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Newstips Electronic Editorial Bulletin Issue # 2010-03c
News to put a little Spring in your step
In this issue:
Antec preps Dark Fleet for spring launch... BlackBerry owners
juiced over Fixmo Tools launch... New Franklin Learner Racin'
Mathematics game... BACtrack: is 0.08% just in your head...
Tiffen at NAB: you bet your sweet glass... Special Report:
Lancing the news blister... Project Yippie: antimalware...
Project Up & Up: multiple short pops on Core i7 piecewise system
upgrades... Reviews: Intel DBX-B CPU Cooler, Intel Core i7-980
CPU, Beamz, Velcro One-Wrap, GE 3-LED 12" light... plus a news
flash & our commentary on our plans
Antec prepares Dark Fleet for spring launch
You may have seen the CES preview of the striking new Dark Fleet
cases from Antec, launching this spring (specs & pix now but
still a wait for preview reviewables). Yes, they're designed for
the kind of striking good looks that get any gamer going, but it
wouldn't look out of place in a contemporary office. The beauty
is more than skin deep - this isn't one of those thin plastic
sculpted facades you may have seen on other case - Antec built it
to be easy to build into, capable of handling server-level drive
counts plus the kind of attention to details that means you can
build without knuckle Band-Aids or inside tangles of wire. Ask
Veronica for details. Contact: Veronica Feldmeier, Antec Inc.
(Fremont, CA) 510-770-2150 vfeldmeier@antec.com
http://antec.com
Fixmo Tools launches - BlackBerry owners juiced
March 17 is the official launch date for Fixmo Tools BlackBerry
Edition ($20) with its innovative collection of oops-antidote
handset utilities (Flame Retardant, Silencer, Undelete,
Forward/Reply with Edit, Battery Watch & Memory Monitor). That's
just the beginning: its price includes a year of updates & Bonus
Tools are already in the works, as is an Android Edition (looks
like a 2Q launch candidate). Why BlackBerry first? Why these
tools? Why Android second? Why launch a software utility company
focused on handsets? Ask Rick. Contact: Rick Segal, Fixmo
(Toronto, ON) 416-414-9726 rick@Fixmo.com http://Fixmo.com
Second Franklin Learner product launches this month
The new LRM220 Racin' Mathematics ($13) handheld game is the
second product in the new Franklin Learner series & ships this
month. The screen bottom has a simple arithmetic formula with a
blank; players use the game's controls to get into the lane with
the right answer & run over it, racing against the clock. Photos
& info are available now with reviewables close enough that it's
OK to ask. Contact: Aline Boutin, Franklin Electronic Publishers
(Burlington, NJ) 609-386-2500x4434 aline_boutin@franklin.com
http://franklin.com
Is 0.08 just in your head?
In most places, a blood alcohol content of 0.08% defines the
legal limit but individuals seldom know what that feels like to
them, let alone lesser or greater levels. Surprisingly, curiosity
about that is one reason that curious consumers buy some of the
less expensive BACtrack models, so they can drink, pay attention
to how that feels, see the reading & perhaps repeat. Keith is
happy to send you a unit for your own tests, but you have to
promise to test in the safety of your own home. Contact: Keith
Nothacker, KHN SOLUTIONS (San Francisco CA) 415-693-9756x113
mailto:keith.nothacker@bactrack.com http://bactrack.com
Tiffen at NAB: you bet your sweet glass
Pro video cameras come with some very expensive lenses but
sometimes stock lenses are a less than perfect fit for particular
shooting situations. At NAB, you won't find a pro who doesn't
know Tiffen for their incredibly broad family of filters. Expect
to see a lot of attention on their Digital HT (high
transmissivity) filters with durable, scratch-resistant
double-sided titanium multi-coats; too many syllables? Ask Hilary
for a syllabus. Contact: Hilary Araujo, Tiffen Company
(Hauppauge, NY) 631-609-3216 haraujo@tiffen.com
http:/.tiffen.com
Special Report: Lancing the news blister
With the recent Supreme Court decision approving corporate &
union sponsorship of political messages, most of the focus has
been on its effects on politics, but ours here is on its effects
on media. After 7 overlapping recessions gutting our profession,
there's little doubt but that this decision opens up new sources
of ad spending ergo a renewed vitality in advertising sales. Yes,
publishers & owners have lots of holes to fill before giving any
attention to newsroom staffing & it's true that some budgets,
once cut or lost, will never be restored. There's another truth:
when money flows are healthy, their capitalist intuitions kick in
& raise the bar on competing. It's that competitive posturing
that will fuel improvements in newsroom staffing & budgets. For a
bellwether on which bosses get that (we're aware of the recent
bureau cuts), keep an eye on NAB. Those spending on HD-capable
cameras, remote trucks & field gear get it; for those who don't
get it yet, look forward to very busy fourth-quarter newsrooms
trying to simultaneously satisfy escalating demands, train new
people, open bureaus & learn to use new gear. Whether you do
print or broadcast, huddle your forces early to discuss your best
responses if you're suddenly able to hire a little more, travel a
little more & spend a little more.
