Telefon mewah dari Motorola

SANGGUPKAH anda membelanjakan sehingga AS$2,000 (RM7,316) untuk sebuah telefon bimbit?

Aura, produk terbaru daripada Motorola bukan sekadar telefon bimbit pertama di dunia yang mempunyai paparan membulat, malah lensanya adalah kristal nilam atau sapphire Gred 1 sebanyak 62 karat.

Dengan jaminan kalis calar dan karat, Aura turut terletak di dalam kelas tersendiri memandangkan bearing utamanya adalah buatan Swiss, serta dilengkapi dengan lapisan pelindung PVD serta gilapan cermin sama seperti jam mewah terbaik.

Lebih menarik ia dibina daripada 700 komponen individu dan setiap telefon bimbit dikatakan mengambil masa sehingga dua minggu untuk disiapkan.

Ia juga mempunyai teknologi paparan warna sebanyak 16 juta warna dengan ketajaman beresolusi 300 ppi, teknologi CrystalTalk dan stereo Bluetooth melengkapkan Aura sebagai simbol kemewahan.

Bagaimanapun, telefon ini belum dipasarkan di Malaysia.

Adebayor terbaik Afrika 2008

EMMANUEL ADEBAYOR

LAGOS, Nigeria - Penyerang Arsenal, Emmanuel Adebayor dari Togo dinamakan sebagai Pemain Terbaik Afrika 2008 kelmarin.

Adebayor, 24, mengetepikan saingan finalis lain termasuk Michael Essien dari Ghana yang juga pemain tengah Chelsea serta pemain Mesir, Mohamed Aboutrika, pemain tengah kelab Al Ahly menerusi undian oleh 35 jurulatih negara Afrika.

Adebayor menjaringkan 30 gol dalam semua kejohanan untuk Arsenal, mengemudi Togo ke pusingan kelayakan Piala Dunia 2010 dan kejohanan Piala Negara Afrika.

Dia merupakan pemain Togo pertama yang memenangi anugerah itu.

"Saya rasa amat gembira menerima anugerah ini. Saya sangat bangga dengan apa yang saya berjaya lakukan untuk bola sepak Afrika Selatan pada ketika Piala Dunia akan beraksi di sini. Kita akan berusaha keras untuk Piala Dunia dan akan menang kejuaraan itu," katanya pada satu majlis gala di Lagos, semalam. - AGENSI

Rakyat Malaysia tidak perlu visa ke Britain

KUALA LUMPUR 10 Feb. – Kerajaan United Kingdom (UK) memutuskan untuk tidak mengenakan keperluan visa kepada pemegang pasport Malaysia, menurut Kementerian Luar dalam kenyataannya hari ini.

Sehubungan itu, menurut kenyataan tersebut, Malaysia akan menandatangani memorandum persefahaman (MoU) Kerjasama Imigresen dengan UK tidak lama lagi bagi meningkatkan kerjasama dalam bidang berkenaan.

“Malaysia mengalu-alukan keputusan kerajaan UK itu dan amat gembira atas kerjasama serta bantuan yang diberikan pihak berkuasa UK dalam perkara ini,’’ menurut kenyataan itu.

Kerajaan UK sebelum ini merancang menguatkuasakan syarat visa ke atas rakyat Malaysia yang akan memasuki negara itu dan memberikan tempoh enam bulan dari Disember tahun lalu untuk menyelesaikan masalah rakyat Malaysia yang tinggal melebihi tempoh.

Kementerian Luar bagaimanapun meminta kerajaan UK menangguhkan syarat itu bagi menyelesaikan masalah tersebut. Satu laporan menyebut lebih 30,000 rakyat Malaysia tinggal melebihi tempoh di negara itu.

Kenyataan itu menambah, melalui MoU tersebut, Malaysia akan memastikan tahap keselamatan yang tinggi di semua lapangan terbang antarabangsa bagi menghalang negara ini menjadi pusat transit pendatang tanpa izin yang ingin memasuki UK.

“Malaysia akan menggunakan pengalamannya dalam perkara ini untuk menghadapi cabaran-cabaran baru isu migrasi pada masa hadapan,” jelas kementerian itu.

Kenyataan itu menyebut, pihak berkuasa Malaysia juga akan terus mengenakan hukuman kepada mereka yang tinggal melebihi tempoh dibenarkan dan bekerja secara haram di UK.

