. 

However, such benefits could provide problems in the corporate 

world where software vendors often bill customers per computer. 

What if one computer can become three or four virtual computers, 

though? Software vendors may need to rework their billing practices. 

performance bottlenecks as 

the cores try to share the 

128-bit memory channel. 

Potential Problems 

Although dual-core and 

multi-core processors will 

provide some significant 

benefits for consumers and 

processor makers, they 

aren't perfect. 

Just as with dual-processor 

setups, software that's 

compatible with dual-core 

processors is necessary. If 

the software's code isn't 

written to take advantage 

of the two cores, it will use 

one and ignore the other. 

Some analysts worry that 

switching the emphasis 

away from continued improvements 

in clock speeds 

will end up hurting consumers. 

Processes and technologies 

that need more 

clock speed to run properly 

won't develop as quickly, 

for example. 

Also, other analysts say the introduction 

of multi-core processors will turn 

focus away from the miniaturization of 

processor components that has been at the 

Multi-Core Equals Multi-Benefits 

WHITE PAPER - HARD HAT AREA 

heart of Moore's Law. Without continued 

strides in miniaturization, many emerging 

technologies may lose some steam. (For 

more dual-core caveats, see Anand’s 

Corner on page 25.) 

Dual-Core Duel 

Because AMD created its chips with 

dual-core technology in mind, the company 

has the edge over Intel, which some 

analysts say won't have true dual-core 

computing until at least 2006 when some 

new designs take hold. 

Regardless of which company has the 

lead now, both AMD and Intel will be 

making major strides in the dual-core 

and multi-core arenas over the next few 

years. It also might take a few years for 

other components of the technology 

industry to fully embrace multi-core 

technologies, allowing computers to take 

full advantage of them. 

Dual-core and multi-core processors give 

chip manufacturers the ability to increase 

processor performance with little increase 

in the three problems that are threatening 

improvements: excessive heat generation, 

electron leakage, and power consumption. 

If dual-core processors can slow the problems 

from those dual-headed monsters, 

they'll be more than worth the wait. 

by Kyle Schurman 

One thing consumers probably won't see is a 100% performance 

boost from a dual-core processor vs. a single-core processor. 

However, the actual performance boost of a dual-core setup 

(at least initially) could range from 0% to 70%, with an average 

performance increase of 25%, according to Intel executives. The 

number and types of software packages running will greatly affect 

the improved performance of dual-core processors. The more 

those software packages make use of multi-threading, the better 

performance boost they'll give. 

The benefits also might be a little tougher to comprehend for 

a public that has measured performance by clock speed for 

almost two decades. It's still unclear how marketers at Intel and 

AMD will deal with this issue. Will they combine the clock speed 

of the two cores or will they develop a simulated clock speed 

number that correlates to the traditional single-core processor? 

It definitely will be tough to avoid confusion when marketing 

these multi-core processors. ▲ 


58 

66 


P 

arents will try almost anything 

to get their kids to 

behave. We have all heard, 

“Be nice, or you’ll wind up 

with coal in your Christmas 

stocking.” Unfortunately, that only works 

up to a certain age before kids realize that 

no matter how bratty they were in August, 

come Christmastime they’ll still get gifts 

from loved ones. But as they grow older 

and their wants shift from Barbies and 

Power Wheels to new cars and expensive 

wrist watches, those chart-topping gifts 

come fewer and farther between. 

No matter how old you are, however, 

acquiring the best technology will 

always cost top dollar, making it extra 

important to mind your manners year 

around. After all, if that shiny, new 

processor upgrade you are after isn’t 

under the tree, you’ll have to buy it 

yourself. And at $800 or so for an 

Athlon 64 FX-55, you don’t want that. 

Fortunately, while most of the components 

we’ve put together for our annual 

holiday wish list are of the high-end 

sort, we have a nose for good deals, too. 

This should be good news for all you 

naughty boys and girls who will have to 

buy your own hardware this year. 

The following is our wish list for 

components for building a new system,

along with some alternatives and more 

affordable options. 

PROCESSOR 


($827; provided by AMD; www.amd.com) 

Auditioning processors is always 

tricky business. Some perform better in fps, 

while others excel in video encoding. One 

chip’s large caches might help in rendering 

a content-creation project, and another’s 

software optimizations will shine in just 

two or three popular 3D projects. 

Before last year, AMD and Intel were 

fairly well-matched in most performance 

metrics. In fact, Intel’s NetBurst architecture 

may have even been putting some distance 

between itself and the Athlon XP. 

The Athlon 64 changed all of that, establishing 

AMD64 as a dominant name in 

gaming, office productivity, and content 

creation. NetBurst retains an advantage in 

some 3D-rendering apps, but benchmark 

victories in favor of the P4 are scarce. 

The FX-55 extends AMD’s lead in the 

tests that matter most to enthusiasts. 

Beyond performance, today’s Athlon 64 

FX is much more attractive than the FX- 

51 we recommended last year, in part 

because it employs a slightly revised 

socket interface that accommodates 

unbuffered memory rather than the registered 

stuff Socket 940 necessitated. 

Moreover, clock speed is at an all-time 

high of 2.6GHz for the new flagship. 

Higher frequencies are possible with the 

FX-55’s unlocked clock multiplier, a feature 

exclusive to the FX series. The sample 

on our test bed peaked at 2.8GHz using 

the reference AVC heatsink and 1.65 

volts. AMD also confirmed that the FX- 

55 actually supports Cool’n’Quiet technology; 

it was previously believed the 

unlocked clock multiplier would disable 

that feature, but our tests show the chip 

indeed drops to 1.3GHz during periods of 

light load. The FX-55 also supports a 

1GHz HyperTransport bus link, giving it 

an 8GBps pipeline to communicate with a 

complementary chipset. That bandwidth 

will become especially important as PCI 

Express platforms gain popularity. 

When you consider AMD’s Enhanced 

Virus Protection and its 64-bit extensions, 

which are just pawing for a final 

version of Microsoft Windows XP x64 

Edition, AMD’s advantages span performance, 

features, longevity, and price. 

Intel isn’t rolling over without a fight. 

The company’s P4 3.46GHz Extreme 

Edition is better equipped to contend with 

AMD’s own flagship. By augmenting the 

925X chipset with a 1,066MHz FSB, the 

processor can now push up to 8.5GBps of 

bandwidth. Conveniently, the platform’s 

DDR2-533 memory subsystem syncs 

perfectly with the same theoretical 

throughput ceiling. 

However, although the 

performance improvement 

is enough to catapult the 

P4 into contention, it’s not 

quite sufficient to eclipse 

AMD’s effort. 

If your checkbook scoffs 

at $1,000 processors, there’s a 

lot of value in AMD’s lower-end Athlon 

64 family and Intel’s midrange lineup in 

LGA775 packaging. The 3GHz P4 530 

falls below $200, for example. AMD’s 

Athlon 64 3000+ in Socket 939 trim is 

in the same price range and packs a 

respectable punch. Both CPUs use interface 

technologies that will last for years to 

come and can be upgraded fairly easily 

down the road. Furthermore, Intel has 

plans to unveil a 3.73GHz Extreme 

Edition and 3.8GHz P4 before year’s end. 

If so, Intel may very well tip the performance 

scales in its favor, although, at that 

intimidating $1,000 price point. 

HEATSINK 

Thermaltake Venus 12 K8 Cooler 

($30; provided by Thermaltake; 

www.thermaltake.com) 

What A Difference A Year Makes 

For the first time 

since the Athlon 64 

FX-51 was announced, 

AMD is changing its 

thermal specifications to 

reflect the Athlon 64 FX- 

55’s 104W maximum 

heat dissipation. Thus, 

there is no guarantee heatsinks 

approved to work with the 

It’s time to see how the high-end parts on our wish list perform together compared to 

the awesome rig we built last year. Unfortunately, NVIDIA’s dual-card SLI (Scalable Link 

Interface) graphics solution is still being polished; although it should be available by 

year’s end, it isn’t ready to be benchmarked. But hey, we’re still sporting an nForce4 Ultra 

motherboard with an Athlon 64 FX-55, 1GB of Corsair’s low-latency DDR400 memory, 

and one of the first GeForce 6800 Ultra PCI Express x16 cards available. Our 2003 Dream 

PC sports an Athlon 64 FX-51, ASUS SK8V K8T800 motherboard, 1GB of registered Cosair 

DDR400, and ATI’s Radeon 9800 XT. 

We tested our games at 1,600 x 1,200, right where the gaming enthusiast looking to 

drop several thousand dollars on a new PC would want to play them. Doom 3 was set to 

Ultra Quality, Counter Strike: Source was maximized with 4X AA and 8X AF, and Far Cry’s 

details were all cranked up. Oh, what a difference indeed. 

Doom 3 . 

Counter Strike: Source . 

Far Cry . 

SiSoftware Sandra 2004 Int. Bandwidth . 

SiSoftware Sandra 2004 Float Bandwidth . 

CPU Dream PC 2004 

70.3fps 

65.91fps 

65.02fps 

6,067MBps 

6,059MBps 

CPU Dream PC 2003 

19.6fps 

33.96fps 

31.51fps 

5,794MBps 

5,734MBps 


Athlon 64 FX series will meet the same 

requirements on AMD’s current flagship. 

Thermaltake is nevertheless confident 

the Venus 12 K8 Cooler is sufficient, and 

we concur. After running an extended 

burn-in test using SiSoftware Sandra 

2004 SP2, the FX-55 continued its rocksolid 

operation, albeit with disturbingly 

loud fan noise. Thermaltake does include 

an easily accessible potentiometer to 

tweak the fan to an acceptable level. 

Though still audible, it’s possible to keep 

the Athlon 64 FX-55 running at full tilt 

without too much distraction. 

Thermalright’s XP-120 ($55) is a solid 

alternative. Centered on a nickel-plated 

copper base, a massive array of aluminum 

fins and heatpipes rests under a 120mm 

fan, resulting in a comparable cooling 

capacity with less noise. Thermalright 

doesn’t include the fan but recommends 

Panaflo’s FBA12G12LIA (about $12), 

which pushes 68.9CFM at 30dBA. 

If you buy a retail CPU from AMD or 

Intel, both companies include qualified 

cooling products with their boxed processors. 

Still, AMD maintains a regularly 

updated page of approved thermal solutions 

at www2.amd.com/us-en/Processors 

/TechnicalResources/1,,30_182_869_9480% 

5e10667,00.html?1094454737. Intel doesn’t 

maintain a database of third-party heatsinks 

for the P4, but it offers a page on thermal 

management for the P4 at www.intel.com 

/cd/channel/reseller/asmo-na/eng 

/products/box_processors/desktop/proc_ 

dsk_p4/technical_reference/99346.htm. 

MOTHERBOARD 

MSI MS-7100 nForce4 SLI 

(Price unavailable; www.msicomputer.com) 


Intel is at the forefront of PCI-E core 

logic thanks to its role in defining and 

evangelizing the technology. However, by 

year’s end, NVIDIA and VIA are shooting 

to have PCI-E chipsets available 

for the AMD64 platform. NVIDIA’s 

nForce4 SLI (Scalable Link Interface) 

may be the most anticipated of these 

chipsets, and MSI is already developing 

its own enthusiast motherboard centering 

on nForce4 SLI. (SLI is NVIDIA’s technology 

that enables parallel rendering 

between a pair of matched PCI-E x16 

graphics cards.) 

The only real difference between 

NVIDIA’s nForce4 SLI and nForce4 

Ultra is the configurability of each 

chipset’s 20 PCI-E lanes. Although 

nForce4 SLI is completely customizable, 

the Ultra is fixed at one x16 and three x1 

links. As a result, mobos that center on 

SLI accommodate a pair of PCI-E 

x16 slots electrically wired to 

run at x8. Hardware is still in 

development, but NVIDIA 

claims an SLI mobo with two 

GeForce 6800 Ultra cards can render 

about 72fps in Doom 3 at 1,600 x 1,200 

with 4X AA. Comparatively, a single 

6800 Ultra peaks at 42fps, according 

to NVIDIA. The chipset’s other I/O 

functions include an integrated GbE 

(Gigabit Ethernet) controller with 

NVIDIA’s accelerated Secure Networking 

Engine, 10 USB 2.0 ports, two channels 

of ATA/133, an integrated audio codec, 

and official support for 3Gbps SATA. 

The motherboard based on MSI’s 

interpretation of the nForce4 SLI chipset, 

code-named MS-7100, goes beyond 

nForce4’s base specification with a 

Silicon Image SATA controller that provides 

two more channels of connectivity, 

an extra GbE controller for two total, 

7.1-channel audio, and FireWire. The 

spotlight feature is support for two PCI- 

E graphics cards, which might make it 

the most powerful board you’ll be able to 

buy this holiday season. 

Although it won’t stand up to the 

gaming potential of a dual-card SLI 

configuration, ASUS’ P5AD2-E is the 

board to buy if you’re interested in a 

P4 on the 1,066MHz FSB. It’s nearly 

identical to the P5GD2 Deluxe from a 

feature-set standpoint, boasting eight 

SATA ports that all support RAID, an 

ATA/133 RAID controller, 1394b 

FireWire, dual GbE ports, an integrated 

802.11g wireless controller, and Intel’s 

implementation of 7.1-channel High 

Definition Audio. ASUS also claims to 

support higher DDR2 memory frequencies; 

considering the P5AD2 worked with 

DDR600 modules, DDR2-667 sounds 

reasonable for the P5AD2-E. 

MEMORY 

Corsair TWINX1024-3200XLPRO 

(1GB DDR400 Kit) 

($300; provided by Corsair; 

www.corsairmicro.com) 

The P4 is running full speed ahead 

with DDR2 memory, but AMD is 

reluctant to abandon DDR technology 

in favor of higher theoretical bandwidth 

numbers. According to AMD reps, the 

Athlon 64’s underlying architecture is 

very sensitive to latency due to its integrated 

memory controller and Hyper- 

Transport bus. As a result, it performs 

much better mated to low-latency DDR 

SDRAM than DDR2, which suffers 

higher latencies. 

You’ll want to arm that Athlon 64 

FX-55 with the lowest-latency DDR400 

modules available. And because the 

CPU’s DDR memory controller is 128 

bits wide, you’ll need a pair of identical 

64-bit modules to populate the entire 

memory bus. Corsair’s TWINX kit fills 

the bill nicely with its dual-matched modules. 

Moreover, the latest XL series boasts 

incredibly low 2-2-2 timings with 1T 

command rates. Theoretically capable of 

pushing 6.4GBps through its memory 

bus, Corsair’s quality modules help the

platform realize more than 6.1GBps of 

throughput per Sandra 2004. That’s 

roughly 95% efficiency—unheard of 

before AMD64 emerged. 

If you’re taking the P4 route, DDR2 

memory is an absolute necessity with 

Intel’s 925X chipset. The best bet now is 

DDR2-533 memory that matches the FSB 

with a theoretical 8.5GBps of bandwidth. 

Not only does Corsair’s TWIN2X1024- 

4300C3PRO offer the bandwidth of 

DDR2-533, but it incorporates some of 

the lowest latency ratings available, helping 

the 3.46GHz P4 Extreme Edition drive 

5.8GBps of data. But because the P4 

accesses memory through an external controller, 

efficiency drops to just 68% of the 

8.5GBps maximum. 

You can save money by tapping other 

brand names, but remember that memory 

plays an integral role in defining performance, 

so you’ll still want to match a 

high-end Athlon 64 to DDR400 modules 

and a P4 on Intel’s 925X chipset to 

DDR2-533. 

GRAPHICS CARD 

NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultra 256MB 

($500; provided by NVIDIA; 

www.nvidia.com) 

It’s hard to go wrong with any of 

today’s modern graphics products. The 

card you choose will likely depend on the 

applications you use. NVIDIA has taken 

a lot of heat for its dual-slot, noisy designs 

in the past, but the GeForce 6800 Ultra is 

a dominant force for gamers seeking the 

Clos du Mesnil of video cards. Armed 

with 16 parallel pixel pipelines, 

256MB of GDDR3 memory, 

and support for Shader Model 

3.0 (a component of DirectX 

9.0c), NVIDIA’s current flagship 

simply screams through the latest games. 

Beyond its performance characteristics, 

a few manufacturers sell the GeForce 6800 

Ultra running faster than the 400MHz 

specification NVIDIA officially set forth, 

enabling even more speed. There’s also 

variance in connectivity options; bundled 

software; physical layout; and, to some 

degree, price. PCI-E x16 versions of the 

card are just materializing, though, so 

expect further differentiation as the new 

interface gains momentum. 

If you’re in the mood for multimedia, 

ATI’s All-In-Wonder X800 XT is one of 

the most attractive products ATI has 

manufactured. It centers on the R400 

processor with 16 pixel pipelines and 

256MB of GDDR-3 memory both running 

at 500MHz. Naturally, it boasts 

impressive 3D performance. The card 

also includes a silicon TV tuner capable of 

accepting an analog feed and a redesigned 

breakout box that delivers component, 

composite, and S-Video outputs, plus an 

array of A/V inputs. For the first time, a 

product in the AIW family offers dualdisplay 

outputs through DVI and VGA 

connectors, too. 

ATI’s lauded Multimedia Center 

software suite is included, as is an 

FM tuner and the Remote 

Wonder II RF controller, all for 

about $499. There’s one catch: 

The AIW X800 XT only ships in 

AGP 8X trim. According to John 

Swinimer, ATI public relations manager, 

there’s no PCI-E version of the card 

planned for the near future. 

Perhaps the best value propositions are 

NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 GT ($400) and 

GeForce 6600 GT cards ($200). Both 

mainstream models are derived from the 

very high-end GeForce 6800 Ultra, the 

former packing 16 pixel pipelines and the 

latter with eight. Despite their trimmeddown 

specs, both midrange products 

support Shader Model 3.0 and SLI. 

While we’re talking SLI, NVIDIA 

claims the technology will be available 

before year’s end. There’s still driver work 

going on behind the scenes, though, making 

it impossible to run independent 

benchmark numbers on the dual-card 

configuration. 

POWER SUPPLY 

Ultra Products X-Connect 500W ATX 

Modular Power Supply 

($150; provided by Ultra Products; 

www.ultraproducts.com) 

The latest generation of hardware consumes 

more power than ever. Although 

many enthusiasts are quick to upgrade their 

motherboards and processors, most don’t 

think about picking up a new PSU unless 

the old one falls flat on its face. Note that 

NVIDIA’s GeForce 6800 Ultra works best 

with more than 400W of power. An SLI 

configuration requires no less than 500W, 

according to NVIDIA. Add that 2.6GHz 

Athlon 64 FX-55 or a flagship P4, and 

you’re talking serious power consumption. 


The X-Connect is designed to address 

the power demands of modern components 

and simultaneously add some 

pizzazz. It starts with a solid performance 

foundation, delivering a sustainable 500W 

of power and up to 34A to the +12V rail 

for the most demanding processors. 

The X-Connect’s attractive looks come 

via a chromed chassis and windowed 

panels. Two 80mm fans inside the X- 

Connect illuminate when the lights go 

out, giving off blue light and highlighting 

the unit’s innards. What really sets the X- 

Connect apart is its modularity. Rather 

than sporting a rat’s nest of cables in the 

back, the X-Connect sports numerous 

connectors that each correspond to a 

different type of power cable. Ultra 

includes nine such cables to enable various 

configurations. The latest model even 

includes a splitter for SATA hard drives. 

Unfortunately, the 24-pin ATX cable that 

LGA775 motherboards require is an 

optional accessory, as is the 6-pin power 

cable for high-end PCI-E graphics cards. 

SOUND CARD 

Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS Platinum 

($200; provided by Creative Labs; 

us.creative.com) 

Unlike CPUs and graphics cards, 

which are in a perpetual state of evolution, 

sound card development moves 

much more slowly. Creative Labs’ Audigy 

2 ZS Platinum, for example, is more than 

a year old and is still at the top of 

its game. By combining the utmost in 

sound quality with connectivity options, 

Creative apparently designed a product 

with indelible appeal. 

Delivering excellent sound quality is 

the card’s principal purpose. Stereo playback 

is rated at up to 24-bit resolution 


and 192KHz sampling with an incredibly 

clear 108dB SNR, while the Audigy 2 ZS 

records at 24-bit and 96KHz. DVD- 

Audio and WMA9 content are both supported, 

enabling high-def, multichannel 

output. The card features 7.1-channel 

output through analog 1/8-inch mini-jack 

plugs on its back panel. Meanwhile, the 

included 5.25-inch connector pod exposes 

both inputs and outputs through 

coaxial, optical, and RCA connectors. 

Games benefit from the card’s exclusive 

support for EAX 4.0 Advanced HD, 

which lets software developers use multiple 

environmental effects simultaneously. 

Further, any game written with Direct- 

Sound 3D in mind can fully utilize multichannel 

output with up to 7.1 channels. 

Paired to Creative’s GigaWorks S750 

speaker system, the sound effects are 

especially startling in games such as 

Doom 3. 

The Audigy 2 ZS is also 

adept in cinematic environments 

where its software decoder can handle 

Dolby Digital EX and DTS-ES. 

Both formats are intended for 6.1-channel 

setups; however, in a 7.1-channel 

application, the rear channel is sent to 

the left and right surround speakers. The 

included software bundle comes with a 

THX setup console, as well, providing 

calibration options to compensate for 

speaker distance, angle, and volume. 

Interestingly, although Creative continues 

to dominate the add-in sound card 

market, the latest developments in PC 

audio actually come from Intel and its 

High Definition Audio initiative, which 

replaces the aging AC’97 codec with a standardized, 

high-quality, multichannel solution 

that’s reasonable enough to integrate 

directly onto motherboards. The result is 

up to 7.1 channels of output at 192KHz 

sampling and up to 32 bits of resolution. 

Given the proper software decoders, Intel 

claims HD Audio fully supports all Dolby 

playback formats. Considering it’s included 

on almost all 925X motherboards, HD 

Audio is a great alternative to expensive 

add-in cards for those with P4s. 

SPEAKERS 

Creative Labs GigaWorks S750 7.1- 

Channel Speaker System 

($500; provided by Creative Labs; 

us.creative.com) 

Recommending audio hardware is perilous 

territory because audio performance 

is subjective. Speakers that sound good in 

one office might not work well in a dorm 

room. Some people swear by surround 

sound; others prefer headphones. Then 

there are the purists who’d rather buy an 

actual home theater setup to which they 

can connect a well-equipped PC. 

Creative’s GigaWorks S750 offers a 

compromise. Its price is far lower than any

7.1-channel speaker and amplifier 

combination you’ll find on the 

home theater market, and its specs 

easily best competing computer 

speakers. The system’s seven 

satellites each consist of a 

3.5-inch driver and 1-inch 

tweeter. Used with an 8inch 

subwoofer, Creative 

claims the set is good for frequency 

response between 25Hz 

and 40KHz, which gives it tremendous 

flexibility for audio reproduction. 

The system’s 700W rms of power is 

plenty to ensure aural integrity up to full 

volume in musical tests. 

The S750 is a natural match for the 

Audigy 2 ZS Platinum and its 7.1-channel 

analog output. Both products shine 

during DVD-Audio playback with very 

impressive clarity. The speaker system’s 

bass response is surprisingly defined, 

though it doesn’t stand up to a home 

theater sub in such apps as Telarc’s 

Tchaikovsky: 1812 Overture that showcases 

DSD (Direct Stream Digital) cannons. 

Then again, a capable sub easily 

costs more than the entire GigaWorks 

S750 system. 

Games are a different story entirely. 

The Audigy 2 ZS enables 7.1-channel 

playback in any app that supports DS3D, 

and if you’re a fan of gaming with headphones, 

full surround is comparably 

impressive. Movie playback is similarly 

immersive, especially in an office or bedroom 

with smaller dimensions. 

All the input/output connectors are on 

the subwoofer’s back panel and are limited 

to analog inputs and RCA speaker 

outputs. An included control pod handles 

volume control and manual adjustment 

of each channel’s level output. It also 

facilitates up-mixing to play 5.1- or 6.1channel 

sound through all of the speakers. 

There’s a headphone jack, a line-input 

port, and Creative’s proprietary M-port 

for connection with the Nomad MuVo 

NX MP3 player on the control pod. 

The shortcomings are few. The system 

doesn’t accept digital input, narrowing its 

appeal to those with high-end sound cards 

with quality analog outputs. If you go with 

something from Creative’s Audigy 2 ZS 

family, you’ll be satisfied, but 

it’s at least preferable to have 

a choice. Conversely, finding 

room for eight speakers can 

be difficult. Klipsch’s GMX 

A-2.1 ($150) is tidier thanks 

to its 2.1-channel configuration, 

and it still offers plenty 

of power from a pair of 

two-way satellites and a 6.5inch 

subwoofer. 

If you’re looking for a good set of 

headphones for a multichannel setup, 

Sennheiser makes some of the best cans 

you can buy. The company’s HD595 

($290) are of audiophile quality. Invest in 

a quality headphone amplifier before buying 

such sweet headphones, though, 

because the Audigy 2 ZS’ line output isn’t 

powerful enough to drive the Sennheisers. 

Another option is forgoing computer 

speakers altogether in favor of a true 

home theater system. It’s nice to think 

about a multimedia setup in the den or 

bedroom, but you can’t beat the rumble 

of an HTPC connected to a plasma display, 

a multichannel receiver, and a surround-sound 

speaker setup. 

