Coolermaster had their crew work on a design for an external hard drive enclosure and the X Craft is the result, it's a functional unit with cool and clean looks; It does its job adequately and keeps your HDD running cool and easy to carry around.

For the performance users the eSATA version will be of special interest as there will be practically no performance degradation between internal/external usage.

Pricing starts at $25 for the USB 2.0 version and goes up to $40 for the eSATA one. The premium you pay for an all-in-one external hard disk is in the same $30-40 region, but the X-Craft has the advantage of upgrade- and service-ability.

If you're in the market for an external HDD enclosure, the X Craft is definitely a worthy consideration.

Cisco has announced a bunch of Gigabit and Power-over Ethernet (PoE) switches at its annual Networkers beanfest in Cannes.

The new switches include the Catalyst 3750-E stackable, its standalone sibling the 3560-E, and the fan-less and silent 2960 and 3560 Compact models. Cisco also announced a stonking 8700W power supply for the Catalyst 6500, enabling it to supply 420 devices with 15.4W of PoE each.

The 3750-E and 3560-E have 24 or 48 Gig ports, all of them powered, plus optional Gig or 10Gig uplinks via a slot which takes either an SFP adapter for Gig fibre or a X2 module for 10G fibre. The 3750-E also supports the same proprietary 64Gbit/s stack interconnect as older 3750 family members.

DirectX 9 support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs

DirectX 10 support for GeForce 8800 GPUs

OpenGL support for GeForce 6/7/8 series GPUs

DirectX 9 and OpenGL NVIDIA SLI support for GeForce 8800 GPUs will be available on January 31, 2007 in a new driver from NVIDIA

DirectX 9 and OpenGL NVIDIA SLI support for GeForce 6 and 7 series GPUs and DirectX 10 NVIDIA SLI support for GeForce 8800 GPUs will be available in a future driver

Although the new lineup of second-generation shuffles offer no enhancements over the monotone silver model introduced last fall, there is one morsel nestled with each new unit: updated earbud headphones.

That's right. Apple has seemingly run through its stockpile of first-generation iPod earbuds and is now more than happy to include an updated pair with each shuffle, as it does every other iPod model.

Customers who want to make sure they receive the updated earbuds when purchasing a grey shuffle should be sure to grab models whose packing sports black lettering (as seen below) as opposed to the green lettering used on packaging for the grey shuffle introduced last fall.

"Because of the huge cooling advantage offered by our custom water block designed by Danger Den, we are able to push this card to speeds faster than anything else on the market today." said Dean Brady, Sr. Director of Marketing for BFG Technologies. "To offer these speeds, every BFG Overclocked Water Cooled Edition graphics card is hand built and tested to ensure maximum performance and reliability."

BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB Water Cooled Edition:
"¢ Core Clock: 650MHz vs standard 575MHz.
"¢ Shader Clock: 1500MHz vs standard 1350MHz.
"¢ Memory Clock: 2000MHz vs standard 1800MHz.

The BFG NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX OC 768MB Water Cooled Edition retails for $899 and is available built-to-order today from Newegg.com.

* The good: Large 7-inch screen; good battery life; built-in GPS.
* The bad: Bigger and heavier than other UMPC systems; underpowered CPU; difficult to input text.
* The bottom line: The Asus R2H is too big to be truly ultramobile, but its relatively large screen and decent battery make it good for on-the-go Web surfing and media playing, even if the onscreen keyboard is a chore to use.

As laptops get smaller and PDA-style mobile phones get larger, a loose coalition of companies, including Microsoft and Intel, have been pushing a new category of mobile computing product, called the Ultramobile PC, or UMPC. The first generation of these handheld PCs, including the Samsung Q1 and the Sony VAIO UX50, fell short of the mark, offering limited battery life, outdated components, and awkward user interfaces. While upcoming pocket-size systems, such as the OQO Model 02 and the VAIO UX Premium, show promise, Asus has taken a different track with the R2H Ultra-Mobile PC, using a larger, brick-size design to house a generous 7-inch touch screen.

AMD today released the final version of its Windows Vista compatible ATI Catalyst driver package, on the eve of Windows Vista's launch. The latest ATI Catalyst 7.1 for Windows Vista is compatible with Vista 32-bit and 64-bit releases and passed WHQL testing on RTM versions of Vista.

As with previous ATI Catalyst beta releases, ATI Catalyst 7.1 only supports ATI Radeon 9500 series or higher graphics cards on the desktop and mobile-front. AMD ATI All-in-Wonder cards are only supported as a display device, VIVO features are unsupported on All-in-Wonder and VIVO capable cards at the time. ATI Theater 550 Pro based products are also supported, though the release notes make no mention of Theater 650-based products.

The good: The RIM BlackBerry Pearl is the first BlackBerry to offer a 1.3-megapixel camera, music and video playback, expandable memory, and a mapping application. The supersleek phone also continues to offer superior push e-mail capabilities, EDGE support, and Bluetooth.

