Assorted Techie News (26th Aug)

nightzip SG

Iomega ships 320GB eSATA hard drive

Iomega has begun shipping its first external hard drives equipped with an eSATA port for direct connection to a PC's Serial ATA bus, the storage specialist announced this week.

No eSATA port on your PC or Mac? Don't worry, Iomega's bundling a suitable PCI add-in adaptor. The drive also has a regular USB 2.0 port too. eSATA connects at 1,500Mbps, rather more than USB 2.0's top speed of 480Mbps and even Firewire's to-line rate of 800Mbps.

How fast the drive is, is another matter. Iomega's offering a 320GB unit based on a 7,200rpm drive with 2MB of cache memory.

The drive comes bundled with suitable cables and back-up software for both Mac and Windows users. The package retails for $240 in the US. Iomega didn't say if or when the drive will ship in Europe. ®

IE7 'near-final' version released

Will be ready by the end of the year

By Nick Farrell: Friday 25 August 2006, 08:53

SOFTWARE GIANT Microsoft has released a 'near final' beta of its super soaraway internet browser IE7 for punters to have a play with.
Internet Explorer 7 Release Candidate 1 replaces the beta 3 version and has all the features that Vole will include in the final product, though it's only available in English for now. Additional languages will be launched in September, including the first Spanish and French versions.

The new build apparently has improvements in performance, stability, security, and application compatibility. Support for CSS has been enhanced and there is an auto-uninstall feature to help punters who've got earlier betas on their machine to get RC1 up and running.

Microsoft seems pretty chuffed with the progress its browser is making and thinks it will be ready for a full version by the end of the year.

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/ZDM/story?id=2353099

nightzip SG

Benq goes for bust on 37-inch screens

By Fuad Abazovic in Leipzig: Friday 25 August 2006, 16:25

BENQ is getting very serious about the gaming and here at the show it even endorsed the young chaps to play their consoles on its 37-inch TVs.
This is one of the first LCDs of this size with 8ns response. Converted to metric, we are talking abouta 94cm screen.

Best of all is that the TV supports 1920x1080 the highest HD resolution available today.

It is the top of the tree and you can also get the 32-incher with the same resolution. Its good for games and consoles and this display/TV is much cheaper than Apple's 30-inch display that everyone is talking about.

nightzip SG

Apple badly botches battery recall Dell obviously a better company

http://www.theinquirer.net/default.aspx?article=33934

By Charlie Demerjian: Friday 25 August 2006, 08:47

DELL LOOKS TO be a much better company than Apple, at the very least far more professional. According to several readers, Dell took care of their battery exchanges quickly and correctly, while Apple is making a joke out of its recall.
Dell service is the butt of industry jokes, but several people, at least in the first wave of returns, got their batteries the next day, a nice return mailer, and a frankly un-Dell level of customer care. A few days into it, lead times had grown, but no major hassles were reported to us, and trust me, we would have heard if it happened on even a small scale.

What about Apple? Well, there are two problems.
Note the third line under 12-inch iBook G4, the CPSC lists battery serial numbers 6C510-6C626 while the Apple site has it listed a 6C519-6C552. Doh!

If you have one model listed in the CPSC list that is not on the Apple list, the Apple site will reject them. One of our readers could not get a battery in this grey area to be acknowledged no matter how many times he tried. Given the complexity of the numbers involved, and it is more than a single off letter, I don't think this is a typo.

But wait, it gets better for the glassy-eyed followers of the turtlenecked sue-happy one, the Apple web site rejects valid ranges too! Yup, another reader with a 15-inch PowerBook G4 had his outright rejected with no real explanation other than the web equivalent of 'nya-nya'.

So, in a shocking twist, we get Dell providing exceptional service, prompt responses, and happy customers, or at least as happy as someone sold a bomb can be. Apple on the other hand is massively screwing this up less than 12 hours in. Take home message? Buy HP, I am happy with mine, and have an un-scalded crotch to prove it. µ

Note: For the record, Apple was not contacted about this article. They deemed us not worthy of returned phone calls the last three times, so we saved our cell minutes this time. They know how to reach us if they want to talk.