NETWORKING 

D-Link DI-624 Xtreme G Router, 

DWL-G520 PCI Adapter 

(DI-624, $85; DWL-G520, $50; 

provided by D-Link; www.dlink.com) 

With so many mobo makers integrating 

GbE controllers, it’s almost tempting 

to run CAT5e cable around the house. 

Although there are plenty of apps that 

command that sort of raw performance, 

the networked home generally isn’t one of 

them. It’s much easier to set up a highspeed 

wireless connection. 

D-Link’s Xtreme G family of wireless 

hardware has been around awhile, but 

it’s better than ever. It centers on 

802.11g, ensuring interoperability with 

other devices at 54Mbps. It also uses 

Atheros’ Super G chipset to enable communication 

at up to 108Mbps with 

other compatible D-Link client hardware. 

A combination of packet bursting 

(part of the 802.11e draft standard), fast 

frames (also in the 802.11e QoS draft 

standard), data compression, and channel 

bonding help double the theoretical 

throughput of 802.11g. 

A recent firmware update for the DI- 

624 adds an XR (extended-range) mode, 

doubling range at the expense of performance. 

XR won’t work at 108Mbps, but 

it’s a great way to enable wireless connectivity 

in areas that were previously out of 

range. Moreover, D-Link’s Michael Scott 

confirms that the router’s built-in processor 

can support finalized subsets of the 

802.11 standard in firmware as they materialize. 

For example, both 802.11e and 

802.11 should be supported in the future. 

You’ll also want client cards for your 

desktops and notebooks. D-Link’s DWL- 

G520 is a standard-issue 802.11g PCI 

adapter that runs at up to 108Mbps in a 

network completely composed of D-Link 

hardware. The DWL-G650 is its PC Card 

contemporary for laptops, also capable of 

108Mbps performance and backward compatibility 

with older 802.11b hardware. 

D-Link is also generating excitement 

with its DCS-3220G, an 802.11g wireless 

Internet camera with 4X digital 

zoom and two-way audio support. The 


DSM-320 MediaLounge streams video, 

music, and images across your network at 

54Mbps and into your home theater system. 

The MediaLounge supports MP3, 

WMA, WAV, MPEG, AVI, and XVID 

formats, plus several image formats. It’s 

controlled by remote and boasts numerous 

outputs, including optical audio and component 

video. (See page 21 for more.) 

STORAGE 

Maxtor 300GB DiamondMax 10 SATA 

Hard Drive Kit (x2) 

($250; provided by Maxtor; 

www.maxtor.com) 

It has only been a couple of years since 

SATA started to replace the ATA/133 

standard, but almost all the latest chipsets 

feature at least four SATA ports and 

native support for RAID 0 and 1. It’s also 

starting to incorporate technologies from 

the second generation of SATA, including 

NCQ (Native Command Queuing), 


which enables dynamic reordering of 

requests to take advantage of spatial locality, 

thereby improving the performance of 

randomized disk accesses. 

Unlike previous Maxtor products that 

used bridge devices to support SATA, 

the DiamondMax 10 uses a native SATA 

controller. The drive spins at 7,200rpm, 

akin to most competitors in its class, but 

the inclusion of a 16MB cache buffer and 

NCQ augments performance noticeably. 

You will need to pair the drive with a 

compatible chipset to fully exploit NCQ’s 

benefits, and as timing would have it, 

NVIDIA’s nForce4 Ultra and Intel’s 

925X chipsets recognize the feature. 

The nForce4 chipset also supports 

RAID 0, RAID 1, and RAID 0+1, and it 

works with SATA 3Gbps drives, though 

units will be somewhat limited through 

year’s end. The software-based Disk Alert 

System makes it easy to visually identify 

failed hardware, while the spare disk allocation 

feature lets one unused drive serve as 

a backup in case a RAID setup fails. 

NVIDIA’s software repairs the array without 

intervention, resuming operation 

immediately. The chipset introduces hot 

plug support for on-the-fly repairs, and the 

morphing process allows the reconfiguring 

of RAID arrays without losing data. For 

example, an existing RAID 0 setup can be 

transitioned to RAID 1 nondestructively. 

Despite the nForce4’s seemingly 

impeccable security, it’s still a good idea 

to maintain a separate backup device to 

protect against fire or theft. A good 

option is an external hard drive that can 

accommodate your storage subsystem. 

Maxtor has that market covered with the 

new OneTouch II ($380), available in 

250GB and 300GB models. It comes 

with a simplified version of Dantz’s 

Retrospect software. By default, it runs 

progressive backups on a daily basis; your 

only responsibility is making sure the 

saved information makes its way offsite 

and is physically secured. Equipped with 

FireWire and USB 2.0 connectors, the 

drive runs under Windows 98SE/Me/ 

2000/XP and Mac OS 9/X. 

For some users, it makes sense to sacrifice 

a little capacity for speed and reliability. 

Western Digital’s Raptor ($200) family of 

SATA products tops out at a mere 74GB, 

but the 10,000rpm drives include fiveyear 

warranties and a 1.2-million MTBF 

rating, making them ideal for high-performance 

striped RAID 0 arrays. 

OPTICAL DRIVE 

Plextor PX-716A DVD±R/RW 

DL Writer 

($149; www.plextor.com) 

Last year, DVD burning was all the 

rage as 8X drives started turning up. 

Plextor’s solid reputation for performance 

and reliability catapulted its PX-708A to 

the top of our optical drive wish list. A lot 

can change in a year, but Plextor is still 

well-respected for manufacturing quality 

optical drives. 

This time around Plextor’s PX-716A is 

in the spotlight, boasting 16X burn 

speeds (22.1MBps) for +R media, in 

addition to the first 4X dual-layer specification 

that fills an 8.5GB disc in less than 

30 minutes. It writes DVD+RW discs at 

8X, another speed record, and DVD-RW 

at 4X. CD-writing jumps to 48X, while 

CD-RW discs burn at 24X. 

Plextor claims the PX-716A is its most 

intelligent drive yet, sporting several complementary 

technologies to maximize 

quality across known and unknown 

media. The drive borrows Taiyo Yuden’s 

AutoStrategy technology, for example, 

automatically developing a write strategy 

for discs not listed in the drive’s internal 

media catalog. Intelligent Tilt employs a 

laser control via liquid crystal and a 3D 

tilt adjustment to ensure optimal recording 

across uneven disc surfaces. PoweRec, 

an older feature, adjusts the drive’s laser 

power to an optimal setting for each disc. 

GigaRec, Q-Check, SecureRecording, 

VariRec, and SilentMode are but a handful 

of the drive’s other features.

If you’ve been holding off on buying 

a DVD writer, now is the time to start 

looking. According to Plextor reps, 16X is 

the ceiling for single-layer discs, similar to 

52X for CDs. Dual-layer performance 

will likely improve, but today’s optical 

drives represent mature technology at an 

attractive price. 

Plextor’s reputation still costs a premium, 

so Sony’s DRU-710A might be better 

for enthusiasts seeking a bargain. 

Capable of writing DVD+R at 16X, 

DVD-R at 8X, and dual-layer discs at 

2.4X, the 710A won’t keep up with the 

PX-716A in burning time, but it sells for 

$119 (after a $30 rebate) and includes 

Ahead Software’s popular Nero 6 software 

suite. Sony even bundles a replaceable 

front panel to match your chassis, 

whether it’s beige or black. 

DISPLAY 

BenQ FP231W 23-inch LCD 

($1,750; www.benq.com) 

When nothing but the best will do, 

check out BenQ’s 23-inch widescreen 

LCD. It wasn’t long ago that 20-inch 

flat panels reigned supreme, but the 

rapid advancement of LCD technology 

has simultaneously led to larger displays 

and lower response times. The FP231W 

boasts a hefty 1,920 x 1,200 resolution 

and still sports a 16ms pixel response. 

Multiple display inputs, an integrated 

USB 2.0 hub, and an attractively slim 

front bezel all contribute to the 

FP231W’s pro stature. 

If the FP231W’s price tag is intimidating, 

Dell’s popular 2001FP 20.1inch 

LCD might be a better option. It’s 

often available online for less than $700. 

If you are looking for something rugged 

for LAN gaming, Shuttle’s XP17 is reasonably 

priced at around $600. The 

Dell and Shuttle feature 16ms response 

times, which is certainly acceptable for 

games and DVD movies. 

MOUSE/KEYBOARD 

Logitech diNovo Media Desktop 

($250; provided by Logitech; 

www.logitech.com) 

It used to be that keyboards 

were straightforward; 

now they feature shortcut 

buttons that purportedly 

improve productivity, but in 

reality they are rarely used. 

Although almost all mice come 

with scroll wheels, many also 

include a bevy of ancillary 

programmable buttons, too. 

Logitech, however, went back to basics 

with its diNovo Media Desktop, exchanging 

useless extras for a low-profile, 

simplified layout and unadulterated 

class. The package includes a Bluetooth 

keyboard, separate MediaPad that connects 

via Bluetooth, and Logitech’s 

MX900 Bluetooth optical mouse. 

The keyboard lays flat, has a tactile 

response similar to a laptop, and offers 

limited shortcut keys for clean lines and 

an artistic design. The included buttons 

primarily control multimedia functions. 

Configuring the keyboard is a snap 

through Logitech’s customized Bluetooth 

setup routine, and an updated 

software package also enables hotkey 

remapping, function key mapping, and 

a battery status applet. 

Think of MediaPad as a detached 

number pad with an integrated remote 

control. The MediaPad’s LCD display 

also provides visual alerts when you 

receive email and displays pertinent file 

information about active media. The 

MX900 optical mouse ($100 on its 

own) is identical to the revered MX700 

with the obvious exception that it 

employs Bluetooth rather than RF. A 

charging stand doubles as a Bluetooth 

hub and is consequentially an integral 

component of the diNovo setup. 

This won’t stop die-hard enthusiasts 

from using Logitech’s brand new MX1000. 

Switching back to RF, the MX1000 incorporates 

laser technology for up to 20 times 

more tracking resolution, according to 

Logitech. The mouse chassis features its 

own illuminated battery level indicator, a 

tilting scroll wheel for side-to-side scrolling, 

and rechargeable Li-Ion batteries. It’s an 

expensive upgrade, however, especially after 

dropping $250 on the diNovo. The 

MX1000 is significantly more comfortable, 

though, and it’s more user-friendly than 

its predecessor. 

In Retrospect 

There you have it; roughly $4,500 in 

pure holiday bliss if you guesstimate $200 

for the motherboard and opt for the more 

reasonable 20.1-inch Dell display. If computers 

came with pink slips, this would be 

a system worth drag racing around town, 

to be sure. 

by Chris Angelini 


56 December 2004 / www.computerpoweruser.com

N 

ew components make great gifts, 

but when the holidays come, we 

almost always find a family member 

needs an entire PC. If you’re bringing 

the uninitiated into the fold or relegating 

your parents’ aging computer to firewall 

duty, you’ll need to track down a system 

that will wow the recipient but won’t, of 

course, hold a candle to your own rig. 

Price is a factor, too. If your family 

member’s eyes are watering but yours 

aren’t, you’ve just handed over the perfect 

gift PC. And chances are you found that 

system here. What is CPU if not a trusted 

advisor in times of holiday computer crisis? 

So, we bring you four systems: a flashy 

notebook, a tote-able SFF, a powerful 

workstation, and a gaming/entertainment 

PC. They can’t compete with the $5,000plus 

computers that will grace our pages in 

April, and you won’t find bleeding-edge 

components (the workstation has a few 

notably new technologies), but these PCs 

certainly compete in one of the most 

important areas: price. 

How We Tested 

Our benchmark lineup consisted of several 

synthetic benchmarks, including 

Futuremark’s 3DMark 2001, 3DMark03, 

and the brand-new 3DMark05. All assess 

the unit’s graphics-producing capabilities, 

and although several system components 

(including processor and memory performance) 

affect the score, they most closely 

analyze the PC’s video card’s performance. 


In fact, the latest version even drops 

3DMark03’s sound test. However, 

3DMark05 is new, which means its scores 

won’t mean much until we’ve reviewed 

more systems. As a result, we haven’t yet 

dropped older versions of the benchmark. 

We also used PCMark04 and SYSmark 

2004, both of which are synthetic benchmarks 

that focus on the system’s abilities to 

handle heavy loads and complete common 

tasks. Each offers an overall score and several 

category scores, but whereas SYSmark 

2004’s category scores assess the system’s 

ability to handle certain types of tasks, such 

as Internet Content Creation, PC-Mark04 

focuses on individual PC components, 

including the CPU and hard drive. 

We used two game benchmarks to see 

how well these systems can play the latest 

games: Doom 3 and Halo. If you 

own these games, you can run these 

same benchmarks. If you have Doom 3, 

for example, choose a resolution, press 

Shop 'Til You Drop 

CTRL-ALT-tilde (~) to display the console, 

and type timedemo demo1. The 

benchmark runs through a portion of 

the game and then displays the fps. 

Halo users enter the command console 

and type cd c:\program files\microsoft 

games\halo. Press ENTER and type 

halo.exe –timedemo –vidmode 800,600 

(or another resolution). You can find the 

benchmark’s information in the timedemo.txt 

document (in the Halo directory). 

Of course, workstations aren’t gaming 

or entertainment machines; they edit 

video and create video games, rather than 

play them. To that end, we ran the Dell 

Precision 370 through SPEC’s (Standard 

Performance Evaluation Corporation’s) 

SPECviewperf 8.0, which assesses the system’s 

performance running several graphics-editing 

applications. SPECviewperf 

includes 3ds Max, CATIA, EnSight, 

Lightscape, Maya, Pro/ENGINEER, 

SolidWorks, and Unigraphics viewsets. 

According to an NPD Techworld survey, most consumers plan to spend less money on 

holiday shopping this year, but young shoppers, particularly males, may save the day. 

Consumers 

Men 

Women 

18- to 24-year-olds 

55- to 64-year-olds 

Plan To Spend This Shopping Season 

$666 

$624 

$537 (averaged $366 last year) 

$693 

41% 

of consumers plan 

to shop online

Dell Precision 370 

Dell’s new workstation has a 

sleek chassis that won’t disrupt your 

carefully planned home office 

décor, but don’t think for a second 

that Dell made any sacrifices 

when it squeezed components 

into this stylishly slim DV-editing 

system. The Precision 370 

boasts NVIDIA’s powerhouse 

workstation-friendly Quadro FX 

3400 (PCI-E), 2GB (in the form of 

four 512MB DIMMs) of the new DDR2 533MHz memory, and an 8X 

DVD+RW. We’re a little surprised to see that Dell didn’t go with dual-processors, 

but we’re not at all disappointed by the powerful 3.6GHz Intel P4. The 

processor has EM64T (Extended Memory 64 Technology), which means it 

supports 64-bit OSes. The system also includes a 160GB 7,200rpm SATA hard 

drive that provides plenty of video and audio file storage. 

Dell also let us take a look at a preproduction version of its 20-inch 2005FP- 

W wide-aspect display monitor. Although most users will find that this flatpanel 

monitor’s default position provides plenty of workspace, you can also 

swing the monitor into portrait mode. Despite its flexibility, the monitor 

doesn’t sink or swivel too easily; you won’t accidentally knock it out of position 

if you bump the monitor with your hand. 

At $4,596, the Precision 370 is one of our guide’s most expensive computers, 

but then it handles more than entertainment alone. Dell backs up this champ 

with a three-year, next business day warranty. 

This massive copper 

heatsink stretches across 

the width of the chassis. 

Oddly, the case has only two 

pairs of extra drive runners; 

the chassis supports three 

additional drives. 

A plastic guard stabilizes 

your Quadro FX 3400 

video card. 

Dell doesn’t sleeve this rig’s 

cables, but it uses several 

straps to keep cables near 

the sides of the chassis. 

The Precision 370 has only 

two 5.25-inch slots but supports 

four 3.5-inch drives. 

SPECviewperf 8.0 

3ds Max 

CATIA 

EnSight 

Lightscape 

Maya 

Pro/ENGINEER 

SolidWorks 

Unigraphics 

30.14 

19.14 

14.76 

20.39 

35.97 

39.69 

22.59 

28.52 


Specs & Benchmarks 

Model 

Manufacturer 

Price 

Operating System 

Processor 

RAM 

Hard Drive 

Optical Drive 

Connectivity 

Video Card 

Video RAM 

Monitor 

Sound Card/Speakers 

Chassis Type 

System Use 

Extras 

URL 

Benchmarks 

SYSmark 2004 

Content Creation Overall 

SYSmark 2004 ICC 

3D Creation 


2D Creation 


Web Publication 

SYSmark 2004 Office 

Productivity Overall 

SYSmark 2004 OP 

Communication 


Document Creation 


Data Analysis 

SYSmark 2004 Rating 

PCMark04 Build 110 

System Score 

CPU Score 

Memory Score 

Graphics Score 

HDD Score 

3DMark2001SE Build 330 

3DMark03 Build 340 


Doom 3 (High Quality) 

800 x 600 

1,024 x 768 

1,280 x 1,024 

Halo 

800 x 600 

1,024 x 768 

1,280 x 1,024 


Dell 

$4,596 

Windows XP Pro 

3.6GHz Intel P4, 

1MB L2 cache 

2GB DDR2 533MHz 

(4 x 512MB) 

160GB 7,200rpm SATA 

8X DVD+RW 

Integrated LAN 

NVIDIA PCI-E 

Quadro FX 3400 

256MB 

20-inch 2005FP-W 

wide-aspect flat-panel 

Creative Labs Sound 

Blaster Audigy 2 

Dell Precision 

Workstation 

Dell mouse and keyboard 

www.dell.com 

206 

185 

263 

179 

158 

147 

186 

144 

180 

4985 

4885 

5431 

5706 

4953 

19958 

9923 

3161 

56.42fps 

59.27fps 

53.13fps 

72.3fps 

68.8fps 

57fps 


Falcon Northwest 

FragBook 

Sure, SFFs are travel-friendly, but 

they’re just luggage until you reach your 

destination, which means that a decent 

gaming notebook still makes the better 

travel companion. But don’t expect to 

hole up at the back of the bus with 

Falcon’s FragBook; the Exotix Metallic 

paint job reels in the gapers, and the 

heavy-duty graphics card keeps them 

glued to the screen until you slip the 

notebook into its hard-shell briefcase. 

Don’t leave home without your Black Ops case. 

We’re surprised that the case doesn’t have the 

FragBook logo at all, but Falcon’s logo alone 

earns instant respect at LAN parties. 


The FragBook is small (despite a 15inch 

diagonal display, it’s only 13 inches 

wide and weighs a mere 7 pounds), which 

means you may not have to battle other 

passengers for elbow room when you fly. 

But size isn’t the notebook’s only claim to 

fame. This little book is also a gamer. A 

2GHz Pentium M 755 processor and a 

128MB ATI Radeon 9700 Mobility sit 

below the automotive finish, along with 

1GB of Corsair DDR333 memory and a 

60GB hard drive. 

Falcon is particularly proud of its crystal-clear 

SXGA TFT notebook displays. 

In fact, the FragBook boasts Falcon’s 

Perfect Pixel Guarantee: Falcon will 

replace a display that has even one dead 

pixel and cover the overnight shipping 

during the life of the warranty. Having 

seen our fair share of dead pixels on notebook 

and flat-panel displays, we’re glad 

that Falcon stepped up with a clear (and 

pretty darn good) pixel policy. The warranty 

on both the notebook and its display 

lasts one year, but Falcon’s 24/7 tech 

support lasts for the lifetime of the notebook. 

That’s not a shabby deal at all. 

Despite its slim footprint, the FragBook’s side 

and back panels boast an array of ports, 

including three USB 2.0 ports, a FireWire port, 

an Ethernet port, and a modem port. Falcon 

even threw in a parallel port for good measure. 

Lest you forget for a second that you’re 

playing on one of Falcon’s finest, the palm 

rest sports a raised FragBook logo. 

Of course, Falcon didn’t forget the 

accessories. The full-sized mouse is a 

gaming must, but Falcon went the extra 

mile and a half by painting the mouse to 

match the notebook. The extra battery is 

also a nice touch, especially for long 

trips, but the crown jewel is the Black 

Ops briefcase, which has plenty of 

padding and easily stores both the mouse 

and extra battery. 

Although the FragBook is larger than 

life, it’s still a notebook, which means it 

can’t beat out high-end desktop graphics 

systems. However, the FragBook held its 

own when it took on the benchmarks 

and games. The notebook also offers 

excellent audio and handles DVD’s like 

a pro.

As if the case doesn’t already have enough 

padding, Falcon includes a small bag that 

covers your notebook and protects it from 

nicks. Then again, you can’t be too careful 

with an Exotix paint job. A scratch would 

certainly put us in tears. 

As with Falcon’s 

high-end desktops, the 

FragBook includes a 

box of goodies that 

boasts a gamer-friendly 

mouse pad; a T-shirt; 

some extremely 

caffeinated coffee; and, 

of course, an oversized 

coffee mug. 

Although the FragBook isn’t 

particularly wide, it has a 

respectable 15-inch diagonal monitor 

that provides clear, crisp images. 

The Black Ops case’s interior includes stiff, 

heavy padding and straps that keep your 

notebook safe from outside bumps and 

inside components, such as spare batteries 

and other equipment. If you’re a pocket 

freak, you’ll love this case. 

Falcon Northwest FragBook 


Model 

Manufacturer 

Price 


Processor 

RAM 

Hard Drive 

Optical Drive 

Connectivity 

Video Card 

Video RAM 

Monitor 


Chassis Type 

System Use 

Extras 

URL 

Benchmarks 

SYSmark 2004 



3D Creation 


2D Creation 






Communication 




Data Analysis 



System Score 

CPU Score 

Memory Score 


HDD Score 





800 x 600 

1,024 x 768 

1,280 x 1,024 

Halo 

800 x 600 

1,024 x 768 

1,280 x 1,024 

Falcon Northwest FragBook 

Falcon Northwest 

$4,048 

Windows XP Home 

2GHz Pentium M 755 Dothan 

1GB Corsair PC2700 LL 

60GB 7,200rpm Hitachi 

Travelstar 

Toshiba 2X DVD-RW 

Intel 2200 802.11g Wireless 

ATI Radeon 9700 Mobility 

128MB 

1,400 x 1,050 SXGA+ TFT 

gaming LCD 

(notebook screen) 

Integrated 

FragBook TL chassis 

Entertainment, office 

Microsoft Intellimouse 

Optical, Exotix paint job 

(mouse and notebook), extra 

FragBook battery, briefcase 

www.falcon-nw.com 

179 

171 

220 

152 

141 

111 

188 

133 

159 

3890 

3871 

2609 

2035 

3219 

10752 

2957 

1152 

34.51fps 

26.7fps 

17.62fps 

38.4fps 

19.4fps 

13.7fps 


ABS Ultimate M5 

Recent releases Far Cry and Doom 3 

punish older systems, and upcoming 

titles promise only more pain, but you 

don’t need to invest in a luxury system to 

prepare for next year’s games. ABS’ 

decidedly affordable Ultimate M5 gaming 

PC has solid components and plenty 

of upgrade potential. 

We like creative PC cases as much as the 

next gamer, and we’re not opposed to 

OEM mods, such as windows and the 

occasional alien face fan grill, but there’s 

This brightly lit sound pressure meter adds a 

little flair to an already cool case. 


more than a few cases out there that cross 

the aesthetic fine line between cool and, 

well, stupid. Luckily, ABS is well aware of 

and respects that line. The result: one classy 

chassis that will get plenty of attention but 

won’t outshine the guts that make the system 

a solid midrange gaming machine. 

The first thing we noticed about the 

Ultimate M5’s insides is that ABS chose 

the non-Wireless Edition version of the 

reliable ASUS A8V Deluxe. Thanks to 

the board’s 939-pin socket, you can buy 

this budget-friendly system now and then 

upgrade from the already reasonable 

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor to 

faster CPUs later. In fact, you can even 

jump from the Athlon 64 to the ultrahigh-performance 

FX-53 series without 

swapping motherboards. 

But that’s down the road, so let’s focus 

on the here and now. You can configure 

your own Ultimate M5 via ABS’ Web site, 

but our review unit includes a 2.2GB 

Athlon 64 3500+ CPU, 1GB of Corsair 

PC3200 DDR RAM, and two 80GB 

Maxtor SATA hard drives in a speedy 

RAID 0 configuration. ABS also tossed in 

an 8X dual-layer DVD±RW; a 16X DVD- 

ROM; and, most importantly, a 256MB 

eVGA e-GeForce FX 6800 GT that will 

The Ultimate M5 has only one external 3.5-inch 

bay, but it has a whopping three empty 

5.25-inch bays, which means you can easily add 

extra optical drives or fan control devices. 

This Cooler Master Cavalier 1 chassis doesn’t 

have front-panel ports, but we’ll take its side 

USB 2.0 and FireWire ports. 

handle present and future games. A 19-inch 

Samsung 997 DF CRT monitor and a oneyear 

warranty with 24/7 tech support and 

onsite service complete the package. 

We can’t complain about the system’s 

components for the price, and we’re certainly 

not complaining about its performance. 

The Ultimate M5 scored well in 

all of the benchmarks that we threw at it 

and posted excellent frame rates in both 

Doom 3 and Halo.

Thanks to these drive locks, you won’t need 

screws or even drive runners when you 

install optical drives and hard drives. 

Two 80GB hard drives in a striped array 

provide the system’s storage. 

Despite the massive heatsink/fan combo, 

we can barely hear this system, even when 

it’s under a full load. 

