Eee lovers will be pleased to hear that Asus recently confirmed the Eee PC 904 HD will be hitting the high streets soon. In a recent press release, Asus revealed exclusively to PC Retail that the new Eee will be launched "in a matter of weeks" to the UK market. It will be the cheapest of the new models and will ship with the same chassis as the 1001 with a 8.9 inch screen - a good inch smaller than the flagship model. The good news is a full size keyboard. The bad news is that it will lose the swanky solid state drive found on other models for a conventional hard drive - hence the HD after it's name. Bet you were thinking Hi Def. Ha! This is afterall a cut down version of sorts for people wanting the Eee experience on a wee budget.

The price will be very tempting at around £250. No news on the rumoured 905 model. Lets hope we see some price drops on the older models to make way for the new.

The C7 is dead, long live the Isaiah or, to call it something a little bit less biblical,  ong live the VIA Nano™.

The Nano is a 64 bits CPU made using a 65 nanometres process, with 1MB of L2 cache and an 800 MHz FSB; it will require between the 25W of the L2100 (1.8 GHz ) all the way down to the 5W of the U24000 (1.0 GHz ). Maybe you don't think that's special, but it means a huge plus if we compare it's performance with that of the C7. Don't believe us? check this out:

We still await for real reviews. For now, all we can say is that, based on the data provided in another graph, it's performance under OfficeBench 2007 is comparable with that of a Celeron-M running at the same frequency. Of course, we're extrapolating from results offered by VIA when comparing the efficiency of both processors. You need to have faith in them, first.

Link: VIA.

Among the things on display at Computex 2008, one we'd like to point out is the case design by Antec that surely deserves a place up there in the pantheon of bizarre commercial cases ever made. It's still in the prototype stage, but the Antec Skeleton doesn't hide it's virtues. Just don't bring it to a LAN party if your components are not insured.

The whole system is refrigerated by a single 250 mm working at a low speed, and from the looks of it, that shouldn't be a problem for those wishing to build fairly powerful computers.

It will be available this September, price unknown yet.

Link: AnandTech.

A few months from now, these products will be available off the shelves, which means that lots of motherboards manufacturers have both Tylersberg chipsets as well as Bloomfield processors already, for some fun-oriented probing. MSI was just kind enough to let us see what they actually look like and comment on their peculiarities.

The X58 turned out to be quite the bitch: even though it's made using a 65 nm process, it gets hotter than the current ones, the area you need to clear around the CPU is double what we're seeing now and you have to remember about those six memory slots for tri-channel configurations. Surely, changing the heatsink mounting system will be left for Mondays.

As for the Nehalem itself (tested here), I wouldn't pay much attention to those references about the octal version, because since it appeared on Intel's roadmap last year, it has sort of vanished. Maybe at the end of next year (2010 would be my bet) you'll be able to get one on your hands. So the one you see there is the eight threaded (four cores) CPU for the 1366 pin socket.

Link: Bit-tech.

Coolink today released its new Chillaramic thermal compound. Thanks to ceramic nano particles, Chillaramic achieves outstanding thermal transfer while not being electrically conductive. Chillaramic is easy to apply, easy to clean off and comes in big 10g tubes that will last you through more than 30 applications without breaking your wallet.

"Today's enthusiast user doesn't only want his thermal paste of choice to perform well, he also expects it to be safe, convenient, versatile and reasonably priced", explains Timothy Chu, Coolink CEO. "Our new Chillaramic compound was designed to meet precisely these requirements!"

Based on ceramic nano-particles, Chillaramic doesn't only provide excellent performance but also completely eliminates the risk of short circuits, making it perfect for crucial applications. Both novice and experienced users will appreciate the fact that the paste is very easy to apply and to clean off.

Tailor-made for the cooling enthusiast, Chillaramic doesn't require a longer burn-in time and can be used with air, water and evaporative cooling systems. Last but not least, the paste comes in big 10g tubes which are sufficient for at least 30 applications on today's CPUs. So at a suggested retail price of EUR 6.90 / USD 8.90, one tube of Coolink Chillaramic will give you a lot of excellent paste at an excellent price!  

New data centre for London nearly halves the energy used by data centres and is Europe’s first to be independently certified as Tier III

Fujitsu Services, one of Europe’s leading IT services companies, will this week open its newest secure data centre. The £44 million data centre has proven environmental and sustainability credentials at its core – not only is it the first in Europe to be independently certified to the Uptime Institute’s international Tier III standard*, but it will nearly halve the energy used by previous data centres.  

