Chip 2001 January

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****************************************************************** SysOpt Express Wednesday, February 16, 2000 The weekly newsletter of www.sysopt.com ****************************************************************** Topics in this weekÆs SysOpt.com newsletter: -- ASUS K7M Reviewed -- EarthWeb launches Windows 2000 Central -- Cambridge Theater DTT2500 user reviews (and our mini-review) -- Handspring Visor to go retail for $150 -- Measure your CD, DAE, and/or DVD reading speed -- Windows 95 DHCP Security alert and fix ****************************************************************** Wow, what a big week we just had, and what a big week we expect to have ahead. With all the action that eBay, Yahoo, Amazon.com, and all the rest had, it certainly has been a week. Even Earthweb had a run-in with a rogue "hacker" that messed with EarthWeb.com's WHOIS contact and DNS info in the NetworkSolutions database. The main site and all ads were not functioning properly as a result, but thankfully we were able to fix it soon. I'm sure you all missed the ads during that period, especially. Looking ahead to the Windows 2000 launch, many people are excited, many don't care, and there are those that think it's a bit anti- climactic. In a way, all three groups have an important point to consider. The promise of extended device support with USB and "plug-and-play" support as well as included DirectX 7 all in a package that should be more robust than Windows 98 is something to get excited about. On the other hand, with all the hardware that doesn't completely work right now, what's all the big hubbub about? Give it a few months until manufacturers start writing serious drivers for it designed for serious work. OpenGL is a surprising no-show in Windows 2000. When you consider that at least 10% of the early adopters already have a copy of Windows 2000, what's the point anyway? Now, with an estimated 65,000 bugs still to weed out of the gold version, waiting until Service Pack 1 seems like a better idea every day. If you just can't wait, definitely jump on board. However, if you can go on for a few more months using your current setup, then keep an eye on Windows 2000, but don't let the idea sweep you away. It isn't quite ready to replace NT... yet. Don't forget: Tuesday, Feb. 15, EarthWeb unveiled their Windows 2000 site, in partnership with Microsoft: win2000.earthweb.com Until next time, Joel Kleppinger (joel@sysopt.com) SysOpt.com Senior Associate Editor ------------------------------------------------------------------ This Week's Site Updates ------------------------------------------------------------------ ASUS K7M Motherboard Review We took a look at this unique Athlon board, which features a variety of FSB settings enabling motherboard-level Athlon overclocking. It does have its rough spots, but it was not a terrible board to work with. However, with the KX133 chipset looming on the horizon, how long will the K7M reign? http://www.sysopt.com/reviews/asus-k7m/index.html ------------------------------------------------------------------ It's here! Windows 2000 has arrived... ------------------------------------------------------------------ To help you get all the information you need, including code repositories; training and certification; articles; tech specs and more, EarthWeb and Microsoft have teamed up to create one site, one source for everything you need: http://win2000.earthweb.com And, when you are there, don't forget to share your successful implementation of Windows 2000 with fellow IT Professionals. Enter our sweeps for free licenses of Windows 2000. Join the discussion groups and rap with your peers! It's all up and running on Windows 2000 Central. ------------------------------------------------------------------ SysOpt's Eye on the News ------------------------------------------------------------------ Web site attacks raise IT questions: It's hard not to know that top web sites were taken offline for hours recently, but who is responsible? At least, who will be considered responsible? It could be the numbers of sites across the Net that were hacked and used in these massive attacks. Read the whole article for more. http://www.zdnet.com/pcweek/stories/news/0,4153,2436607,00.html -- 25% of those moving to Windows 2000 can expect problems The Gartner group announced this estimate of companies moving to Windows 2000 will have problems either with legacy hardware or software. They also expect that less people will upgrade immediately due to recent Y2k related system purchases. http://news.cnet.com/news/0-1003-200-1547577.html -- Intel demos 1.5GHz processor http://www.sysopt.com/news.html#4336 -- Oracle8i Release 2 for Windows 2000 and Linux scheduled for March http://www.sysopt.com/news.html#4306 -- Handspring Visor to go retail at $150 http://www.sysopt.com/news.html#4298 ------------------------------------------------------------------ SysOpt User Reviews - http://www.sysopt.com/userreviews/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ You've probably seen them in the multimedia section of your favorite electronics superstore, whether Best Buy, CompUSA, or any number of other stores. The display model looks at you from the shelf, taunting you. What is it? The speaker system with the longest name yet, the Cambridge SoundWorks Desktop Theater 5.1 DTT2500 Digital Sound System. Sure, it's expensive ($250-300, depending on who you ask), but it just screams YOU WANT ME. Well, a couple of lucky user reviewers took a stab at writing about the setup. You didn't even have to guess - they loved it, each giving it 5 out of 5 stars. It comes with the Creative Digital DIN, an RCA Dolby Digital AC-3 input, Front and Rear Analog inputs, and speaker outs including an amplified out for an unpowered speaker or a line out for a power speaker. The FaF (Fredrik.flykt@edu.edupoli.fi) described the sound: "The bullets just wizzed past my head and footsteps could be heard in the distance. The bass cube, though small in size 5.25", seemed to be everything else than small when listening to some new age pop and techno." He also reminded users to "put your subwoofer in that corner. Doing this will provide four