The Ultimate M5 doesn’t boast the origami 

cabling that builders such as Falcon and 

Voodoo provide, but ABS clearly knows how 

to keep cables out of the center of the case. 

Plastic clips stabilize cards and bay covers, 

but they can’t replace old-fashioned screws. 



Model 

Manufacturer 

Price 


Processor 

RAM 

Hard Drive 

Optical Drive 

Connectivity 

Video Card 

Video RAM 

Monitor 


Chassis Type 

System Use 

Extras 

URL 

Benchmarks 

SYSmark 2004 



3D Creation 


2D Creation 






Communication 




Data Analysis 



System Score 

CPU Score 

Memory Score 


HDD Score 





800 x 600 

1,024 x 768 

1,280 x 1,024 

Halo 

800 x 600 

1,024 x 768 

1,280 x 1,024 


ABS 

$2,116 

Windows XP Home 

2.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 

3500+ 

1GB Corsair PC3200 

80GB Maxtor 6 (x 2; RAID 0) 

Sony 16X DVD-ROM, NEC 

ND2510A dual-layer 

DVD±RW 

Integrated Gigabit Ethernet 

eVGA e-GeForce FX 

6800 GT 

256MB 

19-inch Samsung 997 

DF CRT 

Creative Labs Audigy 2 ZS 

7.1, Altec Lansing VS3151 

Cooler Master Cavalier 1 

Entertainment, gaming 

Logitech Premium Desktop 

www.abspc.com 

197 

185 

252 

165 

161 

145 

175 

163 

178 

4312 

4126 

4567 

6525 

5610 

21256 

10857 

3467 

57.89fps 

63.71fps 

59.21fps 

63.2fps 

69fps 

61.3fps 


Maingear X-Cube 2.5 

Maingear’s shoe-box-sized X-Cube 2.5 won’t quite fit into your favorite techie’s 

stocking, but it’ll slide under the tree nicely. SFFs are taking LAN parties by storm 

because they’re smaller than their desktop counterparts but can hold the same 

video cards and processors. 

The affordable X-Cube 2.5 doesn’t have bleeding-edge technology, such as PCI 

Express or DDR2, but it’s no slouch. The box boasts a 2GHz Athlon 64 3200+ 

processor; 512MB of PC3200 DDR RAM; and, surprisingly enough, a 256MB 

X800 Pro graphics card. And thanks to a 6-in-1 media reader and Sony DW-U18A 

Dual Layer DVD±RW, the system can handle just about any media you throw at it. 

We like Maingear’s choices. It put money into critical gaming and office components 

and offset the costs by choosing a modest hard drive (a 120GB IDE drive) and 

relying on the integrated Realtek ALC658 audio codec instead of an add-on card. 

At a penny short of $1,500, the tiny PC makes some sacrifices to squeeze into tight 

budgets, but that’s not to say that Maingear doesn’t send it off with as much care as 

its high-end systems receive. The custom builder runs the X-Cube 2.5 through an 

aggressive 72-hour burn-in program and then “tunes” and benchmarks the system to 

make sure it’s at the top of its game. We laud builders, including ABS, Dell, and 

Falcon, who take the time to work out any kinks before shipping their PCs. Maingear 

also backs up the system with a one-year warranty and lifetime tech support. 


Thanks to several front panel 

doors, you won’t see your 

media reader, audio ports, or 

optical drive until you use 

them. As a result, you don’t 

have to worry about color 

when you upgrade later. 



Model 

Manufacturer 

Price 


Processor 

RAM 

Hard Drive 

Optical Drive 

Connectivity 

Video Card 

Video RAM 

Monitor 


Chassis Type 

System Use 

Extras 

URL 

Benchmarks 

SYSmark 2004 



3D Creation 


2D Creation 






Communication 




Data Analysis 



System Score 

CPU Score 

Memory Score 


HDD Score 





800 x 600 

1,024 x 768 

1,280 x 1,024 

Halo 

800 x 600 

1,024 x 768 

1,280 x 1,024 


Maingear 

$1,499 

Windows XP Home SP2 


512MB Maingear PC3200 

CL2 DDR 

120GB 7,200rpm 8MB cache 

Western Digital IDE 

Sony DW-U18A Dual Layer 

DVD±RW/CD-RW 

Integrated Gigabit LAN 

ATI Radeon X800 Pro 

(Maingear-tuned) 

256MB 

N/A 

Integrated 

Black X-Cube mini chassis 

Entertainment 

6-in-1 media reader, 4-in-1 

thermal heatpipe arctic CPU 

cooling, Logitech Cordless 

MX Duo Keyboard + Mouse 

www.maingear.com 

193 

178 

238 

171 

164 

149 

185 

159 

178 

4518 

4239 

3826 

6610 

4798 

24076 

11045 

3908 

43.44fps 

45.76fps 

42.98fps 

68.2fps 

57.7fps 

43.1fps

Sneaky, sneaky. The optical drive button blends in with the rest 

of the panel. 

We like the 6-in-1 media reader, but you’ll need to swap this out with a 

floppy drive if you upgrade to a SATA hard drive. 

Two front-panel FireWire and two USB ports? Oh my. The front-panel 

goodness also includes an SPDIF port and headset and mic ports. 

Maingear used sheaths and cable ties to make the X-Cube 2.5’s 

insides worthy of a window. 

The X-Cube 2.5 isn’t completely screwless, but features such as this 

plastic latch save you time when you swap out add-on cards. 

Thanks to the heatpipe system, the heatsink doesn’t require its own fan. 

Instead, the fan near the top keeps the system cool. 

You Can Configure, Too 

If none of these systems jump out at you, don’t despair. All 

four manufacturers let you configure the rigs at their Web sites. 

So jump online, tweak to your heart’s content, and then ship 

your customized gift to 131 West Grand . . . er, we mean, to 

your lucky family member. 

by Joshua Gulick 


I 

n the past 12 months, we have seen 

AMD and Intel launch new platforms, 

NVIDIA and ATI release super-fast 

GPUs, DDR2 system memory debut, and 

DDR memory hit much higher clock 

speeds at lower latencies. Sound cards got 

cleaner and quieter, hard drives got bigger 

and faster, and mobos got so many new 

integrated features that it’s now common 

to find multichannel audio, SATA, RAID, 

and dual-GbE controllers on inexpensive 

products. There is so much new, compelling 

hardware out there, and much 

more is on the way. With a slew of new 

technology on the horizon, 2005 is shaping 

up to be more exciting than 2004. 

PC technology never stops advancing, 

so we looked into our crystal ball, consulted 

the oracle, and came up with some predictions 

on will be hot next holiday season. 

And it probably helped that we hammered 

just about every major company for some 

juicy information, as well. 

Processors: AMD & Intel 

Just about every desktop computer 

brought to market in 2005 will likely be 

powered by AMD or Intel. Some SFF systems 

and portable PCs will continue to be 

based on VIA’s Eden and Transmeta’s 

Efficeon CPUs, but 

they don’t perform like Intel’s 

or AMD’s high-end CPUs. 

The early part of the year will see 

the P4 6xx series, based on the Prescott 

2M core with 2MB of on-die L2 cache at 

speeds reaching 3.8GHz, but by the end of 

the second half of 2005, Intel should have 

migrated to dual-core CPU designs. Intel’s 

current plans are to incorporate dual- 

Pentium M cores with 1MB of L2 cache 

and EM64T support onto a single chip 

that will fit into existing LGA775 sockets. 


The chips, code-named Smithfield, are 

rumored to be named x20 (2.8GHz), x30 

(3GHz), and x40 (3.2GHz). At this fall’s 

IDF, Intel showcased a working dual-core 

processor installed in an i915 chipset-based 

mobo, so upgrading to a dual-core chip 

may not require a new platform. Intel’s 

dual-core CPUs should be manufactured 

on its 0.09-micron process, but Intel 

already has plans to move to a 0.065micron 

process in the not-so-distant future. 

AMD will also evolve into dual-core 

designs. In the early part of 2005, AMD 

will move to a 0.09-micron strained SOI 

manufacturing process to produce the 

2.8GHz Athlon 64 FX-57. Then, later 

in the year, it plans to use the same process 

to introduce dual-core CPUs, code-named 

Toledo, that promise performance improvements 

of 30 to 60%. AMD, in cooperation 

with HP, has already showcased 

a four-way, dual-core Opteron server that 

essentially functions as an eight-way 

server. (For more on dual-core CPUs, see 

page 42.) 

Using two PCI-E NVIDIA GeForce 6800 Ultras in 

an SLI configuration offers almost double the 

performance of any single GPU. This technology 

should exist with next-gen GPUs, as well. 

Mobo Madness 

Current chipset roadmaps from Intel, 

VIA, and NVIDIA show their existing platforms 

evolving. The 925XE for Intel’s 

LGA775 platform, with support for faster 

DDR2 memory and a 1,066MHz frontside 

bus, will be common, as will both variants 

of VIA’s K8T890 and the different flavors 

of NVIDIA’s nForce 4. All currently support 

20 to 24 PCI-E lanes, but we expect 

this number to grow. The goal is to have 

true dual-PCI-E x16 slots on mobos to 

offer full bandwidth to each graphics card 

installed in a dual-GPU configuration. 

Current models have two physical PCI-E 

x16 slots with dual-x8 electrical connections, 

or dual physical slots with an x16/x4 

configuration. Future northbridges will 

likely get at least 32 PCI-E lanes with 

southbridges that offer a few more. 

NVIDIA’s nForce 4 already has native support 

for the emerging SATA II standard, 

and every other major chipset manufacturer 

should follow suit. Also expect AGP and 

standard PCI slots to be less common; 

however, they won’t disappear. 

The Pixel Pushers 

3D graphics will get a boost in features 

and performance. NVIDIA’s GPU codenamed 

NV50 and ATI’s R520 are set to 

arrive in the second half of ’05. If history 

is any indication, expect these new GPUs 

to double the performance of this generation 

while adding new features to comply 

with Microsoft’s next itineration of 

DirectX. In casual conversations with 

reps from NVIDIA, we were told that its 

SLI multi-GPU technology will be supported 

in its next-gen products 

and that frame buffers are 

likely to increase up to 

512MB. The NV50’s feature set 

should include some support for features 

part of the next release of DirectX 

and should start incorporating features to 

accelerate Longhorn’s 3D user interface. 

For ATI, the R520 GPU will bring 

Shader Model 3.0 support to ATI-powered 

video cards and will likely feature 

some sort of multi-GPU configuration. 

Comments made by an ATI rep in a 

recent conference call alluded to ATI’s

multi-GPU plans. Some of its next-gen 

high-end cards based on the R520 will 

also feature 512MB frame buffers. 

Matrox, XGI, S3, and others all plan to 

release new parts, but all indicators point to 

NVIDIA and ATI dominating the enthusiast/gamer 

market. PCI-E graphics cards 

will become more common, but AGP cards 

will be available in limited quantities. 

Spinning Platters 

We pinged some manufactures on where 

to expect hard drive capacities to be next 

year and got some interesting information 

from Maxtor. It expects to ship a 500GB 

drive in 2005 but also said that the technical 

challenges of increasing hard drive 

capacities have increased significantly. As a 

result, the areal density growth rate has 

slowed to doubling every 24 to 30 months, 

meaning the capacity per disk will increase 

by approximately 50% each year. 

The new SATA II standard will be 

prevalent and will include NCQ (Native 

Command Queuing) and peak bandwidth 

of 300MBps. NCQ significantly 

enhances a drive’s performance, enabling 

multithreaded performance and allowing 

the drive to reorder and efficiently execute 

up to 32 commands. NCQ and the 

higher bandwidth will increase performance 

by speeding up file copying, app 

loading, and booting up times. By late 

2005, most hard drive makers will have 

native SATA II solutions available. 

Optical drives will also likely somewhat 

increase in speed. CD burners have hit the 

ceiling at about 56X, and until recordable 

DVD media rated for higher speeds catches 

up to available drives, don’t expect any radically 

faster DVD burners. Dual-layer 

DVD burners will likely be the beneficiary 

of most of the speed increases, although 

they won’t be able to burn a full DVD as 

fast as current single-layer drives. 

Memory & More 

Memory and sound card technologies 

will be advancing, as well. Manufactures of 

the relatively new DDR2 memory modules 

used on Intel’s 900 series chipsets will be 

releasing memory capable of running at 

higher clock speeds with lower latencies 

throughout 2005. Most of the DDR2 

Beyond 2006 

With what we know 

about what’s coming 

in ‘05/‘06, we’re prepared to 

make some predictions 

about what’s in store for the 

holiday season in ‘06/‘07. 

Getting specifics from any of 

the major OEMs was difficult, 

but we’ll speculate a bit. 

The shift to dual-core will 

mark a change in how CPUs 

are marketed and produced. 

Marketing won’t be just 

about clock speed. Intel and 

AMD will continue to increase 

CPU frequencies for 

the foreseeable future, but 

they will also incorporate 

more cores onto a single 

die. By late ‘06, there’s a 

good chance that dual-core 

CPUs will be supplanted by 

quad-core CPUs, with four 

cores incorporated into a 

single die. True multithreaded 

apps and OSes will also 

memory available officially supports clock 

speeds of 400 to 667MHz with timings of 

4-4-4-12, but newer products will exceed 

these clock speeds and support tighter 3-3- 

3-8 timings and will hit even lower latencies. 

Standard DDR memory will get 

similar treatment. DDR memory capable 

of running at speeds in excess of 200MHz 

(DDR400) has been available for some 

time, but it usually had to run at higher 

latencies to remain stable. DDR memory 

that supports 2-2-2-5 timings at higher 

clock speeds will become common. 

For audio, Intel’s new High Definition 

Audio puts a lot of pressure on the likes of 

Creative Labs, M-Audio, and Philips to 

produce add-in sound cards with feature 

sets and sound quality that are superior to 

integrated solutions. Getting details on new 

products was tough, but expect addin 

PCI-E x1 sound cards that tout high 

be more prevalent to take 

advantage of the capabilities 

of multicore CPUs. 

3D graphics should have 

a new set of specs to contend 

with, too. If all goes to 

MS’ plan, Longhorn should 

have shipped by late ‘06, 

and with it comes a 3D interface 

and the next generation 

of DirectX, dubbed DirectX 

Next or Windows Graphics 

Foundation, depending on 

who you ask. With the new 

3D interface, every onscreen 

window will be a 3D 

object rendered by the host 

GPU. And DirectX Next 

incorporates a new unified 

shader model that makes 

the syntax and feature set of 

pixel and vertex shaders 

identical. This means that 

hardware that supports 

Shader Model 4.0 will have 

one large pool of shader 

units instead of the separate 

pixel and vertex shader units 

found today. ATI, NVIDIA, 

and all the 3D GPU manufacturers 

around in late ‘06 

will likely have graphics 

processors that accelerate all 

Longhorn and DirectX Next 

features. Pixel fill rates and 

peak memory bandwidth 

will also increase, which will 

increase performance. 

Also, memory modules 

will have gotten faster and 

will be available in higher 

densities, the floppy disk 

drive may finally disappear, 

and hard drives should 

approach 1TB (1,000GB). 

Obviously, two years is a 

lifetime in PC years, so 

these predictions may not 

be spot on come the ‘06/’07 

holiday season. ▲ 

sampling rates, low signal-to-noise ratios, 

and much lower CPU utilization than most 

integrated audio solutions. 

Your Next Dream Machine 

When you take the wrapping off your 

dream machine next year, you’re likely to 

find it’s powered by a dual-core CPU, 

sporting 2GB of low-latency RAM, a 

500GB-plus super-fast SATA II hard drive, 

a next-gen video card with 512MB of 

GDDR3 RAM, and an optical drive capable 

of burning a full, dual-layer DVD in 

just a few minutes. Every aspect of the system 

will be faster and more feature-rich, 

with support for some technologies that 

aren’t yet available to the public. Don’t go 

putting your current rig on eBay just yet, 

though. It’s not quite obsolete. . . . 

by Marco Chiappetta 


Official product name: AbiWord 

Version # previewed: 2.1.8 

Publisher: The AbiSource Community 

Developer and URL: The AbiSource 

Community; www.abisource.com 

ETA: Q4 2004 

Why you should care: Lean, mean, free 

word processing machine. 

Norton AntiVirus may have a lock 

on the commercial antivirus market, 

but for those who can’t 

afford it, the perennial favorite free AV 

option is AVG Anti-Virus. Though AVG is 

available as a commercial product, most 

users go for the free version. 

Historically, AVG’s free version has run 

one version behind the commercial version, 

meaning it has been at version 6 for at least a 

year. Though it had the AV muscle of version 

7, its UI was a little scattered. Not so 

with version 7, which is much more organized. 

Setting a schedule and checking the 

quarantine Vault still takes more clicks than 

with other products; it only takes about half 

as many as the old version. 

L O A D I N G Z O N E 

The Bleeding 

Edge Of Software 

Inside The World Of Betas 

AbiWord 2.1.8 

When it comes to inexpensive 

replacements for Microsoft 

Word, people tend to only 

think of OpenOffice.org, which is a shame. 

At times, the suit feels as cumbersome and 

overweight as Microsoft Office. 

AbiWord is the other free word processor 

in the open-source universe, and it is lean 

and mean. AbiWord’s 4.6MB download 

may surprise you, but make no mistake 

about it: AbiWord has all the word-processing 

goodness you’ll likely need. 

AbiWord’s Windows’ version looks and 

feels like a real Windows app, complete with 

a polished toolbar, UI, and dialog boxes. 

It looks different from Word (buttons are 

larger and more colorful, and menus are 

designed somewhat differently), but you can 

show it to co-workers without them wondering 

if you’re using fully baked software. 

AVG Anti-Virus (Free) 7.0 Build 269 Beta 


AVG does everything the big guys in the 

industry do. A background checker monitors 

downloads and email attachments, and the 

app won’t let you run a virus directly from 

your drive. There’s also a scheduled scanner, 

update downloader, and emergency disc/ 

diskette creator to perform a scan if viruses 

overrun your computer and you can’t boot. 

The beta is polished and works well, 

though the emergency diskettes missed a few 

test bugs that the main Windows scanner 

found immediately. Also, if you handle 

viruses for a living, turning off the scanner 

to copy and dissect files doesn’t really work. 

Short of disabling the app, it’s always on. ▲ 

by Warren Ernst 

AbiWord opens and saves Word files and 

conversions work extremely well. For students, 

there are headers and footers, footnotes 

and endnotes, and word count. For 

professional writers, there are full revision 

histories, version-control commands, and a 

table of contents feature set. Business users 

will appreciate full table creation and editing 

abilities and automatic numbering and bulleting. 

These commands aren’t buried deep 

in confusing dialog boxes or pop-up menus 

like some word processors, either. 

Some features are lacking. Despite extensive 

tries, I couldn’t make AbiWord’s thesaurus 

plug-in work. There’s no grammar 

checker and the HTML help system isn’t 

searchable. However, AbiWord is worth a 

look if you can’t stomach buying Word, 

OpenOffice.org’s hardware requirements, or 

WordPerfect’s command structure. ▲ 

Official product name: AVG Anti-Virus (Free) 

Version # previewed: 7.0 Build 269 Beta 

Publisher: Grisoft, s.r.o. 

Developer and URL: Grisoft, s.r.o.; 

free.grisoft.com/freeweb.php 

ETA: Q4 2004 

Why you should care: Perhaps the best 

alternative to Norton AntiVirus, and it’s free. 

Send Us Your Betas: Know of software in the beta stage that’s deserving of some attention? Send your prospects 

to bleedingedge@cpumag.com. For more betas, subscribers can go to www.cpumag.com/cpunov04/betas.

3DMark05 

Upgrades 

This latest suite is a substantial update, featuring 

a new engine and animation routines, 

updated shaders and DirectX 9 effects, and 

some benchmarking scenes that contain up to 

1 million polygons per screen. 

Get it at: www.futuremark.com 

ACDSee 7 

Upgrades for this venerable image viewer 

include faster processing, side-by-side image 

comparison, exposure correction, and slideshow 

creation for PDF and Flash. 

Get it at: www.acdsystems.com 

AMD64 Clock Utility 1.1 

For real-time clock-frequency monitoring 

and tweaking, this clock utility now 

features new configuration options and 

CPU usage determination. 

Get it at: cpu.rightmark.org 

The Bat! 3.0.1 

This version of the email-client cult fave 

adds a Mail Chat feature to do IM-style 

messaging through your email servers, a new 

interface for alternative glyph sets, a flow 

chart front end to manage message filtering, 

and a Virtual Folder tool to organize messages 

from the database more efficiently. 

Get it at: www.ritlabs.com 

Creative Nomad Explorer 3.01.10 

For Zen audio players, the Explorer app 

manages music tracks on your player via 

Windows Explorer, letting you drag and 

drop files to and from the player, create 

playlists, and more. 

Get it at: www.creative.com 

S O F T W A R E ▲ U P G R A D E S 

Major program updates abound this month as 3DMark, ACDSee, The 

Bat!, and Tweak XP all grow one version older. For PowerPC lovers, 

Yellow Dog Linux may satisfy your need for an alternative OS. 


Fraps 2.3.2 

Recent updates have added compatibility 

with Windows XP SP2, support for capturing 

screens in PNG and JPEG formats, and 

upgrades to the 256-color capture engine 

for better visual quality in smaller file sizes. 

Get it at: www.fraps.com 

Fresh UI 7.20 

This Windows UI tweaker gets new 

options for hiding aspects of the Start menu 

and Windows Security section. The changes 

join recent updates that added support for 

Mozilla Firefox 1.0. 

Get it at: www.freshdiagnose.com 

HyperSnap DX 5.61.00 

In addition to fixing small bugs and 

annoyances, this version of the image-capture 

utility now has improved FTP uploading. 

Get it at: www.hyperionics.com 

Kerio Personal Firewall 4.1.1 

The firewall app’s latest version fixes small 

bugs involving compatibility with some 

applications and software kernel drivers. 

Get it at: www.kerio.com 

Maxthon 1.1.039 

Based on IE, Maxthon changed its name 

from MyIE2 but has kept its tabbed browsing, 

mouse gestures, and more. The upgrade 

improves startup speed and fixes bugs related 

to closing some pages and switching 

interface languages. 

Get it at: www.maxthon.com 

Mozilla 1.8 Alpha 4 

The original Mozilla browser now has 

better pop-up blocking and image resizing 

and easier NTLM authentication. The 

Linux version now includes the spell checker 

by default. 

Get it at: www.mozilla.org 

PlexTools 2.17 

This utility supports Plextor’s PX-716A 

and PX-716UF, DVD+R DL writing, and 

more functionality for Q-Check drive testing. 

Get it at: www.plextools.com 

TweakXP 4.0 

This major upgrade for the Windows 

tweaker includes a new adjustment for the 

prefetch feature in WinXP, automated tuning 

for your system and background services, 

bandwidth and port monitors, and full compatibility 

for the SP1/SP2 WinXP upgrades. 

Get it at: www.totalidea.com 

WindowBlinds 4.4 

This system for skinning WinXP with 

visual themes gets deeper integration with the 

OS to improve performance up to 40%. 

Get it at: www.stardock.com 

Yellow Dog Linux 4.0 

Built on the Fedora Core 2, this Linux 

package for PowerPCs includes KDE 3.3 and 

GNOME 2.6.0 desktops, plus OpenOffice- 

.org, Rhythmbox, Mozilla, and more. 

Get it at: www.terrasoftsolutions.com 

Driver Bay 

Creative Audigy 2/ZX 1.84.50 

This patch combines previous EAX 4.0 

Advanced HD driver patches with a minor fix 

involving system stalls when disconnecting a 

modem cable. 

Get it at: www.creative.com 

nForce 5.10 

For nForce and nForce 2/3 mobos, these 

WHQL-certified drivers have fixes and 

improvements in RAID implementation and 

audio performance in games and apps. 

Get it at: www.nvidia.com 

Omega Catalyst 2.5.90 

These tweaked drivers for ATI Radeon 

cards include the usual batch of optimizations. 

Get it at: www.omegadrivers.net 

by Steve Smith

The Fix Is In 

A Focus On Photo-Imaging Editors 

Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0 

$99 

Adobe 

www.adobe.com 

The new century brought along 

with it some major changes in 

photography, some of which 

have helped make even the worst photographer 

feel more relaxed taking images. 

Specifically, the introduction of digital 

photography (commensurate with the 

elimination of film and development 

costs) has resulted in a proliferation of 

photo-editing applications that let you 

not only fine-tune your shots, but also 

add filters to your images and incorporate 

your photos into all kinds of projects. 

For this roundup review, I gathered a 

group of apps that fall into an assortment 

of price points, various levels of user experience, 

and platforms. The apps reviewed 

include Adobe Photoshop Elements 3.0, 

Corel Painter IX, Digital Light & Color 

Picture Window Pro 3.5, Jasc Paint Shop 

Pro 9 (shortly before we went to press, 

Corel purchased Jasc Software), Lemke Soft 


GraphicConverter X 5.2.3, Roxio Photo- 

Suite Platinum 7, The GIMP, and Ulead 

PhotoImpact 10. 

Although there is a wide range of 

photo-editing applications available for 

Linux and Mac OS X, I focused my 

testing primarily on applications that are 

geared toward Windows users. However, 

to provide a taste of what's available on 

other platforms, I also looked at Graphic- 

Converter, a shareware application, and 

The GIMP (GNU Image Manipulation 

Program), which is a free, open-source 

Corel Painter IX 

$399, download; $299, upgrade 

Corel 

www.corel.com 

app. I skipped reviewing Adobe Photoshop 

because it's essentially a professional 

tool that carries with it a price tag 

(around $650) that's beyond the budget 

of most digital photographers. 

