News Bits: New XPS M1730 Ship Date, Acer Goes Blu-Ray, Vista Networking Issues

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Dell XPS M1730 shipment date leaked

The shipment date for the upcoming yet-unannounced Dell XPS M1730 gaming notebook has slipped. The shipment date is slated for September 21 in the US, Europe, and Asia. the M1730 will be available with Intel Core 2 Duo Extreme processors, a 17-inch WUXGA display, dual video cards in SLI mode, and a variety of ports in a 10.6 pound, 2-inch thick package.

Read More (Engadget.com)

Vista's networking brought to a halt by a single media file

Windows architecture expert Mark Russinovich has confirmed that by simply playing media files, users can bring throughput in Vista to a stop. A new feature in Vista's kernel called Multimedia Class Scheduler Service (MMCSS) prioritizes the playback of media files to avoid skipping. However the problem it is supposed to fix was largely non-existent to begin with.

The playback of even the smallest media files cut the throughput on local area networks in half. Microsoft has not acknowledged this problem yet, although there is a short registry fix mentioned in the article that seems to resolve the issue.

Read More (TheRegister.co.uk)

Acer officially joins Blu-ray

Acer on August 30 announced that it will become a part of the Blu-ray Disc Association (BDA). Acer will be one of over 170 other companies; currently the company is the third-largest notebook maker in the world.

According to Home Media Research and GFK Research in the first half of 2007, Blu-ray discs accounted for 66 percent of the high-definition movie sales in the US and 60 percent of the sales in Europe.

Read More (BusinessWire.com)

Mitron launches three new SSDs

South Korean manufacturer of Flash Solid State Drive products Mitron announced three new SSD products at IFA 2007 in Berlin, Germany. The drives are scheduled to start mass production in September. The new drives consist of the MSD, MSD PRO, and MSD XTM. They have maximum read/write speeds of 120MB/s and 90MB/s and a random access time of 0.1 ms.

The MSD drives are intended for the consumer market, featuring 2.5-inch/3.5-inch SATA interfaces with capacities of 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB. In Q4 of this year Mitron plans to introduce a 1.8-inch drive with a 128GB capacity.

The MSD PRO drives are intended for server use and the MSD XTM lineup is intended for industrial purposes.

Read More (BusinessWire.com)

AMD announces new SSE5 instruction set

AMD today announced SSE5, a new instruction set to improve performance in everyday applications. While the instructions are available today for developers, they will not appear in AMD products until the Fusion architecture debuts with the Bulldozer CPU cores.

Intel has not commented on the announcement and did not say whether they plan to implement the new instruction set.

Read More (DailyTech.com)

 

These new Mtron SSD products provide the highest performance by featuring a maximum read/write speed of 120 MB/s and 90 MB/s, random access time of 0.1 ms, which means that they are 3 to 4 times faster than existing HDDs and 30-40% faster than other SSD products in the market.

That's just amazing, with powerful CPU & that new SSD, I would expect booting Win XP in about 15 sec and next year in about 10 sec

 

Oh man. That MTRON is so sexy. If only it didn't cost like... far more than a laptop alone.

 

Playing back music in Vista kills file I/O? What a crazy bug.

 

I can't wait for these high speed SSDs to be released.

 

Mtron is currently offering a 64GB model as the top-o-the-line option with a 128GB on the schedule for 2008. Even at those small sizes, you'll have to drop a full grand for the 16GB and a soul-crushing $3,000 for the 64GB SATA drive. At almost $50/GB

http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/blazing-speed/mtrons-latest-solid-state-drives-the-fastest-ever-tested-282606.php

 

hmmm... people still hating the new dell? looks pretty nice to me... (specs wise)

 

dell: still fugly.

I would just wait for a boutique/ODM to counter with their own high-end 17in model if I were in the market for such a machine. It would probably look nicer, and be more durable.

 

I bet they still sell them in droves,even though a lot of people have commented on the looks,if they are anything like the latest Dells,it will be made with mag outer shells unlike 99 percent of asus's which are creaky plastic with flimsy screen hinges,dell might do themselves a favour going for a more durable paint job this time round though,particularly the palm rests.

 

I can't believe MS won't acknowledge something that is obviously a problem. Thank the heavens someone has addressed the issue.

 

My God that Dell is horrid.

I don't care how powerful it is, it's hideous.

 

Yes, it is hideous. And the thing is, the Alienware M9750 will not cost that much more, its part of the same corporate family, has identical specs, and looks SOOO much better.

Although, if I was in for a gaming notebook, I want to know why I would choose anything other than the Sager NP9261 (Clevo D901C) or Sager NP5790 (Clevo M570RU). One is uber-powerful and all conquering, the other is competent, sexy and reasonably priced. Dell can't touch either of them.