September 2006

September 2006 Volume 3 Issue 10 Rs 100

Enchant your

Arm yourself with hardware and software tweaking spells that will supercharge your PC

32

WORKSHOP

 64 TV on your PC A mini shootout of three great cards FEATURE

 88 SLED 10 Finally an alternative to Windows XP? Also available in Bangladesh Nepal, Bhutan, Sri Lanka, U A E

Mega hard disk test 

54

Choose from a range of 55 drives!

Web renewed 

86 AJAX is out to refresh your online experience

Free disk creation 

98 Who needs Nero? Check out these great alternatives

Intel’s Conroe: Processor for the next era?

EDITORIAL

7

Of Movies and Evolution Imagine there’s no heaven, It’s easy if you try, No hell below us, Above us only sky…

I

Can technology become too intelligent?

n his cult-inspiring song, Imagine, John Lennon wasn’t the only dreamer trying to envision a perfect world. Across numerous instances, thinkers, writers and even movie producers have put forth their versions of what it would be like to live in a world without threat, pain and squalor. In a book I read recently (The Naked Sun by Asimov), the author describes a world with no violence, with every inhabitant having equal financial and social standing. We have somewhat similar situations portrayed in movies like The Island, I, Robot and Demolition Man. Of course, in this day and age of relentless and gratuitous violence, such a utopia is difficult to imagine. But imagine what it would be like to have no crime, specifically in our world of technology. Imagine a world with no malicious users writing viruses, no instances of hacking or intellectual rights thievery. In the absence of firewall and intrusion detection systems, lesser overhead on network traffic would result in smoother data transmission. Norton and McAfee might well be names of operating systems or office suites—certainly not security applications! However, I do see a downside. In the absence of threats to data and security, application programmers and users would be far less prone to discovering loopholes in their data. This would have a direct bearing on the efficiency of code and would invariably lead to a situation where application performance would slacken. On the other hand, technologies today are making increasing strides in ‘learning’ our usage models—from cell phones that keep track of our most frequently-used phone numbers to smart cars that study driving characteristics to offer a more ‘personalized’ experience to UPnP devices that are able to discover other devices on a wireless or wired network and automatically configure themselves to talk to one another… the list goes on. You might also have heard of the highly anticipated ‘Cell’ processor that is scheduled to debut in Sony’s Playstation 3 gaming console. The developers of the processor hope to incorporate it in virtually every type of consumer device—from cell phones to televisions to even home appliances. In such a scenario, these processors will have the ability to aggregate their processing power and apply it to whichever application requires it around the house or office—distributed computing for the masses! Sure, this sounds great but if these ‘smart’ devices continue to evolve at their current rate, we have a distressing conundrum—can technology become too intelligent? As highlighted in movies like Terminator and Virtuosity, there could well be a time when applications become—in sci-fi jargon—self-aware. It’s a disconcerting concept, but think about it; all signs seem to point to this being well within the bounds of reality. I also believe that viruses are a necessary evil. In many ways, it is required that they are around—with programmers and users being kept on their toes, we automatically develop resilience to threats. Like its biological counterpart, the more the human body battles viruses and bacteria, the stronger is its immunity system. Maybe I’m just a dreamer. Or maybe I’m just watching too many movies.

| Marco Angelo D’Souza [email protected] SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

Contents SEPTEMBER 2006 54 Big

30

Play anywhere, anytime NEWSWIRE

22 CHIP Knowledge Forum In the months of July and August, we hosted a six-city knowledge forum for system integrators, addressing the subject of system robustness.

30 Play Anywhere, Anytime The Games of Demand service—a joint venture of Indiagames and Airtel Broadband is an attempt to stop piracy in games and build a gaming culture in India.

68 Crowning

64 War of the Tuners A head-to-head comparison of the three best high-end TV tuner cards available in the market to help you make the right buying decision.

68 Crowning Conroe Intel is back with a brand new processor and we were the first to check out its capabilties. Do we have a new king? Find out here…

72 PC Configs Check out our best configurations this month for your home, office, productivity and gaming needs.

COVER STORY 32 Enchant your PC Tweaking your computer is easier than you can imagine—get to know hidden secrets that unlock serious potential in your hardware and software.

76 Wireless Wonders Get the Bluetooth headset for your mobile phone that fits your needs and your budget.

Conroe

78 DivX Compression Get to know how one of the most popular forms of video compression works to deliver quality in small packages.

APPLICATIONS 80 Software Center Simple and easy-to-use applications for everyone is what we have compiled this month in this section.

86 Turbocharged Internet Asynchronous JavaScript and XML have been in the news for ages but ever wondered how they can be better than a conventional web page? Get your answers here...

88 A New Desktop Dimension Get close to Novell’s latest offering for the small business segment and enterprise operating system.

HARDWARE 40 Top Gear

92 Personalized Flicks

Rock solid performance standards set by a veritable mix of products. Watch out for the Nokia N91 multimedia phone review, the fastest memory, and more...

Capture priceless moments on video and share on blogs for others to enjoy.

96 Shop with your mobile

54 Big Bytes A lineup of 15 hard drives in our comparison test this month.

Bytes

32

We gradually progressed from cash to plastic for making payments. And now you have an option to pay through your mobile. We take a look at some of the services being offered. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

112 Barbwired

98 The

Wireless

Perfect Burn

128

98 The Perfect Burn There are loads of free applications available on the Net that can collectively replace Nero 7’s monopoly in the burning domain.

HANDS ON 108 Graphics Guide What are the steps you need to take before you send your silk-screen designs for print and what is the most cost-effective method for printing? Find out here...

110 Creating Picture Packages Pre-package your favorite photographs and flaunt it before your friends with Adobe Photoshop’s readymade layout.

112 Barbwired Wireless Drive away the intruders preying into your system. This workshop details the steps you need to follow to

ensure your home wireless network is completely protected.

115 Presentations with Pizzaz Add some spunk to your PowerPoint presentations with these nifty tips and make your mundane job interesting. Your boss is surely going to be impressed with you!

118 The Personal Touch Send one e-mail message to all your colleagues or friends with a personalized note. And you can do it in Word without the need for any third party software.

…41

UNWIND 128 Fusion Unlimited Games and movies are literally feeding off each other these days —one spawns the other. We take a look at some of these game-movie releases.

Town Square

16

Letters

18

Technology Landscape

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

131 Cars A game based on Pixar’s film on Lightning McQueen’s quest to win the Piston Cup Championship. An exciting experience as you duke it out in a racing encounter.

132 Prey Walk through portals and defy gravity as you play the role of a Cherokee Indian trying to rescue his loved ones from aliens. Don’t miss this game!

| Products Tested Hardware Standalones 40

Regulars Nokia N91

Fusion Unlimited

76

Dr. CHIP

104

Tips and Tricks

120

Game Reviews

131

Last Word

148

Nokia N91, Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX, Leadtek WinFast Palm Top TV, ECS KA3 MVP Extreme, Microsoft LifeCam VX6000, Kingston HyperX KHX8500D2K2/1G, VIP ZB01B, LiteOn SOHW 1633s, Polycom Communicator C100S, Zippy’s ET-35UIS, Level One BLM-3000A

Hard Drives

54

Samsung SP0411N, Samsung SP2504C, Samsung HD160JJ, Hitachi HDS725050KLA360, Hitachi HDT72252525DLA380, Seagate ST3400832AS, Seagate ST3500641AS, Seagate ST3750640AS, Western Digital WD1500ADFD, Western Digital WD1600BB, Western Digital WD2500JB, Western Digital WD3200JS, Western Digital WD5000KS, Western Digital WD5000YS, Western Digital WD800BD

Disk Contents SEPTEMBER 2006 | VOLUME 3 | ISSUE 10

Multimedia

Game Demos

SAINT PAINT STUDIO NERO ALTERNATIVES

System AUTOPATCHER JULY UPDATE CHIP POWER PACK

Internet ABYSS WEB SERVER SITEGENWIZ

GTR 2

Game Demos MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X CALL OF JUAREZ

Linux OPENSUSE 10.1

TOTAL PRO GOLF

Game Trailers TEAM FORTRESS 2 CRYSIS DARK MESSIAH - MIGHT AND MAGIC MICROSOFT FLIGHT SIMULATOR X

Game Patch AGE OF EMPIRES III V1.08

Utilities POWERSTRIP

Movie Trailers

SYNBACK

FLICKA

ULTRAISO

THE PURSUIT OF HAPPINESS

UNDELETE PROFESSIONAL

STRANGER THAN FICTION

WINXP MANAGER

THE MARINE

Mobile IM+ BLUETOOTH OPERA PRO BACKUP OXYGEN PHONE MANAGER TOTAL RECALL ULTRAMP3

Developer ACTIVEPERL

Linux SKYPE REMIND

Quick Quote SEPTEMBER 2006 | VOLUME 3 | ISSUE 10 GENERAL MANAGER - PUBLISHING

Krishna Tewari EDITOR

Hyderabad Vasudevan Iyer [email protected] Phone: (040) 55622211 Fax: (040) 23393488

Marco Angelo D’Souza SENIOR COPY EDITOR

Sharmistha Dey

Chip is a ‘chip above the rest’. Historically strong & widely read, it keeps us well informed on the latest tech trends. W.S. Mukund Managing Director, Acer India

WRITERS

Ashutosh Desai, Pradosh Mitra TEST CENTER

Anand Tuliani, Gaurav Seth, Faheem Sayed, Kunal Rupera MULTIMEDIA COORDINATOR

New Delhi Pranav Saran [email protected] Phone: (011) 55303278,79,80,82 Fax: (011) 23327884 Jitendra Gupta [email protected]

Anup Pillai CIRCULATION DESIGN

Jagdish Limbachiya, Pramod Jadhav, Dinesh Desai, Rushikesh Masurkar, Manoj Tandel, Umesh Dahiwalkar, Ravi Parmar

National Circulation Manager Kumar Mohanani [email protected] SUBSCRIPTIONS

PHOTO EDITOR

Shirish Karale MULTIMEDIA & WEB

Hemant Charya SPECIAL PROJECTS EDITOR-PROJECTS

Brian Pereira SUB-EDITOR

Charmaine Fernandes WRITERS

Rahul Athalye, Lokesh Sharma HEAD BUSINESS

Ganesh Lakshmanan HEAD OFFICE

Intelligent Computing Chip, TBW Publishing & Media Pvt. Ltd. `A’ Wing, Ruby House, 2nd Floor, J.K. Sawant Marg, Dadar(W). Mumbai - 400 028. INDIA Phone: (91 22) 24232323, Fax: (91 22) 2430 2707 E-mail: [email protected] Martin Wilson [email protected] Sagar Salunkhe [email protected] Mrugesh Patel [email protected]

Surekha Pendse, Sarita Quadros E-mail: [email protected] Tel: +91 22 2423 2804 / 05 Fax: +91 22 2430 2707 SUBSCRIBE ONLINE at eshop.infomediaindia.com CHIP INTERNATIONAL

Editorial Consultant International Wolfgang Su, Poccistrabe 11, 80336 Munchen CHIP is also published in the following countries China Czech Republic Germany Greece Hungary Indonesia Italy Malaysia Netherlands Poland Romania Russia Singapore Thailand Turkey Ukraine TBW Publishing & Media Pvt. Ltd. does not take the responsibility for returning unsolicited material sent without due postal stamps for return postage. No part of this magazine can be reproduced without the prior written permission of the publisher. TBW Publishing & Media Pvt. Ltd. reserves the right to use the information published herein in any manner whatsoever.

Hafeez Shaikh [email protected]

Copyright 2004 INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

BRANCH OFFICES

For all international subscription enquiries, contact the subscription department, Intelligent Computing CHIP ([email protected]).

Bangalore Harish Kamat [email protected] Phone: (080)559 7282,83,84 Fax: (080)559 7285 Chennai O K Gurumurthy [email protected] Phone: (044) 28295050-54 Fax: (044) 28295060 Cochin Sawmya Kumar [email protected] Phone: (0484)5054370/80/90

www.chip-india.com

Kolkata A K Roy [email protected] Phone: (033) 2468637, 2468638 Fax: (033) 2462964

Intelligent Computing CHIP is printed by A. S. Vadiwala and published by K. V. Rao on behalf of TBW Publishing and Media Pvt. Ltd. and printed at Infomedia India Ltd, Plot No.3, Sector 7, Off Sion-Panvel Road, Nerul, Navi Mumbai – 400 706 and published at TBW Publishing and Media Pvt. Ltd., `A’ Wing, Ruby House, 2nd Floor, J.K. Sawant Marg, Dadar(W). Mumbai - 400 028. INDIA is an internationally protected trademark owned by Vogel Burda Communication GmbH Cover Design: Pramod Jadhav, Photography: Shirish Karale Model: Swapnil Raje, Make-up Artist: Rajan Vardam

INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

16

TOWN SQUARE

THIS MONTH ON chip-india.com

Town Square Greetings, Let me start with a warm welcome to all members who are back and have started posting again. Thank you for being with us over the past few months. There have been plenty of posts regarding several issues with our web site’s design and functionality. Also, there have been another set of postings regarding the delay in responding to the issues, which is justified. To both these issues, we are putting in our level best to tackle the problems at the earliest. While we may not be able to resolve these issues immediately, we promise that we are listening to you and are always open to suggestions. If you’ve felt your issues and requests have been ignored, let me assure you we here at CHIP-India value our members and readers and at no time are ignorant about your needs. Our aim has and will always be to attend to each person’s problem and bring it to a closure as quickly as possible. However, we may not be able to respond to or solve the problem immediately, but it is always our aim to find the best solution at the earliest. On a positive note, the atmosphere on the web site seems to be optimistic. I would like to sincerely thank you folks for your patience and for continuing to drive the content on our forums, especially in the hardware, software and Internet sections where several of our members (who are experts in their own right) continue to provide rock-solid feedback and help to the web site’s community at large. Kudos to all of you! As for our web site; there has been considerable progress. I know many of you folks are tired of waiting for the changes to be seen but please try to understand that our web site is undergoing a huge makeover as far as the looks, functionality and layout of the web site is concerned—all this is done bearing in mind the suggestions we have received from you over the past few months. After all, it is you guys who are the heart of the site.

One of our members, ‘intelomaker’, had requested 3DMARK in the upcoming CD/DVD. I believe Mr Cool solved your query there by letting you know that it was sent on the DVD packed with the April issue. However, in case anyone requires previous versions of a software, feel free to post on the relevant thread—we monitor it regularly and use it as a source to decide what goes into our cover disks in the forthcoming issues. Also, if you can, we request you to please be specific about the version of the application you need otherwise we will assume it is the latest release. Here, I would like to thank our members Sujith_Poojari, Shamik Mitra and “intelomaker” requesting for software for this month with complete information of the programs they needed. The more details you provide in your information to us, the easier it is for us to locate relevant content for you. During the past few days, a couple of our members have been asking for Norton Anti-virus to be included in the CD/DVD. Well, if you guys need the complete version, you will have to buy the retail pack which is available online or in most of the retail software shops. But if you were talking about the virus definition upgrades, we have included them in our previous issue. Look out for regular releases of these updates on our cover disks each month. There were certain postings about SysOp not responding or keeping in touch with the members. We apologize for this and would like to inform that he will be back shortly. In the meanwhile, you can continue to write to the Editor and let him know your feedback. Through it all, let us continue to keep our spirits high on Town Square and make it the coolest and the best place to hangout for all tech netizens. Until next month, have a great time and happy Ganesh Chaturti! ■ | Vijay Pate INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

LETTERS

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

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18

LETTERS

Letters Hello Team CHIP, I am a regular reader of your magazine and through it I have been benefiting with deeper insights on various computer related issues since the past year. Your June 2006 cover issue was superb to say the least—I liked it very much! However, I believe that you could do far better by enhancing the visual appeal of the cover graphics. The article detailing how to build your own web site in the magazine was very informative and useful. I would like to suggest publishing a series of articles about Web-related technologies like RSS; while these technologies have been around for quite a few years, I have found that many people are still ignorant about their proper use. RSS can do wonders for a person’s Web experience and it takes practically no effort on the user’s part. All one needs is sound knowledge of the technology and how to implement it correctly. On a related topic, you could also publish articles that deal with the basics of Atom, CSS, XML, etc. I’m betting your readers would love reading about them. You can also provide some free RSS reader applications on the cover disks. I would like to highlight a few observations about articles dealing with advanced topics such as the one published in your June issue: Internet Unplugged (page 92). Although the article was informative and a good read, it seemed to be aimed at the readers with a background in wireless technology. I think that such articles lack lucidity and are inadvertently stuffed with jargon. They also tend to have a “text-bookish” language—I believe a non-technical reader would just read one or two paragraphs and then skip the remaining article. One thing you could do is explain the abbreviations used within the text (like W-LAN, WiMAX, GSM, GPRS, UMTS, etc.) in a separate section and include relevant Web links. And if some of these topics are covered in previous CHIP issues, crosslink the article to back issues as well. Tutorials can also be provided on the CHIP CDs and DVD. I hope you will consider the suggestions I have made and implement them in future issues of your magazine. Regards, Aditya Sharma

Hello Aditya, Thanks for writing in and we’re glad that you find our magazine utilitarian. You’ve highlighted a few interesting suggestions here and I would imagine they encapsulate a larger need from our other readers, especially the need for more information on Internet-related technologies and demystifying new-generation technology standards. On the Web front, there are so many advancements occurring that it does indeed become difficult for the end-user to track and relate to these leaps and bounds. Your suggestion on explaining the various new online technologies being used is a good one. Especially with the online world, the more transparent the technology is to the end consumer, the more successful it is. The reason why technologies like RSS and XML have reached such wide levels of acceptance can be attributed to the fact that they have been now merged into several existing applications like web browsers and e-mail clients. In the case of RSS, you can now set up browsers like Firefox and Opera to automatically access RSS feeds without the need to install another specific application. As far as possible, we do make it a point to explicitly explain jargon and terms used in our articles via box elements and links to web-based resources. I believe we skipped out on doing so for that particular article on wireless technologies— thanks for brining it to our notice. More than explaining the technicalities behind the individual wireless standards covered in the article, its intent was to indicate the actual fields of operation for those technologies and how they would impact daily life. But yes, going ahead we will make it a point to explain ourselves in greater detail. Team CHIP Dear CHIP, I am a student of information technology in Nepal. I request you to deconstruct “Digital Convergence”. Although I have a fair idea of what it means, please tell me where I can get access to any documented information on what it entails. Also, I want to know whether it is a standardized terminology used to define a specific technology trend. Also tell me about the effects of digital convergence we are likely to witness on existing and future markets here in India and abroad. Rajeev Ghimire

Umesh Dahiwalkar INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

LETTERS

20

Letters Now you can SMS us!

Since we like knowing what’s on your mind and what you think about our magazine, we now bring you another way to get in touch with us. Have something to say about a test review? Liked a feature story? Was the workshop useful? SMS us your feedback! Here’s how: For comments on a story, create the following message: ICCO Example: ICCO The cover story was very useful You can write as much as you want in your comment! To rate a story, product review, etc look out for the story tag at the base of each article and use it as follows: ICCP <Story tag> Example: ICCP PWS 5 The “Story tag” is mentioned at the base of every story in the magazine and the “Rating” is on a scale of 1 to 5. Finally, send your messages to 7007. Cheers!

70 07 IC

at w CO Th

as a fu

n co v

er s to

ry

Hello Rajeev, The term “Digital Convergence” is a catch-all term that defines all technologies and products aimed at unifying a consumer’s experience with technology. This unification could happen across several application areas including communication, entertainment, productivity, etc. The very fact that you are now using a cellular phone to keep track of your daily appointments, surf the Internet, play games (besides, of course, making phone calls) is evidence of this convergence. The aim of many of today’s consumer electronics and IT companies is to unify a user’s experience with their products, resulting in a seamless experience across devices—televisions that access the Internet, lighting systems that can be controlled from a cell phone, portable multimedia players that interface with your car… the list goes on. In a way, we are seeing fleeting signs of this phenomena occurring around us today, and this is only bound to intensify as technologies become more affordable and acceptance increases. Besides the companies directly related to technology, there are several others that specifically address digital convergence—for more information, check out companies such as Crestron, AMX that are into converging the technologies used in homes and offices. Marco D’Souza Hi Marco, This is regarding the cover stories carried in CHIP in the past few months—Web designing, technology in sports, travel, movies etc. I have been reading CHIP for a long time now, and I find the above bleak in comparison to some of your older cover stories on virus attacks, best tech upgrades for the year, the hacker story, etc. The July cover story on technology in movies is suited to a real movie buff who wants to know what happens behind the scenes. Could you choose your cover stories to be more practically oriented? I believe this would be more useful to your readers at large. Amit Patnaik Hello Amit, Thanks for your feedback. As our readers (who include everyone from first-time users to seasoned geeks), the primary selection criteria for our cover story is that it be as accessible as possible. We believe

our recent cover stories on technology behind movies, sport and travel do appeal to our general readership at large without being too technical for most readers. For those who need their dose of high technology, there is always the hardware, software and handson sections. This is not to say that we do not have cover stories that are technically inclined—we do plan to include cover stories that directly deal with technology on a hands-on level—look out for them in our forthcoming issues! But even these will address technology at an approachable level. Team CHIP Hi Marco, I was really amazed with your July issue—what an eye-catching cover page it was! It seems you are really paying attention to reader feedback on the various technical and design fronts in the magazine. Recently, I wanted to pick up a DVD writer and was very confused about which one to buy and I was thrilled to find DVD writers reviewed in the July issue. I also like the previews of new technologies you bring out—the Webaroo application that you provided was super, but I believe it should be updated every month to reflect the newest trends. I would like you to carry out a comparison test on memory modules and low-end graphics cards for AGP slots as I believe there is still a large number of existing PC users who want to upgrade their computer’s gaming capabilities without an expensive system-wide upgrade. Apoorv Upadhyay Hello Apoorv, Thanks for the good feedback. You can look forward to feature articles and test reviews that deal with affordable hardware and software which can be used on older-generation systems—we’ve received a reasonable amount of feedback on this subject and we’ve already begun addressing it through the new story sections of our magazine such as the “PC config guides’”where we suggest good choices for hardware for computers within various applications. Team CHIP With hundreds of SMSes sent to us, this new feedback system has evoked tremendous response. Going ahead, we’re using what you’re saying to incorporate changes into our content. Keep it coming! INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

22

NEWSWIRE

CHIP Knowledge Forum In our steps to span media and reach out to a greater number of readers, we conducted our first CHIP Forum where we reached out to hundreds of industry players through a multi-city forum. The topic of this forum was “Building Robust Systems for Customer Satisfaction – The CHIP Perspective”

T

oday, the entire concept of performance has undergone a change—no longer is it only about how fast a computer performs, but how reliable and resilient it is in the face of demanding workloads. It is these factors that have been incorporated in the testing processes using to evaluate products you read in CHIP magazine. This forum was conceptualized with the intent of sharing these viewpoints and delivering them to the folks who stand at a position of influence—system integrators, computer distributors, dealers, retailers and value added resellers. More than just pushing boxes, sellers are increasingly realizing that this is the age where customers are savvy about their computing needs and requirements—more than ever before.

