The Zone

Transcend has proudly announced that its StoreJet 25M and StoreJet 25C portable hard drives have been awarded the prestigious "Red Dot" award for excellent design quality by the International Jury of 2009 Red Dot design competition. The judges commented favorably on the StoreJet 25M's superior shockproof design concept that incorporates an attractive anti-slip silicone outer shell and advanced military grade anti-shock technology - a combination that not only offers excellent protection against impact damage, but also prevents the drive from slipping or falling in the first place. The eye-catching StoreJet 25C was praised for its luxurious polished stainless steel case with piano-gloss finish connection panel that makes it a truly fashionable piece of technology. The judges also noted that the distinctive textured backing of the StoreJet 25C not only provides a stable non-slip base for resting the drive on a table, but also added character and enhanced tactile feel.

Hot on the heels of NVIDIA's littlest brother in its GTX 200 performance series graphic cards, we managed to snag an engineering sample for the up and coming GTS 250. With just the card sent in, we didn't have a chance to see what else came with the complete package but it definitely seems to be one of the higher end models. This is mainly because it comes with a custom Zalman fansink, built-in HDMI, DVI and VGA ports and about 1GB worth of GDDR3 memory. Here's our first sneak peak at its performance for both 3DMark06 as well as 3DMark Vantage. For a full in depth review check it out in our latest issue of HWM (HWM April 2009).

We managed to get our hands on a Samsung X460 and take it for a spin. Featuring an ultra slim design that may give the Macbook Air a run for its money, this new addition to Samsung's line of notebooks holds plenty of promise. Like its NC10 netbook counterpart, it is also rumoured to be competitively priced. Couple this with its excellent performance and we may have a sleeper hit on our hands. Check out the PCMark05 score it gave us below. For a full review, pick up the latest copy of HWM (HWM March 2009).

As part of Samsung's renewed attempt at piercing the personal computer market they have introduced their take on the netbook. With a classy design and ultra light casing, the Samsung NC10 looks great. Rumoured to be priced much more competitively (as in cheaper!) to get into the already saturated market, this 10" netbook will be something to watch when it comes out in force. We managed to lay our hands on an advance version. So far we found that the NC10 has an awesome battery life, stays cooler under pressure and has more than reasonable performance. For a full review of the Samsung NC10, pick up a copy of HWM (HWM March 2009).

We finally managed to get our hands on one of those miniscule projectors that you can fit into your pocket. As you can see above, it really is small enough to fit into your pocket. From the few test spins that we've taken we've managed to ascertain that the RCG Virtual Vision 5100 Pocket Projector has a built-in fan (so it should stay cooler than its fan-less compatriots), its based on a 10 Lumens LED lamp (so it should save oodles on electricity) and on top of having a built-in speaker also has touch-sensitive controls. For a full review check it out in the latest issue of HWM.

Hard Drive maker Seagate has taken quite a bit of flak lately from members of its own forum when instances of their 7200.11 hard drives, particularly the 1TB model have been failing due to a firmware problem. Till date, the company has not released a new firmware although you can check if your drive is affected using SeaTools. 

More information on the forum threads below;

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=3668

http://forums.seagate.com/stx/board/message?board.id=ata_drives&thread.id=4452

With the release of the GTX 295 it was only a matter of time before NVIDIA went and overclocked their most powerful single GPU graphic card the GTX 280 and this is exactly what they have done with the release of the GTX 285. We managed to get our hands on one from one of the big boys and have proceeded to do a hands-on right here. Check out the 3DMark Vantage score below but for a full analysis and report check it out in our latest issue of HWM.

Burnout Paradise is easily one of the best racing games of 2008, and we're looking forward to its PC incarnation next month. Taiwanese motherboard company Elitegroup Computer Systems appears to be equally excited too, which may explain the rather obvious "homage" of the game on the box cover of one of their latest motherboards. The similarity is quite uncanny, don't you think?

Once upon a time to set up a hotspot you'd need a wireless access point or router, some network cables, an Internet connection and a computer with all the networking know-how required to set up such a thing. We recently managed to get our hands on a mobile 3G hotspot device that makes a hotspot using your HSDPA 3G or 3.5G USB modem. All you need to do is plug and play! For a full review check it out in our latest issue of HWM.

AMD's latest 45nm 'Deneb' chips or the Phenom II series has just come in. After our brief foray with Intel's Core i7 which raised the performance bar, AMD is looking to up the ante by offering quad cores that can overclock even better. With an overclock speed of 6.3GHz (only achievable with Liquid Nitrogen) and a tougher internal architecture (that can withstand and be more stable with that level of overclocking) the Phenom II processors are set to become major players on the enthusiast scene. Will it be enough to compete against the i7? How will this overclocking performance translate to normal performance? Find out with our indepth review of the Phenom II in the latest issue of HWM. Check out a little view of its standard non-OC PCMark05 Score below:

It's that time of the year again, and with the advent of Christmas, PIKOM's PC Fair proved to be another hunting ground for computer users looking forward to great bargains on tech products as well as computer components. The highlight of this edition of the Fair would definitely be the digital camera bargains as well as really affordable memory and storage products on offers. Antivirus companies were duking it out too in an effort to boost sales with licences going as low as RM40 per year! Check out more happenings and also our booth babe coverage after the jump!

We managed to get our hands on HP's yet to be released 2nd gen netbook, the HP Mini 1000. HP's first netbook, the HP Mini-note 2133 was one of the top netbooks in the market, owing especially to its business netbook-like nature and extremely comfortable keyboard. HP's Mini 1000 retains the keyboard but makes the netbook slimmer, lighter, more energy efficient and more powerful. It looks even better than before with its glossy black imprint lid. For a more detailed run-down of the Mini 1000's better attributes (and better pics) check out our latest issue of HWM (December 2008).

We managed to get our hands on the ASUS P6T Deluxe with the OC Palm. For those not in the know this is an X58 board for the new Nehalem processor that comes with an external BIOS post device that also allows you to do some simple overclocking without accessing the BIOS. The OC Palm definitely makes the whole process simpler and comes complete with a hardware monitor (so you don't need to have separate thermometer and voltmeters to do overclocking) but it by no means replaces the BIOS settings. For a full review on the board and the OC Palm check it out in our latest issue of HWM ( HWM Dec 2008 ).

After the IDF (Intel Developer Forum), Intel was kind enough to release its ground breaking SSD for testing as part of its Nehalem platform reviews. Now most people today scoff at the idea of using SSD as a hard disk mainly because most SSD are only about 8GB or so, just barely enough to put the OS and the office suite. However, Intel's SSD is a whopping 80GBs which is about the size of a standard hard disk these days. While testing out Nehalem and its various boards we also got to play around with Intel's 80GB SSD and boy was it fun. Considering most 7200 RPM hard disks only get a score of about 4000+ in PCMark05, the SSD blew us out of the water with its score. Check it out below. For a full review of the drive and its Nehalem counterparts, check out the Hot off the Labs and our Nehalem board reviews in the latest issue of HWM.

The last Intel Developers Forum (IDF) for the year happened in Taiwan with not much new revealed. As usual there was mention of MIDs (although no definite date on when they'll be released), the associated Moorestown PC display, architectural information on the Nehalem (the usual QuickPaths and integrated GPU) and scant news of the Larrabee GPU. We did manage to get shots of some stuff which did catch our eye but if you've seen them at other IDFs this year we wouldn't be surprised. For a more detailed report on our IDF Taiwan trip check it out in the latest issue of HWM.