Just  a little while ago Apple issued a news release that they have filed a suit against HTC, alleging that the company is infringing on 20 patents, like iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture, and hardware.  We just have to sit back, and wait for more details to unfold!

CUPERTINO, California—March 2, 2010—Apple® today filed a lawsuit against HTC for infringing on 20 Apple patents related to the iPhone’s user interface, underlying architecture and hardware. The lawsuit was filed concurrently with the U.S. International Trade Commission (ITC) and in U.S. District Court in Delaware.

“We can sit by and watch competitors steal our patented inventions, or we can do something about it. We’ve decided to do something about it,” said Steve Jobs, Apple’s CEO. “We think competition is healthy, but competitors should create their own original technology, not steal ours.”

Apple reinvented the mobile phone in 2007 with its revolutionary iPhone®, and did it again in 2008 with its pioneering App Store, which now offers more than 150,000 mobile applications in over 90 countries. Over 40 million iPhones have been sold worldwide.

Apple ignited the personal computer revolution in the 1970s with the Apple II and reinvented the personal computer in the 1980s with the Macintosh. Today, Apple continues to lead the industry in innovation with its award-winning computers, OS X operating system and iLife and professional applications. Apple is also spearheading the digital media revolution with its iPod portable music and video players and iTunes online store, and has entered the mobile phone market with its revolutionary iPhone.

A new little Fitness gadget from Fitbit is a new much talked about device.  So what is it and what does it do?  This new little gadget is a little clips that you attach to your piece of clothing, and it tracks your every movement, and sleep pattern.  It also calculates all the calories you burn during the day and night.  The device will set you back $99, which is really not so bad considering what it does.  It gathers all this information to help you determine how much physical activity you have been doing and how many calories you have burned.  But that’s not all, it also counts all the steps you took during the day, how well you’ve slept (done by internal motion detector).  

There is a little button on the device, and a small LED screen that will display all this information to you, and this will help you determine how high your activity level is.  A little flower on the display grows as your activity level goes up. 

Another really cool part is that the device comes with a base that will plug in to your PC via USB, and is wirelessly connected to your gadget.  It will automatically synchronize all the information stored on it to your computer and then the web, you just have to be with in 10 feet of the base.  The syncing software that comes with the package will take care of all of this for you. 

The web based dashboard is a fairly complete yet simple to use and view your information.  You will be asked to input your age, height, weight, and gender, and by all this information, all of your dashboard output will be calculated.    The dashboard will breakdown all of your activity levels, the highs and lows of your daily routine, as well as the intensity of your workout.  You can log all your nutritional info, all the meals that you had, and based on that Fitbit will calculate how many calories you burned during the day, how much your caloric intake was, and this in turn will give you the idea what your caloric intake should be (depending on your goal, weigh loss, weigh gain).  Inputting your food selection is very easy, because Fitbit has already integrating all the nutritional facts for many food types, even fast foods. 

Sleep paten monitoring is probably the coolest feature.  All you have to do is wear this device during your sleep, and in the morning you can get you snapshot of how well you slept.  Fitbit tracks all your motion and movements that your body makes while you sleep.  It can tell how long it took you to fall asleep, how many times you woke up, and the actual time you were asleep vs. the time you were in bed.  

This is a nifty little device that can be very helpful for many people.  Take a look for yourself at Fitbit.com

OCZ has announced that it will start shipping their new OCZ’s PCIe SSD Z-Drive starting now. 

The Z-Drive is available in multi-level cell (MLC) and single-level cell (SLC) models. The MLC-based Z-Drive p84 supports a maximum read speed of 750 MB/s and a maximum write speed of 650 MB/s. The SLC-based Z-Drive e84 supports a maximum read speed of 800 MB/s and a maximum write speed of 750 MB/s. The Z-Drive is available in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB (p84 only) capacities. 