The bad: The RIM BlackBerry Pearl's microSD slot is inconveniently located behind the battery, and call quality was subpar in our tests. The phone's camera doesn't record video, and we wish there were external controls for the music player and integrated Wi-Fi.

As you can see, the HR-07 is a new type of cooler, based upon the principles of Heatpipe cooling. Heatpipes have been very popular the last couple of years when it comes to CPU and GPU cooling, but for ram cooling, this has not been done before. The coolers have a shiny silver finish, and can, besides the cooling effect, make your rig in a windowed case look that little bit more "extreme" as well. The finish of the cooler is extraordinary: I could not detect one sharp edge or unfinished metal fin on the entire cooler. Thermalright made sure the quality is up there with the very best.

Every cooler has a double heatpipe system, which leads heat away from the heat spreader plate which is in contact with the ram chips, towards the multitude of small metal plates, or fins if you like, which sit on top of the heatpipes. All of these fins are in fact small "radiators", spaced closely together. The air inside your case can move between them, and heat can be moved away by a convective airflow between the fins. Furthermore, small holes are made into the fins to allow air to circulate even better and allow for better ventilation in passive mode. In addition to the passive mode, Thermalright has built in the possibility of active cooling when you're using dual ram coolers, in dual channel operation. The fans can be directly attached to the coolers, and can provide active airflow to offer even better convective heat dissipation.

The ASUS Lamborghini VX1 is like a sports coupe - daring, extraordinary and aggressive. It is meticulous in every detail with its stylish lacquered lid, magnesium-aluminum insertions and a straight-shaped, yet elegant-looking, outline. The hood, embellished with the famous bull logo of Automobili Lamborghini (it is actually a Taurus, the Zodiac sign Ferruccio Lamborghini was born under) covers a top-performance computing motor, a fast graphics card, and other components to match. With all this high-tech stuffing the notebook is ready to dart forwards and vanish in the horizon in the blink of an eye.

Of course, it would be right to compare the racing notebooks from Acer and ASUS between each other, but the Acer Ferrari 4005WLMi is based on a single-core processor from AMD and wouldn't stand a chance against the dual-core processor of the ASUS Lamborghini VX1 whereas the new dual-core Ferrari model hasn't yet reached our test labs. Taking this fact into consideration, we chose the ASUS V6J as the opponent to the Lamborghini VX1 in today's tests. These two notebook models have the same chassis and similar configurations, but differ in their CPU clock rates and the amount of memory (the V6J is inferior in both parameters). With the lids open, these notebooks resemble each other visually, too.

Part of the reason why AGP systems are still abundant lies in the lack of urgency to mass-upgrade for those who have already invested in very decent AGP systems. While another relatively lesser-discussed reason lies in the fact that newer CPUs haven't really improved gaming performance significantly since the late days of AGP's heyday. Remember that we've mostly progressed into multi-core processors these days? Well, if you've been keeping tabs on our reviews, you would realize that dual-core and quad-core processors offer little gaming advantage so far. That brings us to the graphics card quotient that really makes or breaks a game's playability (as long as the system is decked with at least a decent amount of main memory).

Also during this period of transition, you have probably often read about the premature demise of the AGP interface, including our own (mistaken) predictions about its longevity. Yet both ATI and NVIDIA have eventually relented and produced bridge chips (Rialto and High Speed Interconnect respectively) to enable AGP support on their native PCI Express architectures. The aforementioned reasons combined with strong industry demand to support the AGP platform were key reasons why despite the fact that consumer graphics continues to progress in the PCIe scene, there have been the occasional AGP versions appearing now and then to cater to the holdouts. These have usually been of the mid and lower range, like NVIDIA's GeForce 7600 series and 7800 GS while ATI had their Radeon X1300 and X1600 variants on AGP.

OPTICAL DRIVE MANUFACTURER Lite-On IT has announced two new products to its line of 20x DVD writers, the LH-20A1S and the equally catchily titled LH-20A1PU.

The LH-20A1S is the world's verily first 20x DVD burner with a Serial ATA interface, brags the company, mentioning that the internal drive is designed for "advanced computer enthusiasts".

Bear in mind the SATA interface stamps out performance bottlenecking by offering a generous 150MB/s data transfer rate, at least, Lite-On proclaims.

Cisco released three security advisories on Wednesday designed to fix multiple vulnerabilities in its core Internetwork Operating System Software (IOS).

Worst of the trio is a "Crafted IP Option" vulnerability that creates a potential means for hackers to load hostile code onto a range of Cisco routers and switches running IOS. Attacks would have worked by sending certain ICMP, PIMv2, PGM or URD packets with a specific IP option set to a Cisco device, thereby causing the hardware to either crash or load in such a way that arbitrary code is executed. The flaw applies to most of the code base of IOS 12.0, 12.1 and 12.2.

The second vulnerability means that malformed TCP Packets can tie up the memory of vulnerable devices eventually causing them to crash. The third flaw also involves a denial of service risk, triggered by a packet containing crafted IPv6 Type 0 Routing headers.

