Nvidia GTX 480 and 470 reviews

oh boy 6 months late, the cards are finally available. Reviews are posted all over the net as of now... results are rather disappointing! GTX 480 to hot, to loud. Oh damn according to anandtech even the GTX 470 seems to be hotter and louder than any 5800 ATI out there. Update June 2010: at least in europe prices for GTX 470 dropped a lot. They cost only about 10% more than ATI's 5850. Also check out the GTX 460!

Some facts:

• GTX 480 is currently the fastest single GPU solution available, beating ATI 5870 performance by about 10-15%
• GTX 470 is just around 5% faster than a ATI 5850 but also costs a bit more more
• GTX 480 ($499) an is about 25% faster than GTX 470 (around $350)
• relevant to me, DX10 Modern Warfare 2 at 1920*1200 with 4xAA > well here the difference is 20-30% in favor for the Nvidia products. That's not bad! (uuh in other reviews the cards are on par...)

Reviews: GTX 480 and 470 Anandtech and at tomshardware, GTX 480 at techpowerup, GTX 480 at Golem.de und heise.de

Preise in Deutschland
Preise in der Schweiz: GTX 470 > vorher CHF 450.- Juni 2010: akzeptable CHF 400  /  GTX 480 > kranke CHF 600.-

Since ATI demands are still said to be very high, their prices won't drop fast either. I guess I'm looking forward to something like GTX 485 and GTX 475 where some of the problems might have been addressed? For people playing in lower resolution than 1920*1200 or without turning all details to the max, the GTX 460 seems to be a good solution at prices around CHF 225.-

1min Video demonstrating gtx 480 loudness lmao

Windows Phone 7 UI and silverlight

There's this cool 20 Min video from Mix 2010 where Microsoft's Joe Belfiore shows more from Windows Phone 7's user interface. In the end he also presents a nice news app created using silverlight.
I'm no MS freak, just have to admit that I really like what I'm seeing!

Logitech mouse click not working

After years we all faced the following problems with all our Logitech mice...

• double click not working anymore
• left click hardly ever working
• click-dragging resulting in unpredictable results
• single mouse click registered as double click
• etc.

In most cases we just have to clean the inside of the micro-switch and all problems vanish. My 6 yrs old son helped me out this time:

important: read the comments before you disassemble anything.
sometimes you solve the situation by just blowing into the mouse.
or by following these Logitech instructions:  trapped static energy

also: you will void your warranty by going through this.
In my case? ...couldn't care less, the pictured mouse is from 2007.

I'd say the pictures are self-explanatory, some of you might want to remove the battery as the starting step.
Richard has some more information posted here, plus there's another site with similar info and more pictures. I hope this was useful...

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Logitech Set Point 6 released

By the end of February Logitech released Set Point 6. Still a 00 release but it already seems to work quite fine at my place.
It now implements the drivers "Productivity" and the "Gamer" branch under one hood and has a modular update system.

Also in the new release my Performance MX mouse buttons 6 and 9 can't be assigned custom functions. But once again we're lucky enough and Richard's uberoptions adds the value we desire. (Update June 2010: currently I'm not able to apply uberoptions to a fresh windows 7 setup. So I also had to revert back to Setpoint 4.8 - tiresome)

Just take note, that after having installed uberoptions the new OSDs won't fully work yet (volume and font).
During uberoptions installation you have to make sure to feed the installer with the new Setpoint paths. For Windows 7 32bit & 64bit those are
C:\Program Files\Logitech\SetPointP
C:\ProgramData\LogiShrd\SetPointP\Devices

(old vs new notification area icon)

In general v6 looks really good and seems to head into the right direction. Important to some: the new release currently features less wheel options! Some KB/Mouse combos are not fully supported yet.

In their forum you'll find the release notes and some comments. But before you download anything - make sure to save your current configuration user.xml found in %appdata%\Logitech\SetPoint\ it might be helpful in the process.


some facts:

• New Driver Version for Productivity branch is 4.90.80 / up till now we used the fine 4.82.11. Driver Version for Gamer branch is 5.3 (old drivers can be found on Logitech's ftp server)
  
• new install file: 24 MB / old install package: 67 MB
• I never cared much about the huge installer, the memory footprint is more important and in my case I can't report anything really bad. With SetPoint v6, just the mouse, I read khalmnpr.exe 4.8 MB, Setpoint.exe 4.8 MB
• In the new release OSD functionality was cut > now only displays volume, mute, play/pause, caps on/off but no longer application names

some screenshots:

Above's screenshot shows the new App Override dialog. Basically works like the previous one.
Below: the new OSD looks much better:

Gamers might be interested in this Logitech Forum Thread.