-edge AMD and nsisted of bleeding The Demo Areas co tem robustness. sys of d on the basis Intel PCs constructe fice. In each of t up—home and of Two zones were se monstrated in de ere plications wh these, indicative ap nce. reliability and resilie the light of system

In the first of our CHIP Forums in Mumbai, we invited key players in the industry and shared our views with them, while inviting feedback and answering real-world queries pertaining to customer satisfaction. The forums were also structured with a live demonstration comprising practical examples of the points we highlighted, where participants could interact with members of the CHIP Test Center and learn the secrets of what it takes to instill robustness and resilience into modern-day computing systems. CHIP also partnered with Frost & Sullivan who were the knowledge partners at this event, where representatives of the company shared information pertaining to real-world observations and statistics on customer satisfaction in today’s context. 

The GM of th e Special Inte rest introduced th e first CHIP Fo Publications Division ru Mumbai, wel coming the 10 m at the Taj Land’s End in 0+ attendee the Forum tr s. Besides M aveled to five umbai, other cities ac Delhi, Bangal ross the coun ore, Chenna i, Calcutta an try— d Hyderabad .

INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

NEWSWIRE

m comprised an eclectic The attendees at the CHIP Foru , system integrators and mix of PC dealers, distributors ns on system reliability stio que t resellers. Many pertinen e raised and answered at and customer satisfaction wer the event.

Marco D’Souza, Editor of CHIP, speaking on system robustness, relating it to customer needs and satisfaction. These concepts were explained from the point of view of the systems and processes used in the CHIP Test Center for system reliability and performance enhancement.

ts, talks about – CHIP Special Projec Brian Pereira, Editor struction con tem sys ’s computer the efficacy of today hlight the new technology to hig and uses examples of subsequent its d an nt al manageme importance of therm ce. an d long-term perform effect of reliability an

23

After the presentation s, the attendees got to interact with the CHIP Test Cen ter where they shared secrets on system reliability in the present day, using newgeneration system int egration techniques and taking cognizance of system the rmal proper ties.

ICT Practice Dr T R Madan Mohan, Director – Consulting, present at ers speak the of from Frost & Sullivan was one practical and orld real-w a red delive He s. event us the vario to this d relate and action viewpoint on customer satisf age. and day this in used be can that ices best pract

Anand Tuliani, Sr Re viewer – CHIP Test Center, explains the new ideologie s that can be utiliz ed in system construction and integration. Here, there were live examples of benc hmarking method ologies and tools to ascertain the pe used rformance of desk top computers.

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

SMS us!

Story code: NCF (See Page 20 for details)

24

NEWSWIRE

Need for speed

Scrambled data, secure data

A

K

new and unique way to monitor and tackle road traffic has been devised. Cell phone towers of Tampa, Florida, are being used to communicate with wireless devices in motion. A new service, which will measure the radio signals beamed between your cell phones and their towers will convert this measurement into speed and travel time and thereby help speed up your commuting time. The converted information will help in providing updated traffic information and traffic navigation service. IntelliOne Technologies, a company that specializes in using mobile phone network usage to measure roadway speed, has launched this real-world test named

Dinesh Desai

Need4Speed. Ronald Herman, CEO of IntelliOne said that almost all of the traffic reports generated today are usually 20 minutes old. They are based on readings collected by in-road detectors, cameras and helicopters. On the contrary, this new service will enable a user receive the same information on his PC within 30 seconds. IntelliOne will license their technology to third-party vendors who will process the raw data, change them into an easy-tounderstand format and make it available for users. The data will be stored in IntelliOne’s server, and will be regularly updated. To subscribe to the service, one needs an Internet connection. The online application interface will allow a user to set personal preferences like automated alerts, plan across town or across country and so on. For use while driving, the service will be provided through a voice system. The system will ask callers for their destination and will expertly provide them with distraction-free driving instructions around traffic. The service is likely to be available in the next three months.

eeping data organized might not successfully secure it. Chris Gladwin, a software engineer and businessman in Chicago kept his critical data safe by fragmenting and scattered files worth 27 GB (equivalent to a library of 22,000 books) on the Internet. Gladwin said he was curious about the methodology used by cryptographers to keep information secure by segregating them into parts and dispersing them. This is what gave birth to his personal project called Cleversafe. As of now, to store data on the Internet in distributed form, you need to copy the data five times or more. Cleversafe, on the other hand, breaks a piece of data into a large number of small fragments and stores them at different locations. The additional benefit

is the original data can be reconstructed from a majority of fragments. Cleversafe has culminated into a system with enough potential to offer government agencies and companies a simple way to store secured data. It allows you to reassemble the file only by the computer that originally created the fragments. Although the concept of splitting and storing secured data is not new, Cleversafe is considered to be a significant step as it is an open-source system and will therefore lower the cost of reliably storing strong data on the Internet. The experimental Cleversafe grid is spread across 11 storage sites, which is expected to increase to tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands once this technology is Dinesh Desai commercially accepted.

From gamers to creators

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ollege students, hobbyists and avid gamers will now be able to create their own games for the Xbox 360 consoles, Windows PC or both. The XNA Game Studio Express (beta version) application, expected to be available by the end of this month, will allow game enthusiasts to write code and create their own games for the Microsoft gaming device. You have to pay $99 as a joining fee to be part of the “Creator’s Club”. The games that you create will not be distributed to anyone other than the club members. The company plans to release the final product by the end of this year and a broader set of this application is expected to be released next spring. There are plans of allowing hobbyists to sell the developed version of games through Microsoft’s Xbox Live Arcade though the decision to choose and publish will reside entirely on Microsoft’s end. The distribution approach of this application will be similar to that of Visual Studio. The full version will be sold to

professionals while a scaled down version will be distributed free to the enthusiasts or hobbyists. Scott Henson, director for platform strategy for Microsoft’s game developer group, said that the application will make developing games an easier task than what it is today. He hopes the release of this express edition will drastically change the gaming experience. In three to five years we will perhaps witness a scenario where anyone and everyone will publish games and the developers’ community will respond and separate the hits from the flops. According to envisioneering analyst, Richard Doherty, gamers always said that they can do better but now they will have access to the tools with which they can match their skills like that of professional developers. Microsoft has targeted a few colleges and signed up with 10 universities to issue this new software as part of their academic curricula. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

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Super prisms for TV

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rrays of thousands of tiny “super prisms” controlled by robotic muscles could bring about a sweeping change in television technology in the form of real color to TV screens for the first time. The devices, known as electrically tunable diffraction gratings have been built by researchers in Switzerland, and can manipulate light to reproduce the full spectrum of colors on television screens. The existing technology allows a TV manufacturer to use only three primary colors (red, green and blue) to reproduce all the colors visible on screen. This technology uses a flexible approach for all the colors of the spectrum visible to the naked eye by creating a diffraction grating, a slotted grate like a miniature Venetian blind. Unlike solid grates, these grates are made up of flexible polymers, normally used to build artificial muscles in robots as they can contract when voltage is applied on them.

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Micro spydevice In a working screen made up of pixels, multiple grates are placed behind each and every pixel. This allows composite colors to mix and reproduce full range of colors on the TV screen. When pure white light from a light emitting diode hits these grates, the light splits into a full spectrum of colors just like a rainbow is produced from a prism. When different voltages are applied to these grates, they expand or contract. This causes the spectrum to shift after which different colors can be isolated from the spectrum by creating tiny holes in front of the grate. The colors can be lined up with the hole by adjusting the voltage across the grates. This technology will produce the same density on a CRT as one gets on a high quality LCD. Initially thousands of volts were required to flex the muscles of the grates but now that has been reduced to 300 volts, which has made the technology attractive enough to be adopted by electronic firms.

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his is the kind of micro earpiece that James Bond would love to use. A 25-year-old Russian student has developed an earpiece that is smaller than a dime and can be carried by an ant, metaphorically. Measuring 6x5x10 mm in terms of width, height and depth, the earpiece is Bluetooth compliant and can connect to any other Bluetooth device like a cell phone or audio player with the help of a mediator. This comes in the form of a neck-mounted microphone that needs to be connected to the cell phone. The earpiece has a detachable buzzer capable of striking a communication with the earpiece. It cannot connect to any device by Bluetooth on its own; instead it connects to other Bluetooth devices through the attached microphone using standard radio signal. Apart from communication, the earpiece can be used for the alternative purpose of surveillance in areas where audio security is of highest priority.

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Poll: Do you play games on a console? (See Readers’ Letters for details)

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Home unwired

Space alternatives

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ull out all those wires used to connect the telephone, satellite TV, extension phones, modems and computers and install DUALjack instead. DUALjack is a wireless phone extender supporting your home’s voice and data network from a single base station. This wireless line extender, manufactured by RTX America, comes in a pair including a base unit and an actual extender. One has to plug a phone line into the base station, followed by plugging the base station into an electric socket. Another Dualjack unit is plugged into a wall socket in any other part of the home, followed by plugging a telephone line into it from a device such as a fax machine. Up to four extension units can be supported.

DUALjack can be used for conference call The base unit and the extender communicate with each other and transfer data wirelessly. The DUALjack can send/receive voice, fax and data information at a 2.4 GHz wireless connection. It is a complete plug-and-play unit that is easy to install. The receivers are capable of handling both voice mode and data mode. When you use the phone and modem at the same time, voice calls are given more priority over modem/data calls. The receivers support intercom service, and have a “bargein” alert tone that can be heard when someone accidentally picks up a receiver while another person is carrying on a conversation. DUALjack is compatible with a host of devices like cord or cordless phone, answering machines, digital video recorder and satellite or dish TV. Some of its advantages include energy efficient design, secure and private voice data communication.

ommunication will undergo a sweeping change with strategically floating robotic airships replacing telecom towers and expensive satellites according to former NASA manager, Bob Jones. Jones believes that unmanned Stratellites (robotic airships) can hover in the atmosphere and blanket a large area with wireless access for high-speed data and voice communication. The prototype of such airships is already in the make and is expected to be out in the market very soon. During this test phase, the ships are expected to rise as high as 45,000 feet and float there for hours. The prototype will be about one fifth the planned commercial ships and will cost about three billion dollars and is likely to be launched by the end of this year. These ships will rise to a height of 65,000 feet and will stay there for 18 months at a time. The design of the Stratellites varies from that of traditional blimp—instead of the cylindrical shape, this one has the

broad tapered nose of a shark. The ship will be solar powered and will carry loads of radio and digital devices. These dirigibles will essentially prove effective in areas like dead rural zones or during natural disaster when the terrestrial tower fails. The Stratellites will cost much less than satellites and will be able to cover as wide as places like Texas. But signals traversing from telecommunication towers are at times hampered by line of sight and limited range. These signals take quarter of a second to travel a distance of 22,300 miles, which is insignificant for one-way TV signals but terrible for two-way mobile communication. These Stratellites will reduce such turn around time. The stratosphere is an area above the jet stream and where the temperature generally tends to freeze. Till date no such vehicle has stayed there for long durations. Therefore, a complete 18month flight at such a location will be a tough test for these dirigibles.

Blame it on DNS

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ogged by the peeves of your slow Internet connection? One of the chief suspects driving this is DNS or Domain Name System as reported by Nominum, a company selling DNS server software. According to Paul Mockapetris, inventor of DNS architecture and chairman and chief scientist at Nominum, even if carriers spend billions of dollars to build new 3G wireless networks, there is the need to spend more for beefing up the DNS capability. Pure bandwidth does not solve the problem if DNS servers fail to respond quickly. DNS works as a phone book—it helps in mapping the IP address of a computer with the text-based domain name. For example, if you try to open the web page of www. chip-india.com, then the DNS will find the page and ensure that it is opens only on your computer and in nobody else’s. Any Internet user will use the DNS service run by his service provider from their servers. Now if the server of your Internet service

provider starts running slow, then the service will drop queries. In other words, it will fail to open or take longer time to download the web page requested. The service failure may also lead to delayed sending/receiving of mails or poor response time while playing a game. A recent study conducted by VeriTest (a software testing company) and commissioned by Nomanium revealed that Verizon’s Fios network and its DSL (digital subscriber line), which was advertised as the fastest broadband service, actually had the worst service time. Joe Laszlo, an analyst with another research firm, acknowledged that mere increasing raw bandwidth removes the bottlenecks but inevitably exposes the flaws existing at the other part of the network. However, he does not blame DNS completely for slow response time. The service also depends on how fast the browser in your computer can process web pages or how quickly your graphics card can render images. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

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The inbox psychology

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ow do you react when you find your inbox jammed with messages every morning? Have you taken a closer look on how you reply to or file messages or noticed what you choose to keep or delete? All of these behaviors of yours to deal with your inbox actually reveal your habits, your state of mind and even the way you have been brought up. Psychologists from the US have concluded recently that the state of your inbox is a mirror of your self. One one hand, if your inbox is full, it may mean that you keep your life cluttered. On the other, if you obsessively clean your inbox every 10 minutes then may be you are one of those moving so quickly that you’re missing opportunities or ignoring nuances. Keeping your inbox full could also indicate that you

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Console war are a person who wants to cling to the past or you have a lot of unfinished business in your life while cleaning it within short intervals indicates that your compulsion for orders is using up your energy from other endeavors. Even response type can be categorized into two groups. While you may feel the urgency in responding to a mail, others may be too reluctant to revert even after days. Some even lie in between these extremes and Dinesh Desai may get affected by what is termed as “inbox paralysis”. It is a state where you are aware that you need to respond but have failed to do it. To deal with a problem like this, experts suggest solutions such as appointing an assistant to reply on your behalf or use a template with a personalized message.

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t is difficult to argue with someone who has the reputation of being successful and so it seems the case with Sony, titan in the game console arena. Although Microsoft had a great start with the XBox 360, people’s attention have not got diverted from the previous Sony PlayStations and therefore it is natural they have huge expectations from the yet-to-be-released PlayStation 3. According to Boston-based Yankee Group (a market analyst), the future of the game console industry will herald the success of the PS3, which will top all other game consoles sales. Although Sony decided to promote its console as a luxury product and digital entertainment hub, and increased the

Will Zune take over the iPod?

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hanging consumer needs and demands have resulted in spiffing up the media and entertainment market in the past months. A new name in the list of entertainment products is the soon to be released Zune. Zune is Microsoft’s answer to Apple’s popular iPod. It is basically a family of hardware and software products capable of playing audio/video files. The devices under the Zune brand will be Wi-Fi connected and will use a hard drive to store music. These devices would use wireless connectivity to share music with other devices of the Zune family.

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Microsoft and EMI group, the third largest music company, have signed a deal to provide preloaded music videos on Zune. EMI announced that the deal would see artists including American actor Jared Leto’s alternative rock band 30 Seconds to Mars, and English electro pop band Hot Chip. The launch, which was supposed to take place last month, has been delayed because of this deal and now pushed to the end-of-the-year holiday season. Jeff Kempler, executive vice president of EMI commented that Apple had been a very important partner but the new state of affairs is exciting too. Also, any well funded serious entrant should be considered good news for the artists as well as the music industry. While Apple’s iPod and iTunes floored music aficionados all over the world and captured a majority of digital music sales, Microsoft’s Zune plans to counter the effect with its file sharing capability. Watch this space to know more on this...

Dinesh Desai

price of their product, it will not affect their long-term success as game console leader. In the year 2000, when the PS2 was released, Sony shipped around 100 million PlayStation 2 consoles while Microsoft managed to ship only 21 million of their XBox since its release in the year 2001. However, this time, the fight is expected to be more balanced as for the first time in 10 years Sony is facing competition from Microsoft after the success of the XBox 360. As the XBox was released almost a year ahead of the PS3, Microsoft has had the market to themselves for one whole year. But it has been presaged that Sony is going to recover its position as leader of consoles and by the year 2011, it will have shipped around 30 million PS3 consoles and grabbed 44 percent of the US market against 27 million XBox 360 consoles while Nintendo will trail with 11 million units. Microsoft, Goodman said, will find a remedy for the supply constraints it was plagued with during their launch in 2005.

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Play anywhere, anytime Avid Indian gamers can now enjoy their favorite titles at the click of a button while being connected to the Internet. That’s what ‘Games on Demand’ promises aming is one of the most favorite past times most people indulge in. Starting from customizing a PC for gaming to buying consoles, we go to any extent to partake of the ultimate thrill in gaming. To augment this thrill, Indiagames and Airtel have partnered to combine games with the Internet. Their partnership is poised to offer a new service named “Games on Demand” or GoD. On-demand game services have already been

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market has matured enough for innovative services like games-on-demand to be triggered. The study revealed the the most popular game genres in India are cricket, action or film-based and racing. Such games are primarily enjoyed by users ranging from 18 to 28 years of age. Additionally, the study also suggested that casual games (those that don’t require much expertise) have an appeal across all age groups. While racing and action games are mostly

available on the Internet. Yahoo and Verizon were some of the providers who brought the service to the broadband users. Users can go online, register to the service and rent titles or buy them at a given cost. Once a title is rented or bought, users can download or stream the content to their computers and play. This way, they can enjoy the experience of playing the original (non-pirated) version of a title at a reasonable cost. Additionally, since the content is available online, users can play games of their choice anytime, anywhere they wish. A recent study by organizational strategist McKinsey estimated that the present value of the gaming market of India is around $60 million and is expected to hit the $336 million mark by the year 2009. This implies that this

liked by the younger audience, the ubiquitous favorite is undoubtedly cricket. The research concluded that while there is definitely a demand for gaming across various genres in India, the two impediments are availability and cost. To bridge this gap between availability and cost, Indiagames and Airtel followed the international distribution model and launched the GoD service in India. Currently, the PC gaming market is worth five million dollars, out of which 85 per cent is pirated. The GoD service will directly attack the pirated game market. Drawing a comparison between the gaming and present day cable TV market, Vishal Gondal of Indiagames commented, “Before the advent of cable TV, pirated movie video cassettes used to

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inundate the entertainment market. With the penetration of cable TV, the pirated movie market was affected majorly as the cable operators offered new movie titles at a reasonable cost. Indiagames intends to follow the same policy for gaming. Gondal said, “If an original game title costs Rs 1,500, gamers will think twice before investing and will find ways to spend less and procure the same from the grey market. But now with GoD, you can enjoy the experience of playing the original legal version and still pay less in comparison to buying the title from the physical market.” He believes this service will not only reduce the loss incurred by the gaming market due to piracy but also bring the popular titles to the mass.

long one, including Desperados, Crime Cities, Age of Empires II – The Age of Kings, Flight Simulator 2004, Brian Lara Cricket 2005 and others. The titles are rated too—“Everyone” or “Teens” to provide parental control. If you want to enjoy the GoD service, it is necessary to get an Airtel broadband connection. As of now, this is the only broadband service provider Indiagames had tied the knot with. Next, register to the service from Airtel’s broadband web site and download the launching application. This application will detect whether the game you wish to download is compatible with your PC or not. In case your PC is not compatible with the game, you need to upgrade your PC to match the

enough, you can cancel your account without being charged. In an attempt to block piracy, the game content gets streamed from Indiagames’ local server, which means if you close the player application, you will no longer receive the game content on your computer. Even the scores and information like graduation of levels are stored in that server within your account. Therefore copying and burning CDs is practically impossible. As of now, the game list is updated once a month and there are plans to frequent this in the future. Indiagames also plans to build an online gaming community and organize gaming competitions to encourage participation.

Indians lack proper gaming knowledge and are yet to embrace the gaming culture in its totality. But this service has the potential to generate interest among broadband users and will help in developing a gaming culture, which will recursively increase the number of broadband connections. Indiagames has partnered with a number of game development companies who operate on the national and international platform. The list consists of Microsoft, Codemasters, Atari, Alawar, Techland and Play First, spanning all genres. Users gain access to categories like action, adventure, role playing, strategy, race and sports. The game title list is a

game’s minimum requirements. The speed of the game download depends obviously on your broadband connection speed. Some of the additional advantages of this service are cost, unlimited downloads and trial periods. You get to play any of the available titles at a flat rate of Rs 199 per month. The game downloads don’t affect your regular download limit and you are not additionally charged for it. That means if you want you can download games as big as 10 GB even if your regular download limit is set way below. Not only that, once registered you will also get a free trial of 15 days; within this time period you can download and play the games you want. If you don’t find the service appealing

Along with home users, there are some retail plans for cyber cafés as well. This will increase the number of registered users, as all those users who don’t have a broadband connection at homes can enjoy the gaming experience by registering from cyber cafés. Although the service was already present on the Internet, for Indian customers this is certainly something new and notable. Considering the statistics, this service does seem to point toward a promising future for gaming in the Indian market. But while we wait and watch this service gaining acceptance, it would be interesting to fire up a game.  | Pradosh Mitra

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Coverstory

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esktop computers today are becoming faster and more affordable. From dual processors to hard disk to memory, the computers we use today are orders of magnitude, faster that what we used barely a year ago. But along with the hardware, software is also becoming more and more demanding. Each time a new OS or a new version of your favorite imaging application is launched, the system requirements climb higher. This often leads to your relatively new computer acting like it has the brakes on! The brute force method of getting better performance is to select a computer or upgrade your existing one with the best possible components, but this is certainly not the most economical way of doing it. Through this story, we aim to arm you with a basket full of tweaks and optimizations that you can use to help you get through your work (or play) faster than you imagined. To deal with all aspects of your system, we’ve divided the story into three sections. The first comprises general tweaks that can be performed by any computer user for overall system speedup. Next up, we take you through specific system tweaks that enable you to get the most out of the applications you use at your workplace. In the entertainment section, you will find secrets that let you get the most out of your games, movies and audio. In the applications section, we guide you through tweaks on software most used in offices and at work. This includes specific tips and hidden secrets that enable your imaging applications to run smoother, even when you are working with large files that would otherwise bring your computer to its knees. Cast these tweaking spells on your computer and have it operate faster—it’s almost like magic!

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You don’t need to be a geek to get the most out of your PC. Follow the tweaks and supercharge your PC—and you’ll see the difference

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34 There are several tweaks you can perform to extract higher performance from your overall system. These tweaks require you to get into areas of your system you probably have never seen, but stick with us and pay attention—you’ll soon get used to the various sections along with their capabilities.