So what's on the test bench this time around? Well, Alienware has a new chassis for one, a smaller version of the gigantic tower we have seen previously. This is more of a mid-tower size than a full-tower, although the styling is otherwise pretty similar. There are some neat new tricks in the case, which we will look at in just a tick.

The hardware has changed, too. Under the hood of this beast is an 8800 GTX SLI setup - absolutely the fastest graphics sub-system that money can buy.

More to the point, this latest incarnation has the latest in optical media - a Blu-ray drive. The machine is fully equipped to play Blu-ray movies, since the 8800 GTX has an HDCP compliant DVI port and the Windows XP install comes loaded with PowerDVD 6.5, which has Blu-ray support.

Does the next-gen optical content work? How well does 8800 work in SLI? And is the Alienware case an improvement on the old giant? We wade in to find out.

Logitech's diNovo Edge keyboard certainly looks like the best keyboard around. Taking the clean-lined design cues of its previous diNovo boards, Logitech's latest high-end keyboard is a remarkably attractive piece of hardware. It's a pleasure to type on, with a sturdiness that belies its thin profile. Logitech also added some innovation, making this the first wireless keyboard that's also rechargeable. Those factors alone make a compelling argument for the diNovo Edge. Our problem is that for its $200 price tag, it's not perfect; specifically it has a few touch-sensitive elements that don't work as well as they should. But for that fault, the diNovo Edge makes a strong statement against our long-standing aversion to keeping a keyboard in the living room.

Ever since the trend moved towards modernization of the traditional PC into home entertainment consoles, there have been plenty of reasons for one to go for Small Form Factor (SFF) and HTPC designs. There are generally two ways one can go about this though. The easy way out is to buy into custom PCs like the AOpen Mini PC or barebone systems like those offered by Shuttle. The other way is to go the D.I.Y. route. With an increasing number of SFF chassis designs that can accommodate regular sized motherboards, building your own compact PC from the ground up isn't too difficult.

If you're in the second group, you'd most probably be hunting for a microATX motherboard for your rig and while they aren't hard to find, boards these size are historically under-powered or under-featured compared to their full seized ATX brethren. AOpen is one of the manufacturers that have always catered to this group, but once in a while we get hold of a gem from some of the more mainstream manufacturers. The latest board to catch our eye is the Foxconn G9657MA-8EKRS2H. being one of the newer generation Core 2 ready motherboards, the G9657MA-8EKRS2H sports an up-to-date chipset, full CPU and memory speed support, plus rich features in a small footprint.

In an effort to improve their standing in the high-end motherboard market, ECS launched the newest member to its 'Extreme' motherboard line up - the ECS PN2 SLI2+. Based on NVIDIA's nForce 680i SLI, the PN2 SLI2+ aims to be the ultimate motherboard for the Intel Core 2 platforms, succeeding the short reign of the PN1 SLI2, which was based on the older nForce 590 SLI Intel Edition.

What's more, the PN2 SLI2+ is another board that follows the stock NVIDIA OEM design, which doesn't really come as a surprise since it is no real secret who NVIDIA's contract manufacturers are. Instead of developing and qualifying a new product, ECS makes use of the existing design to their advantage, which not only includes the board, but NVIDIA's BIOS as well. Gone is the familiar purple PCB and gone is the 'Extreme' plaque. To all extents, the PN2 SLI2+ we received is the same board as the recently reviewed Biostar TF680i SLI Deluxe, down to the same BIOS revision. The difference? An Elitegroup brand sticker to differentiate it from others. So, the question that remains is whether the same board can be different. Let's find out shall we?

[We] have gathered a number of GeForce 8800 GTX cards available now and put them to the test. Specifically, overclocking and temperature tests. Since all the GeForce 8800 GTX cards are running at standard clocks, we felt that there was little utility in showing you minor and negligible differences in performance figures between them. You should be able to get all the information you need, including the relevant comparisons of the GeForce 8800 GTX against other graphics chipsets in our previous detailed article. Hence, only overclocking and temperature results will be shown in this guide.

On such a level playing field, what separates a Brand X GeForce 8800 GTX from a Brand Y quickly boils down to the bundle, the warranty and service, and probably the most important factor - price. First, we shall show you the various GeForce 8800 GTX models from different vendors and what you can expect to pay for the complete package. So without further ado, we have the first candidate. . .

One of the drawbacks of full graphics card water blocks is that they don't always fit the cards being used like they should. There are tolerance issues depending on the height of the ram versus the height of the GPU. Swiftech offers a cure to those ills with the MCWRamcool.

Chances are that you know someone who has a nice computer but uses terrible speakers. You know, those cheap stereo speakers that come free with a purchase or you buy for $15 as an afterthought. Similarly, you probably know even more people who listen to their digital music through the speakers on their laptop. Some of these people don't care about their sound quality, others don't have the room for a speaker system, but too many of them simply think that they can't afford quality sound. Logitech is trying to change all of this with their X-540 speakers. This kit retails for $99 but packs in a considerable amount of features and functionality. This kit is not for audiophiles, but if you want solid sound at a reasonable price Logitech may have the product for you.