“Usaha juga akan terus dilakukan bagi meningkatkan kempen kesedaran rakyat negara ini supaya tidak melanggar peraturan imigresen UK,” tambah kenyataan itu.

How Much Power Does Your Graphics Card Need? : 3D Performance Requires The Most Electricity

3D Performance Requires The Most Electricity

The power consumption of today's graphics cards has increased a lot. The top models demand between 110 and 270 watts from the power supply; in fact, a powerful graphics card under full load requires as much power as the rest of the components of a PC system combined. If you’re planning to upgrade to a dual-chip card or to extend your system with a second video card using SLI or CrossFire, then the GPU plays the biggest role in determining how many watts your next power supply must be capable of providing.

Powerful graphics cards drive requirements for the power supply.

A stable power source is important if you want to avoid full-load crashes of the operating system, a.k.a. the dreaded “blue screen.” If you don’t have enough juice, then the PC or the power supply overheats, in the worst case, with a loud bang. The most important questions are: how many watts should the power supply have, does it deliver enough amps, and which plugs or adapters are necessary for the supply?

Of course, cost is also a factor. With today’s electricity prices, you must assess not just the cost of the hardware but also estimate the power used over the course of an entire year. If you don’t need ultimate 3D performance and are looking for a graphics card for your HTPC that’s more economical, you can compare four generations of AMD and Nvidia chips here.

Nvidia's GeForce GTX 285: A Worthy Successor? : Faster And Cheaper

A manufacturing process shrink is a lot to get excited about for both vendors and their customers, as the change normally leads to increased performance and efficiency, while reducing production cost by increasing the number of units produced per wafer. But the eventual benefit to design firms often comes at a huge up-front cost, since significant alterations normally result in bugs that need to be fixed before a full production run can begin. Each test run costs hundreds of thousands of dollars, so it pays to get things right the first or second time. Production delays are an even costlier problem when new architecture is involved, which is why Nvidia normally updates its current products before introducing any new ones.



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Today’s updated product, the GeForce GTX 285, makes the typical promises of improved performance and efficiency compared to the GeForce GTX 280 on which it is based. Let’s take a quick look at how it compares to other high-end solutions.

	GeForce GTX 285	GeForce GTX 280	GeForce GTX 260	GeForce GTX 295	Radeon HD 4870 X2
Manufacturing Process	55 nm TSMC	65 nm TSMC	65 nm TSMC	55 nm TSMC	55 nm TSMC
SPs	240	240	216	480 Total	1,600
Core Clock	648 MHz	602 MHz	576 MHz	576 MHz	750 MHz
Shader Clock	1,476 MHz	1,296 MHz	1,242 MHz	1,242 MHz	750 MHz
Memory Data Rate	2,484 MHz	2,214 MHz	1,998 MHz	1,998 MHz	3,600 MHz
Frame Buffer	1 GB	1 GB	896 MB	1,792 MB Tot.	2 GB Tot.
Memory Bus Width	512-bit	512-bit	448-bit	448-bit x 2	256-bit x 2
ROPs	32	32	28	56 Total	32 Total
Price	$380	~$340	~$260	~$500	~$430

The GeForce GTX 285’s most noticeable performance-oriented improvement is an increase in GPU clock speed of around 8%. The memory clock increase–while much larger at 12%–is likely not as important for performance. GeForce GTX 295 graphics units get two of these processors, although each one is handicapped with slower GPU speed, memory speed, and memory bus width. Meanwhile, AMD earns bragging right for both GPU clock and memory data rates, but only because less-complex graphics processors typically clock higher and GDDR5 memory uses a quad-data rate bus.

The specific card in today’s review is a special "XXX" sample of XFX’s GeForce GTX 285, model GX-285N-ZDDF, sporting a core clock of 670 MHz and GDDR3-2500. The larger numbers look more impressive than they are, since these are less than 4% GPU and 1% RAM above the reference specification, so we’ll split the difference and consider it a likely 2-3% average improvement over base speed.

In addition to the basics, XFX includes a door tag, the game Far Cry 2, a DVI-to-HDMI adapter, and an S/PDIF breakout cable. The breakout cable connects a motherboard’s internal S/PDIF audio output to an input adjacent to the card’s power connections, and the combined audio/video signal can be accessed though the output of the HDMI adapter. While this method has been available on Nvidia products for several generations, many previous packages did not include the special cable.