Press Release:

San Jose, Calif.—September 16, 2009—OCZ Technology Group, Inc., a worldwide leader in innovative, ultra-high performance and high reliability memory and flash-based storage as an alternative to hard disk drives (HDDs), today unveiled the Z-Drive, a PCI-Express Solid State Drive (SSD) designed to meet the stringent demands of enterprise computing clients. Unlike other solutions, the Z-Drive provides a cost-effective formula of performance, reliability, and upkeep for enterprise customers and their applications which require the benefits of solid state drive technology, but have previously been hesitant to adopt competing products due to the sheer cost of implementation.

“Traditional enterprise storage technology typically requires overly complex infrastructure as well costly maintenance, and is often unable to deliver the level of performance required by OEM applications,” said Ryan Petersen, CEO of the OCZ Technology Group. “The new OCZ Z-Drive is an all-in-one high performance plug-and-play bootable PCI-E solid state drive that addresses these challenges head on, and meets the demands of the complete range of enterprise storage and data access requirements. The Z-Drive is designed not only to be higher performing and more reliable than conventional solutions, but also to significantly reduce both the maintenance and overall TCO for our clients.”

The Z-Drive is the result of the latest breakthroughs at OCZ and builds on the company’s expertise in flash-based storage. This proprietary SSD is bootable and takes the SATA bottleneck out of the equation by employing a high-speed PCI-Express architecture coupled with a compact enterprise-grade RAID array. With 8 PCI-E lanes and an internal four-way RAID 0 configuration, the Z-Drive delivers exceptional performance that translates to professional-class data storage in a complete, all-in-one form factor. Additionally, OCZ offers unique customization options for OEM clients that may require tailored hardware or firmware solutions for their business.

To accommodate a wide range of professional applications, the Z-Drive is available in multi-level cell (MLC) and single-level cell (SLC) models referred to consecutively as p84 and e84. Z-Drive pushes the envelope in storage performance versus competing traditional and flash based solutions:

In addition, these impressive speeds are achieved all while providing lower power consumption, superior durability, and shock resistance compared to traditional rotational-based drives, translating into exceptional energy savings and reduced maintenance costs.

An ideal solution for enterprise clients that put a premium on both performance and maximum storage capacity including servers, storage arrays, supercomputing, professional media, and industrial electronics, the Z-Drive is available in 256GB, 512GB, and 1TB (p84 only) capacities to offer ample room for the complete spectrum of applications. The Z-Drive comes backed by a leading 3-year warranty and dedicated technical support, ensuring unparalleled peace of mind.

AND has introduced their new budget Athlon II X4 620 and 630 processors.  Several websites have already put out their reviews on these processors and they all seem to have very similar conclusion, that they are not the fastest quad-core chip around, but they seem to compete very well with all of the processors in its price range while being the cheapest.  

The higher clocked Athlon II X4 630 will have an initial MSRP of $122 while the Athlon II X4 620 will come in at just $99. This puts them in direct price competition with Intel’s high-end dual-cores, low-end quad-cores, and even their own Phenom II X3 triple-cores.

These processors will have the following specs:

Dual Mode Memory

AMD’s dual mode memory controller supports both a DDR2 and DDR3 Dual Channel memory controller on the single CPU.  This allows for a seamless upgrade path allowing users with current AM2+ motherboards to use the Phenom II and Athlon II processors in their current motherboards with DDR2 memory, while allowing upgrade path to DDR3 at a later date.

Cache

This is where Athlon II is different from the Phenom II line.  Athlon II has its L3 cache removed in order to save money on production costs, as well as to reduce its overall performance.

The one thing that the Athlon II does not lack is overclocking headroom.  Some of the results netted overclockability up to 3.9 GHz on air cooling.  I am sure even better numbers can be achieved with water cooling, and some extra BIOS and Memory fine tuning.  

Although these processors have their L3 cache removed, they do not seem to suffer much from the performance dip.  For general daily usage, the Athlon II X4 processors compared very well to their Phenom II siblings.  The only place where the lack of L3 cache was evident was with games like Crysis.  However, for a non-gamer, the Athlon II X4s should definitely be on the top of the list.  Even when it comes to the overclocking crowd, the price point and its ability to overclock very well may be a big hit.  