Project Yippie: Antimalware
If Microsoft Security Essentials could run on Windows Serve 2008
R2 (we tried; it can't), this would be a one-line item. You can
get the same antimalware engine for servers & multi-user sites as
Microsoft Forefront (which isn't free, but there's a 120-day free
trial after which it's $13/year). After some initial
misadventures (as reviewed a few issues back), we got the right
incantation (command line) to get it going in seconds,
effortlessly. An earlier interview disclosed that all Microsoft
antimalware solutions use the same back end & engine with
variations in the front end & UI, so we know that Forefront
delivers the same robust & thorough protection we enjoy with MSE
on the desktop, all with the same extremely light footprint on
system resources.
Project Up & Up: What now
Last year, our feature editorial project was a Core i7 system
build optimized for video editing plus everyday (mostly MS
Office) tasks. With all that's changed since, we thought it
appropriate to put that system through a series of
in-place/in-case upgrades to keep its performance current. Our
intent is to upgrade the motherboard, the optical drive, the RAID
card & the CPU while keeping the drives, RAM & graphics card as
they were & adding 2 new features.
Project Up & Up: The case
At this writing, the case is a work in progress. We originally
planned to keep everything in our year-old Thermaltake Element S
case, but we've had too many accidental hits of its top-mounted
power & reset buttons. Antec suggested their "Strong Silent"
combo, a P183 case (the full-size ATX version of the Mini-P180
case we used for our Project Yippie server build) with a
CPX-format (a bit larger than ATX, but a mate for this case)
power supply. We thought we could overstuff this new case (8 hard
drives, optical disc) as we had the original, but the length of
the GTX260 graphics card made that impossible. We'll move the old
mobo & CPU into this new case, but until then, it's running on
its side on a cart, door open, wires & drives hanging out on all
sides, looking like Frankenstein meets CSI. An Antec server case
is on the way.
Project Up & Up: The motherboard
We love the performance of Core i7 CPUs but suspected that our
year-old X58 motherboard might be underperforming; while BIOS &
driver updates could address a lot of that, we also wanted to add
a second Gigabit Ethernet port (one for our static IP on the
"real" internet & one to reach the gear inside our router). Our
explorations led us to the very nicely crafted ASUS workstation
series: the P6T6-WS Revolution (reviewed in a recent issue);
while it's no newer than the Gigabyte board it's replacing,
there's no challenging that it's an upgrade & features like six
PCIe X16 slots give us flexibility we haven't had before. This is
engineered beyond others we've seen & it arrived ready to run
with the new 6-core "Gulftown" Core i7-980 CPU.
Project Up & Up: The optical drive
We always wanted a way to move HD video projects onto BluRay, but
our original Core i7 system only ever had a standard DVD burner.
We replaced that with a Pioneer BDR-205 (reviewed in a recent
issue) that can read & write both BluRay & old-school DVD/CD
formats.
Project Up & Up: Memory
Which do you think is better, more memory or faster memory? We
thought about 4GB modules (24GB total) but those are either
slower or crazy expensive & hard to get. We thought of
1600/2000MHz modules. A productive chat with an engineer at ASUS
taught us that our best approach would be to go for low latency,
ideally using 1333MHz memory with CAS 7 latency (some CAS 6 is
out there but it's hard to get & the difference hard to notice).
Our existing 1333 memory tests out at CAS 8 - close enough -
we're keeping it.
Project Up & Up: The CPU
The new Intel Core i7-980 (reviewed elsewhere in this issue) is
the Lamborghini of processors, running 12 threads across 6 cores
for one heck of a ride. It makes a big difference in video
rendering times in Sony Vegas Pro, which is designed to take full
advantage of extra cores. Other operations are also speedier;
intensive multitaskers will love it. We had a monstrously
powerful Core i7 CPU a year ago, but this one is like that one
with a partner, both on steroids.