For testing, I focused on one of the 

most common questions amateur photographers 

ask first: How do I fix those 

photographs that need fixed? I centered 

on some easier photo tasks, such as 

sharpening images and removing redeye, 

as well as more advanced digitalediting 

tasks, such as adjusting curves 

and levels or what old darkroom types 

would call burning and dodging. 

To compare the different applications, 

I created a directory of 200 photographs, 

selecting various images among those to 

test each program's editing tools and 

other features. The two grading criteria 

I looked most closely at were the output 

quality of an image and the ease of use 

of a program. Like many digital camera 

users, I don't always have the time or 

patience to learn what every last tool in 

a program does. Instead, I want the tools 

to be intuitive and obvious. 

I took all testing images with a Nikon 

D100 professional digital camera, saving 


them as Large/Fine/JPEG files, which 

produced individual images from 3 to 

4MB in size. I installed the programs on 

a 2.8GHz Intel Celeron system with 

512MB of RAM running Windows XP 

Pro SP2 and viewed the images on a 

Sony 18-inch LCD. I broke my testing 

into several categories, comparing the 

apps within each category. 

Browsing Photo Libraries 

There are numerous ways you can 

browse your photo libraries, and the strategy 

you choose will become even more 

important as your library grows in size. 

Many photographers will create an importdate 

folder and then just drop everything in 

that. But if you're like many users, you will 

want things more organized. I stored my 

test photos by date and event/location, liberally 

using subfolders. Thus, a photograph 

could be stored in MyPictures/2004/ 

October/Glenwood-Springs, for example. 

All the programs I tested include a 

folder-browsing mechanism that displays 

thumbnails of your photos. This makes 

it quite easy to peruse your virtual photo 

albums and identify specific images in 

your work queue that you want to 

improve. All the apps also let me change 

the size of the thumbnails (a critical 

capability), although some of the apps, 

notably Photoshop Elements, have a simple 

thumbnail size slider that makes the 

thumbnails larger or smaller. 

Other apps, such as Paint Shop Pro, 

hide thumbnail size adjustments in a 

Preferences pane. Picture Window Pro 

includes the date of the photograph with 

the thumbnail, along with the file name 

and size, which is a nice touch. Photo- 

Impact 10 separates the browsing function 

into two programs, Photo Explorer to 

browse and PhotoImpact to edit. 

Basic Photo Editing 

Once you have selected a photograph 

you want to edit, perhaps the most common 

transformation that's required is 

sharpening it. There are a couple of ways 

to do this. Most pros use a technique 

confusingly named unsharpen mask 

rather than using any explicit sharpening 

tools. (It's an algorithm thing.) 



Digital Light & Color 

Picture Window Pro 3.5 

$89.99 

Digital Light & Color 

www.dl-c.com 

Jasc Paint Shop Pro 9 

$129 

Corel 

www.jasc.com 

Lemke Soft GraphicConverter X 

$30 (shareware) 

Lemke Soft 

www.lemkesoft.com 

Paint Shop Pro offers an automatic 

Sharpen photo-fix capability and Clarify, 

which offers five levels of sharpening; I 

would have liked more control over the 

end result, however. Sharpen just did its 

thing without any adjustments, while 

Clarify both sharpened and changed the 

color profile subtly, which was a rather 

surprising result. 

Picture Window Pro offers a variety of 

sharpening and unsharpening capabilities, 

but the program is hampered by a very 

confusing interface. Furthermore, the 

windows within the Picture Window Pro 

UI can be distracting, sometimes resizing, 

moving, and otherwise changing when 

you select specific functions. 

Roxio's PhotoSuite 7 has a different 

approach to photo editing, which offers 

quite a lot of capability within an elegant 

interface. The program's default view of a 

photograph offers Common Edit Features, 

which include PhotoDoctor, Crop, Rotate, 

Red Eye, Add, Edit Text, and the all 

important Show All Features. Click Show 

All Features, and you are presented with a 

dozen categories of image-editing options, 

including Overall Quality, which includes 

Exposure, Saturation, Sharpness, Tint, and 

Brightness & Contrast. Selecting Sharpness, 

for example, reveals three advanced 

photo settings (Amount, Radius, and 

Threshold) that make it easy to specify the 

exact sharpness you want per image. 

Photoshop Elements requires that you 

switch from Organizer, where you browse 

for image, to the Editor, wherein you can 

modify and adjust images. Once you're in 

Editor, the UI is quite reminiscent of 

Photoshop, with dozens of buttons, toolbars, 

and many other complex (and potentially 

confusing) options. Mitigating this 

somewhat is the How To window, which 

offers tips on common editing tasks, and 

the Quick Fix and Standard Edit tabs, 

which are almost lost in the clutter of the 

interface. Selecting Filter, Sharpen, and 

Unsharp Mask, for example, brings up a 

dialog box with the Amount, Radius, and 

Threshold options, allowing for quick and 

accurate sharpening. 

PhotoImpact also offers a feature-rich 

interface with similar tools, some of which 

may confuse new users. However, the Easy

Palette offers shortcuts to a wide variety 

of common tasks. You'll find Unsharpen 

Mask by clicking Photo and Sharpen. The 

default window displays a palette of nine 

thumbnails of your image that have been 

sharpened to different levels. At this 

thumbnail size, though, it's often difficult 

to see how much the image has actually 

been sharpened. Clicking Options does 

reveal the more useful Amount, Radius, 

and Threshold options. In addition, this 

tool also shows an interesting split view as 

an alternative to the more common dualimage 

view that shows the current image 

and the current image with the filter 

applied. Generally, PhotoImpact seemed 

to run a bit sluggish compared to the other 

applications, so even switching from the 

nine thumbnail samples to the other 

options noticeably took a few seconds. 

Fixing Red-Eye 

Red-eye is one of the most common 

problem areas when taking images. It's 

caused when the back of a subject's eyes 

reflects the flash's light back to the camera. 

The darker the environment, the more 

likely red-eye will occur. Some cameras can 

prestrobe, which dilates the subject's pupil 

sufficiently to minimize red-eye. If you 

have an image with red-eye, though, it can 

make an otherwise good photo bad. As a 

result nearly all photo-editing applications 

have red-eye removal capabilities. All pretty 

much work automatically or by you 

identifying the red-eye areas and pulling 

the red completely out of the image. 

Some applications, such as Paint Shop 

Pro, can produce some very odd and disturbing 

results with artificially sharp-colored 

irises, oddly directed views, and more. With 

Paint Shop Pro, I had to feather the results 

significantly and darken the gray iris color 

(you select the iris color from a pop-up 

menu) to achieve acceptable results. Picture 

Window Pro had considerably more primitive 

tools, and even finding the red-eye 

repair feature was tricky. I had to click the 

toolbox and select Red Eye. At that point I 

was presented a dialog box offering a radius 

slider and pupil and highlight color options, 

along with an unimplemented OPT button 

to bring up optional settings for this almost 

useless filter. When you finally figure out 


Roxio PhotoSuite Platinum 7 

$49.95 

Roxio 

www.roxio.com 

The GIMP 

Free 

The GIMP 

www.gimp.org 

Ulead PhotoImpact 10 

$89.99 

Ulead 

www.ulead.com 

how to use it, you end up with a black circle 

tool with no ability to feather or soften the 

edge of the artificial pupil, no ability to 

change the shape to match the orientation 

of the eye, and no ability to move the highlight 

from dead-center in the pupil. 

By contrast, PhotoSuite 7's Red Eye Auto 

Fix feature worked like magic, removing the 

red-eye glare in my sample photograph without 

otherwise altering any characteristic of 

the photograph. Photoshop Elements Editor 

was almost as easy. I just chose How To, 

Fixing Your Photos, and Using The Red Eye 

Removal Tool. It was then simply a matter 

of clicking the center of a red pupil to see it 

instantly fixed. 

PhotoImpact has a confusing rectangular 

selection tool in its red-eye removal capability, 

but a little experimentation showed that 

only the red (or yellow or green) in the 

selected area was adjusted. I opted for a redeye 

removal level of 75 on the 1 to 100 

scale (the default is 50), but I still had to 

select the pupil twice before I got the 

desired results. When the tool finished, 

though, the results were quite acceptable. 

Fixing Color, Contrast & Exposure 

I used each app to fix an image that I 

took purposely at the incorrect exposure, 

which is something that happens as commonly 

with digital cameras as with traditional 

film cameras. The big advantage 

with digital imaging, though, is that you 

can typically use a camera or image editor 

to view a graph of how the colors and 

blacks are distributed across the color 

spectrum and apply small tweaks to dramatically 

improve images. What you don't 

want to do, though, is just tweak the 

brightness and contrast because they will 

change much more than is necessary when 

compared to adjusting curves and levels. 

Photoshop Elements offered some surprisingly 

clunky tools for this, which you'll 

find by clicking Adjust Lighting and 

Shadows/Highlights. Using a set of three 

sliders (ranging from 0 to 100%) to make 

adjustments in Lighten Shadows, Darken 

Highlights, and Midtone Contrast, it was 

difficult not to end up with a blocky artificial 

image after fixing an overexposed photograph. 

Using Enhance, Adjust Lighting, 

and Levels offered better control and 


produced better results by just sliding the 

top and bottom markers to match the 

actual color usage of the image. 

PhotoImpact's Enhance Lighting feature 

offered poor adjustment capabilities, producing 

too little improvement and a tendency 

to flatten images rather than bring 

out the details. (This is a typical characteristic 

of contrast/brightness adjustments in 

many apps.) The tools found by clicking 

Photo, Auto Process, and Levels did a good 

job, however, as I was able to enter the 

Levels editor and tweak things further. 

Nonetheless, for such a common problem, 

the default fix wasn't particularly acceptable. 

PhotoSuite's auto-fix Exposure tool did 

a good job of improving the image, adjusting 

the levels sufficiently to bring out much 

of the detail in the image without going too 

far and making it blocky. I particularly like 

that the app makes it easy to back off from 

the auto fix and adjust things individually. 

The program has sliders for adjusting dark 

areas, midtones, and bright areas on a range 

from 0 to 255 for the dark and light areas 

and 0.10 to 10.0 for midtones. 

Picture Window Pro offered the most 

confusing exposure fixes of all the applications, 

with the Darken tool offering adjustments 

to Radius, Transparency, Softness, 

and Spacing. None of these seemed directly 

related to the modifications I was after. 

Selecting Transformation, Gray, Levels, 

and Curves got me to a point where I 

could fix the image, but it's hard to understand 

how I should adjust a color image by 

selecting an option from the Gray menu. 

Paint Shop Pro offered good results 

with its Automatic Contrast Enhancement, 

and I really liked that I could choose 

between a lighter, neutral, or darker bias; 

normal or mild strength; and flat, natural, 

or bold appearance. The Neutral, Normal, 

and Natural options did a very nice job of 

fixing my image, although it wasn't until 

after some experimentation that I realized 

that the Auto Proof option gave me the 

ability to see how the adjustments affected 

the entire image, not just the thumbnail. 

Artistic Results 

One thing that makes digital images 

particularly interesting is the ability to 

apply artistic filters to them to transform 



pretty good pictures into (hopefully) nice 

artwork. Paint Shop Pro, for example, 

offers a slick Effect Browser that lets you 

preview hundreds of available transformations. 

If you want to use a photograph as 

the basis of an art project by making further 

changes to it, however, all the applications 

I reviewed pale in comparison to 

Corel Painter. (Considering its hefty 

price, this isn't surprising.) I used it to 

apply a Woodcut transformation to a 

photograph with particularly interesting 

visual results. 

Graphic Converter offers users a tremendous 

amount of bang for the buck, particularly 

given that it's shareware. What the 

program lacks in having a specific photoediting 

menu, it makes up for by having 

available almost all of the transformations 

and changes mentioned previously. 

One of the best applications in terms of 

having a good assortment of artistic tools 

for editing graphics is The GIMP, an opensource, 

X Window System-based program. 

The GIMP has an astonishing amount of 

power that makes it comparable to Adobe 

Photoshop. However, just like Photoshop, 

The GIMP is quite complex and can take 

quite awhile to master its assortment of 

tools and to perform even the most basic 

tasks. Conversely, the program is free. 

The Battle For Photo Ownership 

One thing that drives 

many digital photographers 

crazy about 

photo-editing software is 

the battle for ownership 

that ensues among various 

applications for your 

images after you insert a 

CompactFlash card in 

your system or into a 

card reader connected to 

your system. Within seconds 

in my testing, I had 

Ulead AutoDetector and 

Windows XP asking me 

what I wanted to do with 

the new USB device, and 

Adobe Photo Download 

just sucked all the 

images off the card into 

its memory with nary a 

prompt. Fortunately, the 

other applications were 

better behaved and did 

not join the digital scuffle. 

Once my images 

were tamed, Adobe 

Photo Download proved 

to be a simple and helpful 

application that made 

That's A Shoot 

With a narrow focus of digital photo 

editing, my favorite app among these is 

Roxio PhotoSuite. It has a good combination 

of excellent automatic fixes and an 

exceptionally well-designed UI. If all apps 

were this attractive, using Windows would 

be a very different experience. PhotoSuite is 

the least expensive of the commercial apps 

here, making it a great deal. 

Adobe Photoshop Elements is a close 

runner-up, but its Photoshop roots will 

still prove complex and confusing for 

novice photographers. Paint Shop Pro is 

another excellent choice, particularly if 

you also want a powerful general-purpose 

graphics editor. Ulead's PhotoImpact 

suite could use tighter integration to offer 

a more seamless user experience. For the 

Mac, Picture Window Pro has many fans 

in the professional photography world, 

but its capabilities can come across as 

mediocre, and the user interface was 

downright abysmal. ▲ 

by Dave Taylor 

downloading and organizing 

images on my 

computer a snap. 

However, its default of 

putting pictures in a My 

Pictures/Adobe/Digital 

Camera Photos folder 

was a bit too possessive 

for my liking. ▲

Money vs. Quicken 

Managing Your Finances In 2005 

Money 2005 Small Business 

$89.95 (before $30 rebate) 

Microsoft 

www.microsoft.com 

Tax season approaches. If you've 

managed to neglect your financial 

records up to now, well, good 

luck. For the rest of you, here’s a look at 

the 2005 versions of Money and Quicken. 

Microsoft Money 2005 Small Business 

Don't let the graphics-heavy, WinXPlike 

UI fool you: Money 2005 hasn't been 

dummied down. There's actually considerably 

more functionality in this version than 

in years past, but MS has segregated the 

Money UI into Essential and Advanced 

views. Money 2005 excels in keeping things 

simple yet useful for those who can't stand 

the idea of personal accounting, an advance 

probably worth the purchase price alone. 

In previous versions of these accounting 

titles, tracking spending in certain categories 

over time entailed digging through 

menus, figuring out how to execute the 

proper report, and then deciphering it. 

Money now offers a Favorite Categories 

feature. You select which categories need 

special attention, and Money presents an 


S O F T W A R E ▲ R E V I E W S 

at-a-glance daily summary of spending in 

those areas to let you know if you need to 

modify expenditures to stay within budget. 

MS also did an excellent job with automatic 

category detection. Two years ago 

Money gave us trouble with one family 

member entering Starbucks as Dining Out 

and another (less assiduous) family member 

leaving the category as Miscellaneous or 

simply blank. Money 2005 defaults to linking 

Starbucks with Dining Out. Similar 

default associations are included. 

All the traditional features are still here. 

Income and Spending Analysis and Projections 

are easy to navigate. You get plenty 

of calculators for everything from debt 

control to retirement planning. The My 

Money home page is granularly customizable, 

and bill tracking and reminders are 

easy to create and use. Perks include a free 

credit report from Experian, a year of credit 

monitoring, a free tax preparation, and efiling 

via H&R Block. You can also work 

with Money remotely by logging in to the 

MSN Money site. You can view Account 

and Register data, pay bills, and synch Web 

transactions back to Money on your Desktop. 

MS also throws in a free year of online 

payroll from PayCycle. 

Some features remain functional, if 

underwhelming. The investment tools are 

fair, but new features, such as pop-up alerts 

and stock split tracking, still don't offer a 

persuasive advantage over what online brokerages 

deliver free. Money now supports 

up to eight users with unique .NET login 

identities, but the lack of admin controls is 

dissatisfying. For example, you might want 

to give your teenager access to view data 

but not enter or transfer it. 

The ads in Money 2005 are noticeable 

but not obnoxious. And whereas a .NET 

account used to be optional, membership is 

now all but mandatory. As in older versions, 

coordination with online banking 

accounts remains problematic. With more 

than 5,000 institutions in its database, 

Money 2005's ability to grab your account 

data from banks and investment houses is 

excellent. Unfortunately, the enhanced 

auto-categorization can be hit and miss. My 

transfers from one account to another, for 

example, registered as credit card payment 

transfers, and a transaction at the OshKosh 

factory outlet was classified as Automobile/ 

Maintenance. You can edit these, but 

Money apparently lacks an easy way to 

train its categorization engine. 

Money 2005 Small Business includes an 

effective invoicing and receivables module 

that benefits from an improved tab-style 

UI. It doesn't challenge the likes of Quick- 

Books for handling inventory, and there 

doesn't appear to be a quote-to-sale process,

Quicken 2005 Premier 

Home & Business 

$89.95 (before $20 rebate) 

Intuit 

www.quicken.com 

but Money does a serviceable job for those 

hawking simple goods and services. One 

flaw that remains is a requirement to only 

send invoices as plain-text files, thus negating 

the attractive benefits of the invoice 

designer. Why MS won't convert invoices 

to PDF or Word formats mystifies us. 

Minor detractions aside, this is a worthy 

incremental upgrade and one that will offer 

excellent value to individuals, families, and 

home-operated businesses. 

Intuit Quicken 2005 Premier 

Home & Business 

Intuit could take a few cosmetics lessons 

from MS, starting with the setup wizard. 

Like Quicken's UI, in general, Intuit's 

setup is more text-heavy than its rival and 

involves more steps despite being more 

streamlined from prior versions. Whereas 

Money prompts you to select your institution 

from a list and supply your online 

login and password, Quicken offers a list 

but then opens two new windows, one with 

instructions and one with the institution's 

login screen. I also don’t like Intuit planting 

a signup option for its credit card in the 

midst of this, making it almost seem like 

part of the Quicken setup process. 

I prefer a tabbed UI to Intuit's account 

bar that runs down the left of the screen, 

but at least Intuit now lets you hide the bar. 

Other drawbacks are more noticeable, 


including Intuit withdrawing support for 

QIF files to help urge users into OFX 

(Open Financial Exchange). The problem 

is that some institutions aren't on the Intuit 

bandwagon and only provide downloads in 

QIF, so check with your institution first. 

Quicken errs on the side of silence when 

it doesn't know what category to put 

downloaded transactions in, but items such 

as Starbucks or Shell Oil should be obvious. 

An entry for NW Natural Gas (the 

utility) was incorrectly categorized as 

Auto/Fuel. The good news is that Quicken 

2005 learns well. Just have to go to the registry 

after a data download, click the name 

of a payee, and type the nickname you 

want for that entity. From there all subsequent 

downloads from that payee will bear 

the nickname and category you designate, 

meaning you can rely more on payee namebased 

reports than just category-based ones. 

If you can forgive Intuit's clunky interface 

that's plagued with plenty of scrolling 

through long screens, there's actually a lot 

of good functionality here (most of which 

exists in the 2004 version). For serious 

home-business users, Quicken 2005 beats 

Money. Intuit lets you track more; report 

more; create client estimates that can 

change to invoices; and, best, email invoices 

in plain text or HTML formats. (Thankfully, 

Quicken 2005 lets you send these 

through your PC's primary mail client, not 

Intuit's immensely frustrating and unnecessary 

in-house service in QuickBooks.) 

Quicken's investment tools and educational 

content are a pinch better than 

Money's, although novices will likely find 

Money's layout more engaging. I applaud 

Intuit for toning down the ads in its application, 

although Quicken lacks the handful 

of freebies Microsoft offers. My favorite 

new addition to 2005 occurs in the Checking 

registers. You can now not only tack 

lengthy notes onto transactions but also flag 

them and apply different colors to help 

with organization. Tracking and scheduling 

payments is much improved in Quicken 

2005, and an added ability to filter categories 

can prove a handy time-saver. 

In general, Quicken 2005's advantages 

are subtle and grow on you. For example, 

in previous versions, if a register transaction's 

category wasn't the same as its prior 

instance (say, a Wal-Mart entry for Household 

rather than the prior Wal-Mart entry 

for Groceries), the user would have to scroll 

through the entire category list to find the 

right listing. In 2005 Quicken restructures 

the category pull-down, placing the most 

commonly used items at the top. Similarly, 

instead of just showing which bills are slated 

for payment on the calendar, Quicken 

2005's listings place check marks next to 

those confirmed (via online synching) 

as being paid. This seems like a small point, 

but it can be the difference between 

smooth sailing and a late fee. 

How To Spend Your $ 

I give the nod to Intuit on having more 

functionality than Money, even though 

Intuit exhibits less innovation than MS 

this year. However, in this product category, 

simplicity is paramount because 

multiple household members tend to use 

this app, not just the resident geek. For 

serious home accountants, I recommend 

Quicken. For widest appeal and best 

value, Money wins. ▲ 



PowerDesk Pro 6 

$49.99 

VCO M 

www.v-com.com 

StuffIt Deluxe 8.5 

$39.99 

Allume Systems 

www.stuffit.com 



VCOM PowerDesk Pro 6 

Fifty bucks seems steep for a file-management 

utility that’s primary feature is displaying 

the contents of two Windows folders 

side-by-side—a glorified Windows Explorer if 

I’m right. But if that’s all PowerDesk Pro was, 

this would be a short review. PowerDesk Pro 

offers a grab bag of utilities that make everyday 

computing tasks easier, including synchronizing 

folders, creating and editing play lists 

(M3U or PLS format), and editing ID3 tags. 

Some tools work better than others. File 

Finder, a substitute for Windows’ Search, is a 

bit of a wash. Size Manager, however, is one 

of the best tools I’ve used to track down space 

wasters. It displays visual graphs of a given 

folder’s size, and if there’s a huge file hidden 

many subfolders down, it makes quick work of 

finding it in a few clicks. There are times when 

Archive Manager, which points out differences 

in content between two files, would be incredibly 

useful. I’m not as sure I need the ability to 

color code my folders, but PowerDesk can do 

that, too. 

There are as many cases, however, where these 

tools are already available on your PC. I can use 

Windows Media Player or iTunes to edit ID3 

tags. Windows XP can unpack compressed files, 

and WinXP Pro can create Zip archives. Win- 

XP’s photo-viewing tools arguably work well, 

and dedicated photo apps work faster and 

smoother than PowerDesk’s all-in-one approach. 

PowerDesk installs a giant stack of toolbars at 

the top of every folder and puts “PowerDesk” at 

the head of folder names. Ever try to decipher 

which six folders you need to click on the 

Taskbar when they all show “PowerD”? Fortunately, 

you can uncheck the options. 

Overall, PowerDesk offers a strangely compelling 

collection of tools beyond simply replacing 

Windows Explorer. After inspecting some 

major competitors, such as ExplorerPlus 6.1, this 

seems typical for the genre. Would I drop $50 on 

PowerDesk? I doubt it. But this may be more 

because I’ve already figured out how to do many 

things PowerDesk makes painless. VCOM offers 

a free download well worth checking out. ▲ 

Allume Systems StuffIt Deluxe 8.5 

A 

long time ago, I downloaded WinRAR; 

it ruled, and I haven’t used WinZip 

since. Now I’m here to pass along similar 

advice: WinRAR is the total geek tool, but 

StuffIt Deluxe 8.5 rules. 

StuffIt Deluxe 8.5’s most notable new feature 

is an ability to schedule automatic backups. 

Built-in wizards make scheduling archives 

fairly painless, even when adding files based on 

when they were made. If you don’t want to 

store files locally, you can have them automatically 

sent to an FTP server or out over email. 

This version also offers integration with Microsoft 

Office 2003. 

As in previous versions, StuffIt Deluxe offers 

512-bit encryption and creates self-executable 

archives for no additional charge. It also includes 

StuffIt Express, which gives Deluxe the ability 

create drop-down boxes, or icons on the Desktop 

that automate custom sets of functions. 

Think of dragging photos to a Desktop icon and 

having them automatically archived and emailed 

to everyone on a list or automatically FTPing 

the code you’re working on to a fileserver. 

by Patrick Norton 

StuffIt’s annoying feature is that when viewing 

an archive, you can’t simply drag and drop a file 

to the Desktop for expansion. You have to rightclick 

it and select Extract To Desktop. 

I compared StuffIt to WinRAR and WinZip 

in terms of archive sizes and speed using all 

three with their out-of-the-box standard settings. 

WinRAR had a decided advantage in 

working with highly compressible files, reducing 

27.8MB of text files to a file less than 

6MB. That’s more than half a megabyte smaller 

than StuffIt or WinZip did, while taking a 

few seconds longer. On a mixed group of 

mostly JPG and MP3 files, the final archive 

sizes were almost identical. WinRAR took five 

times as long as WinZip or StuffIt Deluxe. 

WinXP Pro has the built-in ability to create 

compressed archives, but Home doesn’t. And 

WinXP Pro can’t do what StuffIt Deluxe does. 

