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According to Hexus, the Shuttle XPC SD11G5 is slightly overpriced, but it is very stylish and quiet.

One stumbling block Shuttle faces in marketing the SD11G5 is price. A search of online retailers shows it to retail at around the £340 mark. That’s a lot of wedge to pay for a motherboard, case (albeit a stylish one), and cooler. There’s also the lack of relative gaming performance from the onboard graphics. Playing any modern game is an absolute no-no, as far as we’re concerned. Shuttle, though, is aiming the SD11G5 at style gurus and those interested in an ultra-quiet, powerful machine. In that respect and if you can put up with the price, it succeeds well.

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Here’s the lowdown from flock.com…

Flock Developer Preview is now available.
Our code couldn’t wait any longer to be free!

But! This preview ain’t for the faint of heart! If you’re the bleeding-edge type and don’t mind a few scrapes and busted knees from time to time, feel free to give it a whirl.

We’ve got interesting ideas in this thing. We want to know what we’ve done right how we could improve. And we’ve got a lot of work ahead of us!

So if a bucket of source code and developer binaries sound enticing, head over to our Developer page now.

Wanna keep tabs on what we’re up to? Check out FlockRadio, broadcasting our blogs around the clock.

Apparently, this is some next-gen browser… “the browser of the future” if you will… I don’t know much about it, but I plan to look into it now. It’s based on the Mozilla code, so you FireFox fans might just want to check it out.

Check it out at flock.com.

Sadly, people have to be warned about crap like this. Why can’t people get the hint: all spam is bad and possibly dangerous, not just to your computer but possibly you! Some jerks are making tons of money off you silly people who click the links and keep these buggers in business. For the sake of all ‘net-kind, please stop! Ah, who am I fooling… On to the point of this post…

I just read the “Spammers Jump On Bird Flu Bandwagon” article over at SecurityPipeline.com. It’s an important read and good info to pass on to Internet newbies and the consistently naive everywhere!

Spammers are playing off avian flu fears to shill pharmaceuticals and pitch stocks, a security firm said Wednesday.
U.K.-based Sophos warned users that its honeypots — purposefully unprotected PCs set up to trap spam samples — have been capturing a rising number of messages peddling Tamiflu, the Roche-made drug that reduces symptoms of the H5N1 strain of the bird flu virus.

One spam example that Sophos cited starts out “Bird flu case discovered in the USA” to stoke fears and prod people into buying Tamiflu from a Web site. The statement’s not true; no confirmed cases of the avian flu have yet been found in the United States.

When did common sense become extinct? Isn’t it pretty obvious that you shouldn’t go buying medicine at some random website, especially one you read about in a spam message? Can’t you do a little research at CNN.com or MSNBC.com to confirm if the USA is seeing an outbreak of a certain disease or not, at least before believing a spam you received? Gosh!!!

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Yesterday, AMD reported some price drops across much of its processor line, but Avault distracted us with a bigger scoop — an internal AMD document that reveals pricing for the first quarter of 2006 (1Q 06). The price list is definitely interesting. You can sort of get an idea of markups and such.

Today AMD officially dropped the prices on most of their processor line but AVault was able to get a hold of an internal document that shows the pricing for 1Q 06. The big surprise is that AMD also has listed the FX-60 and 5000+ processors.

Click me for Avault news post!
Click me to see the 1Q 06 price list!

There was an episode on Myth Busters where they tried to light a boat on fire to test a Greek/Roman myth. The MBs were unsuccessful, but the MIT students were not! Here’s the scoop…

Ancient Greek and Roman historians recorded that during the siege of Syracuse in 212 BC, Archimedes (a notably smart person) constructed a burning glass to set the Roman warships, anchored within bow and arrow range, afire. The story has been much debated and oft dismissed as myth.

TV’s MythBusters were not able to replicate the feat and “busted” the myth.

Intrigued by the idea and an intuitive belief that it could work, MIT’s 2.009ers decided to apply the early product development ‘sketch or soft modeling’ process to the problem.

Our goal was not to make a decision on the myth—we just wanted to assess if it was at least possible, and have some fun in the process. Jumping ahead, you can see the result… but let’s start at the beginning of the process.

Yay for geeky science stuff! It’s a fun read or at least worth a look at the pictures/video, so go check it out.