Changes from earlier versions of SetPoint:

• The download size has been reduced by approximately 60%. This has been achieved by streamlining the code and removing device pictures from the download package. SetPoint will automatically download pictures in the background for devices that are connected to your system.
• SetPoint 6.0 includes the control panels for standard mice and keyboards (previously supported in SetPoint 4.x) and gaming mice (previously supported in SetPoint 5.x). This reduces duplication of system components, resulting in a smaller overall installation size.
• The SetPoint control panel for standard mice and keyboards has been updated with a new appearance.
• Numerous bug fixes and stability enhancements have been made in SetPoint 6.0

Porsche 918 Spyder at Geneva 2010

Update May 17 2012:  Spy shots are widely spread online since yesterday!
just one example

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It's been forever that I've visited the official Porsche page. I go on typing http://www.porsche.com/ and go "WHAT THE HECK IS THIS???" This car looks faaaantastic!

Porsche 918 Spyder Concept

2x 135hp electric motors, 580hp V8 for a total of , 0-100/0-62 in 3.2s, predicted Nordschleife under 7:27.

10 hours ago I decided to go to the Geneva Motorshow this friday. Now I realize that an hour ago the following media was released.

(high resolution)

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[2x E 109hp & 500hp back on march 1st when it was announced]

Sony Ericsson and Windows Phone 7 Series

For the longest time I thought, wow the ZuneHD user interface is by far the best looking of any mobile device currently out there! Just perfect.

aaaahhh... Today we got good news! Microsoft brings the Zune UI to phones and calls it Windows Phone 7 Series! So the next months I'm looking forward to Sony Ericsson's announcements for matching Xperia hardware in Q4 2010. I just really really hope they'll pack a decent camera with xenon flash into the thing - hdmi out for 720p vid is also very high on my wish list.






The main hardware buttons will be reduced to three: home, search and back - similar to how Symbian and Android phones work these days.
Allthough Ballmer has no objections to Adobe flash, the first release of Windows Phone 7 won't come with flash support. As does Win7, the OS itself supports multitouch for up to 4 fingers.

At the moment the videos are enough for me. If you feel like wanting to read more about the OS, I suggest this good read @ pcworld / oder auf Deutsch gibt's natürlich bei heise was zu lesen. Here's also a short introduction to the next symbian^3 > quite good looking as well.

Firefox with Windows Aero glass effects

Pretty long ago I wrote down, how one could allow Firefox to make use of Windows Vista's or Windows 7 Aero effects. Meanwhile you can choose between some glass add-ons. Basically they're all mods from the original glasser add-on.

Since the hide menubar function has been integrated into Firefox 3.6, all you need for the good looks is the All-Glass add-on. It also renders your tabs fully transparent - that's how I prefer it. To sum it all up:

• All-Glass for the Aero effect
• Kempelton for great looking icons
• Scroll Zoom Button (because I'm to lazy to hit Ctrl+0 while browsing)
• to hide the menubar > right-click and deactivate it. Press Alt to make it visible

done.

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Some of you might be interested in the Firfox 4 Mockup Theme. Allthough it looks good, to me it's still "to alpha" ...

No Adobe Flash in iPad and iPhone

Media is full of possible answers why Apple hardware doesn't support Adobe Flash. Mr Jobs goes on pointing out bugs and stuff. Makes me angry. Use your common sense people.
If their devices would support flash: endless games would be available for free, endless music vids would be available ... for free. A serious threat to their revenue plan and app store delusion I guess.

all Flash bashers should consider:
- it brought sound to the mainstream internet
- animation for the masses
- video for everyone without additional plugin
- first to bring HD Vid to the masses (no breakthrough for the divx plugin)
- first internet mainstream app to access my GPU's power for HD vid decoding

So everyone thinks all current devices will render HTML5 easily? doh.
maybe in two years from now. html5 rendering asks for a lot processing power
whereas flash works TODAY.

While Jobs' hardware does a lot of other things right, I personally have a problem with Apple's arrogance.