If you’ve been using the nagware versions of 

WinRAR or WinZip, try StuffIt Deluxe. Buy it 

if you like it. If you don’t, it’s time to pay up 

for WinRAR or WinZip so they can afford to 

catch up to StuffIt Deluxe. ▲

[rot13]: Puevf Cvevyyb 

qrpvqrq gb jevgr guvf 

zbagu’f olyvar va ebg13. 

Jr’er abg fher jul, 

rknpgyl—ohg vs nal bs lbh 

gnxr gur gvzr gb genafyngr 

vg, gura lbh fubhyq 

pbafvqre lbhefrys na ryvgr 

trrx! Ur jnf nobhg gb 

hhrapbqr vg, ohg jr 

oryvrirq gung cnegvphyne 

zrgubq jbhyq bireybnq bhe 

cntr ynlbhg flfgrz. Bs pbhefr, 

vs ur jnagrq gb or erny 

trrxl, Puevf pbhyq unir 

lRap’rq guvf cnentencu. 

Abarguryrff, vs lbh jnaan 

ernq nobhg gur jnpxl zvfnqiragherf 

bs guvf thl, ivfvg 

obgu ybpxretabzr.pbz naq 

puevf.cvevyyb.pbz. Jnfa’g 

guvf sha? 

Which translates to: Chris Pirillo decided 

to write this month’s byline in rot13. 

We’re not sure why, exactly—but if any of 

you take the time to translate it, then you 

should consider yourself an elite geek! He 

was about to uuencode it, but we believed 

that particular method would overload our 

page layout system. Of course, if he wanted 

to be real geeky, Chris could have yEnc’ed 

this paragraph. Nonetheless, if you wanna 

read about the wacky misadventures of 

this guy, visit both lockergnome.com and 

chris.pirillo.com. Wasn’t this fun? 

Dialogue Box by Chris Pirillo 

ID34U2C 

Pop quiz: Have you ever found yourself 

driving down the road listening to the 

radio when your favorite song comes on? 

You panic trying to figure out the band’s name 

that performs the rockin’ tune. Without any real 

thought, you ask everyone in the car to quiet down 

with the Blind Faith that the D.J. might name the 

artist as the song comes to a close. In its infinite 

wisdom, the radio station either jumps right over 

to a commercial or simply pauses for brief station 

identification. This is the land of confusion! 

Those of us lucky enough to partake in the MP3 

player experience are spared from this kind of annoyance. 

Assuming you buy your music “legally” from 

legitimate download sources, you may have noticed 

that both your PC-based media player and hardware 

MP3 player will display the 

name of the song, along with 

other important information, 

thus preventing the frustration 

that stems from not knowing 

the name of a great song. And 

we’ve all been through the 

desert on a song with no name. 

After all, this is merely an 

audio file and has no ability to 

retain or display such data, 

right? Actually, the MP3 audio 

format does offer this ability, 

thanks to a little something 

called the ID3 tag. Here’s the part where you are 

supposed to say, “Ooooooh” and “aaaaaaah.” 

Remember that it’s not unusual to be loved by anyone 

. . . I mean, to see ID3 tags that lack some of the 

data that would be helpful in indexing or accessing 

at a future time. This is the most common problem 

with music that was “borrowed” (or pirated off a filesharing 

network). It is my understanding that people 

who upload music illegally often don’t take time to 

enter much more than a song name with the band 

attached. Then again, what do you expect from people 

that choose to Ballmer their music? Do they have 

too much *clap, clap* time on their hands? 

Generally speaking, the six most common ID3 

tags are Title, Artist, Album, Year, Comment, and 

Genre. For most people this is plenty. All of their 

wants and desires are covered with the data that 

ID3v1 provides. ID3v2, on the other hand, is quite a 

bit different. In addition to being a lot more flexible 

than its predecessor, ID3v2 allows for an image to be 

Then again, 

what do you 

expect from 

people that 

choose to Ballmer 

their music? 

encapsulated into the tag. I’ve been looking so long 

at these pictures of you that I almost believe that 

they’re real—and within a tag, they can be! 

By now, you’re thinking, “Dude, this is sooooo 

MP3 101.” Don’t worry, I’m about to satisfy every 

power user out there. That’s the power of love. 

Every geek would agree that ID3 tags have really 

changed the way we enjoy audio. Having album 

data right there inside the audio file is pretty cool, 

but what about the music on your hard drive that 

doesn’t contain this type of information? Remember 

that music in that folder with all of those songs 

you ripped from the 14,000-count CD collection 

in your basement? Two years later it’s just sitting 

there gathering virtual dust being totally neglected. 

Does anybody really know what time it is? It’s 

time to organize, yo. 

There are dozens of utilities 

that take the “byte” out of 

unknown song tracks. My 

current favorite is ID3-TagIT 

(www.id3-tagit.de). The UI is a 

little sluggish, but it makes up 

for that problem in its list of 

features, including v1 and v2 

tag transposition and file-case 

conversion. The open-source 

folks are bound to adore Mp3 

Tag Tools (mas sid3lib.sf.net), 

which help you strip annoying 

underscores and leftover %20s. Then there is 

Mp3tag (www.mp3tag.de), the universal Tag 

Editor. It handles APE, WMA, OGG, and AAC. 

Oh, and MP3-Tag Generator (www.softwarefactory.ch). 

The UI is completely unwieldy, but 

it rivals ID3-TagIT in muscle. msTagger (www 

.mstagger.prv.pl) was developed by a Polish programmer. 

It mostly reminds me of the simple, 

classic Windows 98 Find Files dialog box. 

TagScanner (xdev.narod.ru) sports a very robust 

set of export tools. Al Pacino’s favorite would 

probably be The GodFather (users.otenet.gr 

/~jtcliper/tgf). Word on the street is that this is 

the one to beat. 

There are various other programs available, but 

the ones here are completely free. How much do 

you love me now? ‘Cause that’s the way (uh-huh, 

uh-huh) you like it. ■ 

You can dialogue with Chris at chris@cpumag.com. 


Pete Loshin, former 

technical editor of 

software reviews for Byte 

Magazine (print version), 

consults and writes about 

computing and the Internet. 

He also runs http://www 

.linuxcookbook.com. 

He owns shares of both 

Microsoft and Red Hat 

and believes that Windows 

isn't for everyone, 

but neither is Linux. 


Open Sauce by Pete Loshin 

The Open-Source 

Empire Strikes Back 

Puzzle me this: Is Internet Explorer really the 

best Microsoft can do? Is there nothing that 

can be done to make it any better than it was 

in July 2000 when Microsoft released IE 5.5, 

Explorer's last significant revision? 

IE is broken and needs fixing. Unless you've been 

hiding under a rock, you know how costly IE's brokenness 

has been—untold time and money wasted 

on fixing broken systems, endless downloading and 

installing patches that don't fix the underlying problems, 

and frustration that you can improve security 

only by disabling some of IE's more useful features. 

Why doesn't Microsoft fix IE? Why not improve 

its security to stop unwanted pop-ups, keep attackers 

out, and stop malware from running amok on users' 

systems? Why not add in cool features, such as tabbed 

browsing, smarter search, and simpler downloading? 

Why not make it more customizable and add 

support for custom apps or adaptive search? 

Could it have something to do with MS’ monopoly 

over the OS and browser 

markets? Or that IE 6.0 came 

out in August 2001 with 

WinXP, MS' last major Windows 

upgrade? Or that Netscape 

was effectively put out of 

business in 1998, and its Navigator 

stopped working all that 

impressively under WinXP? 

Coincidence? I don't think so. 

The funny thing is that Firefox 

from Mozilla (mozilla.org) 

does all those cool things that IE 

can't do, it's free, and it runs on Windows, as well as 

Mac OS X, Linux, and various other flavors of *nix. 

Even funnier is that MS' domination over the 

browser market is starting to erode for the first time 

since 1997 or so, when it began forcing Netscape out 

of the picture. Since 1997, when Netscape browsers 

held roughly a third of the market, IE captured as 

much as 85 to 95% of the market, depending on 

how you calculate the browser market. 

Netscape Navigator's browser market share dwindled 

over the years, but it never entirely went away, 

and development continued as the open-source 

Mozilla project. After all, Microsoft doesn't publish 

IE for Linux. Mozilla has long been a favorite for 

Google “Internet 

Explorer” and 

“vulnerabilities” 

and you'll see the 

answer in headline 

after headline. . . . 

Linux, as well as Windows users, and over the past 

12 months as criticism of IE mounted, years of IE 

browser domination may be coming to an end. 

According to stats from W3Schools, users of 

Firefox and Mozilla-based browsers have tripled, 

growing from a bit over 6% in September 2003 to 

almost 17% a year later. Google "Internet Explorer" 

and "vulnerabilities" and you'll see the answer in 

headline after headline, citing experts urging users 

to switch to Firefox for safety's sake. 

Most Firefox advantages over IE are old news to 

Mozilla users. I was shocked that IE still doesn't do 

tabbed browsing, and I'd never realized how awful 

the pop-up situation was for Windows users, but 

Firefox brings these features, and more, to them. 

The Mozilla Foundation was established in July 

2003 with support from America Online's Netscape 

division to run the Mozilla Project, which is an 

"open-source community of developers and testers" 

that publishes the Mozilla Web and email applications 

suite. 

Mozilla calls FireFox its 

"next generation browser," and 

it partners nicely with Thunderbird, 

Mozilla's "next generation" 

standalone email and 

newsgroup client. Like Firefox, 

Thunderbird is safe and privacy-friendly, 

and it does a better 

job of filtering spam and malware 

than MS' default mail 

client. Firefox is about a 

4.5MB download, so it's an 

easy alternative for those struggling along with IE. 

Mozilla-oriented browsers still make up less than 

20% of the market, but consider the fate of other 

software targeted by MS' "embrace and extend" 

business strategy. Whatever happened to WordStar, 

WordPerfect, Lotus 1-2-3, and dBASE IV? Even 

Novell has given up on competing with MS' networking 

solutions (and turned to Linux). 

Navigator, reincarnated as Firefox, might just be 

the first software to come back to life after being 

dealt a Redmond deathblow. Stay tuned; it'll only 

get more interesting. ■ 

Get saucy with Pete at pete@cpumag.com.

It seems so simple and inexpensive 

to buy a domain name: fill out a 

form, pay your yearly fee, and— 

bam—Igotmyowndomainname.com is 

yours. In fact, behind this simple process is 

a quickly evolving business of selling, managing, 

and maintaining online addresses 

that is massively complex, hardware intensive, 

and increasingly controversial. 

First, the complex part. There are two 

privately run tiers to the domain industry. 

A handful of select registries manage entire 

domains, such as Verisign, which handles 

all traffic coming to the .com and .net 

TLDs (Top Level Domains). Any browser 

looking for those addresses must touch a 

Verisign server to see what numerical IP 

address is registered for the requested 

domain name. On the other hand, registrars 

such as Register.com with 3 million 

domains and NSI (Network Solutions) 

with 7.4 million domains are among several 

hundred companies that have been accredited 

by ICANN (Internet Corporation For 

Assigned Names and Numbers) to sell and 

maintain domains and to reserve these 

names at registries such as Verisign. 

“The registrar’s role is in the upkeep of 

that domain name,” says Steve Heflin, 

Domain Bank CEO, with 200,000 domains. 

A registrar keeps current contact 

information, the correct names, and IP 

addresses of your site’s servers and passes 

any changes onto the registry. “At renewal 

time, I know how to find you,” he says. 

The registrar can also hold your domain’s 

zone file, the information that directs 

browsers to the correct Web host. 

Second, the expensive part. This business 

of selling names involves a massive 

hardware infrastructure. It takes “lots and 

lots of servers,” says Heflin. “I know why 

they call it a server farm,” he says. Champ 

Mitchell, NSI CEO, counts “over a couple 

of thousand servers” because often traffic 

coming to a domain also needs to hit the 


C A U G H T I N T H E W E B 

The Business Of Selling Domain Names 

registrar’s servers. Companies such as NSI 

and Register.com need servers dedicated to 

each TLD, user interaction, etc. And they 

need redundancy to ensure domains remain 

accessible. The hundreds of servers Register.com 

securely houses in New York City 

weathered the city’s famous blackout last 

year. “Despite almost a full day without 

electricity, we didn’t miss a beat,” says Peter 

Foreman, Register.com CEO. 

Hand-Holding Era 

The domain name business has changed 

dramatically since the late ’90s when only a 

few major registrars composed the market, 

“and it was a larger margin per registration 

than it is today,” says Heflin. Now, with 

hundreds of sellers and resellers, the market 

is commoditized, with domains selling for 

under $10 or bundled free from some vendors. 

How do the big registrars compete? 

Well, they expand the market and offer 

to hold a lot of hands, say domain industry 

CEOs. 

“In the last couple of years, we have 

shifted from a pure domain name model to 

value-added services,” says Foreman. About 

70% of Register.com’s business comes from 

Accredited registrars such as Domain Bank 

maintain relationships with most of the major 

registries, the controllers of TLDs, in order to 

reserve and register new domain names for 

their clients on the Web. 

retail domain sales, but 20% is from corporate 

services. Foreman has clients with 

thousands of domains registered for multiple 

countries, so one of his tasks is helping 

them handle this relentless flow of purchases, 

domain renewals, and maintenance. 

Large companies often buy domains defensively 

to prevent others from exploiting a 

slight variation of a brand-name URL. “We 

help customers manage complex and large 

portfolios of domain names and alert them 

to abuse from someone else registering misspellings,” 

says Foreman. 

Support has become all-important because 

the customer base has shifted to 

mom-and-pop shop owners who are tech 

newbies but understand the need for an 

online domain. According to Foreman, 

“the customer has gone from speculator to 

active user,” from millions of people reserving 

domains for future use to companies 

erecting and managing real Web presences. 

The newcomers “want a company that is 

there to hold their hands. They want someone 

with a voice on the other end of the 

phone,” says Foreman, which is why 200 of 

Register.com’s 500-person workforce are 

dedicated to customer support, similar to 

NSI’s ratio. The big change for domain 

sellers is about 5 million of the estimated 

20 million small businesses in the United 

States are already registered with domains, 

and the rest are coming at an accelerated 

rate. “58% of small businesses believe the 

Internet is where they have to go to help 

their business grow,” says Mitchell. Momand-pop 

shops may only need one or two 

domains, “but they tend to buy the largest 

amount of value-adds, and that is where we 

are focusing for our growth,” he says. 

The future lies in selling new services to 

Mom and Pop. Foreman offers a hosted 

MS Exchange service that lets a small business 

get the power of collaboration tools 

and group scheduling big companies get 

but without having to keep it on their

servers. Mitchell helps owners make their 

domains more visible on search engines. 

What’s In A Name? 

Almost everyone in this business looks 

for ways to make money from the name 

game. Many of these ideas bring controversy. 

For instance, to raise money for operations, 

ICANN ratified a larger budget for 

itself that requires registrars to pay higher 

fees for the domains they sell. Many argue 

that the fees favor larger vendors and may 

price smaller ones out of business. But even 

NSI’s Mitchell complains, “I think [the 

fees] are excessive, and I don’t think they 

are doing anything to earn it.” 

ICANN is not policing the domain markets 

rigorously enough, Mitchell and others 

argue, and so a new problem has emerged: 

wait listing services. Companies such as 

Pool.com let customers back-order a 

domain name whose registration is about 

to expire. According to Mitchell, these services 

start hitting the host registrar’s servers 

feverishly on the date the name is set to 

expire in an effort to grab it. The model has 

led to an explosion in the number of 

accredited registrars in the market and a 

major nuisance for the traditional registrars. 

“It is disruptive to the extent that there are 

hundreds of registrars, the majority of 

which are not true registrars and only participate 

in domain acquisitions,” says 

Heflin. NSI is countering the trend by 

reserving the rights to its customers’ expiring 

domains so they can be resold only by 

NSI. Other registrars complain about this, 

but Mitchell argues that most registrars 

probably will start reserving their expiring 

domains to thwart this back-order industry. 

Another controversy was Verisign’s Site 

Finder, a service that redirected traffic to 

misspelled and unassigned .com and .net 

URLs to a search site that made money 

from paid advertising. Domain sellers 

complained that Verisign was unfairly 

exploiting its position as keeper of the 

world’s biggest domains to push ads. 

ICANN eventually asked Verisign to stop 

the service. 

Domains In The Future 

Every controversy and every new complexity 

seems also to offer registrars new 

Q&A 

Peter Foreman Of Register.com: Facing The Issues 

Because domain names are central to a business’ online identity and the proper functioning 

of the Internet itself, the field is fraught with controversy and unresolved issues. We 

asked Register.com CEO, Peter Foreman, to reflect on the significance of these debates. 

CPU: What do you 

make of Verisign’s Site 

Finder scheme? 

Foreman: It seems to be 

on the back burner for 

now. You never know when 

it will come back to life, but 

we’re hopeful it will stay on 

the back burner. It was 

destabilizing to the infrastructure 

of the ’Net. It 

caused failures in terms of 

resolutions of domain 

names around the world. 

CPU: ICANN is raising 

its budget and fees to registrars, 

but does this concern 

end users? 

Foreman: It’s an issue 

for everybody. The fees 

that are paid are typically 

opportunities. Heflin expects that evermore 

specific domains dedicated to special 

business or content types will continue to 

come online, which means registrars will 

be able to craft even more products. 

Because maintaining a recognizable, 

accessible domain name has become such 

a central part of many people’s business, 

the masters of these domains are in a 

unique position to expand far beyond 

selling and updating a Web identity. In 

fact, the largest domain registrar, NSI, is 

borne by the registrar, 

companies like us, and at 

some point it obviously 

gets passed down to the 

customer. Right now the 

fees are not outrageous, 

and we believe in a strong 

ICANN. I don’t know if 

I’m stealing this from 

Mark Twain or Winston 

Churchill, but ICANN 

is the worst form of 

Internet governance 

except for all of the others. 

It is an imperfect 

organization, but they 

have a sound model. 

CPU: Should registries 

pay to support ICANN? 

Foreman: What we’re 

trying to do is find a way 

to get the registries to 

bear more of that burden 

in the future. The registries 

pay zero. They only 

get paid. That will probably 

evolve in the future as 

some of the registry contracts 

come up for renewal, 

but for the moment it is 

borne by the registrars. ▲ 

envisioning offering small businesses 

research services, online tax tracking and 

accounting, and email management. “We 

should be the one-stop shop for all of his 

Internet presence needs and for all the 

applications that can best be provided 

[online],” says Mitchell. 

The master of your online domain may 

be aiming to become the master of your 

offline domain, as well. 

Wanted: Extraterrestrial Legal Assistance 

An Edmonton, Alberta, man charged with using the Internet for hate crimes, 

recently learned that extraterrestrial influence is no excuse for sociopathic 

behavior. According to the Edmonton Sun, Reinhard Mueller posted anti-Semitic 

writings on the ’Net, citing “authority recognized by all High Councils of this 

Galaxy.” Mueller’s agenda also included “removal of the monetary system.” 

Mueller has been denied Internet access while charges are pending, and 

he left his prosecutors a dire message: “Neglect to proceed and you will 

earn judgment from the Starfleet Commanders on your leadership heads!” 

Surprisingly, Mueller made no claims that all our base would belong to him. ❚ 

Source: The Edmonton Sun/Canoe 

by Steve Smith 


Coder’s 

Corner 


Coder’s Corner: XML 


Coder’s Corner: XML 

XML Schema, Part 6, Breaking Schemas Into Parts 

In the past five months, we’ve provided a comprehensive 

introduction to XML Schema. We 

started with a basic overview and moved into 

explaining global and local elements, how type declarations 

work, simple and complex types, creating 

customer user-defined types, and how XML 

Schema works with multiple XML namespaces. 

Two topics remain to cover. The first is how to 

break schemas up into a set of separate files for easier 

development, reuse, and management. Next 

month, we’ll discuss XML’s limitations. 

Including Schema Files 

Developers try to make writing computer programs 

easier by breaking a program up into small, 

self-contained files. This lets them independently 

edit (and debug) small portions of the overall program 

and write portions of the code that can be 

shared or reused. To support this, most programming 

languages support an “include” mechanism, 

whereby a program file can include into itself code 

that’s stored in a separate file. For example, the C 

programming environment supports a #include 

directive (such as #include “headlib.h”), which 

names a file to be included into the program. When 

a C program is compiled, the C preprocessor takes 

the source listing and replaces each #include statement 

with the code in the referenced file. The result 

is passed on to the compiler for compilation. 

XML Schema supports two mechanisms for 

breaking a schema up into smaller files. These are 

similar to those just described, but XML namespaces 

introduce a few twists. 

Say we want a schema that describes orders for 

products and employees associated with an order. 

Inside the schema are declarations related to the 

products (part numbers, cost, etc.), declarations 

related to employees (name, address, etc.), and declarations 

related to orders. One solution is building 

one large schema file containing all declarations. A 

better solution is building three schema files: one for 

product descriptions, one for employee descriptions, 

and one for product orders. If the files have the same 

target namespace, the product order schema can just 

include the other two schemas and use the element, 

attribute, and type declarations it finds in them. 

The mechanism works as follows: Assume we 

have two schema files, products.xsd and employees.xsd, 

that describe products and employees. They 

both have markup that looks like: 

 

... declarations go here! ... 

 

Both are complete, self-contained schemas with 

the same target namespace (http://www.orderforms 

.org). The product order schema (productorder.xsd) 

now includes these two schemas to get access to the 

declarations inside them. It also has additional declarations 

describing product orders. For example: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The xs:include element includes the referenced 

schemas. Functionally, it’s as if each 

is replaced by the markup inside the referenced 

schema file. This is why the main and included 

schema files must use the same target namespace. 

Recall from last month (November CPU, page 88) 

that elementFormDefault=”qualified” means all 

local elements are by default in the target namespace. 

With xs:include, this default behavior also 

applies to the included schema files (unless overridden 

by declarations inside the included schema). 

After the xs:include, this schema defines a single 

element, singleOrder, which contains a sequence of 

three elements: customer, product, and orderNo.

The first two of these are defined inside the 

products.xsd and customers.xsd files. (See 

the listings at www.utoronto.ca/ian/articles 

/dec04.) The orderNo element is defined in 

this product order schema file. This makes 

sense as an order number isn’t relevant to 

the customer or product schemas. 

Dividing schemas into self-consistent 

parts makes schemas easier to manage and 

use because you can include the same file in 

different schemas. For example, you could 

create a schema describing a product catalog 

and include the existing products.xsd 

schema to obtain the already existing definitions 

of product information. This 

reusability becomes important when your 

schemas must satisfy different purposes. 

The Chameleon Effect 

The main and included schema files 

must use the same target namespace. There 

is a special case, however, when an included 

schema doesn’t declare an explicit target 

namespace. This is fine. In this case the 

declarations in the included schema effectively 

inherit the target namespace of the 

schema doing the including. This so-called 

“chameleon” behavior means you can create 

namespace-free schema code that you 

can insert using xs:include into a schema 

using any namespace you want. Thus, we 

could modify the products.xsd and customers.xsd 

schema files to look like this: 

... declarations 

go here! ... 

The schema productOrders.xsd will still 

work (namespace http://www.orderforms 

.org), as would the following schema file: 

 

... more declarations 

.. 

Importing From Other Namespaces 

The preceding mechanisms work when 

there’s only one namespace. But often a 

schema needs to use elements and types 

from different namespaces. Assume in our 


example the product and customer 

schemas use their own target namespaces, 

http://www.products.org and 

http://www.customers.org, respectively. 

How would a product order schema with 

target namespace http://www.orderforms.org 

include elements and types 

from these schemas? In a second XML 

schema inclusion mechanism called 

import. Import lets you import types, 

attributes, and elements from a foreign 

namespace and use them from inside your 

own schema. This isn’t the same as 

including schema content. You can’t use 

import when the namespaces are the 

same. Conversely, you can’t use include 

when the namespaces are different. Here’s 

a simple example. Suppose the product 

and customer schemas look like this: 


go here .... 


go here .... 

Both declare explicit namespaces. The 

goal is an order forms schema that defines 

the orders’ overall structure and that imports 

and uses these customer/product 

schemas/namespaces. A possible schema is: 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

> 

The xs:import elements import the 

definitions in the two schemas. The 

attributes provide both the schema location 

and the namespace of the schema. 

Note also that the xs:schema element 

must also define prefixes (here cust and 

prod) so that these namespaces can be 

referenced inside this schema. As a 

result, declarations such as call for “customer” 

elements defined in the http:// 

www.customers.org namespace, which 

are found in the imported schema file 

customers-ns.xsd. 

The following XML order form document 

is consistent with this schema 

(with lots of different prefixes to get the 

namespaces properly associated with the 

elements): 

 

Thomson 

Ross 

2312 

Room 211, 

Building 23 

31221 

412 

 

032 Flugle 

Bracket 

Bracket for mounting flugle horns on dashboards 

 

21231232 

 

by Ian Graham 

(Full examples, and others, are available at 

www.utoronto.ca/ian/articles/dec04.) 


Rob "CmdrTaco" Malda 

is the creator and 

director of the popular 

News for Nerds Web site 

Slashdot.org. He spends 

his time fiddling 

with electronic gizmos, 

wandering the ’Net, 

watching anime, 

and trying to think of 

clever lies to put in 

his bio so that he seems 

cooler than he actually is. 