Diesel does have aluminum housing; it’s black in color (feels like an anodized paint) with the word DIESEL on the front with the capacity listed on the bottom, and another OCZ logo on the back.

The cap is plastic and it fits tightly on the USB connector so you won’t have to worry about losing it, but I would have liked to see some sort of strap for when it is off.  On the bottom is a clear plastic loop that has a place for a strap or a keychain.  I would have like to see OCZ include a strap for the drive, incase you like to wear it on your neck, or hang it up in your office.

Specs:

Model: OCZUSBDSL16G

-USB 2.0 Certified      
-Mainstream Speeds      
-Aluminum Chassis      
-True Plug and Play (Compatible with MAC OS X)     
-2 Year Warranty

The OCZ Diesel does have a red LED indicator in the bottom end that blinks to show activity.

Testing:

 Although many of you already know the difference between FAT16, FAT32 and NTFS format, here is a quick overview for those of you that are not very familiar.  Sometimes like myself before using a USB flash drive I wonder which file system to format the drive with.  The first thing you need to establish is weather you will be transferring large files, will you be using it on more then one computer system like PC and MAC, what’s more important to you speed or file size.  Here is a quick breakdown of file systems and various pros, and cons:

Fat16:

Pros

• Decent Disk Space Economy
• Fast Transfer Rate with Small File Sizes
• Average Fault Tolerance

Cons

• Max Volume Size 2GB
• MAX File Size 2GB
• No Built-In Security

Fat32:

Pros

• Max Volume (32GB) and File Size Larger than FAT16
• Average Disc Space Economy
• Better drive performance (On Smaller Volumes than NTFS)

Cons

• MAX File Size 4GB
• No Built-In Security
• Minimal Fault Tolerance

NTFS:

Pros

• Max File Size Nearly Unlimited
• Max Volume Size 2TB
• Maximum Fault Tolerance
• Built-In Security

Cons

• Not a Great Performer with Small File Sizes
• NTFS may wear it out faster (disputable with modern USB sticks)
• Not compatible with MAC and FAT OS

I am sure there are other pros and cons that I have missed, so if you can think of any, post it in the comments and I will add them.  Now I can not tell you which file system to use, so you have to figure out what is more important to you and where your flash drive will be used the most.

I have decided just for comparison purposes to run couple of test on both FAT32 and NTFS just to see if there will be a major difference in speed, and here is what I got:

 FAT32:

 And now NTFS:

You will notice that the only difference in read and write speeds are visible if you transfer smaller file sizes between 512 bytes and 2MB.  Once you start using larger files the speed is practically identical.  All in all based on the results you see above this is a very fast and durable drive.

Later we may put this drive agains a few other flash drives that we have on hand, for some comparison purposes.

Conclusion:

Overall I really like the OCZ Diesel 16GB flash drive.  It feels very durable, and due to its small and sleek size, makes it very portable, and can be placed on your key chain.  If you are looking for a USB flash drive that is good quality, good performance at a very reasonable price, you can not go wrong with OCZ Diesel.

Pros:

• Small
• Portable
• Fast
• Durable

Cons:

• Plastic Cap (easy to loose when its off)
• No Strap Included

Intel has finally officially released their Lynnfield processors; Core i5-750,  i7-860, i7-870 and i7-975.

Based on some latest testing made by a few sites like HotHardware and Tech Report, the new Core i7 processors offers excellent performance.  The i7 870 seems to me the fastest processor that they have tested (slightly slower than the much more expensive Core i7 975).  The Core i7 750 has also shown excellent results.  In the majority of the tests performed, the Core i5 750 performance seems to fall between the Core 2 Quad Q9650 and Core i7 920, and still outperformed the Phenom II X4 965.

