The 100 Best Products of 2008

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology News

This year’s tech gems–as picked by PC World editors and readers–will leave you more productive, connected, and entertained.

After a good deal of–ahem–lively discussion, the editors at PC World have completed this year’s list of the 100 best technology products available today. How did we do it? After nominating hundreds of devices, apps, sites, and services we knew to be good, we rated each one on its design, functionality, performance, and impact; the ones garnering the highest total scores made our list. Note that we chose not to rate products specifically on their price or value, focusing instead on their overall quality. After the scoring was over and the dust had cleared, we had a list that served, among other things, to remind us of what an exciting time in tech this truly is, with game-changing product development happening on many fronts. (more…)

Photoshop to get GPU and physics acceleration

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology News

Santa Clara (CA) – GPU acceleration is one of the most significant trends in today hardware industry, opening the doors to an entirely new class of software. It appears that the next Photoshop will be one of the first mainstream applications that will tap into the GPU for a speed up. And, at least from what we have seen during a first demonstration, the progress is simply stunning. (more…)

Top 10 Firefox 3 Features

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology News

The newest version of our favorite open source web browser, Mozilla Firefox 3, offers dozens of new features and fixes, but only a handful will make the most dramatic difference in your everyday browsing. After 17 months of alphas and betas, Mozilla’s finally made a feature-complete release candidate available, so it’s time to spotlight the biggest improvements that will make “Gran Paradiso” the browser to beat. Nearly everything in the open-source app has gotten a second look from the minds at Mozilla, from back buttons to bookmarks, address bars to add-ons, passwords to performance, and the changes will make Firefox 3 worth the upgrade come its official release date, slated for sometime next month. Let’s take a look at the 10 best upgrades in Firefox 3, and how they’ll bolster your browsing, after the jump. (more…)

Firefox 3 On Track To Be Speediest Browser

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology News

Now that Mozilla’s locked down Firefox 3′s final feature set with Friday’s push of release candidate 1, it’s official: while Firefox 3 boasts some great new features like a smart address bar and better bookmarks manager, the best reason to upgrade will be for the performance improvements. Firefox 3 is noticeably faster and more stable than Firefox 2 to the casual user and Mozilla engineers have numbers that show it will be the fastest browser on the market. Tech site TechWeb reports: (more…)

Intel to update desktop CPU lines in 3Q08

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology News

Intel is planning to cut desktop CPU prices in the third quarter this year, along with the launch of more quad-core and dual-core models, according to sources at motherboard makers. The performance-level Core 2 Quad Q9650 with a core frequency of 3GHz will launch priced at US$530 in thousand-unit tray quantities, while the Core 2 Quad Q9550 will drop around 40% from its original price of US$530 to US$316. The Core 2 Quad 9450, currently priced at US$316, will be phased out of the market to be replaced by the Core 2 Quad 9400 at 2.66GHz and a price of US$266. The Core 2 Quad Q9300 and Q6700 will both be phased out at the same time too, leaving the Q6600 as the only 65nm quad-core CPU left in Intel’s lineup, and which will drop from US$224 to US$203. (more…)

NVIDIA Unleashes World’s Fastest GPU Again

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology News

NVIDIA once again announces the world’s fastest graphics processing unit until the next one rolls around, the GeForce 8800 Ultra. Come May 15th, PC gamers around the world will be able to shell out somewhere around $1000 ( 699 with tax in UK monies) for video cards equipped with the cutting edge GPU with 768MB of memory, which runs 10-15 times faster than the 8800 GTX, previous holder of the world’s fastest title. General manager of desktop GPUs at NVIDIA Ujesh Desai is very pleased indeed. (more…)

Internet 2 reaches 9.08 Gbps

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology News

Tokyo (Japan) – Scientists working on the bigger, better and most importantly faster Internet 2 have achieved a new world speed record.  The Internet 2 Consortium has just announced that in late December and early January, scientists at the Univesity of Tokyo slammed gigabytes of information on an around-the-world path at more than nine gigabits per second. (more…)

NVIDIA Reveals New Mid-Range DX10 GPUs

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology News

NVIDIA today announced the expansion of the NVIDIA GeForce 8 Series line-up to include three new mid-range DirectX 10 GPUs to include the NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GTS, NVIDIA GeForce 8600 GT, and NVIDIA GeForce 8500 GT. These new cards join the already announced NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GTX and GeForce 8800 GTS.  The new 8600 series are available now from retailers, and the GeForce 8500 GT will be released on or before May 1st. (more…)

The 50 Best Tech Products of All Time

// July 2nd, 2008 // No Comments » // Technology News

From breakthrough hardware to time-honored software, we salute those amazing products that changed technology–and our lives–forever.Christopher Null, PC World