WD Ships Half-Terabyte SATA And 120GB Scorpio Drives

Albatron Announces GeForce 7300 GS Series

Print Industry Leaders Publish Key Color Standard

Grandstream Announces H.264 IP Video Phone

WD Ships Half-Terabyte SATA And 120GB Scorpio Drives

Western Digital announced it is shipping its new high-capacity 500 GB Serial ATA WD Caviar SE16 desktop-class hard drives. Providing a half terabyte of capacity for data-intensive applications such as graphic design, digital video editing, personal video recorders and advanced business computing, WD Caviar SE16 500 GB drives also deliver high 7,200 RPM performance with 300 MB/s transfer rate, 16 MB cache and Native Command Queuing (NCQ).

WD Caviar SE16 500 GB (model WD5000KS) hard drives may be ordered on the company's online store (www.westerndigital.com) for $349.99 USD. Customers can currently take advantage of free standard shipping on orders of more than $200.00.

WD Caviar SE16

WD Scorpio

The company also introduced its next-generation WD Scorpio mobile hard drives. Now shipping in capacities up to 120 GB, the latest model WD Scorpio drives are equipped with either the EIDE or Serial ATA interfaces. Offering performance from 5,400 RPM spin speed, WD Scorpio operates with power requirements comparable to 4,200 RPM drives to yield lower power consumption for longer system battery life and increased long-term drive reliability. Technological advancements made in the company's WD Scorpio line of mobile hard drives also provide customers optimized acoustics for quiet operation. The drives feature 12 ms seek time and up to 8 MB cache.

WD Scorpio 120 GB EIDE (model WD1200VE) hard drives are currently shipping in volume and are available on the company's online (www.westerndigital.com) store for $234.99 USD, where customers can currently take advantage of free standard shipping on orders over $200. WD Scorpio 120 GB SATA (model WD1200BEVS) is scheduled to begin shipping next month.

Source: Western Digital

Albatron Announces GeForce 7300 GS Series

Albatron has announced the GeForce 7300 GS series of PCI-Express VGA cards. The novelties are based on NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GS GPU that employs the smaller 90-nm process technology, which lowers distances that data travels, lowers power consumption and lowers heat which in effect raises performance and stability. The condensed technology also results in a smaller and cheaper GPU die thus lowering the price of the card.

The GeForce 7300 GS series also uses TurboCache technology which allows a VGA card to borrow portions of system memory, again lowering the cost of memory on the card. Albatron's 7300 GS series includes cards with 64 MB, 128 MB all the way up to 256 MB of on-board memory which is double the memory suggested by NVIDIA's official specification. These cards use the newer TurboCache 2.0 technology which makes more efficient use of on-board memory which requires less read access from system memory, enhancing Turbo Cache effects and increasing performance.

The amount of total memory available to the card using Turbo Cache is dependant on the onboard memory and the amount of system memory available. The memory bus is 64-bit but is compensated by TurboCache performance.

The GeForce 7300 GS GPU, previously codenamed G72, contains 4 Pixel Shader pipelines and 3 Vertex Shaders. The default core clock is 550 MHz. It also supports Microsoft's DirectX 9.0c, Shader Model 3.0 programming standards and HDR (High Dynamic Range Lighting). This GPU is also geared up with NVIDIA's latest video technology PureVideo which provides non-CPU invasive, DVD-player quality encoding and decoding facilities which also includes HDTV capabilities.

Source: Albatron

Print Industry Leaders Publish Key Color Standard

A 27-company print industry consortium today began releasing key color components of the architecture used by clients worldwide for the high speed printing of bills, statements and other customer communications. The AFP Color Consortium, created by IBM in October 2004, is publishing the new open standard as part of an effort to spur innovation in the rapidly accelerating high-end color print arena.

The consortium has been working collaboratively to define the color management portion of IBM's Advanced Function Presentation (AFP) architecture. Members are designing the architecture to help businesses develop device-independent color applications, resources and workflows that can be printed initially with high-quality grayscales and, eventually, in color.

The AFP Color Consortium currently includes members from 27 international companies. Hardware vendors: IBM, Kodak, Lexmark, Oce, Xeikon and Xerox. Software vendors: CDP Communications, Cincom, Compart Systemhaus, COPI, Crawford Technologies, DocuCorp International, Document Sciences Corporation, Elixir Technologies, Emtex, Exstream Software, GMC Software Technology, Group 1, Intermate, Inventive Designers, ISIS Papyrus, Metavante, MPI, Printsoft, Solimar Systems, StreamServe and Xenos Group.

Also today, the consortium announced the formation of a new on-line community — afpcolor.org. The Web site is designed to provide information and documentation on the open color elements of the AFP architecture, which the consortium believes will help speed adoption of color transaction printing and offer more flexibility to clients.

Source: IBM

Grandstream Announces H.264 IP Video Phone

Grandstream Networks announced the new GXV-3000, a next-generation advanced IP video phone based on SIP standard. GXV-3000 features the latest H.264 real-time video codec, an advanced high-resolution camera sensor, and a thin 5.6-inch TFT color LCD. GXV-3000 is optimized for evolving video and imaging standards by Texas Instruments' TMS320DM643 digital media processor.

GXV-3000 supports the latest H.264 international real-time video codec standard (base profile) with QVGA or CIF resolution, up to 30 fps frame rate, and at bit rates between 64Kbps and 1Mbps.

GXV-3000 features an adjustable advanced VGA resolution camera sensor (with 1-touch ON/OFF switch for privacy control), a 5.6-inch TFT color LCD (2-dimensionally rotatable to allow nearly all viewing angles), 5 navigation keys, 3 line indicators (each of which supports independent SIP account), visual voice/video message indicator, hands-free speakerphone with advanced acoustic echo cancellation, dual 10M/100M Ethernet ports (switch or router mode configurable), 2 USB ports, 2.5mm headset jack, and RCA style audio/video output jack to allow simultaneous video output to TV. In addition, it also supports video call Hold/Transfer/Forward, 3-way conference, audio mute and camera block, video phone book, mirror camera, picture-in-picture, 4x zoom (2x optical plus 2x digital), on-screen-display, auto focus and auto exposure, anti-flickering, video capture & save, configurable screen-saver pictures, downloadable music ring tones, and intuitive graphic user interface.

GXV-3000 will be available for purchase at a suggested retail price of US$295. Grandstream expects to start volume shipment of GXV-3000 in March 2006. The GXV-3000 package will include a universal switching power supply and a 6 ft. Ethernet cable.

Source: Grandstream Networks

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