Advanced Micro Devices (NYSE: AMD), on Thursday shipped triple-core desktop processors that the company hopes to slip in a price-performance slot between dual-core and quad-core available from rivalIntel (NSDQ: INTC).

While not as powerful as the quad-core processors, AMD Phenom X3 series 8000 should provide a significant improvement compared to dual-core chips in the games and playing high-definition content in the PC. Accordingly, the chips may be good enough for fans who do not want to pay more for a product quad-core.

AMD is first shipment X3 8400 and 8600 makers X3 computer processors, AMD Jake Whitman, a spokesman said. The chips will be available to individuals through retailers at the end of April. Pricing will be around $ 150 for the 2.1 GHz-8400 and about $ 175 for 2.3 GHz-8600. The lowest price AMD quad-core processors Phenom, the 2.2-GHz 9500 and 9550, sell for $ 209. 2.4 GHz Intel Core 2 Q6600 quad-core sells for about $ 250 at retail.

“(X3) fits really well between two and four hearts,” said Whitman.

AMD has linked the X3 8400 and 8600 processors X3 with its 780G chipset series. Together, the platform provides smooth HD display movies in Blu-ray format, AMD said. Supported video include standards relating to the H.264 video compression, MPEG-2 for generic coding of moving pictures and associated audio information, and VC-1, a video codec standard originally developed by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT).

In addition, the platform supports DirectX 10, the latest 3-D graphics technology from Microsoft. DirectX 10 is exclusive to Windows Vista. The players seek to increase the performance of the triple-core AMD platform can add a graphics card ATI discrete AMD’s division.

The first system with a processor Phenom X3 will be an office Affinity ZT Systems. The computer will feature a team of processor 8400 and the first March 31 on QVC Computer Shop during the television broadcast, AMD said.

With the shipment of its products triple-core, AMD has launched four high-end X4 Phenom quad-core processors, led by the 2.5 GHz Black Edition 9850, which will be sold for $ 235. Others include the 2.4 GHz-9750, $ 215; 2.3 GHz-9650, $ 215, and 2.2 GHz-9550, $ 209. With the exception of 9550, prices take effect on April 7.

If paired with AMD in the series of 790 chipsets, processors support up to four ATI Radeon 3800 series HD graphics cards.
Finally, on Thursday, AMD shipped to makers desktop energy efficient four processor cores, the 9100th Phenom X4. While the four quad-core chips listed above consume 95 watts to 125 watts, the 9100th uses 65 watts of power. The processor is coupled with an AMD 780 chipset series for playing Blu-ray and delivery graphic enough for casual gamers and multimedia enthusiasts, AMD said.

Intel (NSDQ: INTC), the largest manufacturer of computer chip, said Wednesday that the distribution of low-cost educational designed for laptops, developing markets will soon extend to the United States and Europe .

Computer makers will start selling Intel designed Classmate PC on the market for about $ 250 to $ 350, making it the last super-laptops at low cost to go on sale in the developed world, said Lila Abraham, CEO of ‘Intel platform emerging market group. She refused to identify the PC manufacturers, saying these companies had asked Intel to keep their names quiet until they prepared to unveil the models.

The chipmaker has conducted pilot tests of these devices in the United States and Australia, “she said, but he declined to name the schools where they are being tested. She said that manufacturers in India, Mexico and Indonesia have already begun to sell Classmate notebook PCs in the retail market. To date, Intel has sold fewer than 100000 of the Classmate PC, but plans for an increase in production in 2008.

She developed a second model, the Classmate 2, and has already started working on a third, the Classmate 3, Abraham said in a conference call with journalists from Reuters. “With the second generation, there will be more choices for manufacturers going into detail,” she says.

This will give them the flexibility to build a range of laptop computers with different configurations of memory, screen sizes and different devices, including cameras, “she said.

The Classmate key rivals in the super-laptop low market prices are $ 399 Eee PC from Taiwan’s Asustek Computer and XO laptop, which costs $ 188 to make and is sold by the non-profit association One Laptop Per Child Foundation. Asustek is the largest manufacturer of computer motherboards.

Inventor Mary Lou Jepsen, a scientist who has developed the XO Laptop, resigned from the foundation at the end of last year and has started his own company Pixel Qi with the aim of building a laptop $ 75 in 2010. (Reporting by Jim Finkle in Boston and Duncan Martell in San Francisco, editing by Carol Bishopric)

Toshiba said this week they plans to ship before April 128 GB solid state disk, which will appear first in Toshiba notebooks sold in Japan.

The disc, which has no moving parts, arrives at unusually high capacity at a lower cost than most SSDs through the use of multi-level cell NAND flash technology. Most are single-level cell SSD drives, which store 1 bit of data in each memory cell. MLC drives, on the other hand, store 3 or more bits in each cell. While MLC disks have a transfer speed slower and more energy consumption, they are also much less expensive to achieve.

Nevertheless, SSDs generally cost more than traditional multiple hard disk drives. In justifying the higher cost, manufacturers claim SSDs are faster and more reliable and robust, since there are no moving parts. Recently, however, avian researcher Securities disputed those assertions, saying that customers were dissatisfied returning SSD-basedDell (Dell) notebooks in large numbers. The computer manufacturer said that the bird flu of the estimated rate of return is far too high.

Toshiba believes its latest DSS strikes the right balance between price and performance. “We believe that Toshiba MLC SSDs offer the right combination of cost and performance today to meet the demanding needs storage for laptops and ultra-mobile PC,” Scott Nelson, Vice President of the memory division for Toshiba Toshiba America Electronic Components, said in a statement released Tuesday.