Based within 35 miles of London it will serve the data centre needs for public and private organisations across both the UK and Europe, helping customers to overcome their data centre capacity problems, saving them from the lengthy delays and local planning restrictions involved in building or extending their own data centre facilities.

•    The new data centre is a brown field development utilising a refurbished warehouse, to further reduce the environmental impact compared to a new building on green fields.
•    When fully loaded the data centre will achieve a power usage efficiency (PUE) rating of 1.6 (62% DCiE)** compared to previous data centres at PUE 3.0. (33% DCiE) - this is  nearly double the efficiency of previous data centres.

The data centre has been equipped with high efficiency mechanical and electrical infrastructure that offers the best return on investment for Fujitsu’s customers. The data centre’s new features will save enough electricity to power 2,000 households a year. These  features include:
-    Evaporation towers and heat exchangers more efficiently remove heat from the data centre systems than traditional air conditioning systems.
-    Heat pumps pre-heat incoming fresh air up to operational temperatures as it enters the data centre, reusing heat extracted from the technical halls.
-    Spray humidification - the technical hall air uses low energy spray humidifiers in the air inlets to the technical halls, instead of traditional steam humidification.
-    Variable fans and pumps in the cooling system make a significant energy saving even when the data centre is at full capacity, by matching the cooling provided to the actual cooling needs of the data halls.
-    Diesel Rotary UPS (DRUPS) maintain the electricity supply to the whole data centre when a GRID blackout occurs. DRUPS consume less electricity than current UPS systems – providing a constant saving in energy usage every year.

Additionally, Fujitsu will reduce the power consumption of the customer IT systems housed in the new data centre through an IT Optimisation Programme. By consolidating the IT systems within the data centre power consumption and cost savings of up to 50% can be achieved. When complete the IT optimisation programmes will save enough power for up to 4,000 homes each year.   

Arrow Imaging invests over £200k in three Kodak i1860 scanners
The new i1860 scanners will contribute to processing 5 million documents per month, some 238,000 every day, up from 3.5 million last year

Existing Kodak scanner technology redeployed at Arrow Imaging’s disaster recovery site

March 27, 2008 – Eastman Kodak Company today announced that Arrow Imaging Limited, a Tamworth-based service bureau, has purchased three high performance i1860 production scanners to process an ever increasing amount of client documentation and add capacity for future growth.  Capturing up to 200 pages per minute[1], the i1860s installed are the fastest production scanners ever made by Kodak.

Arrow Imaging specialises in offering a range of bespoke document management services from physical storage, document collection and disposal to higher value scanning, archiving, hosting and software solutions.  An accredited Invu document management software partner providing sales, implementation and training services, it is British Standard ISO 14001/1996 and ISO 9001/2000 accredited[2]. 

Founded in 1981, the company employs over 70 staff and has over 400 clients in numerous vertical markets where paper management is crucial such as aerospace, manufacturing, construction, energy, financial services and healthcare.  Key customers include among others Dunlop, Bostik, George Wimpey, Balfour Beatty, Daimler Chrysler, Derbyshire Building Society, E.ON, West Midlands Ambulance Service and Seven Trent Laboratories. 

Nick Hawkes, Arrow Imaging’s sales director, says “Our consultative approach to helping clients means that on average we retain customers for 12 years.  Given this, along with 45 additional new business wins last year, turnover has increased year on year from £1.9 million in 2005 to £2.55m last financial year. This growth has driven the requirement to add additional scanning capacity to meet our day-to-day operational needs.”

Now that the GeForce GTX 280 is out, you may be wondering what the alternative from AMD will be like. Well, for starters, it will have GDDR5, something the first GTX 280s don't. Quimonda, or was that Infineon? is more than ready to mass provide GDDR5 (Graphics Double Data Rate) memory modules. Other manufacturers like Hynix Semiconductor, or Samsung, will also jump onto that wagon, but it looks like having skipped GDDR4 entirely, in favour of GDDR5, gives Quimonda the edge, here.

The chips waiting to be produced are configured at 512 Mb and reach a speed of 4.5 GHz. This could translate, with a 512 bits memory bus, into a bandwidth of roughly 300 GB/s. Top of the line graphics cards form AMD/ATI are sure to benefit from the improvement, while nVidia should also join the fun (it's anyone's guess just how soon they will). It would actually be time for them to leave GDDR3, like ATI did (when they adopted GDDR4 in 2006).

After almost five years of GDDR3 rule (let's face it, GDDR4 was never a big deal), it's time for a new push in graphics memory performance that doesn't rely on the expensive bus trick. GDDR5 won't be cheap either, but in the long term prices will go down.

Link: X-bit labs.