Check out my Monday Morning News Tech Untangled segment with co-host Mike Sobel on the new Sony Reader WiFi:
Good Monday morning folks. Today on my Monday Morning GlobalTV tech segment I featured our fifth week prize of the Global Great Gadget Giveaway, five paperback size Sony Reader WiFi in gorgeous Holiday red, worth $169.99 each.
They feature a glare-free Pearl V220 6-inch display screen with instant access to the Reader Store. There are eight adjustable font sizes, and you can read in direct sunlight. The built-in WiFi let’s you search, browse, buy or burrow books, including your local library, a feature most competitors don’t have. I was able to access eBooks from the Brokklyn Pupbic Library in the U.S. and my local St. Albert Public Library, including free public domain books.
You can store about 1,200 book titles on the included 2 GB memory, but the MicroSD slot can store up an additional 32GB, which means more than 20,000 books in a pocket or small-purse size eReader.
You can customize your file management, including the music you can take along and listen to alone or while reading. There are 12 built-in dictionaries including 10 translation (to and from French, German, Spanish, Dutch and Italian). Tap and hold unto a word for its meaning or translate into one of the five supported languages.
It has enough battery juice to read more than 14,000 continuous page turns and you can touch the screen with your fingers or the included stylus, especially when you have to type. You can also handwrite on the page you read or highlight the text as well as bookmark pages.
For more information go to: www.store.sony.ca
INTEL PUSHES ENVELOPE ON NEW SIX CORE PROCESSOR
INTEL THROWS MORE COMPUTING POWER OUR WAY
Today Intel releases its newest and most powerful desktop CPU, the Intel Core i7 3960X Processor Extreme Edition, a six core (like three ordinary duo PCs most folks have today, in one processor) running 12 simultaneous threads with Intel Hyperthreading technology.
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This means either running more applications at the same time or running demanding video processing, music compressing or sophisticated graphic programs faster by basically breaking the processing job into individual components at the same time.
Many of these programs today are only capable of running two threads, but more are being tweaked to take advantage of processers like the 3960X which hums along at 3.3 GHz but dynamically increases that to as high as 3.90 GHz using Intel Turbo Boost Technology, giving you power when you need it.
This means programs will complete their tasks faster saving you time and in many cases, money.
This processor has 15MB of smart cache, compared to the three MB i5 processors have, adding to the increased performance. Large onboard cache means the processor won’t have to recalculate as frequent, finishing tasks faster.
This processor is unlocked so enthusiasts can easily improve performance by increasing the frequency and voltage of the processor and RAM…again for faster performance. Compared to years ago, today Intel makes it easier to adjust the various settings in a balanced way so there is less trial and error of yesteryear. If you go to hardcore tech sites like www.tomshardware.com you can read much more detailed analysis on the new processor and accompanying DX79SI Desktop motherboard. Compared to last year’s six core X980 Extreme running on the X58 chipset motherboard, this combination of motherboard and processor also increases performance by featuring an integrated memory controller that supports 4 channels of DDR3-1600 RAM, compared to last year’s three channels.
The one thing that stands out in my mind is the overall performance improvement of the entire Core i3, i5 and i7 family of 2n Generation Intel Processors showing up in new laptops including the newer MacBook Pros and every Windows Laptop and desktop PC maker.
Not only is there a 10-30 per cent marked performance improvement but the price of this entire processor line is a fraction of last year’s chip technology. Add the value of the new HD3000 integrated graphics in laptops and motherboards and you have huge improvement over media play and editing compared to previous chips. This helps keep the price down on the newest computers but not enough. PC makers tend to through more hardware like storage and RAM in a nicer looking package keeping the prices higher than I would like to see.
Still, the Intel Core i7 3960X Processor Extreme Edition will be pricey, plus new motherboard and cooling. How much better is the 3960X over the very respectable Core i7 2600K processor? Well, I can tell you that’s not three times faster as its matching price of about $1000.
Intel plans to release two cheaper six core chips, the Core i7-3930K and Core i7 3820K processors with less Smart Cache, 12 MB and 10MB respectively and less flexibility in overclocking.
So how fast is this chip? I have been using my eval setup from Intel for the past several weeks doing everyday tasks and running the same benchmark tests between the two chips, using the same supporting hardware: An Intel 510 256GB SATA 3 solid state drive, 8 GB of Kingston Hyper X Series RAM evenly populating the four blue DIMM sockets. My graphics card was an older NVIDIA GeForce GTX 275, but we are comparing apples to apples here and see how a faster processor can change your computing experience.
Here is some sampling comparing the one-year apart processors and accompanying motherboards.
To start, my initial reaction to having to use an Intel-supplied sealed liquid cooling set up aggravated me. But to my surprise, despite its size and huge fan, it is whisper quiet when running in idle mode. Nice, like laptop computing, only with more punch.
At default normal speed the 3960X processor outperformed the X980 (on an ASUS P6X58D Premium Motherboard) on the following benchmarks which included timed processing and rendering.
-3.65 seconds from 4.5 seconds on the number-crunching Monte Carlo Excel 2010 test
-36922 CPU with FutureMark 3DMark Vantage compared to 31798
-1:05 minutes on PCBench Advanced Action (a series of sequential Photoshop changes to a file running on Adobe Photoshop CS5.1 64 bit compared to 1:35 minutes
-5149 on FutureMark PCMark 7 compared to 4605
-55.5 seconds on Adobe PREMIER 5 compared to 64.5 seconds
– 573 seconds on Adobe After Effects CS5 compared to 644 seconds
-11.1 score on Cinebench 64 bit 11.5 X compared to 9.2
No doubt, double-digit improvement from last year, but not so with the current much cheaper i7 2600K which offers the best value for the buck. I found the 2600K to be about 15 per cent slower on average but much cheaper to own, not needing a new motherboard and cooling solution and still way faster than last year’s chips.
I also over-clocked my new rig using the alternating between the much improved BIOS settings and the included Intel Extreme Tuning Utility which runs in Windows, making easier for first timers to experiment. One can spend days on end trying out different combinations of processor, memory and voltage settings, individually or all together.
I was able to run the 3960X just shy of 4.7 GHz and 2133 MHz on my Kingston RAM from the default 1600 MHz, with a general performance improvement between 11 and 18 per cent across the board on my benchmarks. But I had some glitches and my computing environment became more intrusive with higher fan noise and occasional software hangs.
I am not a hard core gamer but I like to crunch numbers on my media files, especially video so the value of changing from a still respectable i7 2600K with a new setup on six core computing starts to diminish when you factour in how much more you have to pay to advance to six core computing.
Intel did a number pushing the envelope on extreme computing with the i7 3960X but it’s like they forgot how good the existing consumer line of processors is. If you have deep pockets go for the 3960X and be top dog.
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