Enter the BIOS!

General Tweaks

Disable the legacy ports from the BIOS if you don’t need them

Before we get into tweaking Windows, let’s start with fine tuning the BIOS settings. BIOS stands for Basic Input/ Output System as is the area of your motherboard that controls the settings of its various components. For those who haven’t tinkered with the BIOS yet, press the “Del” key at the very first screen when the computer boots, to get into the BIOS settings screen. Here you need to make a few changes to free up some system resources. Let’s go step-by-step: If you don’t have a floppy drive installed, first disable the floppy disk drive in the first page of the BIOS settings. Otherwise you may get an error “Floppy drive(s) fail” every time you start your PC. If you aren’t using any devices which utilize the parallel or serial ports, disable those ports from the “Integrated Peripherals” section of the BIOS. Doing so also frees up system resources for other peripherals to operate more smoothly. Check which is the first boot-device: if it is the CD/DVD drive, change it to hard disk drive. Many a time, it is left set to CD/DVD drive, as it is initially required while installing Windows. Making this change will speed up the boot process. Next go second page in the BIOS and you should find an entry named ‘System BIOS Cacheable’. By enabling this, the BIOS gets loaded into system memory, allowing quicker access to its functions. Go to the ‘Integrated peripherals’ section and ensure that the hard disk drives and optical drives are operating in DMA mode and not in PIO mode. DMA is a data transfer that puts a very negligible load on the system processor and is much more efficient compared to PIO mode which includes the system processor in all data transfers. This obviously slows down the rest of the system.

Exit the BIOS after saving the changes and move on to Windows. If you have any difficulty in locating or changing the BIOS settings, you can refer to your motherboard’s manual.

BIOS updates Every few months, motherboard manufacturers come out with an updated version of the BIOS. The newer version of the BIOS can increase the stability of your system and device compatibility thereby resulting in better performance. Hence, check the website of your motherboard manufacturer at least once a month to see if an updated version of the BIOS for your motherboard is available. Since flashing the BIOS requires extreme care, it is recommended that you seek your technician’s help if you’re not too confident about doing so. Experienced users can use the BIOS flashing tool which is usually present on the motherboard’s driver CD.

Fine-tuning Windows Tweaking Windows is not only about juicing extra performance out of your system but also enhancing the accessibility to programs and files and folders. At the end of the day, the system should perform at full throttle as well as offer you maximum convenience, thereby increasing the overall productivity. First, keep aside the thought that tweaking requires drilling deep down into the core of the Windows registry or typing long commands. The fact is, you don’t need to be a Windows guru—even a novices can tweak a system well, provided they learn the tricks of the trade. Windows can be tweaked at two levels—basic and registry. At the basic level, there’s absolutely no need of using any tool or tinkering with the registry. You can increase the performance of your system by changing a few settings in Windows and by being well-organized. At the registry level, some modifications are required to be made in the registry to boost the system performance. That doesn’t mean you’ll have to face the nightmare of using the registry editor. There are some nifty utilities with which INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

SUPERCHARGING SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

you can make changes in the registry by checking or un-checking the desired options. While most of the tips are applicable to Windows 98/Me/2000 as well, some are specifically meant for Windows XP. Let’s begin with the basic tweaks.

Boosting Windows XP One of the best ways to boost your Windows XP operating system is to load the latest drivers for your various system components like the motherboard, graphics card, sound card etc. Next, the biggest resource hog is the visual effects that are enabled by default—the fading and sliding effects, shadows under menus, etc. which are only meant to please your eyes are absolutely useless! Cutting down on this eye candy will directly give you a speed boost. Here’s how you go about it: Right-click on “My Computer” and select “Properties” to bring up the “System Properties” dialog box. Click on the “Advanced” tab and hit the “Settings” button under the “Performance” section to bring up the “Performance Options” dialog box. Here, choose the third option, which says “Adjust for best performance” and click on the “OK” button to apply the changes. Doing so will change the entire look and feel to the plain Jane Windows Classic—but a speed-boost is guaranteed! If you have a slow PC, doing so will give you a feeling that your computer got a dose of steroids! However, if you don’t want to cut down completely on eye-candy, you can check the option ‘Use visual styles on buttons and windows leaving the rest unchecked in the “Performance Options” dialog box. This will give Windows a richer look while still delivering better performance.

Managing startup programs You may have noticed a considerable lag after logging on to Windows until Windows finally reaches its desktop. The major cause for this lag is the programs that load at the start up. If you have chat, torrent, P2P clients and download managers loading as soon as your Windows boots, you cannot resume work until these programs finish taking SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

their own sweet time to load. This not only slows down the boot process but the programs block system resources by residing in the RAM. Thus, it is strongly recommended to disable these programs from the startup list unless you seriously require them. For example, you may want a download manager at start up in order to begin downloading as soon as you log in. Otherwise, it makes better sense to launch these programs when you specifically need to use them via the Start Menu or a desktop shortcut.

To manage the list of items in the startup, click on “Start” and select “Run”. Type “msconfig” in the dialog box to bring up the “System Configuration Utility”. Now click on the “Startup” tab. Here, all the programs which load at the startup are listed. Taking care not to disable the anti-virus, uncheck the non-critical startup items. Click on the “OK” button and restart your PC for the changes to take effect.

Organizing the Start menu The key to gain speed over program accessibility lies in organizing your Start menu. The reason being the shortcuts to all the programs installed on your PC reside under ‘Start | Programs’. If you have a cluttered list of over a hundred items in the Start Menu, you will have to hunt for specific programs. Apart from leading to frustration, it leads to a sheer waste of time. On the other hand, if your program shortcuts are neatly organized in groups, you can save considerable amount of time. It even shortens the list of programs by around 40 to 50 percent! To start with, first uninstall programs from “Add/Remove” and delete all the unwanted and rarely-used items under “Start | Programs”. To delete an item, right-click on it and select “delete” from the context menu. Next, right-click on the “Programs” group under Start menu and select open. Create program groups (folders) like office, games, multimedia, imaging, MPEG-4 tools, MP3 tools, Internet, etc to organize your program shortcuts depending on the type of applications installed on your PC. Close the “Programs” window after you are done.

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Adjust your system for best performance using the Performance Options dialog box.

Disable unwanted startup items to speed up booting

Organize your Start menu program groups for quick access

Drag the Menu Speed slider to the left to boost your Start menu speed

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Select the 5.1 channel audio system if you have a 5.1 channel soundcard

Now go to “Start | Programs” and drag only the program shortcuts into the relevant groups that you just created. For instance, if the shortcut to “Adobe Photoshop” is under the group “Adobe” along with other shortcuts, drag only the program shortcut and not the entire “Adobe” group. After moving the shortcut, delete the previous program group—in this case, the “Adobe” group. When you’re done, you’ll realize that the entire list of programs has shrunken to less than half! Finally, go to “Start | Programs” and right-click on any item and select “Sort by name” to sort the list alphabetically.

Tweaking the Windows registry

Multimedia & Gaming

After this session of basic tweaking, it’s time to tweak the Windows registry to juice out extra performance from Windows. Let’s see how you can put the tweaking tools to the best use. Before proceeding any further, insert the CHIP Tools CD and install the components from the CHIP PowerPack.

Tweak UI This nifty 165 KB utility is one of the smallest and best tools for tweaking Windows. To install it, right-click on the file “tweakui.inf” in the installation folder and select “Install” from the context menu. If done properly, Tweak UI will appear in the Control Panel. The reason for choosing this utility is that it works with all versions of Windows. The best feature in Tweak UI is the ability to speed up the Start menu. You can do it by going to the “Mouse” tab and dragging the “Menu Speed” slider to the extreme left. After clicking the OK button the menus in your Start menu will open within a split second! Try using the options under other tabs if you further wish to play around with Tweak UI. There are several other tweaks that can sap plenty of performance from your system—go ahead and try them out, but be sure to take a backup of your system registry before embarking on a long tweaking spree.

Multimedia & Gaming Not many can claim that they have used

a computer without delving into the multimedia capabilities of their systems. Though there would be a few who have never played a game while using a computer. If you have recently bought your computer, chances are that it will be able to play most multimedia content. But unless you have a good graphics card, many of the recent games cannot be played. With the growing use of the Internet and with broadband penetration increasing in the country, more and more people are into archiving their favorite music and movies. Are you unable to play that new game on your existing hardware? Do you complain of not being able to have the complete surround sound experience while playing a DVD? Here are some tips that you should keep in mind to ensure top-notch performance out of your PC on the entertainment front.

Audio tweaking Ensure that you have the software configured in accordance with your physical hardware. You might have a top-of-the-line multi-channel soundcard supported by a multi-channel speaker system. But if you don’t tell your computer guy that you have a multi-channel audio system, all you will get is stereo output and all the extra money that you spent on a good audio system goes down the drain. Right-click on the speaker icon in the system tray and select “Adjust Audio Properties”. Click on “Advanced” in Speaker Settings and select the speaker setup that matches your hardware. But if you want to archive your favorite audio CD collection, you might want to convert them to MP3 or other compressed audio formats. Most CD ripping programs convert an audio CD to an MP3 at a bit rate of 128 Kbps. While most users would not notice the difference, one should change the audio bit rate to 192 kbps. This results in a slightly increased file size but offers much better audio quality. Compressing the file into one of these formats also results in a drastic reduction in file size. The size of an uncompressed raw wave file extracted from an audio CD song is about 45-50 MB while that of a 128 INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

SUPERCHARGING SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

kbps MP3 is 4-5 MB. The size of a 192 kbps MP3 ranges from about 5 to 7 MB while a 320 kbps MP3 takes up about 10 MB while providing for much better listening experience.

Video quality Windows will not play all file formats by default. You need to install different media players to play different file formats. For example, you need QuickTime to play QuickTime-encoded movie files and you need Real Player to play Real media files. If you want to play multiple file formats using a single media player, you will need to install the codec required to play that particular file format. To do so, download a codec pack such as K-Lite Mega Codec Pack 1.57 from www.free-codecs.com (also on our Tools CD). This codec pack installs media player classic as the default media player and is capable of playing almost all media formats. It can even play QuickTime and Real media files using alternative codecs. Alternatively, you can also install an application called VideoLAN, which is known to play numerous audio and video formats—we’ve reviewed it in our application tests this month and it’s also on our Tools CD. Most movies downloaded of the Internet are compressed in DivX or XviD formats. Also if you want to archive your favorite DVD movies on your PC or you want to run them off a media center PC, they will need to be compressed in some form in order to conserve space. A typical DVD when converted to XviD format is about 700-750 MB in size which is almost 1/6th the original DVD size. Is your DVD watching experience up to the mark? Do you experience issues like hazy edges near the bright areas of the screen during a movie? Do the dark scenes get washed out while watching movies like The Matrix or Batman Returns? Do you think that the colors on your system are not crisp and sharp? Fret not. You can use a very neat little tool that is hidden inside almost any THX-certified DVD that you can rent out from your local video parlor. THX is a set of specifications that ensures that your movie-watching experience remains exactly how the director of the movie had intended. SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

All THX-certified movie DVDs come bundled with a tools called the THX optimizer. This THX Optimizer consists of a series of tests that make it easy for even a novice to finetune the audio and video performance of their home theatre setup (including a home theater PC). It primarily helps you redefine audio and video levels to match that of your hardware to result in an optimized moviewatching experience. If you have good video and audio hardware, this tool will help ensure that the signals output by your graphics and soundcard are as close to the reference levels set during the mastering of each movie. The THX optimizer runs a series of audio and video tests which step you through calibrating your home theatre for resolution, sharpness, brightness, contrast and multi-channel audio reproduction.

| COVERSTORY

37

Selecting the 192 kbps bit rate boosts audio quality with very little increase in file size

Gaming Are you extracting the most out of your graphics card? Many of the newer games will not run properly on your older system and if you have a newer graphics card, you might want to run games at higher resolutions and turn on some of the custom settings to extract the most out of your gaming experience. The two top settings that should be increased to the maximum on a newer graphics card are anti-aliasing and anisotropic filtering. Setting them to maximum, no matter what graphics card you use, it will surely increase the visual quality of your games. Of course, increasing the quality comes at the price of lower frame rates. Here is how you can strike a balance with your ATI or Nvidia graphics card. If you are using the older AGP-based graphics card with an ATI chip, you must enable some of the features like SmartGart from the ATI control panel. These features not only affect your system stability but also performance. You can access SmartGart by clicking on “Start | Run | SmartGart” and clicking on “OK”. Make sure that all the settings are set to on in the SmartGart properties box. A similar feature also exists in the Nvidia driver system. Lastly, there are also settings inside games like resolutions, texture details, anti aliasing, anisotropic filtering, shadow

An MP3 encoded at 128 kbps is one-third the size of any lossless compression method

The K-Lite Mega Codec Pack plays most file formats using a single media player

A DVD movie ripped using the XviD codec can be fitted on a single CD

38 details, bilinear and trilinear filtering, etc. Depending on the game you are playing, if these settings are enabled, it enhances the visual and effects quality of your gaming experience. You will need to strike a balance between good quality and gaming performance—keep in mind that high quality textures, anisotropic filtering, textures and anti-aliasing are very taxing on your graphics card. Notch these specific settings down if your game runs slowly.

Office productivity

Office Applications

There’s nothing that fuels the creative juices better than having your application keep up with your speed of work. Whether you’re a graphics designer, a writer or a 3D modeler, it’s not rare to find your computer take its own time to respond to a mouse click or a filter application—more so when you are working with demandingly large files against cruelly truncated deadlines! Earlier in this article, you have seen several tweaks that can sap out a sizeable amount of power from the various subsystems of your computer. Let’s now step a little deeper and target specific applications that you, as a productive user, regularly use in your work. While it would be impossible to address every application out there, we’ve assembled some of the most important tweaks that you can perform for some of the most commonly used desktop software and take them to a new level of responsiveness.

Adobe Photoshop

Change your Photoshop scratch disk to a lesser-used partition

Perhaps one of the most often used applications by creative folks, it is also the most demanding on system resources—it needs a copious amount of RAM, a fast and capacious hard disk, and a performance processor. The basic rule of thumb while choosing your workstation is to plug in as much RAM as you can afford (1 GB is a good place to start), team it up with a speedy processor (at least 3 GHz or comparable) and a 7,200 RPM 120 GB hard disk. But even with the best of systems, it is possible to bring your computer to its knees while working with large files on a default installation of Photoshop. While working on image files, Photoshop makes relentless use of system

RAM to store the file during processing. If you work on multiple files or work on large images, you will run out of RAM. When this happens, your computer turns to your hard disk for storage space. Photoshop calls this temporary storage the Scratch Disk which is basically a location on one of the partitions of your hard disk. To maximize the performance of this Scratch Disk, it is best to select a drive that is defragmented and has plenty of free space. Choose a drive apart from the one on which your OS is loaded. For the best performance, select the scratch disks to run on a RAID 0 drive array. RAID 0 is a hard disk implementation using two or more drives where data is alternately written or read between them. This results in almost an 80% increase in read/write speeds and has a direct impact on the speed of the Photoshop scratch disk. Photoshop requires about 320 MB of scratch disk space but the more you assign to it the better. You can access the scratch disk settings by clicking on Preferences | Plug-ins and scratch disks. From the first drop-down menu, choose the drive that has the most free space. You can select a second, third or fourth drive as required. Next, you can speed up Photoshop startup time by preventing unnecessary plugins from loading each time during application launch. There is a quick and easy way to do this—navigate to the folder where you have Photoshop installed (Most probably C:\Program files\Adobe). In here, you will find a folder called “Plug-ins”. Within this folder you find the plug-in files, all of which get loaded each time you fire up Photoshop. To disable Plug-ins you hardly ever use, simply edit the name of the files or folders containing plug-ins and insert a tilde (~) before each name. That’s it—the next time you start up Photoshop, you should see a perceptible difference in the load time. You can always re-enable plug-ins by removing the tilde sign—the next time Photoshop launches, it will load them. To assign a greater amount of system RAM to Photoshop, you can increase the Memory & Image Cache size. With Photoshop running, click on “Edit | Preferences | Memory & Image Cache”. In the Memory Usage section, increase the slider (but don’t exceed 75 percent). INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

SUPERCHARGING SYSTEM PERFORMANCE

In this same box, you will also see a Cache setting. This specifies the number of instances of an image file created by Photoshop while working on it. Having a greater number of images results in quicker redraw times for larger images, but takes more time to open files for the first time. A value of 4 is good enough for most systems. When you’re through, click on “OK”. After restarting Photoshop, you should find it running smoother, especially when working with large image files.

Microsoft secrets Relatively speaking, Microsoft Office is perhaps one of the least demanding applications on systems, which is why they can run on virtually any desktop today. However, there are a few tweaks that can actually help you save time in the long run. Also, there are several usage methods that can truly supercharge your workflow especially if you frequently create specific types of documents. Let’s first look at some of the tweaks: When accessing and editing Microsoft Word documents over the network, it opens the file into a default 64 KB file in memory. While this usually suffices, there are instances where this size would be too small, causing a delay in saving while changes are made. To increase this size, open your registry by going to “Start | Run” and typing “regedit”. Navigate to the key HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\ Microsoft\Office\[Office version]\Word\ Options and locate the entry “CACHESIZE”. Double-click to open it, change the value to 512 and close the registry editor. The next time you open a network file, MS Word will allot a larger amount of memory to it. There is another tweak within this same registry folder, you will also find an entry called “NoWideTextPrinting”. By changing this value to “1”, you can enable your printer to print non-standard characters (such as Greek alphabet if you tend to use them). The list of tweaks for the various components of Microsoft Office is numerous—there’s no way of including them all here. The two tweaks illustrated earlier indicate how time can be saved and functionality can be increased by digging SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

a little deeper into the applications an unlocking hidden secrets. However, more than these tweak, it is the very way we use our Office applications that can be tweaked to save us more time and add convenience to our workflow. One of the most powerful tools are Macros. No, they are not as daunting as you might imagine—they are actually quite simple to create and tremendously useful! Taking the case of MS Word again, if you frequently write articles or reports and want to ensure that they are wellformatted, you should use Styles. A Style is a collection of font and paragraph formats. In Word, you will see a drop-down menu containing the entries Normal, Heading 1, Heading 2 etc. In each of these, you will notice different font formats and sizes. You can change each of these styles to match your personal preferences. While writing documents, you can click on this box and invoke a particular style to a complete paragraph. This becomes evident when you view the Document Map in Word, where it becomes easy to navigate through large documents in which Styles are used correctly. To further streamline your work, you can assign a keyboard macro that applies these styles as you type. Do this by using the intuitive Macro Recorder in Word by clicking on “Tools | Record New Macros”. After entering a name for the macro, click on a style and assign a keyboard shortcut to it (like ALT+A, for example). Do the same with the rest of the styles you are using. After you’re through, you simply need to hit the shortcut as you are typing and the style will be automatically applied! This will save loads of time in the long run. To make these macros as Styles applicable to all new documents, perform the above steps in the Normal.dot file which is the default document template file of Microsoft Word. While it is impossible for us to cover all applications used in office productivity, these are some of the basic concepts you can try out and then apply them to other applications such as video processing, 3D modeling and so on.  | Anand Tuliani, Kunal Rupera and Marco D’Souza

| COVERSTORY

39

Disable rarely used Photoshop plugins by preceding their names with a ‘~’

Tweak the cache size and levels to streamline work in Photoshop

Use headings to bring order to your Word documents

Macros help you perform automated actions, greatly improving workflow

40

Jagdish Limbachiya

Top Gear

Hardware

W

ith the AMD Socket AM2 fever on the rise, motherboard manufacturers are on a run to launch motherboards supporting AMD’s next-generation platform. We have seen a few AM2-based boards in the past. But this time we put to test an AM2 mobo based on ATI’s CrossFire Xpress 3200 chipset—the ECS KA3 MVP Extreme, which offers an excellent blend of features and performance. If you’re hungry for steroidal performance, check out the monstrous Sapphire X1900XTX boasting ATI’s topof-the line graphics chipset fuelled by 48 shader units. We also got our hands dirty with Kingston’s lowest latency DDR-2

memory having a frequency of 1066 MHz! Cell phone junkies shouldn’t miss out the Nokia N91. This hottest addition to Nokia’s line of multimedia phones sports a 4 gig hard drive that holds over a thousand songs on its 1-inch platter. In addition to this, it sports a stash bag of features which includes support for Wi-Fi and a 2 MP camera. This month we also reviewed a good mix of portable devices. Take a look at Zippy’s 3.5-inch hard drive casing with support for both IDE as well as SATA drives. If you’re serious about video conferencing, the Polycom Skype Communicator and Microsoft Lifecam VX-6000 are devices meant just for you!

| The Ratings Explained The products in the individual and comparison tests share exactly the same test procedures. Each product in Top Gear is rated on a scale of 5 for different key parameters: Performance, Build Quality, Features, Ergonomics and Warranty. These vary according to the characteristics of the hardware. For instance, ergonomics (ease of use) is not important in a graphics card and therefore, it will not be evaluated for this. A product’s Overall Rating is calculated by assigning weightages to each evaluation

parameter—the more important a parameter, the higher is the weightage allotted to it. In addition, there is a Value for Money rating, which is calculated from the performance and the features of the product in relation to the price. High performance and lots of features at a low price translates into a better Value for Money rating. This rating is calculated using current prices. Note: The prices mentioned here do not include taxes. Hence, they will vary according to the taxes applicable in the city or state where you buy the product from. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

TESTED

| HARDWARE

41

Multimedia Smartphone

Nokia N91 Specifications: Dimensions (WxHxD mm): 55.2x113.1x22, Weight: 165 gms, Network: UMTS, GSM 900/1800/1900, Display: 176x208 pixels, Ringtones: 64 channel polyphonic, System Memory: 30 MB, Storage: 4 GB microdrive, supports GPRS, EDGE, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, mini USB, Visual Radio, Audio Output: 3.5 mm jack

Price Contact Phone Website Warranty

Rs 29,799 Nokia India Pvt Ltd

022-26128112 www.nokia.com 1 year

RATINGS Build quality Ergonomics Performance Features Overall Rating Value for money

Heavy metal

N

okia’s N-series phones epitomize entertainment—communication playing more of a facilitator’s role. The N91 stands out of the lot mainly because of its storage capacity and the medium it uses to provide so much space—4 GB on a microdrive. But frankly, there is more to it than just oodles of song storing.