The Department Of Stuff by Rob “Cmdr Taco” Malda 

notamyth.txt 

Iassume that you are, at this point, a relatively 

technical person, and if you are in any way into 

television, you probably already own a TiVo, 

or some comparable PVR. And I’m here to tell you 

that it can get even better. 

MythTV (www.mythtv.org) is the next generation 

of PVR. It’s a Linux application that really 

does almost anything you can imagine a PVR 

doing. Besides the obvious things like pausing 

live TV and saving your shows for later, it can 

record multiple programs simultaneously—some 

people record three or four shows at once. You 

can use any Linux-compatible video input, 

including DVD drives and the pcHDTV highdef 

tuner. 

The networks will be very scared because 

MythTV supports one of the primary features 

that got ReplayTV’s own- 

er, SonicBlue at the time, 

sued: automatic commercial 

detection and skipping. You 

don’t even need to jump 

for the remote when things 

fade to black. Optionally, 

you can even transcode the 

video file and actually remove 

the 20 minutes of commercials 

from an hour of TV and 

keep those programs around 

without losing the disk space. 

You can also do picture in picture, manipulate 

your program guide, record To Do lists via a 

remote control or a Web interface, and rip CDs 

and play back your MP3s (with fancy visualization 

plug-ins). 

As if that’s not enough, you have a front end to 

various game emulators including MAME, a picture 

viewer, a weather module, RSS headline feed 

reader, and a DVD player/ripper/transcoder. In 

addition, the MythTV interface is fully themeable. 

The Web site has several stylish looks for you to 

choose from. 

Now the software is free, but that doesn’t 

mean all of this is going to come cheaply. You’ll 

need an old PC and a good video card. While you 

might have that sitting around your basement, 

you’ll want gigantic hard drives, so thank goodness 

that 300GB drives can now be had for under 

a dollar a gig. 

MythTV is a 

Linux application 

that really does 

almost anything 

you can imagine a 

PVR doing. 

You’ll also need to get a remote control 

because I strongly suspect you aren’t willing to 

stand up and press the buttons on your keyboard. 

Fortunately, $20 can get you an IR input 

device, and you can get any old universal remote 

to work. 

You won’t be able to get high-def input off a 

satellite dish, but you should be able to get an 

analog signal out of any satellite tuner box using a 

serial connection. 

If you live in an apartment complex or share 

networking with neighbors, you can even share 

a single master storage system and allow everyone 

to piggyback onto the system. Get four 

friends to chip in a 300GB drive, and your 

MythTV system can now store 1,000 hours of 

programming. You’ll need to quit your job just 

to watch it all. 

It seems to me that there’s a 

business out there for someone 

who wants it. The software 

is all free. The hardware is 

all inexpensive. The hard 

part is the time to put all 

the pieces together. But a 

few hundred dollars will get 

you started, and if you make it 

work once, you could make it 

work 100 times. Someone 

should start selling MythTV 

boxes with the only real choice the user needs to 

make is how big of a hard drive he wants. The 

latest generation of high-def TiVos retail for just 

shy of $1,000. This box could be easily priced 

several hundred dollars under that and still provide 

value to the lazy consumer and profit to the 

industrious hacker. 

But what all of this proves is that open source 

can really do some amazing things. Random 

hackers around the world duct tape together 

dozens of far-flung components and systems. 

Rippers and transcoders. Program guide data 

services and infrared devices. And, of course, 

Linux. All of this comes together and creates 

something far greater than the sum of its parts. 

That’s the magic of open-source software. ■ 

Email me at foo@baz and face the wrath of my 

spam filters!

After a decade of video 

engineering, Joan migrated 

to game development, cofounding 

Xatrix 

Entertainment and producing 

the two Cyberia 

titles. As president of indy 

developer Mango Grits, she 

talked 3Dfx out of prerelease 

Voodoo hardware 

and developed flying game 

Barrage for Activision, 

then co-founded and ran 

hardware review site 

SharkyExtreme.com as 

managing editor. 

Ensconced in Silicon 

Valley, Joan currently plays 

with small, wearable PCs 

and big, rack-mount vissim 

image generators while 

secretly plotting to save the 

world through a series of 

international locationaware 

multiplayer handheld 

games. 


Forward Slash by Joan Wood 

SharePointing 

Ants have evolved specialized collaboration 

habits so extreme; there is no functional 

life as an individual. Iguanas, on the other 

hand, are such solitary creatures; it's notable that 

they manage to collaborate on making more iguanas. 

People seem to fall 

somewhere in between, 

which can be challenging 

if you have a group of 

them tasked with collaborating 

on a project, especially 

if they are separated 

by time and distance. 

This is where groupware 

comes in handy. If there 

is such a thing as collective 

wisdom, groupware should be able to help 

channel it into something usable. 

There is a lot of it out there, free, expensive, 

open source, or locked up tight proprietary— 

what you use isn't nearly as important as how you 

use it, who is coordinating implementation, and 

how you plan to encourage (or mandate) usage. 

Because Microsoft's SharePoint is included as 

part of Windows Server 2003, and it integrates 

with many of the Microsoft Office tools we all 

have to use at one time or another, it can be a 

great starting point. 

Once the IT department has set up the initial 

site, users can create their own shared workspaces, 

allocating levels of access and types of shared 

environments from a comprehensive menu. 

Identifying the type of site needed for a particular 

project can be as easy as clicking through the 

options until the closest match between site template 

and project requirements pops up. A simple 

library of documents that need to be updated easily 

and accessed widely can evolve into a full-on 

controlled review, edit, approve, feedback discussion 

site with just a few clicks. Making people go 

there and review the docs is a different matter. 

For an email-oriented company, getting those 

threads out of individual inboxes and into a discussion 

forum where they can be shared widely is 

especially challenging. 

Creating open communication across an organization 

involves the complex human aspect far 

more than the technology, but breaking down the 

barriers between departments and cliques can be 

the key to real productivity. Focused priorities, 

If there is such a thing 

as collective wisdom, 

groupware should be 

able to help channel it 

into something usable. 

cooperative goals, and plenty of moderated 

humor, along with designated areas for individuals 

to post their own work for review and feedback, 

changes both the format and the user. 

Instead of being just a consumer of content, each 

participant becomes a pro- 

ducer with a voice and a 

forum. Valid ideas have a 

chance to grow based on 

group consensus or individual 

champions. 

The trick is getting folks 

to set the shared site as 

their home page for the 

initial startup phase and to 

habitually log on for new 

information. If checking the shared site becomes 

as normal as checking email, and there is a constant 

flow of current information when they get 

there, you have a shot at utilizing everything 

groupware can offer. 

The rest is up to the group. ■ 

Share with joan@cpumag.com. 

Artificial Taste Tester 

We all have our favorite thirst-quenching 

drinks. Panels of people have the task of taste 

testing those drinks before they hit the market. 

Rough job. However, this process takes a lot of time 

and usually yields variable results based on humans’ 

different oral physiologies. 

Researchers have developed a taste-testing artificial 

throat, made of two glass tubes (representing 

the mouth and esophagus) and rubber tubing that 

can be closed with a clamp. The artificial throat 

duplicates a normal swallowing procedure; then an 

air jet at the bottom of the sends gas up the tubes at 

the same rate as average human exhalation. This 

allows molecules of subtle flavors to be carried to 

the nasal passage, which is 

how humans get the most 

flavor distinction among 

what they taste. ▲

D I G I T A L L I V I N G 

Road Warrior 

New palmOnes, Introducing The Nintendo 

DS, Samsung’s Built-In Hard Drive 

& More From The Mobile Front 

New Devices & Features From palmOne 

According to tradition, palmOne launches 

new devices each fall. This year is no exception. 

The Tungsten line got an update with the 

Tungsten T5, which features an Intel 416MHz 

XScale processor, a 320 x 480 color screen, and 

256MB of flash memory (55MB for programs 

and 160MB for music, ebooks, etc.). Documents 

To Go lets you take Microsoft Word, Excel, and 

PowerPoint files on the road, and the new File 

Transfer utility lets you connect the T5 to your 

computer, browse files on your handheld, and 

transfer them via drag and drop. The T5 retails 

for $399 and should be available as you read this. 

In other palmOne news, the company recently 

announced it has licensed the MS Exchange 

Server Sync Protocol on the smartphone front. 

The plan is to integrate the technology into 

future smartphones, enabling users to directly 

With 256MB of memory, the palmOne 

Tugsten T5 has room to spare. 

access Microsoft Exchange 2003 data, such as 

email and calendar appointments, from within 

palmOne’s VersaMail client via wireless server 

synchronization. This should hopefully provide 

a more seamless user experience while lowering IT costs for companies supplying their 

mobile workforce with the most up-to-date information available. 

Elsewhere, we’re still waiting for news about the long-rumored Treo 650 smartphone. 

The device is expected to have a 320 x 320 screen, plus Bluetooth to facilitate the use of 

wireless headsets and connectivity to other devices. While the Treo 650 hasn’t been officially 

announced, the CDMA version was expected this month from Verizon Wireless, 

followed by availability through Sprint. A GSM version should be available soon after. ▲ 

NormSoft & GlooLabs Make Music More Mobile 

NormSoft and GlooLabs are hooking up to create a service that will let users navigate 

and listen to their music collections with Pocket Tunes Deluxe. Expected to 

launch in Q4, the service will provide streaming access via Wi-Fi or another mobile 

data service to a music collection stored on a home PC. The music files will automatically 

convert to the right bit rate based on the bandwidth of the wireless connection, 

and users will no longer have to manually copy files to their Palm OS handheld or 

transfer them to a memory expansion card. Details about pricing and system requirements 

weren’t available at press time. ▲ 

by Jen Edwards 

Nintendo DS Launches In 

The U.S. & Japan 

By now you have heard about the 

next evolution of the GameBoy, the 

Nintendo DS, a dual-screen gaming 

device that also offers some traditional 

PDA features, such as two ARM processors, 

a touch screen, and integrated 

wireless networking via Wi-Fi. 

The DS is expected to also include 

something new to the handheld arena, 

namely a microphone with voice-recognition 

capability. While there isn’t 

much information available at present, 

is it possible gamers will be able to control 

at least some gaming characters and 

actions through speech, rather than via 

buttons? The Nintendo DS will also 

bundle PictoChat, an app that will let 

users send wireless messages composed 

with either the on-screen keyboard or 

using the screen with a stylus. The DS 

is expected in the United States Nov. 

21 for around $150 and in Japan two 

weeks later. ▲ 

The Nintendo DS will allow users to 

chat with each other wirelessly thanks 

to its support for Wi-Fi. 


Tapwave Zodiac 

Available In The UK 

The Tapwave Zodiac, a gamecentric 

handheld that runs Palm 

OS 5, was set to make its European 

debut in late October. First 

launched in late 2003, the Zodiac 

2 was the first Palm OS device to 

feature an analog joystick, 

128MB of memory, and two SD 

card expansion slots, as well as 

a 480 x 320 screen and stereo 

audio playback. 

The slightly updated model 

for the UK will feature an international 

charging kit and the 

Zodiac 1.1 software suite, which 

includes such enhancements as 

background audio playback and 

PocketMirror for synching with 

Microsoft Outlook. Various accessories 

will also be available, including 

Tony Hawk’s Pro Skater 

and Midway’s Spy Hunter game 

cards, the Zodiac Sport Case, the 

Zodiac Deluxe Leather Case, cradle, 

and styli. 

The new CommandPlay Game 

Grip accessory is also now available 

in the Tapwave online store. 

It’s designed to make holding the 

Zodiac more comfortable for extended 

periods of time, such as 

during long gaming sessions. The 

grip snaps on and off the portable 

console and has rubber pads 

and an auxiliary stylus attachment. 

You can still plug in headphones 

with the CommandPlay attached, 

and the unit will fit inside either 

the Zodiac Sport Case or the 

Deluxe Case while installed. The 

grip is available for $19.99. ▲ 

The Tapwave Zodiac portable gaming 

console is set for a European release. 

Hardware Limitations Lead To 

Internet Phone Lawsuit 

SIPphone has filed a lawsuit in California 

against Vonage Holdings and Fry’s Electronics 

for not properly informing consumers about 

peripherals used to make broadband Internet 

phone calls. According to the suit, the hardware 

includes broadband routers and phone adapters 

from Linksys that are locked to work only with 

Vonage’s services. The relevant packaging and 

advertisements, however, allegedly don’t state 

that limitation. 

The software lock is designed to help consumers 

install and start using an Internet phone 

service more easily, with less configuration and 

hassle. The cobranded hardware sells for less than 

similar peripherals that don’t use the Vonage service 

exclusively. SIPphone says it learned of the 

problem after receiving complaints from consumers 

who found they were charged a monthly 

fee using Vonage (SIPphone is free) and that they 

couldn’t use the hardware with any other Internet 

phone service. SIPphone isn’t seeking any damages 

beyond attorney’s fees, however. ▲ 


Samsung Announces 

First Phone With 

Built-In Hard Drive 

Samsung recently announced 

plans for the SPH-V5400, the first 

phone with a built-in 1.5GB hard 

drive. The phone has been in the 

works for a while but wasn’t really 

practical until recently because of 

concerns about the reliability and 

size of such drives. With the advent 

of such portable electronics as 


PalmSource Releases New OS 

For Smartphones 

The new Palm OS 6.1, or Cobalt, includes numerous 

features designed to make developing smartphones based 

on the OS quicker and easier. Instead of relying on individual 

phone makers to write their own apps to handle 

making calls, sending email, and Web browsing, Cobalt 

includes all these functions. PalmSource is hoping to help 

its licensees gain a better foothold in the mobile phone 

market, which is expected to continue to grow at a much 

faster pace than the traditional PDA sector. 

In related news, at a recent developer conference in 

Munich, PalmSource released Web Browser 3.0, Developer 

Suite 1.0, and PalmSource Installer. Web Browser 

3.0 features page zooming, scalable fonts, and squeeze-rendering 

techniques designed to minimize scrolling horizontally 

to view an entire Web page. The updated browser is 

fully compliant with W3C standards, supporting WAP 

2.0, HTML, and XHTML, as well as SSL and TLS security 

features. The new PalmSource Installer aims to make 

installing third-party apps to handhelds through wireless 

or direct HotSync connections easier. Developers can 

bundle an app with the relevant support files and documentation 

into a single downloadable file, which users can 

then install with one press of a button, saving time and 

hopefully minimizing support questions. ▲ 

Apple’s iPod mini, smaller drives 

have become a more common reality 

and are now small enough to incorporate 

into mobile phones without 

unacceptably increasing the size of 

the handset. 

While the amount of storage in 

this first hard drive-equipped phone 

isn’t overwhelming, there’s a strong 

possibility this is merely the first 

of many similarly equipped mobile 

phones that will offer ever-increasing 

storage capacities for MP3s, apps, 

personal files, and more. The phone 

also features a 2.2-inch QVGA color 

screen and a 1MP camera. The SPH- 

V5400 will launch first in Korea 

at an estimated $800; it is unclear 

when or if it will hit Europe or 

North America. ▲ 

Samsung’s SPH-V5400 features a built-in 

1.5GB hard drive, as well as a QVGA color 

screen and 1MP camera.


At Your 

Holiday 

Gift Guide 

Leisure 

Part 1 

Plug In, Sit Back & Fire Away 

S o, 

Nintendo has this new game for 

the GameCube starring everyone's 

favorite plumber, Mario. And guess what? 

The princess has been kidnapped . . . 

again. In fact, there are lots of things about 

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door 

that you'll recognize from past Mario titles, 

including Bowser, Koopas, stars, hammers, 

and such. But unlike the past few Mario 

games in which a 3D Mario jumped and 

pranced through lush, 3D levels, this game 

features a 2D (paper) Mario who can fold 

himself into a few handy shapes (paper airplane, 

tube, etc.) as needed. 

PM is also different from most Mario 

games in that, strictly speaking, it isn't an 

action game. There is action in the game, 

of course, but Paper Mario is an RPG, 

complete with character advancement and 

specific attributes that you can enhance as 

you advance through the game. PM manages 

to be deep enough to interest adult 

players while staying accessible enough to 

keep the younger crowd playing. 

Graphically, the game is bright, colorful, 

and cute, as usual, and unfortunately 

this may end up keeping some hardcore 

gamers away from the title. If you've had 

fun in Mario's world in the past, or if 

you're just looking for something a little 

different, you owe it to yourself to give 

PM a try. ▲ 

$49.99 ESRB: (E)veryone 

Nintendo 

www.papermario.com 

by Samit G. Choudhuri & Chris Trumble 

The entertainment world, at least where it pertains to technology, morphs, twists, turns, and fires so fast it’s hard to keep up. But that’s 

exactly why we love it. For the lowdown on the latest in PC entertainment, DVDs, consoles, and just stuff we love, read on. 

Viewtiful Joe 2 

The first 

Viewtiful Joe was a 

nostalgic yet innovative 

offering that returned players to the 

wonderful world of 2D, side-scrolling 

action games. The sequel serves up more 

cel-shaded goodness and new powers, and 

Joe gets some help from his lady Sylvia. 

$39.99 ESRB: (T)een 

Capcom 

www.capcom.com 

GameCube 

Paper Mario: The Thousand-Year Door 

Thin Is In 


GoldenEye: Rogue 

Agent 

You play a 00 agent 

who gets kicked out of 

MI6 for having a bit too 

much fun with your 

license to kill and winds 

up in the employ of one Auric 

Goldfinger. It’s an FPS with a twist. 


EA Games 

www.eagames.com 

Mario takes advantage of his paperness by 

folding into a paper airplane and crossing 

expanses too great to jump across. 

This level looks a tad familiar, but this time 

you can play as Bowser. 

The Lord Of 

The Rings: 

The Third Age 

So far, EA's Lord Of The Rings games 

have been pretty good, but hack-and-slash 

action can only keep you occupied for so 

long. The Third Age is a console-style 

RPG featuring turn-based, menu-driven 

combat that includes a bit of strategy. 


EA Games 

www.eagames.com

We were certain the multiplayer joys 

of the Tribes series was dead after 

the Dynamix released Tribes 2 in 2001. 

The tactical multiplayer action of the series 

was ahead of its time, but T:V demonstrates 

that good games never truly die. 

PC-CD 

Tribes: Vengeance 

What? A Single-Player Game, Too? 

The concept of a single-player campaign 

in a Tribes game will surprise veterans, 

but it does have some obvious 

advantages. For example, a title with a 

strong single player campaign will likely 

draw in a wider audience than a multiplayer-only 

game. T:V is heavily focused 

on the addictive multiplayer component, 

but the engaging single player game doubles 

as a training ground for players to 

Rome: Total War 

Asterix & Obelix Would Be Proud 

L ast 

month’s sci-fi strategy Warhammer 

40,000: Dawn Of War continues 

to be a favorite, but Rome: Total War 

takes things up a notch while infusing a 

historically accurate feel to the Total War 

gameplay style. The two previous Total 

War titles were good, but had some interface 

issues. However, the team fixed those 

issues and has come up with the best 

game in the series—one which is both 

accessible to new gamers and addictive to 

the advanced crowd. Novice players can 

turn on options that let the computer 

take over tasks that might prove too 

cumbersome early on. 

Star Wars Galaxies: 

Jump To Lightspeed 

Omitting outer space 

was a faux pas in the original 

release of Star Wars 

Galaxies, but LucasArts is 

rectifying things with the 

Jump To Lightspeed expansion pack. This 

is the MMORPG we originally expected. 


LucasArts 

starwarsgalaxies.station.sony.com 

/expansions.jsp 

Gameplay features a single-player campaign in 

addition to the addictive multiplayer modes. 

Epic battles are fought in real-time around an 

elegant turn-based strategy game. Brilliant. 

As before, you can take your time while 

mulling strategy and moves in the turnbased 

mode before jumping into the realtime 

battles. The new 3D graphics engine 

gives you an “I’m there” feeling, and you’ll 

feel the massive sense of scale that was 

entailed in historical battles. Diplomacy 

takes on a much bigger role and your cunning 

in this realm will take you far. There’s 

plenty of replay value and drama to be had 

(jump into a battle with thousands of troops 

and see how you feel). This is currently the 

Myst IV: Revelation 

Gameplay takes place 

a decade after Myst III, 

so no previous experience 

is required to play 

this stunningly beautiful 

prerendered adventure 

game. As with all things Myst, you’ll be 

neck-deep in puzzles in no time. 

$39.99 (DVD-ROM) ESRB: (T)een 

Ubisoft Entertainment 

www.mystrevelation.com 


learn the interface as preparation for the 

multiplayer game. 

Fans of the original titles will remember 

the jetpack and being able to jet around 

the huge maps is very much a must-have 

feature for a Tribes game. As before, your 

objectives tend to be more important than 

just taking out other players (though you 

can certainly focus you talents in this 

area). Graphics are powered by the Unreal 

engine so visuals are both modern and 

attractive. This game is an underdog in 

the current FPS market, but don’t let that 

stop you from a rip-roaring good time. ▲ 


Sierra Entertainment 

www.tribesvengeance.com 

front-runner for our Strategy Game Of The 

Year. By Toutatis, it’s the best strategy game 

we’ve played in a long time. It’s an excellent 

time to be an avid strategy gamer. ▲ 


Activision 

www.totalwar.com 

SuperPower 2 

Cerebral gamers and 

evil geniuses will enjoy 

the world domination 

focus. Simplified realworld 

economic, political, 

and military models 

tie the game together. Test your nuclear 

strategy for the balance of power. 


DreamCatcher Interactive 

www.superpower2game.com 


2 015, 

the folks behind the EA’s Medal 

Of Honor: Allied Assault, opted to 

tackle the Vietnam war for its next project. 

The result is Men Of Valor. We gave 

Medal Of Honor top honors in the action 

game category last year and have so far 

not been disappointed by MoV. 

The in-game animations won’t make 

Doom 3 or Half-Life 2 quake in their 

collective boots, but the minutia of 

details in the gaming environment combined 

with scripted events really fleshes 

out a cinematic quality to the singleplayer 

game (in a good way). The 

soundtrack and look of the menus 

E A 


Sports’ FIFA soccer franchise has 

recently had some solid competition 

from Konami’s World Soccer Winning 

Eleven 7 with Winning Eleven 8 due here 

sometime in 2005. The game has been 

released across all the major platforms, 

including the PC, which we enjoy. 

However, we keep coming back to the 

Xbox version with its Live! support. 

Unlike previous versions, FIFA Soccer 

2005 now feels like a solid soccer simulation, 

which won’t endear it to the Sega 

Soccer Slam crowd, but is a welcome 

change. The biggest new enhancement is 

Xbox 

Men Of Valor 

Fight In Vietnam—Medal Of Honor Style 

FIFA Soccer 2005 

Most Realistic Footie Controls Ever 

Halo 2 

Microsoft announced 

Halo 2 preorders for firstday 

sales (Nov. 9) will be 

more than any feature 

film ever released. We’re 

thinking of taking a 

vacation day to fit in the single-player 

game. We’d be remiss to forget the all-new 

Xbox Live multiplayer mode. Buy now. 

$49.99 ESRB: (M)ature 

Microsoft Game Studios 

www.xbox.com/en-US/halo2 


This image (from the PC) brings thoughts of 

“Apocalypse Now” and “Flight of the Valkyries.” 

harkens back to the 1960s, but the visual 

technologies are very much today. 

Here’s the setup before the equalizer. And . . . 

oh! Goooooooooooooooooooooooaaaaaaaal! 

the ingenious First Touch control afforded 

to your players, which according to EA, is a 

fluid player kinetic system that lets you give 

First Touch control with easy button presses 

on your controller. In other words, this 

lets you more realistically trap, dribble and 

control the ball using its momentum. The 

campaign game can be quite rewarding, but 

there’s room to improve the management 

aspect of the game. A good reason to go out 

and buy FIFA Soccer 2006 perhaps? Until 

Dead Or Alive Ultimate 

DOA and DOA2 

come bundled with 

DOAU. This is the first 

high-profile 3D fighter 

with Xbox Live support. 

The developers wanted 

to re-create the social gaming experience 

of gamers at arcades and, for the most 

part, Tecmo has succeeded. 


Tecmo 

www.tecmogames.com/games/doau.asp 

The jungles feature suitable foliage and 

you get a good dose of green claustrophobia. 

The VC battles are intense, and 

your computer controlled squad mates 

are a pleasure to have along as company—it’s 

not just you against the world. 

One innovative feature is the focus on 

healing wounds during combat. For 

example, bandaging a wound while 

stopped is more effecting than doing it 

during a firefight. It adds an interesting 

strategic element to gameplay and make 

you more consciously think of the reality 

of Vietnam. MoV is a solid effort 

that’s worthy of your gaming dollar. ▲ 

$49.99 (Xbox); $39.99 (PC) ESRB: (M)ature 

VU Games 

www.menofvalorgame.com 

then (or Winning Eleven 8) this is the best 

soccer sim for the money. ▲ 

$49.95 (Xbox, PS2, NGC); $39.95 (PC) 

ESRB: (E)veryone 

Electronic Arts 

www.fifa2005.ea.com 

Outrun 2 

And speaking of 

arcades . . . Outrun 2 

captures those yesteryear 

feelings of missing checkpoints 

very accurately. 

The game is simple to 

play, manages to capture a real need for 

speed, and looks superb. To top things off, 

you can now also race on Xbox Live. 