Project Up & Up: The RAID card
We made the case for hardware-based RAID 5 in our initial Core i7
system build because that multiplies both speed & capacity. Our
controller choice then was an LSI Logic card, but it had
continuing challenges & we found a much better solution in an
Adaptec 5405Z controller (reviewed in a recent issue), this time
with 10-year (instead of 72-hour) cache protection without
needing a piggyback battery plus a better dual-core controller &
some impressive power savings through clever drive control.
There's a reason that Adaptec is a category leader; this was an
easy installation with no quirks & we get all the performance our
array can deliver.
Project Up & Up: Adding SATA 3 & USB 3
Neither SATA 3 nor USB 3 was around when we built our Core i7
system a year ago, but ASUS cures that with their U3S6 PCIe X4
adapter (reviewed in a recent issue). Standard rotating-media
hard drives don't read or write fast enough to need the 6Mbps
bandwidth of SATA 3, but some upcoming SSD products do & we want
to be equipped to review them when they come. The same is true
for 4.8Mbps USB3 drives, but we anticipate seeing RAID5 arrays
connect over USB3 & they will need that bandwidth to keep the
connection from being a bottleneck. Besides, with our new
motherboard, finding a slot was no sweat. We even got an Ultra
4-port bracket, bringing the last of the USB2 headers out.
Project Up & Up: Wrap-up
We are intense multitaskers, so even the huge horsepower of our
new 6-core Intel I7 CPU, our workstation-class ASUS motherboard &
other upgrades are sometimes not enough to keep the system from
tripping over our feet. That happened a lot less a year ago with
our first Core i7 project system. It's happening much less now
with our new upgrades in place. Gutting & replacing system parts
can be tedious, but those hours of work get repaid with interest
as we get to work faster & with fewer interruptions (not counting
the damned phone).
Project Up & Up: Postscript
You may have noticed that we're becoming fussy about computer
noise, which means we can lower it by using mobo PWM-driven fans,
which in turn means we have to also pay attention to heat, which
if we're not careful can lead to more fans ergo more noise.
Vicious, ain't it? During the course of our fiddling, we did
something to cause a lot of fragmenting in our main drive array,
which wouldn't have been bad if it hadn't corrupted the registry
to block Windows startup repair or restore from working. We were
down a few days trying. We ended up booting from our backup
drive, fetching newer versions of everything we could (we lost a
few hours of writing when our master Bulletin document got
disintegrated), then rebuilding our main array & copying our
backup back to it. It was painful & frustrating, but could
certainly have been worse.
Special Report Bonus Review: Intel DBX-B CPU Cooler
We've seen a lot of "box solution" bundled CPU coolers over the
years, but the new Intel DBX-B CPU Cooler (shipped to "Gulftown"
reviewers) deserves its own attention. It can handle most of the
heat load of that CPU most of the time at its minimum 800rpm fan
speed at a very quiet 20dBA; if anything does get crazy, the PWM
fan ramps up to 1800rpm & 35dBA. Mounting is simplified by sticky
strips on the back plate that can hold it in place against the
motherboard until you get the screws in; the protective fan cage
removes readily for easy access to those screw heads. It includes
a single dose of thermal solution that goes dead center onto the
CPU case - no more questions about how much is enough. It has a
simple instruction that's missing from most such kits: the fan
goes on the front side. We tend not to send a CPU into Easy-Bake
turf because we know how quickly heat degrades components & their
life expectancy; we try to keep things as cool as possible, but
work hard to make that happen as quietly as possible. Bottom
line: the new Intel DBX-B CPU Cooler adds a wonderful new weapon
to the landscape of cooling solutions & does so while exhibiting
intelligent engineering design.
Special Report Bonus Review 2: Intel Core i7-980 Extreme CPU
It's been drool bait since we first learned of it - the
Lamborghini of CPUs - the 6-core/12-thread Intel Core i7-980
Extreme ("Gulftown") is built on 32nm technology that reduces
both power consumption & heat generation (130W TDP) even when
screaming at 3.33GHz. One of the coolest things about it is that
it's a drop-in same-socket CPU upgrade on most Socket 1336
motherboards (note: all but the newest may need BIOS & possibly
driver updates to handle it). Some applications (like Sony Vegas)
come ready to take advantage of all those cores; complex video
rendering tasks go appreciably faster with this CPU. This will be
the heart of most gamers' dream machines for some time to come
because that horsepower can also speed the calculations needed to
produce fast-changing synthetic environments in detail. The more
extreme business users - those intense multitaskers who keep lots
of Windows open & busy as well as those who whip their desktops
into doing jobs that normally take a workstation to do - won't
vacillate long over the grand it costs to crank up their
motherboards with one of these. Bottom line: the Intel Core
i7-980 Extreme CPU opens the throttle on overall desktop system
performance the widest it has ever been.