Features and applications Apart from providing storage space for over a thousand songs (assuming the songs are encoded at 128 kbps and are 3.5 MB in size), the N91 comes loaded with some powerful features. Its “active desktop” is similar to that of the N70 with shortcuts to contacts, messages, calendar, visual radio, camera and the built-in web browser. You will never run out of space for saving all your contacts—30 MB is quite generous. (It is a 3rd edition Series 60 phone that comes installed with Symbian OS v9.1). On the messaging and e-mail front, the phone supports POP3, SMTP and IMAP accounts. This means you can access mail accounts that use any of these protocols. Photos taken with the 2 MP camera produces decent results at 1600x1200. Video clips are recorded at a maximum resolution of 352x288. Real Player is used to play any video you record onto this device. It supports the video that is

encoded in H.263, 3GPP or MPEG-4 format. The phone supports an array of popular PC and mobile formats for playing music such as MP3, AAC/AAC+, WAV, WMA, M4A, AWB, AMR and AWB. You can change your shortcuts, re-assign the key functions and set voice commands to contacts as well as applications. The Standby and Music service always runs in the background at any point of time. The music continues to play even when you’re using applications like the camera, for instance, and pauses while in the video mode. Visual Radio is new and has recently been introduced only in New Delhi—so the rest of us will have to access regular stations. The connectivity options offered by the N91 are Bluetooth and Wi-Fi (802.11 b/g)—features that the corporate sector

The N91’s media player controls are well placed but the keypad buttons are too small

particularly look for in their cell phones more than anything else.

Ergonomics and build quality The N91’s shell is made of stainless steel; the overall build of the phone with a sliding mechanism is excellent. The buttons on the phone are placed for easy single-handed use. The menu button is positioned on the right edge of the phone for easy access to the thumb—too bad if you are a leftie. The lower half of the phone slides open to uncover a closely packed keypad. The buttons have a superb tactile feel but they are too small for even medium-sized fingers.

Performance Phone navigation is simple. Accessing music from the microdrive is a little sluggish. Details (except bit rate) and album art can be viewed on the phone. Audio output on the earphones provided is average. Since audio output is via a 3.5 mm jack, you can use your own headphones. Connecting the phone to the PC is simple if you transfer music files. Just set it to be detected as a mass storage device and that’s it. For: Superb build quality; manual keypad lock and support for various audio formats. Against: Weight and price lower the phone’s appeal. Crowded keypad.

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

SMS us!

Story code: HWS (See Page 20 for details)

42

HARDWARE

| TESTED

Graphics Card

Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX Specifications: Interface: PCI Express, Graphics Core: X1900XTX, Core clock speed: 650 MHz, Memory size: 512 MB, Memory type: GDDR3, Memory bus: 256 bit, Memory bus speed: 1.5 GHz, CrossFire ready: Yes

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 29,990 Sanjay Gogia

011-26223810 [email protected] www.sapphiretech.com 3 years

RATINGS Build quality Performance Features Overall Rating Value for money

Crowning glory

G

amers crave for photo-realistic gaming experience. With the recent advances in gaming hardware, games have become a visual treat. Nvidia and ATI are the two leading gaming card manufacturers, each trying to outsmart the other in the need for speed. This month we review the Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX graphics card. Find out if it snatches the crown of the fastest non-SLI graphics solution.

Features The Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX features the R580 core GPU which is the same as that of the X1900 series with the exception of a bumped up clock speed of 650 MHz. This additional 50 MHz comes handy in games that rely on pure GPU clock speeds. The card features 512 MB of GDDR3 memory, which is pretty much standard with most recent graphics solutions. The memory clock has been beefed up and it runs at 775 MHz. What sets this card apart from others is its 48 pixel shader processors, which increase the performance of shader-heavy games like Oblivion and F.E.A.R. Another great feature is that it supports FSAA (Full Screen Anti-Aliasing) and HDR (High Dynamic Range) simultaneously. For games that support HDR and FSAA like Cryptek’s Far

Cry and Oblivion, this feature provides for great visuals.

Design The Sapphire Radeon X1900XTX features an actively cooled, copper-based heatsink, thereby providing cooling to the GPU as well as the GDDR3 memory. It ensures overclockability without losing out on stability. The heatsink is designed in a way that it channels the hot air directly out of the chassis unlike the stock Nvidia cooling system that retains the hot air inside the cabinet system. The card features two DVI connectors and an S-Video connector for connecting display devices like TV. Inside the box, Sapphire provides a DVI to D-SUB converter for monitors that don’t support the DVI interface. A drive installation CD, a

ATI provides a plethora of connectivity options as shown above

DVI to component converter, a manual, an S-Video cable, an S-Video to RCA converter cable and a 6-pin power cable are also bundled. Other goodies include a copy of PowerDirector 4.0 and PowerDVD 6. The package also offers four excellent games— Tony Hawk’s Underground 2, Richard Burns Rally, Prince of Persia Warrior Within and Brothers in Arms: Road to Hill 30. Two of these can be played as full featured versions while the other two can be played as demos.

Performance The card provided excellent performance in most of our synthetic benchmarks and beat every card in the real-world benchmark tests. It scored a massive 102.5 fps in Doom 3 at high resolutions—faster by 22 percent when compared to the Nvidia 7900GTX. HDR games like Half-life 2 – Lost Coast scored better at 69 fps. The extra pixel shader processors did help in games like F.E.A.R where the benchmarks showed 69 fps at 1280x960 and it was still decently playable at 51 fps at 1600x1200. The Sapphire X1900XTX retails for Rs 29,990, which is a fair price for the excellent performance advantage it offers. For: Good performance and loads of goodies. Against: Noisy heatsink. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

TESTED

| HARDWARE

43

External TV Tuner Card

Leadtek Winfast Palm Top TV Specifications: USB 2.0, TV RF-in, Remote Control, Seven bundled software

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 4,000 Top Notch Infotronix (I) Pvt Ltd

044-26616201 [email protected] www.zebronics.net 1 year

RATINGS Build quality Ergonomics Performance Features Overall Rating Value for money

PVR in your palm

L

eadtek’s Winfast Palm Top TV is an external TV tuner power house. This device is so tiny that it looks like small car without wheels and fits snuggly in your palm. A complete media center, it substitutes your TV, FM, and VCR. To use the FM function, you will have to connect an external antenna (which was not provided with the package). The main software which controls the tuner is called WinFast PVR. It is easy to use and comes with a manual. The Palm Top device doesn’t need an external power supply as all other TV tuner cards do. To power the device, all you have to do is plug it in to your computer’s USB port. Next, after setting up the device and the software, is tuning the channels. The user gets to specify

the region, which gives the device preset instructions to speed tuning. The tuning is real fast—it took us not more than a minute to tune 100 channels. One unique feature incorporated in the device is Picture-in-Picture (PIP), using which the channels can be categorized as per your requirements. You can watch two channels at one time; although that’s a tad difficult, Winfast PVR allows you to view one main screen and one sub screen at the same time. Befitting the perfect media center experience, this device allows you to pause, rewind live television and play instant replays. Take your breaks during a TV show or movie and never miss a scene again. For the purpose of recording, the Palm Top provides excellent features which are

The Winfast comes packed with an array of bundled software

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

are not only flexible to use but also gives you full control over your TV or media player. It supports de-Interlacing for good video quality. It allows you to specify file size, video length and also gives you the option to choose the type of encoding format you want and specify the file size. There is also the option of scheduling recording—the time control feature helps you schedule a particular program and recording happens automatically. You can not only split single video files recorded from your TV but also those copied to your PC and then burn them directly to a DVD or to a CD without any other software. New and innovative features that caught our attention include the ability to display video as a desktop background; a unique tool enables taking a snapshot from a playing video and mail it directly through the same program. Seven other programs that come bundled include Ulead DVD MovieFactory 4, Cool 3D SE, Cyberlink Power DVD 6 and Ulead Videostudio 9 SE. The Palm Top TV is your alternative media center without much investment. For: Elegant design; very easy to set up; no external power supply needed and a good PVR. Against: Requires a fast processor.

44

HARDWARE

| TESTED

Motherboard

ECS KA3 MVP Extreme Specifications: Form factor: ATX; CPU Socket type: AMD Socket AM2; Chipset: Northbridge – ATI RD580; Southbridge – ATI SB600; FSB: 1000 MHz; Memory: DDRII-800 (max 32 GB); Graphics: CrossFire support, HD Audio: Realtek ALC883; SATA/PATA: 6/2; Ethernet: Agere Gigabit, Realtek 10/100; USB Ports: 10; FireWire ports: 2

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 11,300 www.theitdepot.com

044-42158922 [email protected] www.ecs.com.tw 3 years

RATINGS Build quality Performance Features Overall Rating Value for money

CrossFire mainboard

E

CS EliteGroup is known for manufacturing feature-rich and cost-effective motherboards. The KA3 MVP Extreme is their first Socket AM2 (successor to Socket 939) board to hit the market. This is a CrossFire board that uses ATI’s Xpress 3200 chipset with two PCI-e 16x slots. A single PCI-e 1x and 2 PCI slots are also squeezed onto the ATX board. The Northbridge and Southbridge have passive heatsinks—the latter being very small in height and size. A 40 mm fluorescent yellow exhaust fan blows heat from the voltage regulators out of the board. As far as package contents are concerned, this board comes packed with SATA cables, an extra USB/Firewire panel, an additional parallel port bracket and an eSATA bracket. An additional BIOS chip has been provided that can be used to flash problematic firmware.

Design and layout This is one colorful board. The PCB is purple and on it you will see orange, red, yellow ochre, blue, bright yellow and green. To complete this riot of color, the PCI slots are accompanied with flashing blue diagnostic LEDs. At first glance, the board seems bare with minimum clutter and open space between the memory, Northbridge and

the CPU. The 16x PCI-express slots are positioned too close to each other and they are separated by a 1x PCI-e slot and a CMOS battery. There should have been enough space to house two cards with large heatsinks.

Performance The motherboard was put through the paces with SiSoft Sandra’s processor and memory benchmarks. The processor scores were up to the mark with other AM2-based boards reviewed earlier. The memory bandwidth recorded a lower score (by about 2-5 percent) as the board accepted the Kingston memory (at default latencies) with a command rate of 2T. On the audio/video encoding front, the scores were acceptable —the audio compression putting a greater amount of load on the processor. Watching a movie while another was being converted to XviD at the same time brought the encode rate down by just 5 fps. Since this is an “Extreme” board, the BIOS provides users with overclocking options to adjust the CPU multiplier and CPU/RAM voltages. In spite of these features, the RAM was unable to work at 1T. For: Loads of USB and SATA connection options are provided. Produced good scores in the encoding tests.

Against: Lack of space between the CrossFire PCI-e slots.

Test rig Processor: AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Memory: Kingston KHX8500D2K2 (1066 MHz running at 800 MHz) (5-5-5-15:2T) Hard drive: Western Digital Raptor 740GD Graphics: Nvidia GeForce 6800 GS

Performance Scores PCMark ‘05: 6134 3DMark ‘05: 5213 SiSoft Sandra 2007 Dhrystone (MIPS) : 20378 Whetstone (MFLOPS) : 17206 Memory bandwidth : 7931 MB/s HDD index : 55 MB/s HDD sequential read : 68 MB/s HDD sequential write : 32/52 MB/s Audio encoding (192kbps – best quality): 624.7 kB/s Video encoding test: 87.24 fps Video encoding + playback test: 82.3 fps Gaming test Doom 3: 1024x768@low: 115 fps 1280x1024@high: 76.3 fps F.E.A.R.: 1024x768@low: 115 fps 1280x960@high: 43 fps INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

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HARDWARE

| TESTED

Web Camera

Microsoft LifeCam VX-6000 Specifications: High-definition video (1.3 MP, 1280x1024 pixels) and photos (5 MP interpolated), Wide-angle lens with 71 degrees field of view, Automatic face tracking software, built-in unidirectional microphone with acoustic noise cancellation

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 5,631 Microsoft Entertainment & Devices Division

1600111100 [email protected] www.microsoft.com 3 years

RATINGS Build Quality Ergonomics Performance Features Overall Rating Value for money

High-definition web cam

I

t is indeed exciting when you are able to chat with friends and family while also being able to watch them in real time. Today video chatting has become so common a trend in Internet communication that the market is inundated with numerous web cams that let you video chat with clarity. The VX-6000 is Mircosoft’s new web cam integrated with the new Windows Live Messenger. It also works on Yahoo and other similar instant messengers. The new avatar of Windows Live Messenger has a separate module for video chatting, very similar to that of Skype.

Installation Software installation is pretty straight forward—pop in the disc and install the software and drives. Remember that you need to install the software before you plug it in. Microsoft cautions users with the removable bright green fluorescent tag on the USB adapter and a prompt to install the software first. OS compatibility is with Windows XP only. The web cam comes with a flat circular stand that allows it to easily perch on CRT monitors. For LCD monitors, the base opens up imparting a nice tight grip.

Features and performance

The web cam can be perched on top of an LCD monitor

One distinctive features of the web cam is its ability to record high-definition videos at a resolution of 1.3 megapixels (1280x1024 pixels). Note that the regular CRT television resolution is 640x480 pixels. Still images can be interpolated up to 5 megapixels. Video can be recorded at 30 fps. Recording at such a resolution comes handy if you are into video blogging. Another cool feature is face tracking. The web cam follows your face as you move within its 71-degree wide-angle frame; what it does is mere zooming in and out as you move around, therefore it gets a bit irritating when the cam remains zoomed on your face. It also lets you pan and tilt the

image. Face tracking, panning and tilting are not possible for resolutions above 800x600 pixels, which means you cannot face track at the cam’s highest resolution of 1.3 megapixels. With a USB 1.1 connection, it supports a maximum resolution of 800x600 pixels for video and the highest resolution of 1.9 megapixels for stills. This is due to the limitation of the USB 1.1 data connection speed. The quality of video and still images is very good with good color reproduction. The skin tones are also accurately represented. The built-in microphone comes with the acoustic noise-canceling feature. It saves you the trouble of using an additional microphone. You can also team it up with your own set of speakers or headphones. The camera is an expensive proposition if you only want to use it for video chatting online. And to do that at 1280x1024 resolution, you need a blazing fast Internet connection at both ends. Therefore if video recording at high resolutions is your requirement then the VX-6000 is delightful to work with. Otherwise there are lots of affordable options available from Logitech, Creative and iBall. For: One of the few web cams with the ability to record at HD (1280x1024) resolutions. Against: Very expensive. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

TESTED

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48

HARDWARE

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Memory

Kingston HyperX KHX8500D2K2/1G Specifications: Type: DDR-2 PC-8500, Frequency: 1066 MHz, Timings: CL5 (5-5-5-15), Size: 1 GB (2x512 MB modules)

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 12,500 Kingston Technology

022-26592961 [email protected] www.kingston.com/asia Lifetime

RATINGS Performance Features Overall Rating Value for money

Memory for enthusiasts

W

ith the introduction of AMD’s Socket AM2 platform, all the new platforms (Intel and AMD) support only DDR-2 memory. Also, with the release of Microsoft Windows Vista and Office 2007, memory requirements will take a giant leap. You will require at least a gigabyte of memory to run Windows Vista without any hiccups. Frequency up to 667 MHz can provide enough juice to a basic system. But if you are an enthusiast, high frequency and tight memory timings are what you will need. Aimed at enthusiasts, the Kingston KHX8500D2K2/1G is a 1 GB low-latency dual-channel memory kit. It comes as a matched pair of 512 MB modules having a frequency of 1066 MHz and timing of 5-5-5-15. To dissipate the heat at high frequencies, the modules come fitted with aluminum heat-spreaders. TEST SCORES

SiSoft Sandra 2007 Memory Bandwidth Int iSSE2 (MB/s) Memory Latency (ns) ScienceMark 2 Memory Bandwidth (MB/s) Memory Latency (ns) Doom 3: 1024 x 768 low (fps) FEAR: 1024 x 768 low (fps)

The test To evaluate the performance, we ran the memory bandwidth benchmark in SiSoft Sandra 2007 and ScienceMark 2. In addition to this, we ran Doom 3 and F.E.A.R. at 1024x768 using low settings. We also compared the performance of the KHX8500D2K2 with the Corsair CM2X5128500 having the same specifications and with the Corsair CM2X256A-4300 having a frequency of 533 MHz.

Results Higher bandwidth hardly makes any difference in games with two or three additional frames. However, you need it for multi-tasking and resource-hungry applications. By default, platforms can support a maximum frequency of 800

Corsair Kingston CM2X256A-4300 KHX8500D2K2/1G 533 MHz 800 MHz 4-4-4-12-2T 4-4-4-12-2T

MHz. To push it further, motherboard and processor clock speeds need to be bumped using multipliers and FSB settings in the BIOS. The advantage of having a frequency of 1066 MHz is that the memory can handle tighter timings at high speeds thereby offering greater flexibility while over clocking. The Kingston KHX8500D2K2/1G is the best you can get—but for a premium. Basic users stay away! For: Provides great memory bandwidth; good for over clocking. Against: Commands a heavy price.

Test rig Processor: AMD Athlon 64 FX-62 Motherboard: Asus M2N32-SLI Deluxe Hard Drive: Western Digital Raptor 740GD

Corsair CM2X512-8500 800 MHz 800 MHz 5-5-5-15-1T 4-4-4-12-1T

Kingston KHX8500D2K2/1G 800 MHz 800 MHz 5-5-5-15-1T 4-4-4-12-1T

6279 100

8170 86

8016 84

8400 81

8068 84

8499 81

5875.62 62.87 114 66

6555.34 47.04 116 66

6588.84 49.3 116 66

6589.67 45.86 116 66

6661.04 48.7 116 66

6608.82 45.86 117 66

INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

TESTED

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Server Cabinet

VIP ZB01B Specifications: Dimensions (WxHxD mm): 210x480x530; 500 Watts Power Safe PSU

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 7,000 Kunhar Peripherals Pvt Ltd

022-66345758 [email protected] www.kunhar.com 3 years

RATINGS Build quality Ergonomics Performance Features Overall Rating Value for money

Steal deal

T

he VIP ZB01B server cabinet looks sexy with its black steel body. This cabinet defines space at its best—it is big and airy and equipped with the required cooling options. It provides excellent airflow, which is the most important factor in choosing a server cabinet as such a cabinet normally has more peripherals compared to a normal PC and therefore requires more efficient cooling and airflow.

Features The front bezel of the cabinet swings open like a door, giving you access to the

The hard drive cage has an additional fan for cooling the hard drive

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

four optical drive slots and the power buttons. Each slot has a 120 mm fan at the front and the back; these work as the intake and exhaust fans respectively. The fan positioned right beside the hard drive cage when used as a RAID array helps in lowering the temperatures of the storage subsystem. Another neat feature is the mounting of the hard drive, floppy drive and the optical drives; just push in the side plates on the respective drives and slide them into the respective drive bays. The cabinet has a unique locking system for the expansion cards for which no extra

Drives are easy to mount with these side plates

tools are required. There are two extra slots for two 80 mm fans on the sides of the cabinet. These slots can be used alternatively to mount two more hard drives or any other PCI card. The intrusion detection mechanism helps to detect when the cabinet was left open. There are steel filters on the front fan and at the side of the hard drive cage fan, which can be slid off for easy cleaning.

Performance The cabinet comes with a 500 Watt PSU, enabling stability in power supply without any fluctuations. It has SATA and PCI-E card support unlike most other PSUs. We used Rthdribl and SiSoft Sandra applications for our tests. Also, we noticed no voltage variations in power supply even under loaded conditions. Finally, coming to price, it commensurates with the features and performance of the server cabinet. So if you want a cabinet for your server-based requirements along with tool less mounting of your peripherals, the VIP ZB01B is the one you should consider buying without any second thought. For: Great price; feature rich; easy to mount drives. Against: None.

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HARDWARE

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Internal DVD Writer

LiteOn SOHW 1633s Specifications: Interface: ATAPI, Size: Half Height, Buffer size: 2 MB, DVD+R/-R:16x/8x, DVD Dual layer: 2.4x, DVD+RW/DVD-RW: 4x/4x

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 2,150 Mediatech India Pvt Ltd

022-26361111 [email protected] www.liteonit.com 1 year

RATINGS Build quality Performance Features Overall Rating Value for money

Entry-level DVD writer

W

ith the ever-increasing demand in storage data capacities and the consistent fall in prices, DVD writers have become the de facto standard in optical storage. Whether you want to take data backups or burn the latest high quality movie or game, a DVD writer comes to your rescue. Let us see how the LiteOn SOHW 1633s fares among all the other writers in its category.

Features The LiteOn SOHW 1633s is an internal DVD writer that adheres to the EIDE/ ATAPI interface. Although the 1633s is labeled a 16x DVD writer, it is capable of writing DVD+R media at 16x while it writes DVD-R only at 8x speeds. Like most writers, this device has a standard buffer size of 2 MB and features a buffer underrun protection system. This ensures that you will not waste media when trying to write data to it. Like all other drives, it supports DVD+RW and DVD-RW formats at 4x. It can even write to dual layer DVD media at 2.4x. It does not support writing to DVD-RAM media but again its use is rare and buying DVD-RAM media in retail is almost unheard of. It can write to CD media at 48x, which is pretty much standard.

Setup and ease of use

Performance

The LiteOn SOHW 1633s is a half height drive, which means it can easily fit even in the cramped spaces of small cabinets as well as small form factor PC systems. It is a no-frills drive without an additional front bezel, which means one cannot match the drive in case the cabinet color is changed. The front side features essentials like the eject switch, a status LED and emergency drive opening hole. The emergency drive opening feature is particularly useful when you want to open the drive bay without powering it up. Inside the box, you find a quick setup guide, Nero burning ROM 6.6—the popular CD and DVD authoring software and a copy of power DVD 6 for viewing DVD video.

This drive performed reasonably well in our tests. It is capable of writing to a DVD media in under 6 minutes which is very impressive for any DVD writer. It featured a random access time of 129 ms, which is average compared to that of other similar drives available today. Its full seek time of 208 ms is the best till date. Its average speed measured a decent 6.7x—faster than most drives in its category. Its start and finish speeds as measured by Nero CD-DVD were an impressive 3.45x and 8.25x respectively which is about 1.5 times faster then a 16x ASUS DVD writer. Although the drive was a pretty fast performer, we must mention that the CPU usage for this device was marginally higher when compared to that of other drives. The LiteOn SOHW 1633s is an entrylevel DVD writer providing a good mix of features and performance at an affordable price point. If you don’t mind shelling out a bit extra, we suggest you buy a writer that supports 16x speeds on DVD+R as well as the DVD-R media. For: Simplistic design; excellent value for money. Against: Writes DVD-R media at 8x speed only.