$39.99 ESRB: (E)veryone 

Microsoft Game Studios 

www.sega-am2.co.jp/outrun2

R atchet 

& Clank series is becoming a 

November staple along with another 

hot Sony franchise, the Jak & Daxter 

games. Both series are heading into their 

third years this fall, and we couldn't be 

happier. Ratchet & Clank's third adventure, 

jauntily subtitled Up Your Arsenal, 

pits our intrepid heroes against another 

dire threat to galactic peace and prosperity, 

a swarm of alien mutants called the 

thyrranoids. The thyrranoids are out to 

destroy all organic life, and as you might 

guess, there's an evil genius behind it 

all—the aptly named Dr. Nefarious. 

Jak 3 

No Good Deed. . . . 

R emember 

the dark, unfriendly city 

Jak and his buddy Daxter fought to 

liberate in Jak II? Well, it seems the 

denizens of the city didn't appreciate the 

destruction and danger the battle to 

reclaim Haven City produced (not to 

mention the power vacuum), and, looking 

for someone to blame, the folks found a 

scapegoat in Jak. As Jak 3 begins, our hero 

is taken out into the Wasteland desert and 

left without so much as a canteen, and 

things quickly go from bad to worse. 

Like its predecessor, Jak 3 is a spot-on 

blend of platform elements and 3D 

PlayStation 2 

Ratchet & Clank: Up Your Arsenal 

More Fun Than You Deserve 

Grand Theft Auto: 

San Andreas 

Rockstar North isn't 

resting on its laurels. 

The new game world is 

reportedly five times or 

more bigger than Vice 

City, including three cities and some rural 

areas you can explore. Add to that a killer 

soundtrack that’s a Who’s Who of ’90s 

music, and you have one great game. 

$49.99 ESRB: (M)ature 

Rockstar Games 

www.rockstargames.com/sanandreas 

Ratchet and Clank are 

given the important 

task of finding the 

only person ever to 

have defeated Dr. 

Nefarious, and that 

person turns out to be the treacherous 

buffoon Captain Qwark. 

Needless to say, there's lots of enemies 

to blow up, lots of hidden bolts to find, 

and an impressive array of excellent 

weapons to use in freeing the galaxy from 

this menace. Arsenal doesn't feel like a 

cookie-cutter retread of the previous 

Jak lines up his next shot with full desert gear 

in effect and (of course) Daxter looking on. 

action, including a variety of weapons 

and vehicles that do a good job of keeping 

things fresh. In addition, Jak also 

gets help in the form of various eco 

Ace Combat 5: 

The Unsung War 

Namco's Ace Combat 

series has been serving up 

an effective blend of flight 

sim realism and arcade 

simplicity. In Ace 

Combat 5, you'll get to fly more than 50 

real-life combat aircraft in a variety of situations 

and mission types over gorgeous environments 

as the game's story unfolds. 


Namco 

acecombat5.namco.com 


installments. The 

engaging story, some 

new gadgets and 

weapons, and a new online-play component 

help to keep this game fresh as a 

daisy. Plus online play lets up to eight players 

compete in multiplayer mayhem. ▲ 


Sony Computer Entertainment America 

www.us.playstation.com 

powers, including his occasional transformations 

into Dark Jak and a few 

interesting combat upgrades provided by 

light eco. If that sounds like a lot of 

stuff to keep track of, it is, but despite 

its impressive gameplay variety, Jak 3 is 

pretty easy to pick up and play. This is 

due in part to excellent level design (a 

hallmark of this series from the first 

game in 2002), and partly due to a control 

scheme that is nicely intuitive 

whether you're running, fighting, shooting, 

or driving. ▲ 


Sony Computer Entertainment America 

www.us.playstation.com 

Shadow Hearts: 

Covenant 

Shadow Hearts: 

Covenant is an RPG 

sequel but stands on its 

own; the game boasts an 

engrossing story, interesting 

characters, atmospheric environments, 

and best of all, a fresh combat system 

that combines turn-based smarts and 

precise button skills. 


In addition to playing 

online multiplayer, you 

can take on your pals in 

four-player split-screen 

action. 

Midway 

www.shadowheartscovenant.com 



DVD Byte by Todd Doogan 

It’s time to look at the month 

of November. (We’ll cover 

December in our January 

issue.) Boy, oh, boy! I can 

already smell the turkey and 

stuffing. There’s some big fun 

stuff coming this month, so 

open up your wallets and be 

thankful for DVD. 

Nov. 2 brings us HBO’s 

favorite jive talking celebrity 

basher in his own movie: 

Ali G Indahouse. 

There’s also Jackie 

Chan in the flop 

Around The 

World In 80 

Days and a whole 

bunch of TV: 

Looney Tunes: 

Golden 

Collection 

Scene It? focuses on 

DVD trivia games that 

you can play on the television 

through your DVD 

player. There are numerous 

titles, but we had a good 

time with a couple of 

recent releases. (Fans of 

classic movies may also 

want to check out the 

Turner Classic Movies 

Edition, which is available 

now for $49.99.) 

The James Bond franchise 

may have come upon 

some rough times of late 

(Denise Richards as a 

nuclear physicist? Hello?), and the 

recent purchase of MGM by Sony 

seems to have some ramifications on 

the next Bond film. However, when all 

is said and done, we still love 007 and 

the James Bond Edition entertained us 

Volume 2, The Simple Life 2, 

The Simpsons Christmas 2, 

Star Trek The Original Series: 

Season Two, Three’s 

Company: Season Three, 

Traffic: The Mini-Series 

(Director’s Cut), and The West 

Wing: The Complete Third 

Season. The 9th is another 

good day for DVD fans because 

Shrek 2 and the new Stepford 

Wives streets along with new 

releases for 

Bridget Jones’s 

Diary and Gone 

With The Wind. 

And fans of The 

Grudge starring 

Buffy might want 

to check out the 

original: Ju-On. TV 

releases for today 

include Friends: 

Eighth Season 

and Showtime’s The L Word: 

The Complete 

First Season. 

Speaking of Buffy, 

on the 16th you 

can get her 

Seventh Season 

on disc, as well as 

Aqua Teen 

Hunger Force: 

Volume Three, 

The Chronicles 

Of Riddick, a new version of 

Daredevil: Director’s Cut, Will 

Ferrell in Elf, Pee-wee’s 

Playhouse, Space Ghost Coast 

To Coast: Volume Two, and 

Top Gun: Widescreen 

Collector’s Edition. Warner 

gives us a present with Harry 

Scene It? James Bond Edition & TV Edition 

Family Style Gaming On The Telly 


happily for hours. We’ve watched the 

films (especially the Connery ones) 

many dozens of times. Now if only 

“Choudhuri, Samit G. Choudhuri” had 

the same distinctive ring to it as “Bond, 

Potter And The Prisoner Of 

Azkaban. You 

can also pick up 

The Rambo 

Collection, 

Seinfeld Seasons, 

Tom Hanks in 

Spielberg’s The 

Terminal, and 

three new Star 

Wars discs: 

Droids, Ewoks, 

and the Caravan of Cour / 

Battle of Endor TV movie 

double feature. Closing out 

the month, only one title has 

the guff to challenge the likes 

of Spider-Man 2 and that’s 

Tru Calling: Season 1. Good 

luck to her. ▲ 

James Bond.” Maybe it’s 

just my delivery. Yeah, 

that’s it. 

The TV Edition game 

is probably better for your 

typical TV viewing family. 

It includes more than 180 

shows, including “Nick 

At Nite,” “X-Files,” and 

“Leave It To Beaver,” to 

name just a handful. 

Break out Monopoly, 

Risk, and Scene It?’s TV 

Editon this winter for family 

fun around the telly. 

Then break out Doom 3, 

Half-Life 2, and Halo 2 

after the young ones hit the hay. ▲ 

$49.99 (James Bond Edition); 

$44.99 (TV Edition) 

Scene It? www.sceneit.com


Hot Shots: The Beauty Of The Game 

Yeah, we know it’s all about the gameplay. Sure, there are those who would have you believe graphics are relatively unimportant in 

the greater scope of things, but if you read CPU mag, you probably already know those folks are off their collective rockers. We 

want great gameplay with stunning graphics, and the images you you see below show promise. Remember, it’s hype until the review. 

Empire Earth II (PC-CD). 

Choose from 14 civilizations 

before and then play 

through about 10,000 

years. That’s right, this 

game will occupy much of 

your time once it’s out 

during Q1 2005. Now 

made sure you head over 

to www.empireearth.com 

for the official 411. 

Black & White II (PC-CD). EA’s original 

release was an innovative idea with groundbreaking 

AI. Numerous issues plagued the 

game and designer Peter Molyneux is very 

aware of them. You’ll find updated info posted 

to www.bwgame.com. Last but not least, read 

our interview with Peter on page 108 of the 

Dec. 2003 issue. Oh, we lurve fighting cows. 

‘Net Patch On 

The Horizon? 

Can you image your world without 

the Internet? For individuals in the 

Internet Deprivation Study, conducted 

by Yahoo! and OMD, a Web-free world 

became a reality for 14 days. They quit 

cold turkey. No email, instant mail, or 

even a simple online search for some 

simple directions. The result? These 

individuals soon experienced “withdrawal 

and feelings of loss, frustration 

and disconnectedness” when cut off 

from the Web-all these feelings of loss 

despite being paid $500 per household 

for participating in the study. 

For those addicts who need to cut 

back on their Internet time, maybe 

‘Net patches or ‘Net gum will be the 

next big thing. ▲ 


Tips & Tricks 

SOFTWARE TIPS & TRICKS 

Make SP2 Play Nice With Your PC 

THE LONG-AWAITED WINDOWS XP SP2 

(SERVICE PACK 2) AND ITS MANY SECU- 

RITY UPDATES IS HERE, BUT NOT WITH- 

OUT SOME NEW HEADACHES FOR USERS. 

Because most of us will need to deal with 

SP2 sooner or later, here is our quick-anddirty 

guide to avoiding problems. 

Load Safely 

Before installing SP2, note that installation 

can freeze if spyware is on your system, 

so do a thorough spyware scan. Lavasoft’s 

Ad-Aware and Webroot’s Spy Sweeper are 

popular choices, but you may want to run 

more than one detection program because 

no single program catches everything. Also, 

back up critical data. A substantial OS 

upgrade such as this has the potential to 

make a system unbootable for a host of reasons. 

Make your backups; we’ll wait. 

Burn SP2 To CD 

If you have multiple machines to upgrade 

and you don’t want to go through 

the download on each, download a single 

executable file that can be burned onto 

CD. At Microsoft’s site (www.micro 

soft.com), type kb835935-sp2-enu.exe 

into the Search box and click Windows 

XP Service Pack 2 For IT Professionals 

And Developers. Save the file to your hard 

drive and copy this to a CD. 

Patch The Patch 

Microsoft has already issued a patch 

for SP2 that cures performance issues 

with virtual private networks. The patch 

is not easy to find, however, so go to 

Microsoft’s site and find the Knowledge 

Base document KB884020 to locate the 

relevant document and download link. 


Clear Blockages 

The biggest complaint with SP2 is that 

it stops some programs from working, 

including IM clients and security programs 

New controls for the Windows Firewall let you 

designate which of your programs is allowed 

to receive communications from the Internet. 

that access ports Windows Firewall is protecting 

from external communications. In 

most cases, the WSC (Windows Security 

Center) monitor will alert you to this activity 

when you first load the program, and it 

asks whether to block the activity or let the 

program function properly in the future. In 

other cases, even programs that load will 

lose some functionality without warning. 

You should create an exception. 

Open the WSC using the Windows Security 

Alerts icon in your System Tray and 

click Windows Firewall on the bottom 

of the page. Go to the Exceptions tab and 

click Add Program. Select the one giving 

you trouble and click OK. By making a 

program an Exception, Windows Firewall 

will open only the ports necessary for the 

program to communicate with the 

Internet when they are needed. This is the 

best solution because it won’t keep ports 

open unnecessarily. If this doesn’t solve the 

problem, then you may need to find and 

manually open specific ports for the program. 

This is an involved process; you can 

get detailed instructions by typing kb84 

2242 in the Search box at Microsoft’s site. 

Update DivX 

If you have the common video encoder/decoder 

DivX installed on an SP2 

system, it can cause Windows Explorer to 

crash when you right-click a file name. 

The easiest way to remedy this is to go to 

DivX’s site (www.divx.com) to download 

the latest version of its programs. 

Kill The Center 

If you have a handle on your firewall and 

virus solutions, and you have Automatic 

Updates set to your liking, then you can 

dispense with the WSC by disabling it. Use 

the Run command and type services.msc 

in the Open box. Click OK. In the Services 

window, scroll down and double-click 

Security Center. In its Properties window, 

use the Startup Type drop-down menu to 

choose Disabled. WSC will no longer load 

at startup and run in the background, 

although any settings for the Windows 

Firewall and Automatic Updates will 

remain in place. WSC will no longer monitor 

these processes and alert you to problems. 

To stop the WSC in your current session, 

click Stop in the Properties window. 

Use An Alternate Firewall 

Don’t get a false sense of security from 

Windows Firewall, which only blocks 

inbound intrusions. It is not a two-way firewall 

that blocks attempts by your PC to 

contact others. Keep in place third-party

products such as ZoneAlarm or rely on 

these other products entirely. Unfortunately, 

if you turn Windows Firewall off, 

then WSC may keep issuing alerts about 

not having a firewall. If you want to rely on 

your own firewall, open WSC and click 

Windows Firewall on the bottom of the 

window. On the General tab, click the Off 

radio button and click OK. Back in the 

WSC main window area, click Recommendations 

in the Firewall section. Check 

the I Have A Firewall Solution That I Will 

Monitor Myself option and click OK. This 

disables future alerts. 

If WSC is alerting you unnecessarily, or 

if you just tire of its alerts, you can turn 

them off by opening WSC and clicking 

Change The Way Security Center Alerts 

Me in the Resources sidebar. Uncheck the 

alerts you want to disable and click OK. 

Ease Downloads 

SP2 adds some features to Internet 

Explorer, including a pop-up blocker and 

a notification bar that opens beneath your 

toolbar with various IE alerts and message. 

SP2 also adds a new security setting 

to IE that can interfere with downloading 

files from sites that use promotional pages 

to initiate downloads after a few seconds 

of waiting. To fix this problem, go to the 

IE Tools menu and open Internet Options. 

On the Security tab, click Custom 

Level. In the Security Settings window, 

scroll to Downloads and check the radio 

button that enables Automatic Prompting 

For File Downloads. Click OK to close 

the windows and reload IE. 

IE Add-On Manager 

One tool added to IE is an Add-On 

Manager that lets you monitor and control 

add-ons installed by third-parties and 

loaded with IE. It also gives you more control 

over some of those toolbar add-ons 

that creep onto your browser. In IE, use the 

Tools menu to access Manage Add-Ons. 

The first window shows add-ons that are 

currently loaded and running. To see all 

the add-ons available to IE, use the dropdown 

menu to choose Add-Ons That Have 

Been Used By Internet Explorer. But there 

is more to see. Right-click the list’s column 

headings to bring up a list of additional 

Registry Tip Of The Month 

Block The SP2 Update 

Because SP2 is incompatible with 

some programs and program 

functions, some users and network 

administrators may want to delay 

installing the upgrade. Nevertheless, 

many machines in the corporate environment 

have their Windows XP 

Automatic Update feature set to download 

any and all OS patches and 

updates, and so SP2 could be installed 

unintentionally. Microsoft has issued a 

toolkit that blocks Automatic Update 

from downloading SP2 by making 

changes to the Windows Registry. At 

Microsoft’s site, type xpsp2blocker 

tools.exe into the Search bar to find 

the download and its instructions. This 

routine blocks SP2 from installing 

either through Automatic Update or 

the Windows Update tool. ▲ 

categories about these files you can add to 

the viewer. You will see fields that indicate 

when you last accessed the add-on, where 

its file resides on your hard drive, etc. Click 

any of these items to add the field to the 

add-on window. 

Many of these add-ons are legitimate 

ActiveX controls for things such as Shockwave 

Flash or browser extensions and 

helpers for the Google toolbar. According 

to Microsoft, add-ons are the most common 

cause for IE crashes. If you find an 

unfriendly add-on in this list, highlight it 

and use the Disable radio button in the 

Settings section below to prevent it from 

loading. If your browser tends to crash 

whenever you visit a site that uses a particular 

ActiveX add-on, highlight the add-on 

here and use the Update ActiveX button to 

get a more recent version. 

SP2 Begone 

If you just don’t like what SP2 has 

done to your system, there are several 

ways to remove it safely. The best method 

is to use the Add Or Remove Programs 

tool in your Control Panel. At the top of 

the window, check the Show Updates 

box, scroll to the listing for Windows XP 

Service Pack 2, and use the Remove button. 

Follow the uninstall instructions. 

If that fails, you can also use a hidden 

folder SP2 made to initiate its own uninstall 

routine. In the Run command box, 

type c:\windows\$NtServicePackUn 

install$\spuninst\spuninst.exe. This will 

start the SP2 uninstall wizard. Follow 

the prompts. 

Finally, if all of this fails, you can use 

the System Restore tool to roll your PC 

back to the restore point SP2 made on 

your system before it installed. In the All 

Programs menu, go to Accessories, System 

Tools, and then System Restore. Click the 

radio button for Restore My Computer To 

An Earlier Time and click Next. Use the 

calendar to find the date on which you 

installed SP2 and highlight the specific 

time in the right window indicating the 

SP2 installation. Click Next and continue 

to follow the warnings and prompts. 

by Steve Smith 

Tips & Tricks 

For some fun, subscribers can go online 

and find out how to hook up a Mac to 

Verizon’s 1xRTT network (www.cpumag 

.com/cpudec04/mac). 

What Stinks? 

Bad breath plagues 96% of the 

population at one time or another, 

but it’s often hard for people to 

determine themselves whether they 

have it. Help has come in the unlikely 

form of a mobile phone. Siemens is 

developing a cell phone with a tiny 

sensor to alert users when 

their breath stinks. The 

ceramic chip, smaller than 

1mm, detects chemical reactions 

in the phone’s immediate 

vicinity and responds with 

an electronic signal. But be 

choosy in your lunch selection: In 

addition to picking up offensive 

breath, the chip also detects body 

odors or gaseous emissions. ▲ 


Tips & Tricks 

WARM UP TO PENGUINS 

Grab Web & FTP Content With Curl 

WHETHER YOU'RE SHELL SCRIPT- 

that can make grabbing online content so 

pleasant and quick you may never fire up 

a Web browser again. One such command 

is curl, and it's well worth getting 

to know, especially if you don't use applications 

that can resume frustrating, interrupted 

downloads. 

Curl Basics 

Curl is actually used in numerous 

venues, but we'll focus here on its ability 

to transfer simple HTTP and FTP traffic. 

Perhaps the easiest use of curl is in 

downloading one or more files from the 

same directory. You can do this from a 

command prompt in the format of: 

curl URL -O 

Here, -O indicates to use the same file 

name that's used on the site, and URL 

points to which files to grab. For example, 

perhaps you want to download the 

four main CDs for Fedora Core 3's test 2 

release, which you could find at this writing 

in the directory ftp://download.fedo 

ra.redhat.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/test 

/2.91/i386/iso/ with the file names FC3test2-i386-disc1.iso,FC3-test2-i386disc2.iso, 

FC3-test2-i386-disc3.iso, and 

FC3-test2-i386-disc4.iso. 

To grab more than one file at a time, 

you can use a technique known as file 

globbing. This involves a limited form 

of regular expressions. The full set of 

rules for this approach in the bash shell 

is available by typing man 7 glob at a 

command prompt. To use file globbing 


ING OR YOU JUST WANT TO 

KNOW HANDY COMMAND LINE 

TRICKS, THERE ARE PROGRAMS 

in our example, we would refer to FC3test2-i386-disc[1-4].iso. 

Thus, the full 

text we would type at the command 

prompt is: 

curl ftp://download.fedora.redhat 

.com/pub/fedora/linux/core/test/2.91 

/i386/iso/FC3-test2-i386-disc[1-4].iso -O 

This is a bit of a mouthful, but it will 

grab all four files with one command. You 

can find more information about how curl 

sees file globbing by typing man curl. 

Using Curl With The Web 

You can interact with the Web using 

curl, as well, which is great if you're 

working on a script that requires live 

Web content. Grabbing the source code 

for a page is as simple as typing curl 

URL at a command prompt. For example, 

you might end up using something 

such as curl http://www.gutenberg.net. 

Let's say you are a voracious reader and 

want to track which books Project 

Gutenberg has added or updated in the 

last week. Surfing the site by hand, we 

find this information at http://www 

.gutenberg.net/browse/recent/last7. 

To dump the contents of this page to 

our system, we would use the command: 

curl http://www.gutenberg.net/browse 

/recent/last7 

If we want to track any documents that 

change or want to email the results to our 

system, we need to do more. Emailing the 

contents is a simple task. For example, we 

could create a cron job that runs once a 

week. So, we would type crontab -e at a 

command prompt to open our account's 

cron job repository and add a line similar 

to this: 

* * * * 0 curlhttp://www.guten 

berg.net/browse/recent/last7 | mail -s 

"Gutenberg Page" me@example.com 

This line in a cron file specifies that 

the command should run every Sunday 

at exactly midnight. (To learn more 

about how a cron job is specified, type 

man 5 crontab at a command prompt.) 

When we save the crontab file, its new 

contents are put into effect. Then, if 

we're using an email client that can read 

HTML, we're set to view the page. Keep 

in mind, our mail server has to be 

installed and running in order for this to 

work, even if it's just set to pass off mail 

from localhost to elsewhere. 

If we only want to see a page if something 

changes, we would save the page's 

source into text files that we can compare 

with one another. Saving the curl 

output into a file is simple enough. We 

just add > filename at the end of the 

command. However, we can't always 

use the same file name or we will just 

be replacing the previous one each time. 

In fact, this task is complex enough that 

we need to look at a shell script rather 

than trying to fit this all on a single 

crontab line. 

Say we create a script in ~/bin/guten 

_check and run a chmod u+x on it to 

make it executable. Now we open this 

file to edit it. The first thing we need to 

do is generate the file name we want to 

use. Because we want to compare information 

saved on particular days, we'll 

use the current date as part of the name. 

Getting the current date involves the 

date command, but it gives its values in 

the following format: 

Tue Oct 5 20:47:20 PDT 2004

This isn't good for us, and besides, 

who wants to have to script in all the processing 

for that? Instead, we'll use the date 

man page (type man date) to get date to 

feed us the format we want to use. What 

we find is date +%s, which lets us get the 

date in "seconds since '00:00:00 1970-01- 

01 UTC'." So, the script might start with: 

#!/bin/bash 

today=`date +%s` 

The backticks (`) are used to tell Linux 

we're interested in the results of what is 

inside the backticks. Now that we know 

what today is, we can use ~/bin/data/ as the 

home for our saved files with file names in 

the format of gutendate. This gives us: 

#!/bin/bash 


cd ~/bin/data 

curl http://www.gutenberg.net/browse 

/recent/last7 > guten$today 

Be sure to create the directories ~/bin 

and ~/bin/data before trying this script. 

Because this script isn't useful the first 

time it runs (it needs to create a file but 

has nothing to compare it to), we need to 

include code for checking to see if there 

are two files. Let's start this by running 

ls -l ~/bin/data/guten*: 

numfiles=`ls -l ~/bin/data/guten* | wc -l` 

This number tells us how many lines 

(or how many files) the listing resulted in. 

Now we can create an if clause to wrap 

the rest of the script in: 

if [ $numfiles -gt 1 ]; then 

(content) 

fi 

Now we need to compare today's 

document with the previous document 

downloaded. To compare text documents 

for any difference between them, use the 

diff command in the format diff firstfile 

secondfile. For firstfile, we can use 

guten$today. Rather than having to handle 

the nightmare of date math for the 

second file, we've already made it easy on 

ourselves. Because the dates are generated 

in the number of seconds from a particular 

point of time, the bigger the number 

means the later the date, and vice versa. 

This lets us use the following to get the 

file names, run a diff on them, and see if 

anything resulted (if the files are identical, 

diff sends no output at all): 

files=`ls guten*` 

result=`diff $files` 

if [ `echo $result | wc -l` -gt 0 ]; then 

cat guten$today | mail -s "Page 

Change" dee@renaissoft.com 

fi 

Finally, to make sure we only have two 

files at any given time, we end the main 

statement with: 

delfile=`ls -rt | head -1` 

rm $delfile 

This code will delete the last file in 

the directory, leaving us with just the 

one we downloaded. Using just the ls 

command with no flags may put two 

file names next to each other on the 

same line, but, in fact, ls sends each of 

these names on a different line. So, we 

need to use the head command to grab 

just the first line of the output, rather 

than cut to grab the first word of a single 

line of output. 

The final script looks like this: 

#!/bin/bash 


cd ~/bin/data 

curl http://www.gutenberg.net 

/browse/recent/last7 > guten$today 

numfiles=`ls -l ~/bin/data/guten* | 

wc -l` 

if [ $numfiles -gt 1 ]; then 

files=`ls guten*` 

Tips & Tricks 

result=`diff $files` 

if [ `echo $result | wc -l` -gt 0 ]; then 

cat guten$today | mail -s "Page 

Change" dee@renaissoft.com 

fi 

delfile=`ls -rt | head -1` 

rm $delfile 

fi 

Now we just need to add an entry to 

crontab -e, such as: 

* * * * 0 

/home/me/bin/guten_check 

Curl Up 

Taken by itself, curl is a useful tool. 

Combine it with shell and other types of 

scripting, however, and it really shines. 

The uses for curl are only limited by 

your imagination. 

by Dee-Ann Leblanc 

They're Everywhere! 