The GeForce Go 7300 isn’t even announced yet, but hey, that didn’t stop ASUS. I wonder if NVIDIA is upset? Here’s the press release rundown…

A6Vm and A6Km Notebook Series offer beautiful graphics, enhanced computing and faster connectivity

Taipei, Taiwan; October 24, 2005 - ASUSTeK Computer Inc. (ASUS), a leading provider of high-performance notebook computers, today introduced the 15.4” widescreen A6Vm and A6Km Notebook Series – the world’s first notebooks to adopt NVIDIA’s latest GeForce Go 7300 graphics processing unit (GPU) for incredible 3D graphics performance.
“The ASUS A6Vm and A6Km are the latest of the best-selling A6 Notebook Series,” stated Rob Csongor, General Manager of Notebook GPUS at NVIDIA. “By adding a GeForce Go 7-series mobile GPU, it’s clear that these notebooks have been designed to provide users a powerful processing platform with all the 3D and video capabilities of a true Multimedia Notebook.”

In addition, the notebooks also incorporate built-in high-resolution webcam and Bluetooth V2.0+EDR module for better connectivity as well as faster connection that complete the digital entertainment experience.

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I don’t live in the UK, but if I did and wanted to purchase a HTPC instead of building my own, I’d definitely take a glance at Evesham’s ebox². I try not to call gadgets and tech stuff sexy, but this is a sexy little beast. Well, any PC with a slot drive is 99% likely to be sexy. Why don’t more manufacturers grow brains and realize people want slot drives!

Anyway, there it is. If you’re in the UK, then check it out at Evesham.com. It’s sleek, small, supposedly quiet and will blend in well with other home theater components.

Dang! He’s about to reach half a million clams! Guess it’s not called the Million Dollar Home Page for nothing, eh?

I had my doubts that people would be silly enough to make him this rich, but he just might hit that million dollar mark at this rate.

I don’t know about you, but I don’t feel like spending much time at the site’s main page. All those little boxes do spark my curiosity, and I hover over what I think might be new ones since the last time I visited to see what the boxes are advertising, but after a couple minutes, I’ve had my fill of pixels.

Do people actually spend 30 minutes or more at milliondollarhomepage clicking away at all the ads? Guess it really doesn’t matter, unless you are an advertiser. In a year, no one will be visiting the site any more… unless Alex can think of a way to keep it fresh, which he just might be able to do considering how creative he seems to be.

Congrats in advance, Alex, for reaching $500,000! My bet is he reaches it this week.

Laptopmag recently posted its outlook on Dell’s new XPS M170, which is basically a refreshed XPS Gen 2 laptop. If I were considering a desktop replacement notebook, I’d probably end up buying one of these bad boys. They offer the best and fastest in laptop technology in one of the lightest packages in its class at around 9 pounds. Most competing laptops weigh in at 3-4 pounds more! Laptop says:

“Previously known as the XPS Gen 2, if the M170 looks similar to its predecessor, that’s because they’re identical. Dell decided not to mess with a good thing, especially when it comes to weight. At 8.6 pounds, the XPS is one of the lightest desktop replacement units available. That may be too heavy to lug through airports or take it to coffee shops, but it’s a huge achievement compared to the 13-pound monsters that usually dominate this space. The light load is possible largely because Dell has custom built the motherboard and not relied on the stock factory design that virtually all other 15-inch gaming notebooks use, making it easier to slim the system down.”

If you are familiar with the Inspiron 9300 17″ notebook, then this one will look familiar to you. They appear to be built off the same barebones kit. The biggest change from XPS Gen 2 to the M170 is the availability of the NVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX, which is easily the best laptop graphics solution available when it comes to gaming. This sucker performs very closely to its desktop brother.

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I moved all my home theater PC (HTPC) stuff over from the Antec Overture case to the much prettier and more component-friendly SilverStone LC16M yesterday. It turned out to be more stressful and time-consuming than I had hoped it would be. Much of it was my own fault though and no fault of the Overture or LC16M.

The LC16 is actually not as long as the Overture, which I like because it fits on my component shelf better. The problem is that this also means it’s a little more cramped from front to back than the Overture, which also means that the 5.25″ bay and any drive installed in it hangs over the motherboard more. Damn Plextor drives are always longer than they should be too.

I wish I knew if there was some technical reason behind the length of Plextor’s drives. They always seem to be an inch or so longer than Lite-On and other drives. Other than the length, I love Plextor drives. They just aren’t good for cramped spaces.

Another problem with the length of the drive and the location of it is that the Plextor drive is practically kissing my Radeon X850 XT. I really don’t like that, but I think I’ve gotten over it. An driver that was one inch shorter would make a big difference. In this case, an inch would go a long way.

The main thing that would have saved me time and frustration is to read the entire manual before proceeding with the install in the LC16M. The LC16M includes multimedia / HTPC software called iMON Multimedian. There are like 5 different ways you have to hook up the included VFD/IR display … USB, power, more power, etc. The LC16M manual is actually good for a case manual, but it should have a warning in it about checking the last page if you want to hook up the iMON stuff, which everyone will want to do, right!?

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