R2X2 - News for real nerds..

Source: Macrumors

Apple has said that they would be focusing on both quality and
performance in Snow Leopard. In particular, Apple has made it clear
that there will be efforts to improve support for multi-core processors
and GPU processing. These improvements will help developers more
efficiently use these capabilities that already ship in Macs.

Source: Liveside

We saw today that there’s a major announcement about Windows Live Wave 3
to be released across all services soon, and one of the updated service
is Windows Live SkyDrive. The SkyDrive team were one of the first to
post about what’s to come in the next update on their team blog, here’s a summary of what they say:

Increased Storage
- Upgraded from the current 5GB to 25 GB of online storage!

File Organisation
- Download photos directly to Windows Live Photo Gallery
- Download as a .zip file Download an entire folder in one compressed file (initially available only in the United States, Denmark, and Ireland)
- Move files between folders and support for copying files to multiple folders

• File Sharing
  - Share files and photos without requiring others to use Windows Live ID
  - Share files according to Categories or “Networks” in Windows Live People, instead of having to select individual contacts
  - Integrates with the new Windows Live Toolbar to share your Favorites and keep them in sync between computers (we mentioned earlier that Windows Live Favorites is being integrated into SkyDrive)
  - What’s New feed integration (more in depth about this later)

Other Updates
- Comments with HTML support, new comment options, and spam control
-
More supported countries and regions: Arabia, China, Hong Kong, Israel,
South Africa, Vietnam and 13 new languages: Basque, Catalan, Guajarati,
Hindi, Indonesian, Kannada, Malay, Malayalam, Marathi,
Serbian-Cyrillic, Tamil, Telugu, and Vietnamese

As
previously mentioned, we also see Windows Live Photos taken out of
Spaces and integrated into SkyDrive. We will have a more comprehensive
review on this later, but here’s a teaser of what’s to come:

• Windows Live Photos
  - Bigger thumbnails than previous version
  - Order prints of your photos right from SkyDrive
  - New online slide show that works with any browser (although not required, but Silverlight is recommended to be installed for this)
  - People tags similar to Windows Live Photo Gallery, allowing you to tag your contacts – online!

Excited? We sure are! Stay tuned at LiveSide as we cover more of the upcoming Wave 3 services in detail!

Source: Engadget

 

 

We’ve noticed a pattern with NEC
– compact, minimalist computer designs with low-end to run-of-the-mill
specs. There’s nothing wrong with having a specialty, and NEC Asia
Pacific is sticking with what it knows with the PowerMate P4000 and P6000 all-in-ones.
The P4000 is a light worker (to put it perhaps too kindly), with a
1.9GHz AMD Athlon 64 X2 processor, 1GB of RAM, 250GB of hard disk
space, an NVIDIA GeForce 9100M G integrated graphics chip, and a
16-inch display at 1366 x 768. We’d go instead for the P6000 (pictured
above), which is actually competitive with similarly priced all-in-ones
like the Gateway One.
It’s got a 2.53GHz Intel Core 2 Duo, twice the storage and memory of
its lesser sibling, integrated NVIDIA GeForce 9300, and a roomier
19-inch, 1440 x 900 display. Both systems are due for release in Asia
next week, the P4000 at S$1,899 ($1,270) and the P6000 at S$2,499
($1,675). The latter is clearly the better deal, but they’re both
expensive compared to bulkier alternatives — desk space is at a
premium these days. Pic of the P4000 after the break.

 

 

[Via PCLaunches]

Source: Mary Jo Foley

Which came first — Google dropping StarOffice from its Google Pack or Sun agreeing to distribute Microsoft’s Live-Search-powered MSN toolbar with the Java runtime?

We’ll probably never know (at least until Sun CEO Jonathan Schwartz
blogs about it). But the new deal, announced on November 10, between
Sun and Microsoft is ironic, if nothing else, given the twisted history
between the two over Java.

(In 1997, Sun sued Microsoft, for alleged misuse of Sun’s Java
technology. Microsoft paid $20 million to Sun as a settlement. In 2002,
Sun filed a civil antitrust suit against Microsoft over Java again. Microsoft ended up paying Sun $700-million-plus in 2004 to settle “all outstanding antitrust issues.”)

In 2005, Sun struck a deal with Google to bundle the Google toolbar with Java. That deal is replaced by the new agreement with Microsoft — although in the U.S. only and only for Internet Explorer users, as the Seattle Post-Intelligencer notes. The Google toolbar will still be bundled with Java overseas.

Microsoft has been seeking partners to preload its Live Search and
other Windows Live properties on new PCs and/or as part of their
software offerings.

Microsoft is slated to launch the final “Wave 3″ release of its Live
services on November 12, company officials said recently. Microsoft has
been beta testing its Wave 3 release of its Live Essentials suite for the past couple of months.

The new Live Essentials suite, unified via a common installer,
includes updated versions of Windows Live Messenger instant-messaging;
Windows Live Mail (with a new and improved Live Calendar); Windows Live
Writer blog-posting tool; Windows Live Movie Maker; Windows Live Photo
Gallery, the Family Safety parental control tools and the Outlook
Connector.