times more powerfull bass, and is room shaking" Shinryuken (cscyes@yahoo.com) put the emotive action into it: "Just turn up half of the volume then you can have a concert hall, you can even feel Air Supply is singing the song "Goodbye" by Air Supply just in front of you, SUPERB is the only word I can say!" Now for my own mini-review: I recently bought a set of these, and although I have not run them through their paces, I'm pretty impressed with the overall sound. The sound is crisp and clean with good bass, and the rear speaker stands are great. They aren't worth $300 in my opinion, but if you can get a good deal on them, they produce just about the best sound out there. Here's the best part: You can get them totally free at Microcenter. The catch? Open an Etrade account with $1000 and maintain the account for a year. Microcenter and Etrade have worked a deal where if you do the above and spend at least $300 at Microcenter, Etrade will give you $300. It's tough to refuse that deal. ------------------------------------------------------------------ Downloads - Utilities and Drivers ------------------------------------------------------------------ This week, instead of spotlighting specific drivers or utilities, we'll take a look at a couple of sites that will help in getting more out of your hardware. First is the CD Speed and DVD speed utility page. With these, you can graphically test your CD-ROM and DVD-ROM drives across different sections of the disk as well as their Digital Audio Extraction (DAE) abilities across the range of the CD. An excellent app if you're wondering what your drive can REALLY do. They also have a CD+G creator and CD media information. http://users.pandora.be/erik.deppe/cdspeed.htm If you're looking for drivers for your video card, look no further than 3D Chipset. I was looking for the beta Detonator drivers for the TNT (no, Nvidia doesn't keep me in the loop), and 3D Chipset came through. If the drivers are out there, 3D Chipset probably either has a link to them or hosts them themselves. http://www.3dchipset.com ------------------------------------------------------------------ SysOpt Forum Threads ------------------------------------------------------------------ Socalgal, our world-famous moderator, sends along the latest hot stuff from the forum: Batch file help and use: http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum2/HTML/004873.html DHCP Security fix for Windows 9x http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/004059.html Resurrecting an old debate: How to change the multiplier on a locked Intel CPU (WARNING: About 1MB of images): http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum3/HTML/004429.html What OS will you get next? http://www.sysopt.com/forum/Forum1/HTML/004291.html As always, be sure and check out the SysOpt Forums for Tech Support help, user interaction, and even a few laughs. Talk shop with the best: http://www.sysopt.com/forum/cgi-bin/Ultimate.cgi ------------------------------------------------------------------ ResellerRatings.com - User Evaluations of Online Retailers ------------------------------------------------------------------ SysOpt's ResellerRatings.com provides user evaluations of over 1,300 online hardware retailers (buy.com, NECX.com, Egghead, as well as smaller companies) along with helpful customer comments. The service may help you or your company avoid a costly mistake, and should help you identify a merchant with which others have had many successful purchases. http://www.resellerratings.com/ ------------------------------------------------------------------ Join SysOpt.com's RC5 Cracking Team! ------------------------------------------------------------------ RC5 is an effort to prove that a specific encryption process isn't crack proof, and to do that, an organization called Distributed.net has enlisted the help of hundreds of thousands of users all over the Internet who each run a small client utility on their systems (in the background, which uses idle CPU time) to crunch keys in hopes of cracking an encrypted message. Team SysOpt.com/Tweakit.com has hundreds of members, all of which are working together towards the goal. And along the way, there is of course friendly competition with other teams, since all of the crunching stats are tabulated for all to see. More information and find out how to join: http://www.sysopt.com/rc5team.html Or, if SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) is more your style, take a look at our SETI@Home team for a distributed computing effort with a twist: http://www.sysopt.com/seti.html ****************************************************************** Get all the latest technical tips, tools, and resources via EarthWeb's extensive collection of free e-mail newsletters! For more info please visit: http://www.earthweb.com/newsletters/index.html http://www.htmlgoodies.com http://www.opensourceit.com http://www.gamelan.com http://www.gocertify.com http://www.jars.com http://www.supportsource.com http://www.datamation.com http://www.intranetjournal.com http://www.crossnodes.com http://www.earthwebdirect.com http://www.dice.com http://www.itknowledge.com http://www.y2kinfo.com http://www.thebazaar.org http://www.erphub.com http://www.developer.com http://www.tpj.com http://www.earthweb.com ****************************************************************** Tell a Friend or Colleague! ****************************************************************** Want to suggest this newsletter to a friend? Just forward it to them, and let them know that they can sign up on SysOpt.com's front page, or by sending an email to LISTSERV@EARTHWEB.COM with SUBSCRIBE SYSOPT in the BODY (not the subject line). ****************************************************************** UNSUBSCRIBE ****************************************************************** To unsubscribe, send an e-mail message to LISTSERV@EARTHWEB.COM with SIGNOFF SYSOPT in the BODY (not the subject line) of the message. The return address MUST be the address that you used to sign up for the list originally. If you have any problems with your subscription, please send e-mail to webmaster@sysopt.com with a description of the problems you're having and we'll do our best to help.