They're Everywhere! 

The inevitable war with the machines 

may be more "Infested: Invasion of the 

Killer Bugs" than "Terminator." 

Australian researchers are currently 

studying insect swarms in an effort to develop 

miniature machines for military use. 

Theoretically, these machines would mimic 

the hive-mind and problem-solving nature 

of insect swarms and be used initially for 

gathering information. The project, according 

to the Defence Science and Technology 

Organisation, will take 10 to 15 years to 

complete, giving mankind a fair shot at 

preparing for the eventual onslaught of 

mechanical wasps, ants, and grasshoppers. 

Source: Yahoo! News/AFP 

sg.news.yahoo.com 


Mike Magee is an industry 

veteran. He cut his teeth 

on ancient products like 

the Dragon and the 

Japanese PC platforms 

long before the IBM-PC 

won. He worked for a 

corporate reseller in the 

mid-’80s and saw the 

Compaq 386 sandwich 

box and every GUI known 

to humankind. Mike 

decided that the way to go 

was the Interweb around 

1994 after editing PC 

mags in the late ’80s and 

’90s. A co-founder of The 

Register, Mike started the 

chip-driven INQUIRER 

(www.theinquirer.net) 

in 2001. He has contacts 

from top to bottom in the 

business, spanning the 

entire chain, who help 

him root out interesting 

rumours and speculation. 


Shavings From The Rumour Mill by Mike Magee 

Intel Rips Its Roadmaps 

Ibreathed a sigh of relief when Intel finally bit 

the bullet and said that it wouldn’t release a 

4GHz Pentium 4 and had abandoned the lonesome 

trail to 10GHz it promised a few years back. 

Hindsight being 20/20, I suppose we should have 

speculated that Intel was going to do that when it 

de-emphasized the megahertz speeds of its Pentium 

M, which we’ve always thought had the makings of 

a way great chip. So Intel’s been thinking this one 

through for more than two years. 

The British monarchy used to have a saying: “The 

King is dead. Long live the King.” It was a problem 

when there was a Queen, but tradition can change, 

just like an Intel roadmap. And 

we managed to see the shape of 

things to come from Intel just a 

few days before printing. Of 

course, roadmaps for Intel are 

probably like plans for navies 

(navigators)—the name we use 

in Britshire for people building 

roads. You come up against 

immoveable objects and sometimes 

blasting mountains out of 

the way is a peak too far. But we think that what 

Intel’s now telling its customers makes a heap more 

sense than what it was saying earlier in the year. 

We’d like to be able to tell you what the equivalent 

brand for the digital home is to Intel’s 

Centrino, but while we know there will be such a 

brand, no one’s cut that shaving our way yet. What 

Intel is doing with its new improved family of 

desktop chips does involve some important seachanges, 

however. The Glenwood and Lakeport 

chipset support several types of Smithfield LGA 

775 style microprocessors, as we knew already. But 

it’s the details of the ICH7 bridge that are the devil 

that Intel is betting on in 2005. 

ICH7, a generic name for the bridge Intel is 

readying, and which fits in a 652 microBGA socket, 

includes a stack of features which will help its digital 

home push. There’s a base line of features including 

four PCI Express X1 ports, four serial ATA ports, 

RAID, AC 97 2.3 support and power management, 

but the details are most interesting. It will push 

Serial ATA to 3Gbps, introduce Energy Lake and 

the AMT (Active Management Technology) it spoke 

about recently, and even be able to switch between 

ATX and BTX form factors. 

. . . it is very likely 

that Intel will 

produce dual-core 

Pentium Ms as a 

desktop option. 

Intel will also plug in enhanced Speedstep into 

its desktops, allowing for less heat and quieter 

PCs, and those features will be ready for the 6XX 

series of 2MB level two cache 1066 FSB Pentium 

4s in early 2005. The existing chipsets support 

this stuff, and the family also supports Windows 

XP SP2, so viruses are less likely. 

There will be the astonishing total of five different 

kinds of ICH for future Glenwood/Lakeport 

chips. They come with no-suffix (vanilla), DH for 

the Digital Home, DO for the Digital Office, DE 

for the Digital Enterprise, and R for RAID. When 

building motherboards, Intel and its chipset customers 

will be able to mix and 

match features. 

Lakeport P, a mainstream 

chipset, will support 1066, 800 

and 533MHz system buses, 

DDR2-667, and Smithfield 

dual processors 4GB of memory. 

Lakeport G will have integrated 

graphics. Glenwood will 

support 8GB of system memory, 

and have a Turbo mode for 

performance hungry buyers. All ICH7 chipsets will 

support 3Gbps S-ATA, while ICH7 RAID will 

offer different kinds of support for your valuable 

hard drive data. 

What’s really exciting me, though, is that now 

it is very likely that Intel will produce dual-core 

Pentium Ms as a desktop option. That design is 

already in preparation and should offer a very 

quiet Media PC. 

As Intel’s chief rival, AMD, is also telling me 

that frequencies for its dual-core chips will also 

not be as high as its single core microprocessors, 

the question we have to work out is whether we 

get more performance for two, without the 

extra megahertz. 

The only blot on the landscape is that sources 

are telling me that Windows XP 64 for both 

AMD and Intel chips may be pushed out even 

further than it already is. If Microsoft’s not careful, 

it’s going to collide with Longhorn. Or was 

that the plan all along? ■ 

Send rumours to “Mad Mike” Magee at 

Mike@cpumag.com.

Those of you who lost countless 

hours of work you typed into 

Commodores, TRS-80s, or early Apple 

systems will sympathize with the problem 

that Robert Tansley, lead developer 

in the DSpace (www.dspace.org) project 

at HP, seeks to solve. In the span of 

generations or even decades, data can be 

fleeting. Applications change. Entire 

hardware and operating system platforms 

evaporate. As painful as obsolescence 

can be for individuals, the 

problem is far worse for organizations 

(especially governments) entrusted with 

preserving data forever. Fortunately, 

help is on the way. ▲ 


CPU: How serious of a problem is digital 

file storage? 

Tansley: People first became aware of the 

general problem with traditional preservation 

even as early as the late 1970s. Some 

of the original stories about things that 

were lost include things like in 1964 when 

the first ever email message was transmitted. 

It may have been sent from MIT, 

Cambridge University in the UK, or the 

Carnegie Institute of Technology in the 

U.S. No one actually will ever know which 

team sent the first email message because it 

has vanished. Another example: In the 

1970s, various satellite observations were 

made of Brazil and the Amazonian basin. 

Those are just lost now, and with them 

potential information about climate shift 

and that sort of thing. 

MIT and HP understood that this was 

one particular consequence for storing the 

intellectual output of humanity in digital 

form. In 1086 in England, William of 

Normandy wanted a census of his new 

country and commissioned this book, 

'The Domesday Book,' which listed information 

about who was living in the country, 

the land they owned, and so forth. 

It's still readable to this day. 

Nine hundred years later, the BBC's 

Domesday disc project captured similar 

information about England in 1986. But 

pretty soon because that was in digital format, 

the disc readers—the hardware and 

the software required to access that information—became 

obsolete and very hard to 

get hold of. So in 2002 a rather expensive 

rescue operation was mounted, where people 

had to reverse-engineer the file formats. 

They had to connect aging equipment to 

new PCs and, in some cases, leave the data 

transferring from the old equipment to the 

new equipment, taking 50 hours or more. 

You saw the same thing happen with the 

1960 U.S. census. All that data had to be 

What’s Cooking . . . 

Technically Speaking 

An Interview With Robert Tansley, Lead Developer Of The DSpace Project 

migrated to new technology throughout a 

three- or four-year period starting in 1976. 

CPU: From a high-level perspective, how 

does DSpace, or preservation systems in 

general, handle data? 

Tansley: DSpace is intended to avoid the 

need for the expensive rescue scenario that I 

described earlier. One aspect of that is getting 

and keeping the original disc. The 

system makes it easy for people to take content 

that's on their hard drives or in proprietary 

vendor repositories and put it in 

a place that can be centrally managed. So 

getting and keeping the bits is one aspect. 

That also includes getting it off esoteric 

storage—physical storage formats like old 

laser discs, that sort of thing. Then you 

have to maintain the accessibility of the 

bits. That entails maintaining descriptions 

of the bits so that you can find them later 

by searching and retrieving and also giving 

names to things that you put in it. All of 



your videos, data sets, software, source 

code, all those things get a persistent 

name. So if someone else wishes to access 

this 20 years down the line, they can use 

this name to actually find it. The third 

piece of the preservation problem is keeping 

the bits understandable over time. This 

is something you do aggressively and preemptively 

as formats start to become obsolete. 

You can migrate from, say, your WAV 

format files to whichever new audio format 

is in widespread use at the time. DSpace 

provides the platform to apply those tools. 

CPU: So it requires some administrator 

sitting there saying, 'OK, WAV format is 

falling out of use. The new format is, say, 

Windows Lossless. DSpace, here's the 

codec or the technology required to handle 

this and translate one format to the other.' 

Then DSpace helps to automate the migration 

of all applicable files in the old format 

to the new one? 

Tansley: That's exactly it. There are 

large numbers of different automated 

ways of achieving that that people are 

looking at. All you need to do is indicate 

that format X—we'll say WAV—is 

becoming obsolete, and this new 

format—say Windows Lossless—is 

becoming dominant. Then the system 

can work out automatically that that's a 

translation it should do throughout the 

content it has inside. This is very much 

the research angle, though, because people 

don't understand how to do this yet. 

We are just beginning to explore the 

problem, really. No one actually knows 

how to do digital preservation yet. 

CPU: Does DSpace also scale down to 

small businesses and individuals? 

Tansley: It certainly scales down to 

small organizations. It's very easy to 

deploy the system and use it in a simple 

fashion. I'm not sure if it's really a system 

that's been designed for individual use. 

CPU: Why not? Families are accumulating 

hundreds of gigabytes of data: family 

videos, music collections, etc. You're saying 

DSpace is not a platform that would 


help with the permanent archiving and 

migration of that data over time? 

Tansley: I don't think this is a system 

that the family would obtain, install, and 

use itself. Where a system like DSpace 

could have a role in this scenario is if a 

commercial vendor or a service advisor, 

perhaps even an ISP, were to run DSpace 

and offer this service to consumers so they 

could deposit all of their gigabytes of photos, 

videos, and so forth into the DSpace 

that the ISP runs. Then the ISP could do 

the management, the migration of formats 

over time, and that sort of thing. 

CPU: The conversion problem seems 

deceptively simple, but now that we think 

about it, how do you design an automated 

system able to reason out which of all the 

new formats to employ for conversion? Do 

you employ all of them that apply? And of 

all the file conversion options in the new 

format, which options do you enable? That 

has to be extremely hard. 

Tansley: It is, and it also depends on 

what exactly it is you're trying to preserve 

and why. There are two general strategies 

that people talk about when they talk 

about digital preservation these days. One 

of them is called format migration, what 

we've just been talking about. In order to 

keep some content useful, you take the file 

in the old format and apply some tool to 

migrate that to a new file in some new 

format. Often, you might find that you 

unintentionally lost some information 

during that translation. For example, 

many word processor formats these days 

have undo information. If you then translate 

that to a PDF, the undo information 

is lost, and it's harder to edit the result 

afterwards. That's the migration technique. 

Another technique for preservation 

is emulation. This is more appropriate for 

interactive sorts of content, things like software 

packages, video games, and, in the 

context of MIT, perhaps interactive visualizations 

of molecules. For this sort of 

preservation strategy, you need to maintain 

tools that emulate the hardware and software 

environment that the original object 

existed in so that later on people can run 

this emulator and view the object as it was 

originally intended. And it rapidly gets even 

more complicated. Software is becoming a 

large part of our cultural record, as is interactive 

content and things like dynamic 

Web sites that change over time. 

CPU: Now the lack of applicability to 

homes makes more sense. But we assume 

you could make a scaled-down version of 

DSpace because, at its simplest, this is an 

asset management and migration tool. 

Tansley: Yes, you could certainly build a 

scaled-down version of this that would be 

more useful to an individual home user. 

CPU: How close is DSpace to being a 

'finished' platform? 

Tansley: Well, there's still development 

work we're doing. And hopefully that will 

continue to go on into the future. But the 

intention with DSpace, the original twoyear 

DSpace project, was to build a system 

that did all of the basic things that you 

need a system like this to do, but just at a 

very basic level. When you move to the 

open-source model, you attract developers 

from communities that know about digital 

preservation. They can all build on this 

platform to increase the depth in each area 

to make it more scalable, to improve preservation 

capabilities like migrating a file from 

one format to another. That's where we are 

now, but we're getting contributions from 

all over the globe for things like bug fixes, 

extra features, and we're working with the 

community to extend the architecture of 

the system to make it more scalable and 

modular. We're calling this new, improved, 

scalable architecture DSpace 2. So although 

the system's been in useful production 

since November 2002, in terms of the 

whole DSpace system, I think we are only 

just beginning. 

Subscribers can see more content with Robert Tansley at 

www.cpumag.com/cpudec04/tansley.


Under 

Development 

A Peek At What's Brewing In The Laboratory 

IBM's New Spin On Single-Atom Measurements 

Some sweeping tech advances may not 

seem terribly important at first glance, 

but a recent innovation by IBM researchers 

may be critical to the future of atomic-scale 

computing. The IBM team's "spin-flip 

spectroscopy" process measures the energy 

that's required to flip a single atom's magnetic 

orientation, or "spin." In this case the 

team measured the energy needed to flip a 

manganese atom's spin from up to down, 

the two possible states for an atom. 

Scientists placed the magnetized atom 

on a surface in a vacuum environment 

cooled to just over 0 degrees Kelvin and 

controlled its spin with a magnetic field. A 

nonmagnetic scanning tunneling microscope 

tip hovered just over the atom. When 

Intel Advances Next-Gen 65nm Process 

Don't get too settled on Prescott's 

90nm fabrication technology. The 

next-generation shrink to 65nm is already 

en route. 

The 65nm process got its first legs back 

in November 2003 when Intel crafted 

4Mb SRAMs based on the technology. 

The new advance steps up to 70Mb 

SRAMs on 65nm. According to Intel, 

with 65nm SRAM cells, one could pack 

approximately 10 million transistors into 1 


the tip was charged with voltage, electrons 

tunneled from the tip to the atom. When 

the voltage reached a certain point, scientists 

observed the flow of electrons increased, 

and the atom's spin flipped. 

This proof of process is important 

because being able to determine and affect 

the properties of individual atoms is necessary 

to the advance of future "spintronic"based 

nanoscale computing devices. 

"Harnessing the quantum spin of electrons 

and atoms is central to an emerging 

class of dramatically new ideas for futuristic 

electronic, computing, data storage, and 

even quantum computing devices," says 

Andreas Heinrich, a researcher at IBM's 

Almaden Research Center. "To engineer 

square mm. SRAM cells are the essential 

ingredient behind on-die processor cache 

circuitry. Naturally, the move from 65nm 

memory to a full-blown 65nm processor is 

only a matter of technology maturation. 

"The semiconductor industry continues 

to face the challenges of power and heat 

dissipation as transistors get smaller and 

smaller," says Kari Skoog, Intel spokesperson. 

"Intel is taking a holistic approach 

in our next-generation 65nm process 

technology to address these challenges 

with innovative technologies. Our 65nm 

process technology enables us to pack 

even more transistors onto a single chip, 

which means we can design such new 

Get ready for shrinkage. Intel's next-gen 65nm 

fabrication process has already produced 70Mb 

SRAMs and will soon enable significantly more 

functionality on Intel's processors. 

This conceptual diagram shows IBM's new 

"spin-flip spectroscopy" technique. 

Electrons (red) tunnel from the tip of 

a scanning tunneling microscope (top) 

through an atom (red circle) that rests on a 

surface (bottom). When the electrons' energy 

exceeds a certain value, it flips the atom's spin, 

or magnetic orientation, from down to up (represented 

by the arrows in the circle). 

the nanoscale features we anticipate these 

new spintronic circuits will require, we will 

need fundamental knowledge of the magnetic 

properties of small numbers of atoms 

in various environments. Our new spinflip 

technique provides this information in 

much more detail and precision than had 

been possible before." 

Future IBM work with spin-flip spectroscopy 

will delve into how atoms interact 

when brought into close proximity 

and are arranged in different geometries. 

features as security or virtualization into 

future products." 

To help cope with rising power densities, 

Intel is implementing its second generation 

of strained silicon technology, 

which should increase transistor performance 

by up to 15% with no increase 

in current leakage. In fact, Intel states 

that second-gen strained silicon transistors 

can cut leakage by up to four times 

of that found with the 90nm process. 

Additionally, the battery-saving technologies 

in Intel's Centrino platform are gradually 

becoming pervasive, as the 65nm 

technology will employ "sleep transistors" 

that block electricity flow to large blocks 

of circuitry when they are not in use. 

Intel plans to have its 65nm process 

technology ready in 2005 with high-volume 

65nm product shipments in 2006.

y William Van Winkle 

Bell Creates Wi-Fi Balancing Act Yale Quantum 

Optics On A Chip 

Say you take your notebook to a Starbucks hotspot to engage in 

a little online gaming over a caramel macchiato. How would 

you feel if the guy across from you was getting twice the bandwidth 

for the same price? Load imbalance in WLANs is a very common 

problem in locations that deploy multiple access points. Given a 

choice you'll probably select the access point with the strongest signal, 

right? Well, so does everybody else. 

Fortunately, researchers at Lucent's Bell Labs think that they 

have an answer. At the recent MobiCom 2004 event held in 

Philadelphia, Bell scientists presented a paper called 

"Fairness and Load Balancing in Wireless LANs Using 

Association Control" in which they detail a new 

802.11-compliant method for balancing Wi-Fi 

traffic. The algorithm at the center of the 

process monitors traffic from each user and 

dynamically shifts connections from heavily 

loaded to lightly loaded APs as needed. 

"In the presence of hotspots, our algorithms 

provide fair service to all users accessing the 

network, while also maximizing the amount of bandwidth they 

receive," says Yigal Bejerano, a researcher in Bell Labs' Internet 

Management Lab, in a statement. "Typically our algorithms also 

yield higher network utilization than the most commonly used 

'strongest signal' approach, while today's approaches tend to focus 

on overall throughput when allocating network resources. We 

believe that understanding the correlation between fairness and loadbalancing 

are critical in order to maximize bandwidth for all users." 

In a separate paper from Bell Labs at MobiCom, researchers analyzed 

the mean end-to-end travel time of packets through a WLAN 

based on node topology and the queue size at each node. In many 

cases there are zones within a constellation of nodes that act as bottlenecks. 

You might visualize the nodes as being arranged in an hourglass 

pattern. The conventional approach to alleviating bottlenecks is 

to increase bandwidth capacity at the narrowest point. Bell's new 

algorithm instead creates new, 

more effective links between 

constellation nodes and eliminates 

ineffective ones. Thus, 

optimizing the flow of packets 

upstream from the bottleneck 

can greatly reduce end-to-end 

transit times. 

The idea is similar to creating 

a better set of paths out of 

the suburbs to access the 

freeway on-ramp. You are 

still stuck with a tedious wait 

at the on-ramp, but you've 

cut your total travel time, and 

it costs a lot less to reroute 

residential traffic than to 

build a new on-ramp. 

Future work on these fronts from Bell will work to address packet 

scheduling, local interference, and other real-world factors. 

If you've kept up on your "Under Development" reading, 

you know that quantum computing is a hot 

prospect for high-performance computing in the next 

decade (or two). However, getting from here to there is a 

Herculean task, and no one has a clear idea of how to 

accomplish it. Yale University researchers have brought us 

one step closer, though, with their demonstration of quantum 

optical computation on a microchip and not some 

massive magnetic chamber that dominates a test lab. 

Quantum computation hinges on performing parallel 

operations on quantum bits, or qubits, existing in a bizarre 

state of superposition, in which one bit can possess more 

than one operational value. One problem with quantum 

computing, though, is that superposition states are incredibly 

fragile, and trying to just read the state is often enough to 

make the superposition collapse into a regular binary value. 

Yale researchers devised a superconducting "Cooper box" 

able to store oscillating microwave photons and let them be 

read and written to without collapsing their superposition. 

The Cooper box utilizes a massive number of superconducting 

aluminum atoms to form a cavity over 1 million times 

smaller than that used in conventional atomic physics tests. 

Within this environment a "probing" photon is able to read 

a qubit's superimposed state without disrupting it. 

"The goal of producing a practical quantum computer is 

an extremely difficult one," says Yale professor Steven Girvin. 

"We are still in the early 'pre-ENIAC' days of trying to make 

1- and 2-quantum bits and gates. This experiment successfully 

demonstrates some of the basic building blocks needed for 

a new architecture for quantum computing based on superconducting 

quantum bits controlled by microwave pulses. 

The next steps will be to scale up to a larger number of 

qubits and demonstrate the use of the resonant microwave 

cavity as a quantum 'data bus' to couple the qubits together." 

"The qubit in this image 

consists of two parts," 

says Yale professor Steven 

Girvin, "a skinny (submicron) 

horizontal bar 

attached to something 

that looks like two 'goal 

posts' stuck in the (electrical) 

ground. The skinny 

cross bar is the Cooper 

pair box, which contains 

about 100 million pairs of 

electrons. One additional 

pair of electrons can hop from the ground onto the box through 

the junctions where it attaches to the 'goal posts.' " 

(Credit: D. Schuster and L. Frunzio, Schoelkopf Group, Yale 

University) 


Others might have invented 

VoIP (Voice over IP) technology, 

but Jeffrey Citron 

and his company, Vonage, 

look to be the ones who 

will turn it into an industry. Citron is no 

stranger to reshaping established industries. 

He founded NASDAQ trading giant The 

Island ECN, as well as the online brokerage, 

Datek (now owned by Ameritrade), 

which was critical in sparking the day trading 

phenomenon. If Citron’s Vonage can 

do for communications what Datek did to 

conventional stock trading, you may never 

dial through a Baby Bell again. 

QWhat is Vonage and why did you 

develop it? 

Citron: Vonage had a very simple premise: 

To be able to deliver a competitive phone 

service using existing broadband connections 

or last-mile IP networks. If you look 

back a bit at the history of communications, 

[converging services have been] very 

problematic because every time you want 

to add something new, you’ve got to go 

out and swap out all the equipment that 

does conversion along the way. We believe 

that you can converge services to a common, 

uniform IP layer, which is global in 

its nature. Then on top of that, you can do 

all kinds of applications: video, audio, 

messaging, email, you name it—even 

things that we haven’t quite invented yet. 

So, with that in mind and understanding 

how that convergence would work, we 

launched Vonage. And now we have 

222,000 customers. 

QCompared to traditional telco services, 

do you offer anything that is 

unique to VoIP? 

Citron: Absolutely. VoIP frees voice services 

from the traditional wires in which it 

used to be carried and controlled. In doing 

so, a number of new capabilities become 

available. One of the greatest abilities is 

that you can take your VoIP services 


Back Door 

Q&A With Jeffrey Citron 

anywhere in the world. As long as you can 

plug into a broadband connection, you 

can get it. Take your phone number with 

you. It doesn’t cost you any more or any 

less. There’s no concept of roaming like 

there is with cellular or if you go to a different 

country. 

The other interesting aspect is that you 

could have a phone number that’s not 

geographically tracked. You could have a 

phone number in California that’s from 

New York or a phone number from 

Canada in the United States. Of course, 

we’ll have other kinds of features, like 

the ability for our customers to have 

more than one phone number on their 

device. And you can access the service 

through a number of different devices. 

Today you could access it through our 

adapter: You take an adapter and you 

plug it into a regular, traditional, plain 

old telephone, which turns it into an IP 

phone. You can use a softphone, meaning 

a phone that runs on your computer 

or on a PDA. Soon you’ll be able to 

purchase a Wi-Fi phone. 

QWe never took Vonage seriously until 

we saw a guy listen to his voicemail 

on his laptop over a Wi-Fi connection. 

Citron: Exactly. You can retrieve them 

via your Web browser or have your voicemails 

emailed to you. That’s pretty sexy. 

And the ability to set your call forwarding 

so it actually rings your phone and forwards 

at the same time is very helpful. 

QAre you encountering any sort of 

regulatory difficulties? 

Citron: The biggest regulatory problem in 

this country is that our regulatory structure 

was built almost 100 years ago and 

was based on people not moving. A lot of 

the old rules just don’t work well for our 

users. We have a patchwork of 51 states’ 

worth of regulations to deal with. Our 

customers could be in any one of those 

states at any point in time. It doesn’t make 

a lot of sense. The states should really be 

held at bay from creating their own regulations 

because in doing so, they make it 

very difficult for operators to operate on a 

national basis. 

QDo you see free models such as 

Skype as a threat to the traditional 

phone business, even if it’s routed 

over broadband? 

Citron: No, because at least the Skype free 

model still limits the universe of people 

who can call each other to people who are 

on the Skype service. That service has to be 

up and actively running, connecting to a 

broadband connection on each end. That 

doesn’t really help a lot when I want to call 

my wife, who might be in a car. The realities 

are, when I actually want to make a 

real phone call, I pick up my Vonage line. 

Subscribers can go to www.cpumag.com 

/cpudec04/citron for bonus content. 

William Van Winkle began writing for computer 

magazines in 1996. He 

was first published in 1990, the 

same year he took his first job in 

computers. He and his family 

live outside of Portland, Ore.

74470 81182 1 2> - Computer Power User

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