by Mark Hachman 09.14.09
When AMD's new Radeon HD cards launch in a few weeks, the showstopper will be a technology the company calls Eyefinity, which can power up to six monitors on a single graphics card. At a press event outlining AMD's Vision strategy, AMD showed off a jaw-dropping 24 30-inch monitors, all powered by a single PC with four graphics cards. AMD's software combined the images, producing a single 7680-by- 3200 image using the six cards, and what apparently was a 30,720-by-12,800 image spread over a whopping twenty-four monitors. Old-timers may remember Matrox Graphics, which currently sells kits to do what AMD promises to do natively. As Jason Cross noted last night, a customer is going to be much less likely to buy from Matrox versus AMD, which actively supports its products with driver updates almost every week. Details on the new graphics cards (which include the Radeon HD 5870, with a 825-MHz core clock, 1-2 Gbytes of DDR2 memory at 5.2 GHz, and 1600 shaders, according to Fudzilla) are all NDA, and we didn't sit in on the presentation. Expect six DisplayPort connectors, without a legacy VGA connector. Samsung said it will actively support EyeFinity technology with a series of small-bezel monitors. This is critical, as gamers can now place a series of monitors right next to each other to create an eye-popping display (or, I suppose, combine a few cheap LCD TVs for the same effect). "Normally a 24-screen machine would cost about $10,000 to run, and would require four engineers and a nuclear physicist to turn it on," said Nigel Dessau, the chief marketing officer of AMD.
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Monday, September 14, 2009
Microsoft Cranks Up Windows 7 Marketing Machine
By Rick Whiting, Sep. 14, 2009
Microsoft continues to set the stage for next month's general availability of Windows 7, accelerating the availability of toolkits to spur adoption of the next-generation desktop operating system and hyping the success of early deployments. Monday Microsoft said it would release its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2009 R2 late next month to help organizations migrate to the upcoming Windows 7 -- right around the Oct. 22 scheduled availability of Windows 7 and much earlier than the original release date of early 2010. The company also released information about several early Windows 7 deployments the company said demonstrated the total cost of ownership (TCO) advantages of implementing Windows 7. Last week Microsoft released the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010, a "solution accelerator" that IT managers will use to deploy Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. A release candidate of the toolkit debuted in August, but the final version was not expected until after the Oct. 22 rollout of Windows 7. Microsoft's overall message: We're not waiting and neither should you.
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Microsoft continues to set the stage for next month's general availability of Windows 7, accelerating the availability of toolkits to spur adoption of the next-generation desktop operating system and hyping the success of early deployments. Monday Microsoft said it would release its Microsoft Desktop Optimization Pack 2009 R2 late next month to help organizations migrate to the upcoming Windows 7 -- right around the Oct. 22 scheduled availability of Windows 7 and much earlier than the original release date of early 2010. The company also released information about several early Windows 7 deployments the company said demonstrated the total cost of ownership (TCO) advantages of implementing Windows 7. Last week Microsoft released the Microsoft Deployment Toolkit 2010, a "solution accelerator" that IT managers will use to deploy Windows 7 and Windows Server 2008 R2. A release candidate of the toolkit debuted in August, but the final version was not expected until after the Oct. 22 rollout of Windows 7. Microsoft's overall message: We're not waiting and neither should you.
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Bing Gets Visual Search Capability
By Paul McDougall September 14, 2009
Microsoft on Monday launched an enhancement to Bing that allows users of the search engine to find certain items by viewing images instead of sifting through pages of text-based Internet links. For instance, a search on HDTVs yields rows of images of flat-panel televisions. The results can be grouped by manufacturer, display technology, screen size, and resolution. Similarly, a query on new cars renders pictures of various models that are sortable by automaker, mileage, price, and vehicle type. At present, Bing's visual search engine is in the beta stage and is limited to several search categories predetermined by Microsoft. But company officials believe the technology has big potential and could help Microsoft close the gap with market leader Google. "It's clear that images play a big part in helping consumers with a variety of search activities," said Bing product manager Todd Schwartz, in a blog post Monday. A study by Microsoft found that consumers can process image results 20% faster than text-only search results, according to Schwartz. "Visual search is a new way to formulate and refine your search queries through imagery, particularly for sets of results that tend to be more structured," wrote Schwartz. "What you'll see is an amazing new visual search experience," said Schwartz.
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Microsoft on Monday launched an enhancement to Bing that allows users of the search engine to find certain items by viewing images instead of sifting through pages of text-based Internet links. For instance, a search on HDTVs yields rows of images of flat-panel televisions. The results can be grouped by manufacturer, display technology, screen size, and resolution. Similarly, a query on new cars renders pictures of various models that are sortable by automaker, mileage, price, and vehicle type. At present, Bing's visual search engine is in the beta stage and is limited to several search categories predetermined by Microsoft. But company officials believe the technology has big potential and could help Microsoft close the gap with market leader Google. "It's clear that images play a big part in helping consumers with a variety of search activities," said Bing product manager Todd Schwartz, in a blog post Monday. A study by Microsoft found that consumers can process image results 20% faster than text-only search results, according to Schwartz. "Visual search is a new way to formulate and refine your search queries through imagery, particularly for sets of results that tend to be more structured," wrote Schwartz. "What you'll see is an amazing new visual search experience," said Schwartz.
Read ore here -->Link
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