Desktops

We’ve always been intrigued by the EFI-X dongle that fools OS X into running on stock Intel machines, Software Update and all, and now it looks like the company a company called EFi-X USA is taking things one step further — it’s planning on shipping pre-built machines capable of running Apple’s OS. The EFi-X Millennium 4 will sport an overclocked 3.8GHz Core 2 Quad, 4GB of RAM, and a GeForce 8800 GTS graphics card in an Antec P180 case, all for $1,899 plus the $199 EFi-X dongle. The idea is to avoid any Psystar-style legal troubles by leaving the purchase and installation of OS X up to the end user, but apparently no one at EFi-X USA has talked to a lawyer or even read our previous posts on the matter, since Apple’s lawsuit against Psystar turns as much on contributory and induced copyright infringement as it does on Psystar’s direct violation of Apple’s OS X EULA. In other words, it’s illegal to sell a product expressly designed to allow customers to infringe copyrights — a principle Napster and Grokster made famous, you’ll recall. Plus we’re pretty certain there’s a DMCA argument in there since the EFi-X dongle circumvents Apple’s protections on OS X — the validity of which Psystar is actually testing in its revised countersuit. We’ll see how it goes — we’re seriously worried that these companies are doing far more harm to the OSx86 scene than good.

P.S.- Oh, and honestly, Apple, if you want this entire headache to go away, all you have to do is produce a reasonably-priced, configurable midrange tower. Think about it.

Update: We’ve just been pinged by the original EFi-X team, who tell us that EFi-X USA has nothing to do with them, that they have no plans to sell actual machines, and that they strongly disapprove of EFi-X USA. Shades of Psystar’s use of netkas’s work on OSx86 without permission, we’d say — shady shady.

[Thanks, Mark]

Well what do you know, a real live CherryPal has finally made it into the wilds. TGDaily has the honors of having a first look at the $249 cloud computer. While impressed by the small size and fanless design, the build quality was “flimsy” making the device feel very much like pre-production product. The Xubuntu-based PC with Xfce desktop instantly recognized and connected to the reviewers WiFi network for quick login to the CherryPal cloud. Great, but things fell apart when loading Firefox onto the 400MHz Freescale processor — the sluggish response experienced is a critical fail for a PC whose applications are stored in the cloud. Something that might be sorted out in future builds of Firefox… or not.

At just under two grand, NVIDIA’s new Quadro CX graphics card certainly isn’t for everybody, but its ability to add some GPU acceleration to the apps in Adobe’s Creative Suite 4 has no doubt piqued the interest of quite a few professionals out there and, according to PC Perspective, they likely won’t be disappointed. On the card’s big selling points, PC Perspective found that it mostly delivered as NVIDIA promised, with the stand-out result being a 2x speed increase in H.264 encoding times in Premiere CS4, something NVIDIA and Elemental eventually hope to increase to 10x with a few more updates to the RapidHD software. The card also expectedly provided a significant boost to Photoshop CS4 but, unlike with the RapidHD plug-in for Premiere, many of those performance gains can also be achieved with other OpenGL-supporting GPUs (though obviously not quite to the same degree). Hit up the link below for the complete rundown, plus a few videos that show just what the card (and a suitable system) are capable of.

[Thanks, Ryan]

HP just announced it will begin offering a desktop pre-loaded with a build of SUSE Linux. This joins the company’s other non-Windows offering, the previously announced (but not yet available) Mini 1000 netbook, which is equipped with its Ubuntu-based MIE. The new model — the Compaq dc5850 — is unfortunately aimed at the enterprise and education markets, so while we’re glad to see HP dipping its toes into open source waters, we’d be more enthused if the computer-maker followed in Dell’s footsteps and offered a wider range of options. The PC will be available on December 15th for $519, though it doesn’t appear that the average consumer will be able to buy it — at least not yet.

[Via Computerworld]

Dell just dropped the new tiny-tower OptiPlex 160 for businesses and educational markets looking to save space and “go green.” This 1.85-inch thick machine packs the usual assortment of ports, and an integrated power supply (no brick!), but unfortunately forgoes the integrated disc drive. The $563 base model incorporates a single-core Intel Atom processor, 80GB HDD, 1GB RAM, integrated video, and Vista Home Basic SP1 — most of which reminds us of the Eee Box, other than the extra two Benjamins Dell’s asking for. You can also spring for a 64GB SSD and an external DVD-ROM drive, and there will be a dual-core Atom option in 2009. While folks over in Round Rock envision these in the workplace, we certainly wouldn’t mind taking one home for a romantic weekend with Ubuntu.