Special Report Bonus Review 3: BeamZ
We had the Beamz product here for months, since before they could
support our 64-bit O/S. Our plans to try it on Judie's notebook
blew up when it did. We just checked back, found a December
upgrade that supports 64-bit Windows 7 & finally got it to run.
Beamz gets its name from double U-shaped frames, each with 3 (so
total 6) laser-photosensor pairs that you can beam-break with a
wave of your hand. This marries (over USB) to software that
interfaces with a music library (some tunes come with the product
& more are available for sale). Each beam-break corresponds to a
different instrument track or hit (meaning here a very short
music or rhythm phrase), as described when the music is authored;
a switch toggles between a main & secondary set of these. Push a
button to start the tune & wave your hands to bring in the other
contributions (like horns, drum hits, vibes, sax, piano, flute,
or cello, for example, depending on the arrangement). The timing,
tonality & duration are consistent with the main tune, somewhat
like doing a multitrack mix-down. This is the kind of thing your
cousins will always want to play with when they visit you, long
after you tire of it. The instruments sound synthetic &
MIDI-like, there's almost no combination that sounds truly
wonderful & it would be foolish to perceive this as eliciting any
level of musical talent, but you probably don't know anyone at
any age who won't take at least 20-30 minutes to play with it.
Bottom line: Beamz is a big, fun toy that lets you fiddle with
music that plays on your PC as you play with it.
Special Report Bonus Review 4: Velcro One-Wrap
Http://cableorganizer.com sent several spring cleaning items,
including a package of 5 rainbow-hued (one each red orange,
yellow, green & blue) Velcro One-Wrap cable straps. The colors
are as useful as you make them; for example, you could separately
bundle cables connecting to the back of a switching receiver per
mating item (cable box, Blu-Ray player, TV set, computer, Roku
box, etc.). Each strap is about 8" long with mating Velcro front
& back for the full length, so they'll bundle any collection of
cables almost up to the size of your wrist. We like these a lot
more than the recycled twist ties we've been using for this.
Bottom line: Velcro One-Wrap cable straps are a handy
one-size-fits-all way to tame unruly cords into tidy accord.
Special Report Bonus Review 5: GE 3-LED 12" fixture
When we reviewed a GE 2-LED under-counter light fixture a few
issues back, Jasco responded by saying, you know, we have a
brighter one, let us send it to you. They do indeed. The GE
Premium 12" Linkable Under-Counter 3-LED Plug-In Fixture offers
significantly higher brightness (in a slightly warm white color
temperature) in a more handsome aluminum fixture with modular
electrical connectors at both ends that let you link them into as
long a light bar as you desire. Whether you have just one or link
several, there's a switch at one end & a plug-in cord at the
other. The brightness (depending on placement, of course) is
adequate for reading or working in a defined space; it would take
a good many of these to accomplish household whole-room lighting.
Bottom line: We credit Jasco's impressive GE Premium 12" Linkable
Under-Counter 3-LED Plug-In Fixture with the level of brightness
& flexibility that we see as necessary for consumer adoption of
LED illumination.
Flash: News for other beats
We just learned from a supervisor at Target National Bank that
their current (read: new) policy is to wait the full 10 business
days (14-16 calendar days) that their service agreement allows
before payments on the card become available credit to
cardholders. We suspect this is true of other credit cards as
well. You may want to pass this on to a consumer reporter.
Our plans
Our overall plans for 2010 involve more coverage on LED lighting
& on helping computers shut up. We've almost finished our Project
Yippie series on how small concerns can move their ftp, Web &
e-mail server in-house. We squeezed our entire "Project Up & Up"
series (on phasing through in-place upgrades to keep running
systems up to snuff) into a single issue. We began our coverage
of 2560 as an important display alternative both for computing &
for TV viewing. We have several planned projects involving very
small format PCs in several roles: as inexpensive utility PCs, as
very quiet set-top boxes & as deployable small servers. We're now
also thinking about how all the downsizing in equipment may
actually help field news reporting stay limber & responsive. As
always, we also want to know what you'd really like to see us
cover more of or cover less of, even if that means you just want
us to spend more time looking at nifty gadgets. Contact: Martin
Winston, Newstips (Novelty, OH) 440-338-8400; marty@Newstips.com
http://Newstips.com
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Newstips Bulletin [Novelty, OH] +1.440.338.8400 http://Newstips.com
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