A copy of Nero Burning ROM and PowerDVD is bundled in the package

INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

TESTED

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Internet Skype Phone

Polycom Communicator C100S Specifications: Dimensions (WxHxD inches): 3.24x5.25x0.85, Interface: USB 1.1

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 7,740 P V Krishna 011-26207771 [email protected] www.polycomasia.com 1 year

RATINGS Build quality Ergonomics Performance Features Overall Rating

Value for money

Wired conversations

I

nternational landline and cell phone charges being very high, people are increasingly considering Internet telephony or VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) for international calling. VoIP, which is basically the transmission of voice over IP-based networks, has become a very popular medium of communication.

free of cost. You can also make PC-to-phone calls using Skype but for a small fee that is much less than what you would normally pay for a landline or a cell phone call. The C100S comes with 30 free SkypeOut minutes (used to make calls to landlines) and one-month free Skype voicemail.

Design There are three ways in which you can connect to a VoIP network. Using a VoIP telephone. Using a regular telephone with a VoIP adapter. The most popular and widely used—a microphone and headphones or speakers connected to your PC. There are two ways you can make calls on a VoIP network. From a VoIP device to a normal telephone, commonly known as PC-tophone calls. From a VoIP device to another VoIP device commonly known as PC-to-PC calls. The Polycom Communicator C100S is specially built to work with one of the most popular applications for Internet telephony—Skype. You can make PC-to-PC calls anywhere in the world using Skype, SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

The C100S is a hybrid device—it has a speaker on the top, two microphones at the bottom and a 3.5 mm headphone port. You need to fix a ferrite bead at the end of the headphone cable plugging into the device to prevent Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) and Electromagnetic Interference (EMI) from affecting the device through the headphone wire. The specification of the ferrite bead has also been included.

Installation The C100S connects to the computer using a USB cable. This cable is 3 feet long and wraps itself around the back of the unit making the C100S a truly portable device. The cover of the USB cable enclosure also acts as a stand for the device, placing the device at an angle of 45 degrees from the horizontal surface. Polycom claims this is the perfect level for high fidelity acoustics and we noticed this from the voice quality.

You need to have Skype installed on your system as well as Polycom’s own proprietary software to make calls. There’s no software on the bundled CD; instead it takes you to the download page of Polycom’s web site so that you can download the latest available software from their site. Installation is pretty much straight forward.

Performance Often we’ve seen Skype users complaining about echoes while making calls, using a headphone and microphone. With the C100S, we experienced no such echoes and the sound clarity was excellent. It offers full-duplex voice performance for simultaneous natural two-way conversations. We tried both PC-to-PC and PC-to-phone calls. In both cases, the voice was crystal clear and echo-free. The two microphones at the bottom are very sensitive. Even if you sit 10 feet away from the device, you can be clearly heard by the person at the other end, so the device would certainly serve well if you intend to use it for group discussions. For: Clarity in sound; echo-free PC-to-PC calls. Against: Expensive option when compared to a headphone and microphone.

52

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External Hard Drive Case

Zippy ET-35UIS

Specifications: Form factor: 3.5-inch, Dimensions (WxHxD mm): 200x110x30, Interface: USB 2.0 Hi-Speed, IDE and SATA support

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 1,200 Big Byte Corporation 022-23894800 [email protected] www.bigbyteindia.com 1 year

RATINGS Build quality Performance Features Overall Rating Value for money

Mouse

Level One BLM-3000A

Specifications: Interface: Bluetooth Wireless v1.2, Type: Optical, Resolution: 800 dpi, Operational Range: up to 10 m, PC connectivity: USB 1.1

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 5,730 MINDS (India) Pvt Ltd

9891136980 [email protected] http://global.level1.com 1 year

RATINGS Build quality Performance Features Overall Rating Value for money

Port-a-drive!

A

fter having reviewed several external hard drive cases, what struck us about the Zippy ET-35UIS external hard drive case is that it not only supports IDE drives but also SATA drives as against its counterparts. Like most of the 3.5-inch cases, this one too draws power from an adapter bundled in the package. It sports a sleek aluminum shell with a glossy finish; the rear panel features an on/off switch and a USB port. The advantage of having an external case is the freedom to carry your data wherever you go. Just jam a 3.5-inch IDE or a SATA drive into the case and it turns into a portable drive. Since the drive has support for SATA as well, a SATA cable is pre-fitted on the PCB next to the IDE cable header. Depending on the type of the drive, you can use the bundled Molex or SATA power connector. An IDE cable is provided for IDE drives. To evaluate the effectiveness of the case we tested it with the Hitachi Deskstar

T7K250 hard drive. We used Everest Ultimate 2006 for synthetic tests. For real-world scores, we recorded the transfer speeds of 1 GB single as well as multiple files between the hard drive and the RAM drive to assess the read and write speeds. An 80 GB SATA drive and this case would approximately sum up to Rs 3,900—a great bang for the buck for an external 80 GB drive! For: Support for IDE and SATA drives; good value for money. Against: Bulky.

Test Scores Everest Ultimate 2006 Sequential Read 32.2 MB/s Write 26.4 MB/s

Random 32.3 MB/s 26.3 MB/s

Real world Read Write

Single file 31.3 MB/s 28.6 MB/s

Multiple files 28.6 MB/s 25.7 MB/s

High on price

W

hile most wireless mice operate on infrared and other radio technologies, the Level One BLM-3000A wireless mouse works on the Bluetooth standard. The ergonomics of this optical mouse attracts attention; its jet-black exterior and its slim design give it an added appeal. It features two buttons with a central scroll wheel and it has a LED-based optical sensor although mice with laser sensors have already entered the market. The mouse is powered by two AAA-sized alkaline batteries, which come bundled along with a Bluetooth dongle, quick setup guide, driver CD and a carry pouch. Setting up the device was child’s play. Install the drivers, follow the instructions and you’re done. While the keys and the scroll wheel responded nicely to touch, its slim yet longer design made the task of operating the device easier. This mouse was easier to use and operate than many laptop mice that we have seen. The keys were nicely spaced and their size was adequate such that

they could be pressed easily. However, the mouse lagged in the performance benchmarks. Although it features a resolution of 800 dpi, its sampling rate was 79 Hz. This is a very low specification when compared to that of a PS2 ball mouse with a sampling rate of 95 Hz and far below that of the Microsoft wireless optical mouse 2.0 with a sampling rate of 112 Hz. Its battery life is to reckon with; it lasts for over a month thanks to its power saving features. However, a distinct lag when waking up from the sleep mode is a quirk that one can’t ignore. Gamers should avoid this mouse because of its poor sampling rate. It is ideal for office productivity but comes with a heavy price tag. So unless you have a compelling reason to buy this mouse, you should consider looking at other better and more affordable alternatives. For: Good ergonomics and greater range. Against: Not so impressive performance; very expensive. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

TESTED

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Big Bytes

Hard drives with massive storage capacities, great performance levels and speed—all here for you. Take your pick...

Pramod Jadhav

HARD DRIVE COMPARISON

Y

ou surely get frustrated when you come across the classic error message, “You have run out of space on Drive C” and the disk cleanup utility prompts you to make space on the drive. With the increasing broadband penetration and some of the ISPs providing unlimited downloads, free space on the hard drive quickly fills up. Hard drive technology has improved by leaps and bounds in recent times in terms of capacity, performance as well as reliability. From the earliest days of MFM drives, hard drive technologies have steadily increased to RLL, ESDI, IDE (which was later named as ATA and is now called PATA), EIDE (which makes use of DMA for data transfers), SATA and SCSI. Hard drives have also grown faster with time—earlier drives were able to rotate at 3600, 4200, 5400 rpm whereas the newer SATA, SCSI and Fibre channel drives are able to rotate at 10,000 and 15,000 rpm. Also, drive manufacturers began to put in more and more cache on the hard drives. In recent times, we have seen hard drives undergoing a change from 2 MB of cache to 8 MB and now 16 MB cache drives have also been introduced. Hard drive manufacturers are constantly striving to increase hard drive capacities and performance. We observed a couple of first timers in this round up— we received a hard drive which featured a massive storage capacity of 750 GB. Using the current hard drive technology, the storage density is limited at 100 to

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55

200 GB per square inch by a phenomenon called the superparamagnetic effect, which occurs due to the minimum size of particles that can be used. However, this limitation was tackled with what is known as perpendicular recording. This is the first time we received hard drives supporting perpendicular recording. The perpendicular recording technology helps in increasing storage capacities and also increases performance. Also, most of the hard drives we received for the round up supported the SATA interface. With the prices of SATA hard drives being almost similar to that of their PATA counterparts, the use of PATA hard drives will be reduced to a minimum. Many of us like to keep our music, movies, games, applications and data collection within easy access. With the growing size of applications and games, a 40 GB hard drive is bound to run out of storage very easily. Many of us also like to archive our collection of music and movies which takes up a lot of space on the hard drive. With a wide range of applications and games to run on, hard drive speeds are also an issue as disk I/O throughput is the weakest performance link in a computer. Availability of data is the most important aspect when it comes to hard drives. You must take into account the storage capacity, performance, price and the warranty into consideration before beginning your quest for a hard drive. This comparison test will help you decide which model is right for you.

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

SMS us!

Story code: HCH (See Page 20 for details)

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HARDWARE

| HARD DRIVE COMPARISON

Test Process Hard drives are available in capacities ranging from 40 GB way up to 750 GB. Within the same capacity, drives offered by various manufacturers vary in features. That’s where the concept of drive family steps in. Drives belonging to a particular family share common characteristics in terms of interface, buffer size, performance and so on. Since it would be a Herculean task to test all the drives belonging to each and every family of drives, we have tested the largest available drive per family for each brand. The test parameters for the drives are features, performance, and warranty and support.

Features Here we noted the technical specifications of the drives which included parameters such as the spindle speed, capacity, buffer size, interface and number of platters and heads. Higher spindle speed and larger buffer directly translates into a performance boost. We also took note of the environmental characteristics such as acoustics and shock resistance and awarded more points to drives which were quieter and more resistant to shock. Drives with support for native command queuing (NCQ) and perpendicular recording went a step further. Extra points were awarded to the drives which featured a Molex connector.

Synthetic tests This set of tests evaluated the read and write speeds of the hard drive by stressing it to its maximum limits. We used the following benchmarking tools under this section.

20% Warranty & Support 30% Features

50% Performance

Test Rig Motherboard : WinFast 6150K8MD-8EKRSH Processor : AMD Athlon 64 FX 60 Memory : 2 GB Kingston HyperX ULK2 Futuremark also features a hard drive test suite. It evaluated the performance of a drive by simulating real word instances such as Windows XP startup, application loading, general usage, virus scan and file write. Real-world test In this section of the performance test, we evaluated the performance of the drive in real world by measuring file transfer speeds and application and file loading time. File transfer speed Here we created a 1 GB RAM drive out of a portion of the system’s memory. The reason for doing this was to allow the hard drive to utilize its full potential while reading and writing data. We then measured the transfer speed by using a stopwatch to record the time taken to transfer 1 GB single as well as multiple files between the hard disk and the RAM drive.

Everest Ultimate 2006 This is a comprehensive system diagnostic tool which also has an inbuilt disk benchmarking utility. It evaluates the sequential and random read/write speeds and displays the results in megabytes per second. PCMark 05 This system-wide benchmarking tool by

Random read speed displayed by Everest Ultimate 2006

File loading time In this test we opened a 300 MB TIFF image in Adobe Photoshop and recorded the time taken to open the file and display it in the Photoshop interface. The quicker the drive, the lesser the time required to load the file. Game loading time While the game loads, the hard drive gets significantly stressed as multiple files are accessed. The faster the hard disk’s read speed, the lesser the time it requires to load the game. Apart from gaming, quick reading speeds are also required by applications like image editing, DTP, etc. In this case, we ran Oblivion and noted the time it took to start a new game.

Warranty and support This is one of the most important parameters of a hard drive. Since a hard drive has moving parts, it is most susceptive to failure. Hence, it is absolutely critical that it is backed by robust warranty and support.

Value for money index At the end of the day, you should get your money’s worth. For this reason, we concluded our test with the value for money index. This is a ratio of features and performance with respect to price. The higher the performance and features with respect to price, the higher this score. The “Best Value” award was given to the drive which offered the best value for money according to our evaluation.

Interpreting the Buying Guide The buying guide has been designed to help you make the right buying decision in your quest for a hard drive. To give you an overview of all the drives available, drives of all capacities under various families have been taken into consideration. After picking a drive, running your finger horizontally across the row will take you through the drive’s specifications. Further to the right, you can find its value for money by the color of the shaded cell coinciding with the drive’s capacity. Likewise, you can even find out the hottest deals for a particular capacity. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

HARD DRIVE COMPARISON

Western Digital’s Raptor WD1500-ADFD is a hard drive with a class of its own, with tremendous power and commendable performance. This hard drive gives you a data storage capacity of 150 GB which we feel is a little inadequate considering the latest hard drives come at a capacity of 750 GB. The USP of this hard drive is a mind blowing spindle speed of 10000 rpm. With such high speeds, it is obvious how fast the data transfers are going to be. What makes this drive stand apart from the WD740 is its increased buffer size. The drive comes with a 16 MB buffer or integrated cache which is much higher than that of a normal hard drive with a measly 2 MB or 8 MB. This increase in buffer size noticeably reduces the read and write time of the drive. The average latency is 2.99 ms—the lowest among all the hard drives tested. This is no surprise as the drive has 4 platters and 2 heads, which reduces the time required for reading and writing data as there are fewer platters for the heads to seek data

from. The drive supports SATA 1 interface and can be used in RAID arrays. The file transfer speeds were simply mindblowing —the Raptor took just 12.3 seconds to write a 1 GB file and 14.9 seconds to write a 1 GB multiple file as can be seen from the comparison table. This is indeed the fastest amongst all hard drives that we reviewed in this comparison test. Imagine trying to load a 300 MB image file to Photoshop and waiting for ages to open such a huge image file. The Raptor just zoomed through and opened the file in a record 4.12 seconds without a glitch. The benchmark tests were done using Everest Ultimate 2006 and PC Mark 2005 and here too the Raptor was way ahead of all the other drives that we tested. This drive has come as a boon to all enthusiasts and gamers as it gives you unimaginable speed. But be ready to spend for such performance. For: Superb speed; excellent data transfer speeds and high buffer memory. Against: Expensive; low storage capacity.

The Samsung HD160JJ hard drive comes with an excellent price and delivers superb performance for such an affordable price. This hard drive has a storage capacity of 160 GB with a spindle speed of 7200 rpm. It has a buffer cache of 8 MB which is excellent when compared to other drives in its category which usually offer a measly 2 MB for almost the same price. The average latency of this drive, which is 4.2 ms was a bit higher than that of other Samsung drives. The data transfer speeds were excellent as this drive supports SATA 2 with 300 MB/s. The SATA 2 interface really boosts up the performance of the drive when it comes to multimedia and content creation as this increases the transfer rates and is very helpful with audio and video resource hogging applications. As the drive is incorporated with Native Command Queuing (NCQ), the seek times are elevated on single threaded applications which makes the drive slower. In case of multi-threaded applications,

NCQ is a real boon as it determines the best order to perform operations with the knowledge of its seek times and head position. This in turn increases the performance of the system when it is under heavy load by multiple applications. The drive delivered commendable scores in all our tests; it took just 19.10 seconds to write a 1 GB file and 22.89 seconds to write 1 GB multiple files on to the drive which is commendable. The 300 MB image file opened in a jiffy, taking just 4.54 seconds to open. While this is not the fastest score, it is better then most other drives in the comparison. Everest and PC Mark tests delivered average results, and the game loading time was also not impressive. But you can’t have everything at such a low price. If you are looking for a performer but don’t want it to be heavy on your pocket, then the Samsung HD160JJ is definitely worth a buy. For: Excellent storage capacity for a low price; good buffer memory, NCQ support. Against: None.

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

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Western Digital WD1500-ADFD

Specifications: Spindle speed: 10,000 rpm, Capacity: 150 GB, Buffer size: 16 MB, Interface: SATA 150 MB/s, Average Latency: 2.99 ms, Native Command Queuing

Price Contact Phone E-mail Warranty

Rs 15,000 Venktron Digital Systems Pvt Ltd 022-23874427 [email protected] 5 years

RATINGS Features Perfomance Overall Rating Value for money

Samsung HD160JJ

Specifications: Spindle speed: 7,200 rpm, Capacity: 160 GB, Buffer size: 8 MB, Interface: SATA 2, Average Latency: 4.2 ms

Price Contact Phone E-mail Warranty

Rs 3,350 Samsung India Electronics Pvt Ltd 011-41511234 [email protected] 5 years

RATINGS Features Perfomance Overall Rating Value for money

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HARDWARE

| HARD DRIVE COMPARISON

| Buying Guide Brand & model WESTERN DIGITAL WD3200JS WD3000JS WD2500JS WD2000JS WD1600JS WD1200JS WD800JD WD400JD WD3200JB WD3000JB WD2500JB WD2000JB WD1600JB WD1200JB WD800JB WD400JB WD800BD WD400BD WD2500BB WD2000BB WD1600BB WD1200BB WD800BB WD400BB WD200BB WD5000KS WD4000KS WD3200KS WD2500KS WD5000YS WD360ADFD WD740ADFD WD1500ADFD SAMSUNG SP2504C SP2004C HD160JJ HD120IJ HD080HJ HD040GJ SP0411N SEAGATE ST3400832AS ST3300831AS ST3250823AS ST3200826AS ST3300622AS ST3400633AS ST3500641AS ST3250620AS ST3320620AS ST3400620AS ST3500630AS ST3750640AS HITACHI HDS725050KLA360 HDT72252525DLA380 HDT722516DLA380

Drive family

Caviar SE SATA

Caviar SE IDE

Caviar SATA

Caviar IDE

Caviar SE16 SATA Caviar RE2 Raptor

Samsung P120 S

SpinPoint P80 S SpinPoint PL40

Barracuda 7200.8

Barracuda 7200.9

Barracuda 7200.10

DeskStar 7K500 DeskStar T7K250

Interface

Spindle speed (RPM) Buffer (MB) Warranty (Yrs)

Price (Rs)

SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA Parallel ATA SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 150 MB/s SATA 150 MB/s SATA 150 MB/s

7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 10000 10000 10000

8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 8 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 2 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16

3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 3 5 5 5 5

5,750 5,050 4,550 4,400 3,700 3,650 3,000 2,800 5,500 5,250 4,500 4,300 3,500 3,150 2,850 2,700 2,900 1,700 4,400 4,200 3,500 2,850 2,750 2,600 1,750 12,000 9,750 6,000 4,650 18,500 6,000 9,000 15,000

SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s Parallel ATA

7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200

8 8 8 8 8 8 2

5 5 5 5 5 5 5

4,200 3,750 3,350 3,200 2,450 2,050 2,000

SATA 150 MB/s SATA 150 MB/s SATA 150 MB/s SATA 150 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s

7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200 7200

8 8 8 8 16 16 16 16 16 16 16 16

5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5 5

13,000 6,000 4,700 4,500 5,600 12,000 15,500 4,350 5,500 11,300 15,500 23,200

SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s SATA 300 MB/s

7200 7200 7200

16 8 8

5 5 5

24,150 9,280 6,500

36 GB

40 GB

INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

HARD DRIVE COMPARISON

 Great value for money

74 GB

80 GB

120 Gb

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

160 GB

200 GB

250 GB

300 GB

 Good value for money

320 GB

400 GB

| HARDWARE

59

 Low value for money

500 GB

750 GB

60

HARDWARE

| HARD DRIVE COMPARISON

| Personal Take

SpecScan Anand Tuliani [email protected]

Around a year back, a budget of Rs 4,500 wouldn’t allow you to get more than 120 gigs. But today, it is a different scenario as you can easily grab a drive wih more than double the capacity for the same price. Not only this, the SATA 300 MB/s interface and support for NCQ come as a bonus. The Seagate ST3250620AS belonging

1

2

NAME

Seagate ST3750640AS

Western Digital WD1500ADFD

Contact Phone E-mail Price*

eSys Distribution Ltd 011-41811694 [email protected] Rs 23,200

Venktron Digital Systems Pvt Ltd 022-23874427 [email protected] Rs 15,000

Overall results Features (Out of 30) Performance (Out of 50) Warranty & Support (Out of 20) Overall (Out of 100) Value for money

to the Barracuda 7200.10 family is the one

Features

drive that I would want to buy right away. A

Drive family Capacity (GB) Interface Spindle speed (rpm) Buffer size (MB) Average latency (ms) Number of platters Number of heads Shock resistance Operating Shock, 2 ms Non-operating Shock, 2 ms Acoustics Idle mode (bels) Seek Mode (bels) Native command queueing Perpendicular recording Molex connectors for SATA

storage space of 250 GB and 16 MB buffer plus awesome performance for a price of Rs 4,350 is a steal. It is not worth opting for 200 GB as you can get an additional 50 GB for a few hundred bucks. The most interesting aspect is if you want half a terabyte, you can get two 250 GB drives as it turns out to be much cheaper than a single 500 GB drive. Put them in RAID 0 and you’ll be blown by the blistering speed!

27.55 40.46 20.00

21.31 46.49 20.00

Total: 88.01

Total: 87.80

Barracuda 7200.10 750 SATA 300 MB/s 7200 16 4.16 4 8

Raptor 150 SATA 300 MB/s 10000 16 2.99 2 4

68 300

65 250

2.7 3 ✓ ✓ ✓

2.7 3 ✓ ✓ ✓

75.10 74.20 57.70 63.20

85.60 84.20 74.80 74.40

8.47 6.42 4.97 76.22 71.09

27.25 25.41 21.94 192.61 199.48

3.54 19.01

4.12 19.34

73.72 71.26

82.78 82.25

63.17 56.67

68.63 69.95

5

5

Performance Faheem Sayed [email protected]

After testing different families of drives, the one that I think worth considering is Western Digital’s Raptor WD1500ADFD, which has a spindle speed of 10,000 rpm and 16 MB buffer. Not only does it have mindblowing transfer speeds, but it is also a silent performer. This drive cruised through the entire test process without a hitch. However, the only disappointment is its price. Next after the Raptor is the Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 with perpendicular recording feature and a massive 750 GB capacity, but this one too is heavy on your pocket. But as they say, good things come for a price. So be ready to shell out some moolah if you want to settle for nothing but the best.