[Thanks, Ivana]

We’ve already heard about NVIDIA’s apparent interest in getting into the netbook space, despite the fact that it dropped its own grand designs with VIA not too long ago, and it now looks like it could be wrangling its way into other Atom-based territory as well, at least if DigiTimes’ latest reporting is to be believed. Supposedly, NVIDIA has been working on getting its MCP79 chipset to support Intel’s Atom processors, but it’s apparently only focusing on desktop-bound nettops during the “initial period,” and leaving the more plentiful netbooks for another day. Unfortunately, there aren’t many more specifics than that, but ASUS, Gigabyte and MSI are apparently welcoming the partnership, and saying that it’ll give them “more pricing flexibility.”

Apparently, AMD has officially announced the release of its Phenom II processor — though if they did, they forgot to actually, you know, announce it. According to EE Times, the quad-core, 45nm chip is said to support DDR2 and DDR 3 memory (the latter up to 1333MHz) and is available at both 3GHz and 2.8GHz speeds (for $275 and $235, respectively). If that’s not exciting enough, a 65nm (DDR2) version of the chip is also availabe. The article winds up by saying that the chips are expected to appear in systems on display at the upcoming CES. Sound good? Now all we need is an actual, official announcement. Like, from the chip maker itself. We’re looking at you, AMD. Call us. You have the number.

[Via Register Hardware]

Update: So, what do you know? It looks like the EE Times link is down without any sort of explanation. We’re not exactly sure what to make of this, but we’ll keep you posted regardless. And no, AMD hasn’t called either.

After the latest green PC (that’d be the Advent Eco PC, pictured above) launched in late September, we don’t suspect too many Britons rushed out to get one. Why? ‘Cause the £600 ($880) list price has already sunk to around £440 ($646). If that figure is a little more in your budget, you might want to give the read link a look. The critics over at Techcast Network found the design to be fairly attractive, the keyboard to be a touch cramped (and unnecessarily wireless) and the performance to be “nothing to write home about.” Comically enough, they also point out that an Atom CPU would’ve probably increased the “greenness,” and quite frankly, this machine lacks the raw horsepower necessary to adequately handle Windows Vista. But hey, there’s lots of pretty pictures to glance at below even if you’ve no interest in bringing one home.

Looking for a completely impractical and ridiculously expensive cooling solution for your new i7? Danamics has your number with its LM10 CPU cooler, full of a sodium and potassium mixture (called NaK) that would explode if it came in contact with water (which, remember, is what you’re mostly made of), but is perfectly inert inside its little pipes. We’re more worried about the pump: a marvel of modern tech that uses a powerful electromagnet to create flow — not exactly the sort of thing you want next to your RAID array. It all sounds menacing and lovely and would be a nifty conversation starter at your next LAN party, but sadly it simply doesn’t perform according to NordicHardware — it’s beaten by $50 heat pipe cooler from Thermalright. At $350 the LM10 seems to be an impressive technological trophy-piece, but unless we can amp up that magnet and spray NaK all over our case during an RIAA raid, we think we’ll pass.

As William Gibson once wrote, “the street finds its own uses for things.” Of course, the future he envisioned was populated by cut-throat characters with names like Dex Cowb0t, mercenary-types who made their money the only way they knew how: with custom cyberspace decks, hopped up on designer drugs like “splurge” and “spazz.” What he never understood was that the only true measure of a technology is its ability to aid a bored populace in its pursuit of nostalgia and novelty. And by these standards, the Pico-ITX board might be one of the most important technological breakthroughs of its time (roughly 2007-2010 CE). Where would the hackers and case modders of our humble era be if it weren’t for this guy? They wouldn’t be shoving PCs into old Game Boy cases, that’s for sure. Case in point: the Linksys Bt320g seedbox project places VIA’s EPIA PX10000G mobo and a 320GB HDD in an old Linksys shell (and a 400GB HDD in a second router). The man responsible doesn’t say whether or not this one was intended to thwart they copyright police in the event of a search and seizure, but on the other hand we’re assuming that he isn’t going to be seeding OpenOffice on the thing either. If retro computing’s your bag, we’ve found a Timex Sinclair ZX81 case mod that should bring you considerable joy. Unfortunately the membrane keyboard’s been disabled, but if you don’t mind using a USB keyboard with a machine that originally sported 1KB RAM (at a whopping 3.25MHz), you might want to hit the read link and see how it’s done.

Read - Linksys BT320G case mod
Read - Sinclair ZX81 turned into PC