Here are some specs of the new processors:

Press Release:

SANTA CLARA, Calif., Sept. 8, 2009 – Intel Corporation introduced several high-performance desktop and server processors today, bringing the next level of integration and intelligence to computers. The new Intel Core™ i5 processor family, two new Intel Core™ i7 processors and the Intel® Xeon processor 3400 series bring Intel’s latest Nehalem microarchitecture to mainstream desktop and entry server markets.

New Intel® Core™ Processors for Consumers
Formerly codenamed “Lynnfield,” these new chips are based on Intel’s award-winning Nehalem microarchitecture and are designed for consumers who need top-notch performance for digital media, productivity, gaming and other demanding applications. These processors, along with the new Intel P55 express chipset, are available today.

All processors are lead- and halogen-free¹ and feature Intel® exclusive Turbo Boost Technology. The top-of-the-line Core i7 processors also support Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology. Combined, these features give computer users absolute “intelligent” performance when necessary and optimum power-efficiency when the computer is lightly loaded.

Computers Just Got Smaller
The new chipset brings the most revolutionary design changes since the invention of the PCI bus in the early 1990s and sets the stage for Intel’s forthcoming 2010 compute platform. The Intel® P55 Express Chipset will be the baseline building block component for motherboards worldwide, delivering great new levels of performance and scalability for everyone from the retail buyer to the technically savvy do-it-yourselfer.

The new Core i7 and i5 processors are the first Intel processors to integrate both a 16-lane PCI Express 2 graphics port and two-channel memory controller, enabling all input/output and manageability functions to be handled by the single-chip Intel P55 Express Chipset. Previous Intel chipsets required two separate chips. A new Direct Media Interface (DMI) connects between the processor and chipset. The chipset supports 8 PCI Express 2.0 x1 Ports (2.5GT/s) for flexible device support. Dual graphics cards are supported in a “2×8″ configuration. The chipset also supports 6 SATA 3 Gb/s Ports with Intel® Matrix Storage Technology providing RAID levels 0/1/5/10. Up to 14 USB 2.0 Ports can be supported with the chipset’s integrated USB 2.0 Rate Matching Hub, along with Intel® High Definition Audio for premium digital sound. The new processors are the first to be supported by the new Land Grid Array (LGA) 1156 package and socket technology.

Better Entry Servers
Small businesses requiring 24/7 operation and educators now have more reasons than ever to buy a purpose-built server with Intel’s new Xeon processors and Intel® 3400 and 3420 chipsets. These new products improve small business productivity by running email, file, print and dynamic Web serving tasks more efficiently. They also improve education by enabling dependable classroom collaboration and making school administrative services more productive. Servers based on Xeon 3400 processors provide more dependability over desktop systems through differentiated features such as Error Correcting Code memory and RAID 0/1/5/10 for server operating systems. They are designed to help small businesses grow by enabling up to 64 percent² more sale transactions and up to 56 percent faster business response time. This improvement is enabled with Intel’s Nehalem microarchitecture and a 4x improvement in memory capacity (32 GB). Intel® Turbo Boost Technology and Intel® Hyper-Threading Technology enable these servers to automatically adapt their performance to unique business needs. The processors launched today also include the Intel® Xeon® L3426, a low-power variant that delivers up to 188 percent improvement in energy efficiency per dollar than the previous-generation Intel® Xeon® X3380, and enables innovative server form factors for space and thermally constrained environments. For more information on these products, please visit www.intel.com/xeon

“The availability of the Compliance and Certification program is a significant milestone, and means consumers are one step closer to seeing certified SuperSpeed USB products on store shelves,” said Jeff Ravencraft, USB-IF president and chair. “When consumers see the SuperSpeed USB logo, they will have the assurance that the product interoperates with existing USB 2.0 products and provides all the speed and power efficiency enhancements that SuperSpeed USB offers, while continuing the ease-of-use consumers have come to expect from USB.”

Stay tuned for more news soon!

Source: EarthTimes