Synthetic tests Everest Ultimate 2006 Linear read (MB/s) Linear write (MB/s) Random read (MB/s) Random write (MB/s) PC Mark 2005 XP Startup (MB/s) Application loading (MB/s) General usage (MB/s) Virus scan (MB/s) File write (MB/s) Real-world tests Open 300 MB TIFF file in PS7 (sec) Game load time - Oblivion (sec) Single File Copy - 1 GB Read - HDD to RAM drive (MB/s) Write - RAM drive to HDD (MB/s) Multiple File Copy - 1 GB Read - HDD to RAM drive (MB/s) Write - RAM drive to HDD (MB/s)

Warranty Number of years

* Prices are indicative and are subject to change, taxes extra INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

HARD DRIVE COMPARISON

| HARDWARE

61

3

4

5

6

7

Seagate ST3500641AS

Hitachi HDS725050KLA360

Western Digital WD5000YS

Seagate ST3400832AS

Hitachi HDT72252525DLA380

eSys Distribution Ltd 011-41811694 [email protected] Rs 15,500

Neoteric Infomatique Pvt Ltd 022-39828600 [email protected] Rs 24,150

Venktron Digital Systems Pvt Ltd 022-23874427 [email protected] Rs 18,500

eSys Distribution Ltd 011-41811694 [email protected] Rs 13,000

Neoteric Infomatique Pvt Ltd 022-39828600 [email protected] Rs 9,280

23.18 39.07 20.00

Total: 82.25

22.44 39.21 20.00

Total: 81.66

22.80 38.84 20.00

Total: 81.63

19.46 39.17 20.00

Total: 78.63

18.69 39.07 20.00

Total: 77.76

Barracuda 7200.9 500 SATA 300 MB/s 7200 16 4.16 4 8

DeskStar 7K500 500 SATA 300 MB/s 7200 16 4.17 5 10

Caviar RE 2 500 SATA 300 MB/s 7200 16 4.17 4 8

Barracuda 7200 .8 400 SATA 150 MB/s 7200 8 4.16 3 6

DeskStar T7K250 250 SATA 300 MB/s 7200 8 4.17 2 4

63 350

55 225

65 250

63 300

55 350

2.8 3.2 ✓ ✕ ✓

3.1 3 ✓ ✕ ✓

2.8 3.2 ✓ ✕ ✓

2.8 3.4 ✓ ✕ ✓

2.9 3.4 ✓ ✕ ✓

61.10 59.60 50.60 48.90

62.10 61.10 49.20 49.70

69.80 69.60 56.70 58.70

66.80 65.60 59.60 52.00

39.00 64.50 53.30 50.30

8.32 6.73 5.52 50.31 58.78

9.75 8.19 7.04 132.03 56.84

20.77 18.62 16.40 153.53 140.21

8.94 6.78 5.43 80.35 63.98

21.56 18.12 14.54 247.57 129.09

3.48 19.20

4.22 18.96

6.70 21.50

3.40 19.54

6.60 20.45

59.50 54.58

61.28 60.09

68.72 63.60

69.61 56.11

63.21 62.06

51.95 47.06

55.90 46.89

64.20 48.69

43.70 48.10

58.28 40.47

5

5

5

5

5

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

62

HARDWARE

| HARD DRIVE COMPARISON

SpecScan 8

9

NAME

Samsung SP2504C

Samsung HD160JJ

10 Western Digital WD5000KS

Contact Phone E-mail Price*

Samsung India Electronics Pvt Ltd 011-41511234 [email protected] Rs 4,200

Samsung India Electronics Pvt Ltd 011-41511234 [email protected] Rs 3,350

Venktron Digital Systems Pvt Ltd 022-23874427 [email protected] Rs 12,000

Overall results Features (Out of 30) Performance (Out of 50) Warranty & Support (Out of 20) Overall (Out of 100) Value for money

19.12 38.46 20.00

Total: 77.58

18.18 37.25 20.00

Total: 75.43

20.69 40.25 12.00

Total: 72.94

Features Drive family Capacity (GB) Interface Spindle speed (rpm) Buffer size (MB) Average latency (ms) Number of platters Number of heads Shock resistance Operating Shock, 2 ms Non-operating Shock, 2 ms Acoustics Idle mode (bels) Seek Mode (bels) Native command queueing Perpendicular recording Molex connectors for SATA

SpinPoint P Series 250 SATA 300 MB/s 7200 8 4.17 2 4

SpinPoint P Series 160 SATA 300 MB/s 7200 8 4.2 2 4

Caviar SE 16 500 SATA 300 MB/s 7200 16 4.2 4 8

63 350

63 350

65 250

2.5 2.8 ✓ ✕ ✓

2.8 3.3 ✓ ✕ ✓

2.8 3.2 ✕ ✕ ✓

69.70 68.40 55.10 57.10

58.80 56.20 46.20 49.20

70.80 70.30 59.60 56.90

8.27 6.60 5.72 82.13 70.25

7.84 6.27 5.17 78.63 60.22

20.34 18.59 16.04 151.79 150.04

4.34 19.06

4.54 18.98

5.54 20.85

69.14 66.71

55.90 53.81

65.35 66.49

62.14 48.74

53.61 44.74

65.60 52.14

5

5

3

Performance Synthetic tests Everest Ultimate 2006 Linear read (MB/s) Linear write (MB/s) Random read (MB/s) Random write (MB/s) PC Mark 2005 XP Startup (MB/s) Application loading (MB/s) General usage (MB/s) Virus scan (MB/s) File write (MB/s) Real-world tests Open 300 MB TIFF file in PS7 (sec) Game load time - Oblivion (sec) Single File Copy - 1 GB Read - HDD to RAM drive (MB/s) Write - RAM drive to HDD (MB/s) Multiple File Copy - 1 GB Read - HDD to RAM drive (MB/s) Write - RAM drive to HDD (MB/s)

Warranty Number of years

* Prices are indicative and are subject to change, taxes extra INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

HARD DRIVE COMPARISON

| HARDWARE

63

11

12

13

14

15

Western Digital WD3200JS

Samsung SP0411N

Western Digital WD800BD

Western Digital WD2500JB

Western Digital WD1600BB

Venktron Digital Systems Pvt Ltd 022-23874427 [email protected] Rs 5,750

Samsung India Electronics Pvt Ltd 011-41511234 [email protected] Rs 2,000

Venktron Digital Systems Pvt Ltd 022-23874427 [email protected] Rs 2,900

Venktron Digital Systems Pvt Ltd 022-23874427 [email protected] Rs 4,500

Venktron Digital Systems Pvt Ltd 022-23874427 [email protected] Rs 3,500

17.43 39.61 12.00

Total: 69.04

10.50 32.26 20.00

Total: 62.76

13.70 36.90 12.00

Total: 62.60

13.06 35.20 12.00

9.18 36.32 12.00

Total: 60.26

Total: 57.51

Caviar SE 320 SATA 300 MB/s 7200 8 4.2 3 6

SpinPoint P Series 40 Parallel ATA 7200 2 4.17 1 1

Caviar 80 SATA 300 MB/s 7200 2 4.2 2 4

Caviar SE 250 Parallel ATA 7200 8 4.17 3 6

Caviar 160 Parallel ATA 7200 2 4.2 3 6

65 350

63 350

65 350

65 250

26 63

2.8 3.2 ✕ ✕ ✓

2.6 2.7 ✕ ✕ ✕

2.8 3.9 ✕ ✕ ✓

3.3 3.9 ✕ ✕ ✕

2.6 3.7 ✕ ✕ ✕

63.90 44.70 52.60 36.70

54.20 57.30 45.60 59.40

58.30 58.00 48.10 48.30

62.10 67.70 52.30 64.10

63.60 65.30 53.10 65.70

18.72 16.94 13.52 134.96 108.84

6.86 4.69 3.56 48.27 53.39

19.14 14.11 10.19 121.90 126.57

8.41 6.54 5.38 57.47 57.19

17.52 11.98 8.61 110.94 130.89

5.04 21.30

5.20 22.18

5.31 22.00

4.68 20.54

5.14 21.60

63.29 46.76

49.71 49.02

54.67 38.35

61.13 55.35

61.69 60.59

61.91 37.80

45.84 23.86

52.32 32.53

47.63 44.23

49.95 27.16

3

5

3

3

3

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

64

HARDWARE

| FEATURE

Pramod Jadhav

War of the tuners Your PC can be a behemoth entertainment center if you enable it with a TV tuner card. We do a head-to-head comparison of the three best in the market

T

he PC today has become a complete entertainment hub. Be it watching DVDs or listening to audio CDs/MP3s, it is the one-stop place serving your work and recreation needs. If you’re an audiophile or a movie buff, you can convert your PC into a mammoth jukebox with thousands of songs and a movie library consisting of hundreds of movies. And that too without any additional piece of hardware. However, if you want to add the functionality of a television and FM radio as well, you need a TV tuner card. Live television and FM radio are not the only features offered by a TV tuner card—that’s less than half of what you can actually do with it! A TV tuner card can actually do much more than a mammoth television set. You can record your favorite television shows and create a DVD out of it. If you don’t want to miss the news or a movie being aired while you’re out of your house or on the phone, you can pause live TV and resume after you’re back. During live telecast of cricket or football matches,it is impossible to watch each and every match

without staying up late at nights. With a TV tuner card, you can schedule the recording and watch it later when you have the time. For radio lovers, it is possible to grab your favorite songs being aired and burn them onto an audio or an MP3 disc. You’re lucky if you have an LCD monitor; adding a TV tuner card to your PC can turn it into a full-fledged LCD TV! You can even hook up a camcorder, DVD player or a game console to your PC using a TV tuner card. At present, the Compro VideoMate Gold Plus II, Pinnacle PCTV 110i and PixelView PlayTV are the best cards in the market from the respective manufacturers. To find out which one of them reigns supreme, we got our hands on them and put them to the grind. Go ahead and take your pick!

Test rig Motherboard : Gigabyte K8NS Processor : AMD Athlon 64 2800+ Memory : 1 GB DDR-400 Hard drive : Hitachi Deskstar 7K80 Graphics : Nvidia GeForce 6200 TC INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

FEATURE

| HARDWARE

65

| Terminator Time-shifting It is one of the features in the application which comes bundled with the TV tuner card. Using this feature, you can pause and resume live TV or video playback. When you click on the pause button to begin time-shifting, the software freezes the playback and starts buffering the content in a video file on the hard drive. On releasing pause, it begins playing back the buffered content from the point where you paused. From the point you resume playback, the software has to multi-task until you stop the time-shift. While playing back the buffered contents, it has to buffer the live playback in the background. Since time-shifting requires buffering, it means you need atleast 512 MB of memory and a good hard drive, preferably SATA, or else you may experience jerky playback of the buffered contents.

Remote control power-on This feature enables you to turn on your PC from the “shut down” state using a remote control. It is the TV tuner card which must have the support to wake up the PC. This is present in the form of “power up” and “power switch” headers on the card. The “power up” header connects to the power button header on the motherboard with the bundled cord and the “power switch” header connects to the power switch cable of the PC case. In short, the PC’s power switch is routed through the TV tuner card.

Power-up scheduling If you’re out and you want the PC to turn on automatically at a scheduled time, record a TV show and then shut down, use the power-up scheduling feature. However, to use this feature, the TV tuner card must have the support to wake up the PC from the “shut down” state. Since the PC requires a few minutes to boot completely to the desktop, the power-up function intelligently powers up the PC a few minutes before the scheduled time for recording. The software which comes bundled with the TV tuner can be set to capture video for specified time duration and shut down the PC automatically after capturing is complete.

SpecScan

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty FEATURES Interface Decoder chip TV tuner FM tuner Rear panel I/O TV-RF FM-RF IR receiver-in Audio-in Audio-out S-Video-in Composite-in On-board headers Audio-in Audio-out Wake-up Capture Formats MPEG-1 | 2 | 4 Maximum resolution IR Remote Channels & volume Previous channel Source Full screen Time-shifting controls Capture Screenshot Remote wake-up Power-up scheduling Multi-channel preview Scheduled recording Direct-to-DVD recording Time-shifting Screenshot Package contents FM antenna Line-out cable Internal audio cable Power-up cable Batteries Bundled software

1

2

3

Compro VideoMate Gold Plus II Rs 3,500 Mediatech India Distribution Pvt Ltd 022-26361111 [email protected] www.comprousa.com 1 year

Pinnacle PCTV 110i

PixelView Play TV Pro2 Rs 3,990 Rs 1,950 Pinnacle Systems Rashi Peripherals Pvt Ltd 011-41608211 022-67090909 [email protected] [email protected] www.pinnaclesys.co.in www.prolink.com.tw 1 year 1 year

PCI Philips SAA7134HL ✓ ✓

PCI Philips SAA7131E ✓ ✓

PCI Conexant Fusion 878A ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✕ ✕ ✓ ✓ (Via adapter)

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✕

✓ ✓ ✕

✓|✓|✓ 720 x 576

✓|✓|✓ 720 x 576

✓|✓|✓ 720 x 576

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✕ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓

✓ ✕ ✕ ✕ ✓

✓ ✓ ✕ ✕ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✕

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓

✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ ✓ Ulead PhotoExplorer 8.5 SE, Ulead DVD MovieFactory 3 SE, Ulead VideoStudio 8 SE

✓ ✕ ✓ ✕ ✓ Pinnacle Studio QuickStart 10

✓ ✓ ✕ ✕ ✓ None

PERFORMANCE TV reception FM reception Time-shift Video capture Software Interface

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

SMS us!

Story code: HIT (See Page 20 for details)

66

HARDWARE

| FEATURE

Compro VideoMate Gold Plus II

The remote control is the only device in a TV tuner where ergonomics play a very important role. It is the layout and the tactility of the buttons which determine how good a remote control really is. The buttons should be laid out in such a way that the user is able to master the positions of the controls with great ease.

Pinnacle PCTV 110i

For example, functions like adjusting the volume, surfing channels, time-shifting, recording, and so on should be possible without looking at the remote control. Also, the buttons should be well-spaced to avoid clutter. If you observe the remote controls closely, the PixelView Play TV Pro2

What to look out for The cards were evaluated on the basis of their features and performance. Features which carry the maximum weightage are audio and video I/O, support for capturing formats and maximum resolution. Powerup scheduling is a must-have option if you want your PC to switch on by itself, log on to Windows and capture your favorite program at a scheduled time. Not all tuners deliver the same level of performance. There’s a significant difference in the quality of TV and FM reception. In addition to the quality of tuner used, the output quality depends solely on the strength of the decoder chip.

Compro VideoMate Gold Plus II

PixelView Play TV Pro2

features the most intuitive layout followed by the Compro VideoMate Gold Plus II. We were a bit disappointed with the Pinnacle PCTV 110i since it features a panoply of over 40 buttons on its face. Pinnacle could have surely done a better job by providing all the functions with lesser number of buttons. Unlike a motherboard or a graphics card which need to be upgraded every few years, a TV tuner card is a one-time investment which will stay in your PC case for its lifetime. So if you plan to buy one, get the best one around.

The verdict Pinnacle PCTV 110i

PixelView Play TV Pro2 A good decoder chip translates into crisp, high-resolution output and high videocapture quality. Since the overall control of the TV tuner lies within the software, the interface should be extremely intuitive so that even a first-timer can exploit all the features supported by the card. Auto-scanning, fine-tuning of channels, adjusting the picture quality and capture settings should be a breeze even for someone who is new to TV tuners. The software interface score indicates how good the software is.

If you take a quick glance at the table (previous page), you will notice that the Compro VideoMate Gold Plus II wins hands down when compared to the other two. Name a feature and it offers that. The Pinnacle PCTV 110i, which is the second best card took a slight hit in features and performance. If it has been your choice so far, think twice. You surely can get the best performer for a lesser price. The PixelView Play TV Pro 2, on the other hand, sports a good feature set but it is a complete disappointment with respect to its reception quality. With the richest feature set and the best performance, the Compro VideoMate Gold Plus II with the most powerful decoder chip is a clear winner and everyone’s favorite. So if you’re serious about buying the best TV tuner card, get this one without any second thoughts—it can’t get any better!  | Anand Tuliani INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

FEATURE

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

| HARDWARE

67

68

HARDWARE

| PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Crowning Conroe This month we review the latest offering from Intel’s top-of-the-line product family called the Conroe. We performed a comprehensive review to find out whether it displaces the reigning king Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 Specifications: Series: Core 2 Duo, Dual Core, Operating Frequency: 2.66 GHz, FSB: 1066 MHz, L2 cache: 4 MB shared, production die: 65 nm.

Price Contact Phone E-mail Website Warranty

Rs 27,500 Saranya Rustagi 080-25075252 [email protected] www.intel.com

3 years

RATINGS Performance Value for money

Pramod Jadhav

Dinesh Desai

I

ntel has become a second name to processors from the point of view of a common man. The Indian desktop market relies on the reputation and awareness of a brand for making purchasing decisions. That is probably why in spite of having a superior processor lineup for almost four years, AMD was not able to capitalize as a market leader in India as much as it did in the international markets. Although Intel enjoyed market domination in the subcontinent, with its NetBurst architecture, it went on a clock speed frenzy with its Pentium 4 line of processors. Higher frequencies did not necessarily mean higher performance as these processors did not perform as well as their AMD counterparts, which were clocked at much lesser frequencies. Besides, higher frequencies led to greater heat generation. The Pentium 4 Prescotts were popularly referred to as Pres“hots” because of the enormous amount of heat

they generated. In the last two years, AMD gathered ground with their 64-bit platforms—the Socket 754 and the Socket 939. Their Duron series of processors were considered great value for money while their Athlon 64 series became the de facto standard for gamers and multimedia content creation users. Their Athlon 64 FX-62 was the reigning king. That is until Intel launched their Core 2 Duo family of processors on July 27, 2006. Before we get into the technical details of the processor, let us look at Intel’s current product lineup. The table overleaf lists their desktop line of processors.

What makes the Conroe tick? Intel learnt from its mistakes and got back to the drawing board. This time around it derived its inspiration from Yonah (Core Duo), the mobile platform used for laptops. The new Woodcrest (servers), Conroe (desktops) and Merom (laptops) INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

Product Name

Model Number

Frequency

Core 2 Extreme

X6800

2.93 GHz

Core 2 Duo

E6700

2.66 GHz

Core 2 Duo

E6600

2.40 GHz

Core 2 Duo

E6400

Core 2 Duo

E6300

Cache

Core

1066 MHz

4 MB

1066 MHz

4 MB

1066 MHz

2.13 GHz 1.86 GHz

are all based on the Yonah but nearly 80 percent of the architecture and the circuit design has been redone. Like the Yonah, Conroe too uses the 65 nm manufacturing process. Intel has also addressed the heat problem and the Conroe uses a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of 65 watts compared to the 89 watts for AMD’s Athlon 64 FX-62. It is almost half of that used by Intel’s previous generation lineup. Intel has managed to run its processors cool using the least amount of power. Now coming to whether Conroe will perform up to the mark or not, let us first take a look at the other finer points of the Core architecture.

Time for some jargon Here are the five important features that were showcased by Intel during one of their recent Intel Developer Forums: Intel Wide Dynamic Execution Intel Advanced Smart cache Intel Intelligent power capability Intel Advanced Digital media boost Intel Smart Memory Access

Intel Wide Dynamic Execution With the Wide Dynamic Execution, the two cores in the processor are individually capable of executing up to four instructions per clock cycle. That’s a 33 percent improvement over the earlier

FSB

| HARDWARE

Manufacturing Process

Price (Rs)

Conroe XE

65 nm

50,000

Conroe

65 nm

27,500

4 MB

Conroe

65 nm

16,200

1066 MHz

2 MB

Conroe

65 nm

11,600

1066 MHz

2 MB

Conroe

65 nm

9,625

Intel cores which could execute three instructions per clock. This basically means that the Conroe is able to process more instructions per clock cycle, thus allowing for faster execution time.

Micro and Macro Fusion: Intel has included the short pipeline design into the Conroe. The shorter pipeline consists of only 14 stages compared to the 30+ stages in the Pressler core, thus reducing the penalty caused due to wrongly predicted data while it was being fetched in advance. The micro and macro fusion capabilities further increase the performance of the Conroe. The macro fusion feature combines two instructions called the compare and jump. This facilitates the execution of two instructions in a time frame that can only execute a single instruction. This feature increases the performance of applications with multiple compare and jump instructions.

69

then access to the physical memory. In the Pentium D the caches are independent to each core. Using a single L2 cache lets each core utilize the L2 cache depending on its requirements and hence simplifies cache coherence. Cache coherence is intended to manage conflicts and maintain consistency between cache and memory. But there are disadvantages of sharing the L2 cache. If both the cores are running heavy applications that access huge amount of system memory, they could repeatedly strike the whole cache, thus reducing its effectiveness.

Intel Intelligent Power Capability The Conroe processor is capable of switching off/deactivating certain parts of the processor and the cache without causing any loss in performance. This performance on demand technology ensures quick system response while drastically reducing the power required to run the processor.

Intel Advanced Smart Cache The Core 2 Duo packs in two cores onto the single 65 nm die. The two cores share a massive 4 MB cache (2 MB in case of the E6300 and the E6400). The increased cache leads to quicker access of frequently used data as the processor does not need to search for the data in the main memory. Besides, access to L2 cache is much faster

Intel Advanced Digital Media Boost This feature significantly improves performance when executing streaming instructions like SSE, SSE2 and SSE3. The speed of execution of applications that frequently use these instructions like video, speech, image processing, encryption, engineering and scientific applications, is increased dramatically as it allows 128-bit instructions to be completely executed at a throughput rate of one per clock cycle, effectively doubling the speed of execution as compared to previous generation processors.

Intel Smart Memory Access

Significant changes to the core architecture offer enhanced performance

Multimedia performance gets a boost by 128-bit single cycle SSE instructions

This feature helps in accelerating out-oforder execution by optimizing the use of data bandwidth from the memory subsystem. A newly designed prediction mechanism reduces the time for which

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| PRODUCT OF THE MONTH

an instruction has to wait for data to arrive. The data is moved to the faster L2 cache before execution, thus keeping the road from memory to the CPU occupied eventually increasing data throughput and system performance. It is clear that Intel has incorporated several performance enhancing changes in the Conroe processor’s DNA. Read on to find out if these performance enhancing features are reflected in our synthetic and real world benchmarks.

Benchmarks Although we would have ideally liked to compare the Conroe against the FX-62, we could not do so because we did not receive the processors simultaneously. That is why we have stacked up the Conroe against the Pentium D 930 instead of the Athlon 64 FX-62. Let us put all the speculation aside and see whether Intel really has a winner in hand.

Test Rigs

Intel

Intel

Processor

E6700

Pentium D 930

Motherboard

Biostar TForce P965 Deluxe

RAM

Kingston HyperX KHX8500D2K2/1G 1GB kit DDR2 1066MHz Non-ECC CL5 (kit of 2 - 512 MB)

Hard Disk

Western Digital WD740 10,000 rpm

Graphics Card

Asus TOP 7900GT 256 MB GDDR3

An important reason why the FX-62 has greater bandwidth is because the latencies are greatly reduced. This is a direct result of the onboard memory controller.

Office Productivity Our PC Mark 2005 test suite confirmed that the Conroe is indeed the fastest processor around with the score crossing the 7600 mark.

Gaming SiSoft Sandra (Processor and Memory Bandwidth) SiSoft Sandra processor benchmark shows a considerable increase in performance in both the Dhrystone ALU benchmark and the iSSE3 Whetstone benchmark. The memory bandwidth benchmark is the only place where the E6700 falls behind.

As is the case with more and more new games today, at higher resolutions, they become increasingly GPU dependent. Its also evident in the case of Doom 3 as you see frames almost leveling at 1600x1200 with full details enabled. It would be worth investing in a high-end graphics solution to play games at higher

BENCHMARKS PC Mark 2005 Pentium D 930 E6700 (Conroe)

Total 5783 7603

CPU, Memory 5129, 4010 6929, 5636

Sisoft Sandra (Memory Bandwidth, MB/s) Pentium D 930 E6700 (Conroe)

RAM Integer (MB/s)

RAM Float (MB/s)

5108 5492

5110 5477

Sisoft Sandra (Processor) Pentium D 930 E6700 (Conroe)

Dhrystone

Whetstone

13746 24933

11265 17265

Gaming Pentium D 930 E6700 (Conroe)

Doom 3 (fps) 16.9 16.7

F.E.A.R (fps) 38 39

Encoding

Audio (seconds)

Video (seconds)

Pentium D 930 E6700 (Conroe)

358 182

88 54

Graphics, HDD 7244, 6256 8387, 6335

resolutions rather than investing in a faster CPU.

Real world tests The Conroe is about twice as fast as its previous generation counterpart. As we can see from the results, both its cores share the load seamlessly during multiprocessing without a degradation in performance.

Motherboard compatibility The socket for Conroe still remains the same i.e. LGA 775 but it works only on the newer 965P and 975X chipsets. We used Biostar’s TForce P965 Deluxe board, which uses the 965P chipset for benchmarking. Along with that we used Kingston’s 1 GB kit DDR2 1066 MHz Non-ECC CL5 (kit of 2x512 MB). At default speeds, the board under-clocked it to 800 MHz with a timing of 5-5-5-16. Conroe compatible boards with chipsets from Nvidia and ATI are also available. (The Radeon Xpress 200 chipset from ATI and the nForce 570 and 590 SLI from Nvidia support the Conroe.)

How to upgrade to Conroe With the ASRock 775Twins 2.0 motherboard, which is based on ATI Radeon Xpress 200 chipset, you can use your existing DDR RAM as it supports both DDR and DDR2 RAM and the board costs a mere Rs 3,500. You can get the E6300 for a sum of Rs 9,700 and you are ready to roll.

Verdict

Audio and Video (seconds) 366 185

Intel has certainly made a smashing comeback with the Conroe. It breaks all performance records compared to its predecessors as well as offerings provided by its competition. Although we did not get the opportunity to do a direct comparision of the Conroe with the FX-62, from what we have seen, it pretty much thrashes its AMD counterpart in almost all benchmarks. Conroe is definitely jackpot material. At a price point of Rs 27,500, it provides better value for money compared to the Athlon 64 FX-62 and is definitely the processor to consider if you are buying a new system or looking for an upgrade.  | Gaurav Seth & Kunal Rupera INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

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| PC CONFIGS

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Gaming No matter what your budget, arm yourself with these configurations for firepower to enjoy your favorite games CATEGORY

ENTRY-LEVEL

PRICE (Rs) MID RANGE

Processor

AMD Athlon 64 3000+ processor (Socket 939)

3,900

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor (Socket 939)

6,000

Motherboard

Foxconn NF4XK8MC-RS (Nvidia nForce4)

3,000

Asus A8N-E (Nvidia nForce4 Ultra)

5,650

RAM

Transcend 512 MB DDR 400 (2.5-3-3-8)

2,250

Transcend DDR 400 512x2 MB (2.5-3-3-8)

4,400

Hard Disk

Seagate 160 GB Barracuda (SATA)

3,400

Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 (250 GB)

5,650

Graphics Card

Forsa 7600GS (PCI Express x16) 256 MB

6,700

MSI 7600GT NX7600GT-T2D256E 256 MB

11,250

Optical Drive

Lite-On SHW-1635S Dual Layer DVD writer

2,350

Lite-On SHW-1635S Dual Layer DVD writer

2,350

Network Card

Onboard LAN (10/100)

Monitor LCD

Samsung SyncMaster 740N LCD monitor (8ms response time)

Monitor CRT

Samsung 793S CRT Non-Flat

Keyboard

Microsoft keyboard and optical mouse set

Mouse

—

Speakers 2.1

Logitech X-230

3,300

Altec Lansing MX5021

7,100

Speakers 5.1

Logitech X-530

5,900

Logitech THX Z-5300e

11,000

Soundcard

Onboard (6 channel)

Nil

Case

Zebronics Antibiotic

PSU

External HDD (optional)

Nil 11,250 5,000 800 Nil

PRICE (Rs)

Onboard Gigabit LAN Samsung SyncMaster 740N LCD monitor (8 ms response time)

Nil 11,250

— Microsoft keyboard and optical mouse set —

800 Nil

Creative 24-bit Live! 7.1 Channel

1,700

2,100

Gigabyte Triton

3,000

PowerSafe 400 Watts

1,500

Powersafe 400 Watts

1,500

40 GB 2.5-inch Seagate Momentus HDD (Rs 3,000) + Generic External Casing (Rs 300)

3,300

40 GB Seagate Momentus HDD 2.5-inch (Rs 3,000)+ Vantec Nexstar3 Enclosure (Rs 1,000)

4,300

Disclaimer: We’ve mentioned the lowest street prices here. These prices are indicative and subject to change. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

Workstation No animation or imaging application is too strenuous for this configuration HIGH END

PRICE (Rs)

CATEGORY

LOW END

PRICE (Rs)

Processor

AMD Opteron 170 2.0 GHz Dual Core

Intel Core 2 Duo E6700 (Socket LGA775)

27,500

Gigabyte GA-965P-DQ (P965 Express)

16,800

Kingston KHX8500D2K2/1G 1GB kit (512 x 2) DDR2 1066 MHz Non-ECC 5-5-5-15-1T

12,500

Motherboard

ASUS A8N-SLI Premium (nForce4 SLI)

Western Digital Raptor X WD1500AHFD 150 GB 10,000 rpm 16 MB Cache Serial ATA150 (two in RAID 0) (Rs 14,000x2)

28,000

RAM

Corsair XMS 2 GB (2x1 GB) DDR 400 Dual Channel Kit System, Model: Twinx20483200c2pt (2-3-3-6) (Rs 5,650x2)

13,000

Leadtek WinFast PX7950 GX2 TDH, 1 GB DDR3

34,000

Hard Disk

Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 (250 GB) (Two in RAID 1)

11,300

Graphics Card

Leadtek Quadro FX 540 PCI-E 128 MB with TV-Out

9,750

Optical Drive

Lite-On SHW-1635S Dual Layer DVD writer

2,350

Network Card

Onboard Dual Gigabit LAN

Monitor

Samsung SyncMaster 740N LCD monitor (8 ms response time)

Keyboard

Microsoft keyboard and optical mouse set

Mouse

—

Case

VIP ZB-01

3,800

PSU

Antec Neo HE 550 Watts

8,522

External Hard Disk (optional)

Western Digital Passport 80 GB

5,500

Lite-On SHM-165H6S LightScribe Dual Layer DVD writer Onboard Dual Gigabit LAN Dell 2407WFP 24-inch UltraSharp Widescreen Flat Panel LCD monitor

3,750 Nil 43,691

21,200 9,700

Nil

— Logitech G15 gaming keyboard

4,850

Logitech G5 Laser gaming mouse

3,850

Klipsch Promedia GMX A-2.1

11,150

Logitech Z-5500 5.1 505 Watt speakers

23,000

Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi XtremeMusic

9,200

Antec Performance P180 Silver

9,950

NeoHE 550 Watts

8,522

Western Digital Passport 80GB

5,500

11,250 800

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HARDWARE

| PC PRODUCT CONFIGS OF THE MONTH

Home

HTPC

This is your no-frills, wallet-friendly configuration for basic home computing

If it’s home theater you crave, this system will deliver serious thrills

HOME

PRODUCT

Processor

AMD Sempron 64 2600+ (Socket 754)

2,500

Motherboard

Asus K8V-MX (VIA K8M800)

2,550

RAM

Transcend 512 MB DDR 400 (2.5-3-3-8)

2,250

Hard Disk

80 GB Seagate Barracuda SATA

2,450

Graphics Card

Onboard

Optical Drive

Lite-On SHW-1635S Dual Layer DVD writer

Network Card

Onboard 10/100 LAN

Monitor LCD

Samsung SyncMaster 740N LCD monitor (8 ms response time)

Monitor CRT

Samsung 793S CRT (Non-Flat)

Keyboard

Microsoft keyboard and optical mouse set

Mouse

—

Speakers 2.1

Creative SBS370

Speakers 5.1

—

Soundcard

Onboard audio (6 channel)

Case

VIP 711B & 300 Watts VIP PSU

PSU

Bundled with case

PRICE (Rs)

Nil

HTPC

PRODUCT

Processor

AMD Athlon 64 3500+ processor (Socket 939)

6,000

Motherboard

Foxconn 6150K8MD-EKRSH (Nvidia GeForce 6150)

3,950

RAM

Transcend DDR 400 512x2 MB (2.5-3-3-8)

4,400

Hard Disk

Hitachi Deskstar T7K250 (250 GB)

5,650

Graphics Card

Onboard

Optical Drive

Lite-On SHW-1635S Dual Layer DVD writer

Network Card

Onboard Gigabit LAN

LCD 17-inch

Samsung SyncMaster 740N LCD Monitor (8 ms response time)

11,250

LCD 24-inch

Dell 2407WFP 24-inch UltraSharp Widescreen Flat Panel LCD monitor

43,691

Keyboard

Logitech Cordless Desktop EX111 (wireless optical mouse & wireless RF keyboard)

Mouse

—

Speakers 2.1

(For home theater experience, we recommend only a 5.1 setup)

Speakers 5.1

Logitech THX Z-5300e

Soundcard

Creative 24-bit Live! 7.1 Channel

1,700

Case

Cooler Master Media 260

9,000

PSU

Powersafe 400 Watts

1,500

TV Tuner Card

Compro VideoMate Gold Plus II

3,500

2,350

Nil 11,250

5,000 800

1,250

1,300

PRICE (Rs)

2,350 Nil

2,500

11,000

| Gaurav Seth INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

PERSONAL TECHNOLOGY

| HARDWARE

75

Nifty Memory Tricks B

ill Gates, the erstwhile head of Microsoft once said, “640 KB ought to be enough for anybody!” This statement was made in the early 90s, when DOS was the de facto PC operating system. And of course, it lacks foresight. A few years later the PC hardware industry struggled with the problem of memory addressability, beyond the 640 KB and 1 MB limits. To overcome that, the industry resorted to memory tricks, the genius of system software programmers. First generation PCs of the mid-80s had severe memory limitations because of the width of the address bus. The 8086, a 16-bit system, had an address bus 20-bits wide, and hence the maximum addressable memory was 1 MB. But not all of that precious 1 MB was available to software applications. In fact, just the first 640 KB (conventional memory) was up for grabs, on a first come, first serve basis. The next 384 KB of estate was called Upper Memory Area, and reserved for drivers, video RAM, ROM routines, and other system information. After loading DOS, BIOS communication routines, and Terminate and Stay Resident Programs (TSRs) you had some conventional memory left for applications. If that application was a hefty one like Lotus 123 (the de facto spreadsheet in those days), you’d soon get the “Insufficient Memory” system error message. There were a few blocks in the upper memory area that were reserved and unused. These areas were called Upper Memory Blocks (UMBs). With some clever programming, certain things like drivers and TSRs could be shifted to the UMBs, thereby freeing up conventional memory. The applications that did such juggling acts were called Memory Maximizers. The HIMEM.SYS and EMM386.EXE

To expand memory, you once had to add memory boards of this size

drivers are prime examples. As memory boards (see picture) became available, manufacturers modified the architecture to accommodate expanded memory. But the 1 MB memory limit continued to be a pesky problem. So once again programmers wrote applications to swap memory pages between expanded memory (on memory cards) and the UMBs. Once the 80286 systems came along, memory addressability was increased to 16 MB. And with the | Brian Pereira advent of 32-bit systems like the 80386 and 80486, [email protected] you could go all the way to 4 GB (though we are yet to see PCs with 4 GB memory today). Windows 95 improved memory management, significantly. Virtual memory paging is another memory trick, accomplished by the memory manager VMM386. exe. It was introduced as multitasking came to PCs (with Windows and 80386 systems); in fact it is still used today. I am also awed by other memory shuffling tricks like the DOS Diskcopy utility and Windows Defrag. Using a single floppy drive in the PC, Diskcopy gave us the freedom to make exact replicas of floppy disks. Depending on the amount of content on the floppy, and the capacity of memory, you had to keep swapping the master disk and its copy a number of times in the single drive. With repeated swapping, the contents from the master would be copied to another disk via main memory. The Windows defrag utility also uses main memory to tidy up file storage on the hard disk. It picks up a cluster of a fragmented file and copies it into main memory. Then it writes that cluster back to disk in such a manner that all the file’s clusters end up sequentially. And you could see a graphical rendition of this in the Windows 98 defrag utility. Going forward, I expect memory density to cross the 1 Gbit threshold. Then memory will catch up with hard disks, on the capacity front. When that happens, you’ll see hybrid systems that use both Flash memory and hard disk for permanent storage. Earlier this year, Samsung announced that it will build hybrid hard disk systems for notebooks. The Flash memory section will be used for caching frequently used applications. Eventually, there’ll be only “solid state disks”. The writer has been tracking personal technology for the past 12 years

With rapid advances in memory technology, soon you’ll see hybrid systems that use both Flash and hard disk memory for permanent storage

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Wireless Wonders A guide to buying the right Bluetooth headset

Mid-range

Entry-level

High-end

Models: Logitech Mobile Express, Sony Ericsson HBH-610, Motorola H500, Plantronics Explorer 320, Nokia HS-36W

Models: Logitech Mobile Traveller, Jabra BT250v, Motorola H700, Plantronics Discovery 640

Models: Jabra JX10, Jabra SP500, Plantronics Pulsar 590A

Budget: Rs 2,000 – Rs 3,500

Budget: Rs 3,500- Rs 6,000

Budget: Rs 6,000 and above

I

n this age of wireless and mobile connectivity, a variety of spiffy and feature-rich Bluetooth headsets are available in the market. When you are planning to buy a Bluetooth headset, remember that you will be wearing it for a considerably long period and so the headset should feel comfortable when placed against your ears. Entry-level headsets are best suited for those who are looking for basic Bluetooth functionality such as making and receiving calls. The Logitech Mobile Express is a basic Bluetooth headset without any frills and fancies and is light on the pocket. However, it is not comfortable to wear. If you want no compromise on performance within a tight budget, try the Motorola H500. It has a sleek, streamlined design and an ergonomic ear hook, which feels comfortable when placed against the ear. But as the headset is a tad bulky, it is advisable not to use it for a long durations. The headset has a range of 15 meters and offers average sound clarity. Therefore, don’t expect it to sound good in a noisy environment.

H

eadsets in the mid-range category include features like a good microphone, one-touch functionality like receive, end, and reject calls. Also, these headsets are lightweight and comfortable. The Jabra BT250v is the best headset in this category; it looks like something out of a sci-fi movie—it is sleek and comfortable with plenty of features. It is contoured to fit nicely behind your ear with a bendable, soft rubber ear bud arm on the top. This headset offers a talk time of 5 hours and a range of 30 meters. Another contender that you could look at in this category is the Motorola H700—a perfect blend of comfort, performance, price and appeal. A lightweight headset, it sports good looks and is very comfortable to wear. It offers a talk time of more than 6 hours. On the front of this headset, you will find a large call button which handles call answer, end and pairing functions as well as powering on and off the headset—this is good as it reduces the overall weight of the headset. However, the range offered by this headset is nothing to rave about—a conservative 12 meters.

H

eadsets in this category are headturners that people would like to flaunt. These are sexy, sleek, lightweight and don’t compromise on the comfort factor. Also, these headsets cater to the entertainment needs of users. The Plantronics Pulsar 590A, for example, provides wireless compatibility for any device with a headphone jack such as laptop, home stereo, MP3 player including the iPod and multimedia device such as the Sony PSP. It is fashioned in the headband type instead of the usual ear bud type. The headband offers add-ons not found in other headsets such as USB charging cable, desktop charging stand, etc. So if you don’t mind spending a little extra, you should check out the Pulsar 590A. The Jabra JX10 is a lightweight headset and features a comfortable ear loop. It offers a talk time of more than 6 hours. The volume buttons and the charger port are placed on the top while the Answer/End button is positioned on the left. You can easily press these buttons while wearing the headset without having to look. The JX10 comes with no compromise on performance.  | Faheem Sayed INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

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TECHNOLOGY LANDSCAPE

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

| HARDWARE

77

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| INFOGRAPHICS

DivX Compression DivX Compression – the Encoder DVD videos use MPEG-2 standard of encoding data. The need for higher quality video has highlighted its inability to do an efficient job. The MPEG-4 standard picked up steam because of its ability to compress data and maintain video quality at the same time. This, in effect, has been extremely helpful for media that needs to be streamed online. This standard is being used by different codecs (coderdecoder) like DivX, XviD, 3ivX to treat digital video in a way so as to maintain quality while increasing packing strength. DivX compression technique follows the MPEG-4 standard. This standard basically specifies how digital video should be encoded. The codec pack follows these basic principals and also uses its own algorithms, special techniques for better quality and compression. Let us take a look at how DivX uses MPEG-4 compression.

the previous frame). Referring to previous frames for motion estimation allows the codec to store less information of the entire macroblock. There might be a slight difference between the original and the encoded form. DivX makes up for this with its own data correction during playback. (Fig. 1 does not show the macroblocks but it displays the weightages assigned to each one.)

I, P and B-frames Each frame is treated in a different way depending on the amount of motion detected in a frame. There are three ways MPEG-4 may encode a frame. If very little or no change is detected from the previous frame then it is encoded as an Intra-Frame (I-frame). This means that the macroblocks store the information as an image, rather than as a motion vector. Increasing the number of I-frames increases the quality and the size of the output. I-frames are also known as “key frames”. P-Frames or “predicted frames” use motion estimation as discussed above. They usually follow a “key frame” and there can be several in a row. The blocks in a P-frame include ones that have been predicted with the help the vectors in a previous frame. Blocks that don’t have any motion vectors assigned to them are saved as images, similar to an I-frame. Greater the number of predicted, motion estimated blocks in a P-frame, better is the compression. B-frame or Bi-directional frames may

1

Frames and Macroblocks A video consists of frames. Each frame is further divided in to 16x16 pixel squares known as “macroblocks”. Each macroblock in a frame is compared with a corresponding one in the previous (or forward) frame. If motion is detected in the frame then it is represented by a vector (has direction as well as magnitude). This “motion vector” represents the position of the image in a macroblock (with respect to

be present in an encoded video stream if the option is enabled during the encode process. These frames refer to the previous frame as well the next one. A B-frame can also contain “Intra-blocks” – as mentioned above – if it cannot forward or backward predict it. Bi-directional encoding produces a better compression ratio keeping quality in mind and is useful while creating low bitrate videos.

Spatial and Temporal Filtering Spatial and temporal filtering are techniques to remove or normalize aberrations in color. Spatial filtering involves the comparison of color between adjacent pixels in a single frame while temporal compares adjacent frames. These smoothen sharp changes in color between adjacent pixels or frames. All the information stored for each pixel is further converted into frequency values (in an ascending order) using a complex mathematical function. Explaining this technique is beyond the scope of this article but this conversion is used to increase the compression ratio with minimum loss in quality.

Quantizer The “quantizer” is a fixed value that is used to control the accuracy of image data (according to the MPEG-4 standard). A higher value increases the percentage of error but also reduces the file size. For high quality “quantization” one uses a lower value. Fig. 2 highlights these details for a single frame in the DivX Pro encoder. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

INFOGRAPHICS

| HARDWARE

79

DivX is one the most popular video compression techniques used today. It can encode quality video for PCs, certified home theaters, portables and handhelds

2

Pramod Jadhav

Types of Encoding 1-Pass Encoding A single-pass encode means the video stream will be processed and compressed as it receives each frame. This is the fastest way to encode a video clip.

frames. The nth-pass technique analyzes the clip a few times, updating the log file each time, fine-tuning it before the final encode. This procedure takes time but produces an optimal quality output.

3

DivX Playback – the Decoder Multipass Encoding A multipass encode can be a 1st-pass or nth-pass. Both do more or less the same thing; the only difference being the number of times it analyzes the video clip. In both methods, the encoder goes through the entire video stream before beginning any sort of encoding. It decides on the bitrate as it goes through the video and logs it in a file. If it is using 1st-pass, it will begin encoding after the first analysis and use the log file for information on the

Software like DivX player, QuickTime, VLC Media Player use the DivX decoder to playback the encoded video. The decoder is configured to correlate with the encoded video stream and play the clip. It also has mechanisms to smooth artifacts called “deblocking” and “deringing”. Fig. 3 shows “ringing” artifacts along the edges in a low bitrate video.

AVI Files The AVI format was originally created by

Microsoft. It is a popular but dated format and at times creates heavier files. The “.AVI” extension, known as a container, can be compared to a tetra pack capable of holding different liquids. Similarly, an “AVI” container supports different codecs like DivX, Cinepak, motion JPEG, XviD, etc.  | Ashutosh Desai

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Software Center

Applications

I

n our bouquet of applications this month, we bring you a collection of system tools, multimedia players, a disk image software and plenty of other juicy desktop utilities. First up, our software of the month is Autodesk Maya Personal Learning Edition 7.0.1—an excellent tool for getting to know the ropes in modeling and animating using Maya. Packed with video tutorials and plenty of online documentation, you’ll soon be on your way to creating 3D wonders. Trend Micro PC-cillin Internet Security 2006 is a comprehensive suite for system and data protection, including an armory of tools such as anti-virus, anti-phishing, Wi-Fi network protection, firewall, anti-spyware etc. If you’ve always been worried about losing data, SyncBack Freeware is an

excellent little utility that just might be the answer to your problems—and it is free! Also check out Undelete Professional and never worry about mistaken deletions again. For all you tweakers, PowerStrip is an excellent tool for sapping the most from your graphics card and monitor and it’s a boon while setting up a home theater PC. On the system tuning front, WinXP manager is the program you need to dig deep into your system and squeeze every last ounce of performance from it. If you’re not able to play that new video file on your PC, install VideoLAN and run any type of audio or video file. Whether you need to back up your favorite game CDs or movie DVDs, UltraISO is the coolest tool to use—plus it does a whole lot more for your ISO files.

| The Ratings Explained The parameters used for evaluating software are assigned a graphical rating out of a scale of 5. These measures include performance, features and ease of use. The overall rating shown in the reviews is based on all these factors. In addition, there is a value for money rating for each application. This rating is obtained

by compiling the features and the utility of the application against its price. In case of freeware and shareware tools available for downloading from the Internet, we replace the price with the download size (and therefore, the time taken to download the application) for arriving at the value for money rating.

INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

TESTED

| APPLICATIONS

81

3D Modeling and Animation

Maya 7 Personal Learning Edition System requirements: Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Professional, Hardware-accelerated OpenGL graphics card, 3-button mouse, 300 MB of free hard disk space

Price Contact Website

Free Autodesk

www.autodesk.com

RATINGS Ease of use Features Performance Overall Rating

Find it on CHIP

CD

Stepping up to Maya

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earning a new 3D modeling and animation application can be quite a daunting task. In a bid to make the transition to their 3D modeling package easier, Autodesk Maya Personal Learning Edition 7.0.1 is primarily intended for those who wish to learn Alias Maya. This is a free download, infused with loads of instructional material to guide users through the program’s usage and interface. It is not meant to be a full-fledged modeling and animation package but is instead aimed at getting new users acquainted with 3D modeling in Alias Maya. While installing the program, you will need to obtain a registration key—this is obtained by registering free on the web site. To be able to view the instructional videos, you will also need to have Quicktime version 6.5 or greater installed on your computer. After the installation is complete, users are greeted with a screen that offers to guide them through navigating the interface and getting accustomed to its layout and features. These guides are in the form of intuitive and lucid Quicktime videos with voiceovers that handhold first-time users through various areas of the program such as the interface, creating and modeling 3D objects, accessing menus, rendering and performing basic animations.

The main interface of the program is divided into a large preview area within which you create your 3D models. This area is bound by toolbars that allow access to several functions relevant to the current modeling or animation job. Even though this is an educational version, Autodesk Maya Personal Learning Edition includes a host of advanced modeling features such as character rigging and inverse kinematics, Autodesk Maya Paint Effects, a complete particle system for advanced environmental effects, NURBS modeling for creating realistic organic shapes, etc. However, there were no presaved models included in the package—we had to download free models from web resources. We reckon that supplementing

The Quicktime-based learning videos are a great way to get to know the interface and learn the program’s capabilities

the tutorials with actual meshes would have quickened the learning process. The program uses Mental Ray as its raytracing engine for rendering objects and scenes. However, in this free version, it forces an intrusive watermark on all renderings. This version also disables advanced rendering features such as thread and host parallelism, support for hardware rendering, light mapping and creating renders with resolutions over 512x512. We were pleasantly surprised to see this version of Maya occupying only about 10 MB of RAM while running, making it suited to running on older systems with modest hardware configurations. This is a good application to get accustomed to the capabilities and layout of Maya and is a stepping stone to the full version. Those wanting to get into 3D modeling with Maya would find this application very utilitarian. With several restrictions in capabilities and the addition of watermarks to your renderings, this version cannot be used for commercial work. For: Free; contains almost all of the features of the full version. Excellent help with video tutorials. Against: Watermarks embedded into the final renderings; no bundled mesh models to play around with.

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

SMS us!

Story code: SWS (See Page 20 for details)

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APPLICATIONS

| TESTED

System Security

PC-cillin Internet Security 2006 14.1 System requirements: Windows (all versions), Mac OS 9/OS X, 600 MHz of faster processor, 128 or more RAM, CD/DVD-ROM drive.

Price Contact Phone email Website

Rs 2,100 Ingram Micro India Pvt Ltd 9322242269 [email protected]

www.trendmicro.com

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CD

Blanket protection

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rend Micro has traditionally existed in the enterprise space with product offerings to match. Using a one-click approach to installation, the PC-cillin Internet Security 2006 is a breeze to install and configure. It contains several components for system protection including anti-virus protection, firewall, anti-spyware and anti-phishing. Before installation, the program runs a scan for trojans on the computer. You have the option of installing the program in one of two modes—Automatic, which installs all the programs components, and Minimum, which excludes components like personal firewall, Wi-Fi instrusion detection and realtime network virus protection. The program requires you to disable the default Windows Firewall before continuing. The first time the program is run, it displays an intuitive “getting started” tutorial that steps you through its capabilities. This makes it easy for first-time users to get accustomed to its interface, which is well laid out with a set of five buttons on the left allowing access to its various sections. The first “Overview” button lets you view the status of the program and lets you know whether it needs to be updated, when the last scan was performed, whether automatic updates

is enabled, etc. Each of these settings can be individually configured. The program also helps you configure protection settings such as real-time Internet traffic scanning, spam and fraud filters, privacy proection, personal firewall and Wi-Fi intrusion detection from one single screen. There is also a button for halting all communications between your computer and the Internet or local network. However, in their default state we noticed that most of these settings were disabled. The anti-fraud wizard enables protection against credit card or password theft. Since this might be a new concept for most users, an intuitive wizard steps you through configuring this capability for the first time. Through this wizard, you can safeguard your credit card number, online shopping passwords, etc. It even embeds an anti-fraud toolbar in IE, through which you can monitor the threat level while surfing. Under the Anti-virus tab, you can manually launch a real-time scan, mail scan and configure outbreak notifications along with quarantine file management. In the anti-spyware section, you can set exception lists and enable the types of threats to look out for hack tools, password cracking tools, remote access applications, etc. There is a comprehensive Anti-phishing and Content Protection section. This includes

a wizard that helps set up anti-fraud countermeasures, spam and fraud filters, web site filters, etc. These settings link to the protection settings in the overview section of the program, but allow a more granular level of configuration. You can also launch a vulnerability check to test whether your Windows XP or MS Office installation is vulnerable to threats. Depending on the results, the program even allows you to update your OS and office installation if you are online. Under the Network Security section, you can manage your local network if the PCs run supported program versions. Here, you can remotely launch a scan, check for vulnerabilities or scan for application updates. You can also access and configure general settings such as registration, upgrade and renewal of the application, online updation, view event logs, etc. In our tests, the application did a good job of blocking online and network threats. But, we did notice a lapse in some instances of blocking spyware. For: A comprehensive toolkit for system protection; well-priced; Wi-Fi protection; easy to configure. Against: Very verbose messages and notifications; default settings leave loopholes in security. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

TESTED

Backups minus the headache

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hile every computer user will agree that backups are all-important, admit it—not everyone has a fail-safe backup policy in place. SyncBack’s free version of its backup utility is a surprisingly powerful and configurable little application that can fulfill virtually any backup need. After installing it, you will first need to set up a profile for either backing up or synchronization. The backup feature is used to simply copy files or directories to another area of your hard disk or even an external or shared network drive. It can also be set up to synchronize two folders in which files are constantly changed (to keep their contents similar). While creating a profile, besides specifying the source and destination directories, there are several tabs containing other powerful tools for fine-tuning your backup. For example, you can compress your backup to a password-protected Zip file or even upload it to an FTP server. You can also decide which file types you want to include

or exclude in the backup by using the Filter Options—for example, you can choose to copy only DOC, PPT and TXT files from your work folder. To ensure your files have been correctly copied, the program can compare files not just on a file size level, but also using checksums and time stamps. Each of these profiles can be configured to start or shutdown programs of your choice before running—we found this necessary when copying files that were locked for use by applications like e-mail clients, etc (though the commercial version of this software does have the ability to copy locked files). Finally, to make your backups truly transparent, the program can be configured to run its profiles in the background at pre-defined time intervals. You can even set schedules for individual profiles. For: Takes the tedium out of backups with a powerful feature set;free. Against: The free version does not have the ability to copy locked files.

Tame your graphics

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f you’re a purist and need to get the best out of your video display, there are few tools that can outshine PowerStrip. This freeware application is aimed squarely at your graphics card and monitor—using it, you can tweak virtually every aspect of the color, resolution and graphics capabilities of your computer. After installation, the program shows up as an icon in the system tray. Right-clicking on it will bring up a menu through which you can access four areas in your graphics sub-system: Application profiles, Display profiles, Color profiles and Performance profiles. A separate section lets you pull up information on your graphics card and monitor along with tools for enabling multiple monitors. In the Application profile, you can choose to enable or disable a variety of graphics features and set these to be triggered when a specific application is launched (for example, you can disable the screensaver while running your movie playback software). Among other functions in this section, you can choose

SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

| APPLICATIONS

Backup Utility

SyncBack Freeware V3.2.12

System requirements: Windows 98, 98SE, ME, NT 4, Windows 2000, Windows XP (Note: Windows 95 not supported)

Price Contact email Website

Free 2BrightSparks [email protected] www.2brightsparks.com

RATINGS Ease of use Features Performance Overall Rating

Find it on CHIP

CD

System Tweaking to hide windows, boost process priority, disable power management, etc. Next, the “Display profiles” allows fine control over various aspects of your display device. Be it a conventional monitor, a TFT or even a projector or plasma display, one can configure the display to run in standard as well as non-standard resolutions (such as widescreen or HDTV). Advanced users can also dig deeper and precisely control monitor timing parameters for extracting an exact video display. This capability is ideally suited to fine-tuning a home theater setup if you need to run a device like a projector or HDTV-capable display via your computer’s graphics card. If you are a designer and need the most precise of color calibrations with your display device, the “Color profiles” lets you configure brightness, contrast, gamma and color. For precise control, this can be done for individual color channels as well. For: A powerful tool for fine-tuning the graphics card and display; free. Against: Harmful if used incorrectly.

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PowerStrip 3.65

System requirements: Windows 95/98/Me/NT 4.0/2000/XP

Price Contact Website

Free EnTech Taiwan www.entechtaiwan.net

RATINGS Ease of use Features Performance Overall Rating

Find it on CHIP

CD

84

APPLICATIONS

| TESTED

Audio/Video Playback

VideoLAN VLC 0.8.4

System requirements: Windows 98/98SE/ME/ NT4.0/2000/XP

Price Contact Website

Free www.videolan.org

www.videolan.org

RATINGS Ease of use Features Performance Overall Rating

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CD

Disk Burning

Windows 95/98/ME/NT/2000/XP Free trial, To buy: $29.95 (Approx Rs 1,380) EZB Systems, Inc

www.ezbsystems.com

RATINGS Ease of use Features Performance Overall Rating Value for money

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ideoLAN is a single package download that contains numerous audio and video codecs (over 56 in this release) allowing it to play virtually any multimedia file you might want to throw at it. Like other players, this one also sports the ability to be skinned, allowing you to download additional themes and change its look. Its playlist capability lets you sort multimedia files for user specified playback. Compared other software of its kind, VideoLAN is light on system resources and with its native support for processor enhancements like MMX, SSE and 3DNow, multimedia file playback was smooth even on lower-end systems. This was especially apparent while seeking within video files—something that results in perceptibly sluggish response with other players like Media Player Classic. More than just drag-and-drop multimedia playback capability, this software even supports Telnet, allowing it to be remotely

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System requirements: Pentium 166 MHz or above,

Contact website

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controlled. Further, it can output video and audio files as a stream, enabling a user to host streaming multimedia files on a network, where the stream can be picked up from other systems on a LAN or via the Internet. It also allows digital video to be captured from an external Firewire or USB video capture device like a camcorder or cell phone. A nifty little capability is the mouse gesture feature—something that we’ve only seen in web browsers till date. This allows the program’s functionality to be completely controlled using the mouse by moving it in pre-defined strokes, much like what is seen in the Firefox or Opera web browser. Besides Windows, VideoLAN is available for download for other operating system platforms such as Mac OS X, Linux and BeOS. For: Efficient and very capable audio/ video playback; multi-OS support; capture and streaming; free. Against: None.

Back up those disks

UltraISO 8.2

Price

A Player for all

CD

n this age of large hard disks, there is hardly a dearth of space for storing important files. If you specifically need to back up your CDs and DVDs, there’s no better way to do it than to create an ISO image of them. An ISO image is a mirror image of the file structure on a CD or DVD disk. After taking an ISO image, you can easily store the file on another location and subsequently create an identical copy of your CD or DVD in case the original is damaged or lost. We found UltraISO to be an excellent tool for letting you work with these ISO images. Besides creating ISO files, this program allows you to open, convert and edit them as well. Besides creating ISO files from existing CDs and DVDs (it can create ISO file sizes of up to 10 GB), you can even create an ISO file from files and folders on your hard disk. The program is easy to install and use—the main interface is a lot like a regular disk creating application consisting of two windows: the upper window displays the contents of the ISO file while the lower is used to browse

the contents of your local drive. Creating a new ISO file is as simple as dragging and dropping files into the compilation window. Besides creating files, the program allows you to open and edit existing ISO files where you can add or delete files within it. An interesting aspect about this program is its comprehensive support for other file formats—besides ISO files, it can read over 30 other CD/DVD formats such as Nero, Alcohol 120%, Clone CD, Mac Hybrid CDs etc. Additionally, it can convert between these formats allowing you to port ISO images between applications: a brilliant feature in itself. UltraISO can also create bootable CDs and DVDs allowing you to specify a boot file of the operating system of your choice. It also works with DVD videos, Xbox and PS2 DVDs. The program supports add-on tools that extend its functionality, enabling users to create menu-driven DVDs, multiboot CDs, etc. For: Comprehensive image format support. Against: New users may find some of its features difficult to use. INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

TESTED

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WinXP Manager 4.98.3 menus, toolbars—ideal for adding that personalized touch to your computer. There is also a security setting that lets you manage and strengthen the security features of your operating system including passwords and network authentication, adding a further level of protection against intrusion. Finally, a set of miscellaneous utilities allows you to perform useful tasks like managing your computer remotely, controlling when users can log into the computer or back up your Outlook data. The Process Manager is an interesting tool which, like the Windows Task Manager, displays running processes but goes a step further by highlighting processes that are critically required to run the PC. For: A good set of tweaking tools for various system subsections; Auto Optimization feature; useful process manager. Against: Requires you to install .NET framework.

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SEPTEMBER 2006 | INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP

System requirements: Windows XP, .NET Framework Price

Free trial, To buy: $39.95 (Approx Rs 1,840)

Contact Website

Yamicsoft Software

www.yamicsoft.com

RATINGS Ease of use Features Performance Overall Rating Value for money

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System Utility

Deleted? No worries mistaken deletion is perhaps the worst thing that can happen to a person’s data files. In the event of such a tragedy, if you’re lucky, you should be able to locate and recover the file from your Windows Recycle Bin. However, most often than not, the Recovery Bin doesn’t do a good job of recovering files, especially with files deleted from mapped network drives, through the command prompt or older versions of office files, for example. In these cases, Undelete Professional Edition 5 offers a good set of options. This application is available in several versions addressing the home, professional and enterprise. It also has a server component that can be installed on a file server; this enables the network file recovery functionality when used in conjunction with the client application. In this client version, after installation the program checks for updates and then proceeds to scan your hard disk for the presence of recycle bins. It then creates a list of deleted files and folders and displays them in an interface similar to Windows

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System Utility

System supercharging inXP Manager is an optimization tool that goes beyond just tweaking your system—it addresses other applications like your browser, your internet connectivity, the registry etc. The application interface consists of various buttons on the left which when clicked displays the contents on a large pane on the right. There are tabs under the pane that allow you to navigate to other sections within a particular optimization area. The program allows you to access system information such as hardware configuration information, operating system information, DirectX version, user accounts, etc. Then comes the Optimizer that lets you tweak specific parts of the computer like the processor, the hard disk subsystem, etc. WinXP Manager also lets you clean out areas of your PC. The Customization tool lets you personalize various aspects of Windows XP interface such as the icons, the context

| APPLICATIONS

Explorer—the hard disk partitions are listed in a tree on the left pane while the contents of each of these drives are listed on the right. When loaded on the system, this application takes over the Windows Recycle Bin and replaces it with its own version that monitors file deletions on your partitions. Interestingly, the application was even able to locate and recover files that were deleted before it was installed. However, the trial version of the application does not allow the recovery of these files directly from the disk. Also, the application does not support the older 12-bit FAT system that is used on volumes under 16 MB (such as 1.44 MB floppy disks and low-capacity flash drives)—this could be a problem if you still use such devices. An interesting feature is the ability to save versions of certain types of files (like office documents) directly within the Undelete Recycle Bin. For: Ability to recover pre-install files; special support for MS Office documents. Against: Most features in the trial version are disabled.

Undelete Professional Edition 5

System requirements: Windows XP/2000 Professional /NT 4.0 Workstation

Price Contact Phone Website

Rs 3,000 Aladdin Multimedia Pvt Ltd 66936795

www.aladdinindia.com

RATINGS Ease of use Features Performance Overall Rating

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CD

86

APPLICATIONS

| FEATURE

Turbocharged Internet Now no more long waits while surfing! Thanks to AJAX, an increasing number of web pages are becoming faster and more user-friendly

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here are web sites where even a DSL connection is of no help—there is enough time to go get a coffee after you have clicked on the page. The reason for this is the browser window remains blank for a long time after you have clicked upon it. It takes ages for the next page to load and the pictures, graphics, texts and animations to appear on the screen. But all these peeves can be easily tackled with AJAX—a programming technology that helps in cutting down on the painfully long waiting time. It is found on an increasing number of web pages today. It is omnipresent in case of all the major players—Google Maps, Microsoft Live.com and Yahoo Photo-Community Flickr have already included this web turbo charger in their families of web sites. In case of most web pages, the user usually needs to click on a link at the corner of the map if he or she wishes to change the location on the map and then wait until the pictures for the new window are loaded. But this is not the case with an AJAX-Google user. Here, all he needs to do is select the map with the pointer, keep the left mouse button pressed and move the map wherever he wants. AJAX does not load any unnecessary graphics ballast in the background; it only loads the required windows. They are displayed only after being loaded completely. Not only is this far more convenient, but it is also faster as this requires less bandwidth for the data transfer. AJAX is a skillfully written Java script, combined with other standard technologies. The name “Asynchronous Java-Script and XML” suggests its meaning and also what it can actually do. AJAX designs web pages in a dynamic manner and thus relies on HTML with CSS, Java script and XML. This means—instead of reloading an entire web page and all elements with every clicked link, only those

contents that have been requested by you are reloaded and added to the web page. Until now, such effects could be achieved only with the help of Flash or Frames. But one drawback in both these technologies is that they don’t function with every browser. Flash animations require a plug-in and Frames has been presented in various ways. AJAX, on the other hand, works with all browsers and almost without any problems. However, users who have deactivated Java script cannot use AJAX web pages.

JavaScript is the key In this case, the JavaScript-command <XMLHttp Request> is the most important component of AJAX. It sends requests for XML data to the server as well as receives it. A JavaScript with this command is called the AJAX engine. It is responsible for complete

communication with the server on behalf of the browser and almost acts as an intelligent proxy. Now, if a link is clicked, the web page remains unchanged and does not disappear as was the case till now. AJAX receives the data in the background, and after the transfer, it incorporates the changes into the HTML page, adjusts the CSS-style model and updates the browser window. Only then can that part of the page that has been clicked be incorporated into the web page.

Adding AJAX to your web page The most essential part of every page is an appropriate JavaScript that needs to be adapted. Innumerable models for a wide variety of applications are available on web pages such as www.ajaxian.com. Let’s take Hello World, for instance. It allows you to add text to a web page later as soon

| How AJAX is already revolutionizing the Net More and more pages are already making use of AJAX. These include big players such as ‘Google Maps’ as well as smaller projects like the free Word-editor ‘Writely’ and the Open-source-script ‘Lightbox’ for their own home page. More tempo Ajax ensures variable zoom facility and free scrolling of the card on Google maps

More comfort Light box, the virtual light box of www.huddletogether.com loads pictures in large format without opening a new page More functions Ajax will come into its own with ‘Writely’—a complete word editor INTELLIGENT COMPUTING CHIP | SEPTEMBER 2006

FEATURE

| APPLICATIONS

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| AJAX accelerates the Internet

| Flipside

Normal request

Application of AJAX so far has not always been advantageous. The “back” button of the web browser is rendered useless. The browser returns to the last known address and not to the last web page contents modified by AJAX. It is thus not possible to set a bookmark on pages modified by AJAX except on the source page. Search engines also face a similar problem—their search messengers don’t recognize AJAX contents. This leads to them not being indexed. To design a page that is suitable for the disabled, one has to forego AJAX. Programs reading or translating web pages fail due to the dynamic contents.

Browser

Browser

Browser

Link

Without AJAX The entire page is reloaded when the link is clicked. The browser window goes blank and the user has to wait

Request with AJAX Browser Link

Browser

Browser

Link

With AJAX The user clicks on the AJAX link, the browser window remains unchanged for a moment and then the user can read further without an interruption. The current page is incorporated as soon as AJAX gets an answer as a corresponding link is activated. The HTML code of a newly developed web page can be hardly differentiated from that of a classic page. The basic structure remains the same. This includes tables, forms and other elements such as DIV tags (A

tag is used in XHTML and divides a web page into manageable parts, thus enabling a web page to be updated in sections). These serve as place holders and link the content and the structure. A simple DIV tag for AJAX appears as follows:

In this case, the DIV tag has a definite ID . This is important so that AJAX can subsequently insert the desired text on the DIV tag position. In addition, a script-design is allocated to this ID in our example. This is done via a separate CSS-file (Cascading Style Sheet). It then appears as follows: #test•{ display:•none; } This design is indeed very easy: The implies that the text is

not displayed for the first time (in this case ). The JavaScript must take the XML file from the server for it to appear. But this takes place only if the user requests so with a click. The content of the XML file appears as follows: Hello•World The XML tag can have any name, as it is not an HTML command. In our JavaScript, we have defined as the source for the text that has to be displayed. The surfer clicks on a link and AJAX loads from the XML file. On a normal web page. In case of bigger text size, the surfer would have to wait till it is completely loaded. In this case however, the surfer can instead continue to execute further actions on the web page. AJAX incorporates the data as soon as it is provided by the server in XML format. The DIV tag appears as follows: Hello World