Toshiba, which has not released prices, “says the new disc has a reading speed of 100 MB per second and a write speed of 40 MB per second, making it faster than 5400 rpm and 7200 rpm disk drives. The company asserts that it reaches the high level of performance through the use of a SATA II interface and a new controller MLC.

Accordingly, the last player performs very well in the speed of Windows Vista boot, application loading, current usage, and to facilitate the search for the virus, according to Toshiba.

The new product weighs about three hundredths of a pound and is embedded in a module form factor. Toshiba has also begun mass production of a 64 GB module board. The company plans to begin sampling next month of the same size and SSDs 1.8 inches and 2.5-inch drive enclosures.

While manufacturers plough ahead with notebook targeted SSDs, questions arise as to whether they offer a performance increase significant enough to justify the higher cost. Avi Cohen, managing partner of bird flu securities can be found in the rate of return on notebooks Dell DSS varies from 20% to 30%. A spokesman for Dell, however, said the figures were “totally inaccurate by orders of magnitude.” The computer manufacturer has refused to release specific numbers.

Manufacturers of NAND flash memory, the memory technology used in the SSDs, hoping notebook adoption will give the industry a much-needed financial boost this year. Researcher iSuppli last month reduced its revenue outlook for 2008 the global market for NAND flash memory in single-digit percentage range from its previous estimate of an increase of 27%. Flash manufacturers have taken last year to 13.9 billion.

ISuppli has issued the warning “amid worrying signs of reductions in the order and weak consumer spending.”

The second line of defence to prevent the Blu-ray disc to be copied was raped: SlySoft, a software company based in Antigua, West Indies, said last week that its HD AnyDVD 6.4.0.0 Copy program can now ” make back-up copies of safety Blu-ray BD + protected. ”

The first line of defence for Blu-ray, Advance Access Content System (AACS) System copy protection, was rejected in late 2006. Efforts to keep the 32-bit processing AACS key grounded off the Internet dramatically in 2007, when opponents of regimes copy protection has posted significant number in a variety of forms on Digg and other Web sites .

The technology behind BD + was developed by Cryptography Research and sold to Macrovision in November 2007. BD + is supposed to serve as a second layer of protection to prevent Blu-ray content to be copied. In July 8, 2007 issue of Home Media magazine, Richard Doherty, a media analyst for the Envisioneering Group, said BD +, unlike AACS, are unlikely to be breached for 10 years.

SlySoft, in a press release on March 19, repetition and the prediction of Doherty noted that it had managed to circumvent BD +, only eight months after his statement.

“We are rather proud of having brought down to earth and highly praised as” unbreakable “BD +,” said Peer van Heuen, head of the high-definition technologies to SlySoft, last week. “However, we must also recognize that the Blu-ray titles released so far have not yet fully exploited the possibilities of BD +. Upcoming versions will undoubtedly have a more polished and protection BD +, but we well prepared for this, and await the coming developments rather relaxed. ”
BD + is designed to respond to attempts to circumvent this, it is likely that Macrovision will be able to take steps to re-lock compromised Blu-ray titles. Indeed, Macrovision offers such action is yet to come.

“Macrovision does not comment on the procedures and specific techniques that can have a direct impact on security technology BD +,” said Eric Rodli, executive vice president and general manager of Macrovision entertainment, in a letter sent by post. “BD + is a security response system designed to respond to security attacks, not prevent them entirely. Under this system, the updated BD + security code is continuously developed so that customers get BD + current utility of the use of this technology.

Cincinnati Bell is a candidate wishing to adopt virtualization office. This is because it was found that what is good for the inside of Cincinnati Bell is also a potential new service to its customers phone service. The company is southwestern Ohio, in the first phase of its deployment of office-based virtualization VMware Infrastructure 3 and Sun Microsystems (NSDQ: JAVA) Virtual Desktop Infrastructure. With nearly 3300 computers using employees, it will convert one fourth of them to virtual machines in the first attempt.

“Over the next two quarters, we will convert users to 750 [Sun Ray] clients, primarily call center, help desk, and clerical service,” said Jeff Harvey, senior business consultant Cincinnati Bell and project leader. In addition, many system administrators in the data centre and staff at the centre of operations of the network will also convert to clients with virtualized desktops. go And some sales staff to laptop-Sun laptop as thin client machine.

Calls which prompted the movement, “says Harvey are users of Windows 2000 on personal computers and the company is moving closer to the” end-of-life Windows 2000. Most of what is used on leased assets. We have no choice “but to move on. Moving to clients is a cost-effective alternative to the modernization of hundreds of PCs.

“Different departments have different needs. Why give them all an office of 9 Go? “Has he said, referring to the power users fond of 10 Gb capacity for network access.

In addition, he will not have to tear the whole infrastructure of Windows 2000. “Most of Cincinnati Bell moved to Windows XP,” he says, but he does not need to force all users to upgrade to XP. Remain About eight users on Windows 2000 or Windows 2003, ageing of the current version of Lotus Notes. Six run Windows XP Professional, rather than the standard XP desktop, and two software quality assurance testers take virtual machines running Vista, so that the company can be assured the new it is producing software will work within the framework of a future Vista upgrade, “he adds. host hardware on which the virtual machine is located is likely to be running Windows XP, and one day, Vista, “he adds.

VMware offers its own virtual office infrastructure, as Kidaro startup, recently bought by Microsoft (NSDQ: MSFT), and other vendors. Cincinnati Bell turned to Sun for Sun VDI is designed to run on top of VMware Infrastructure 3, Cincinnati Bell, which had already installed. In addition, it carries a wide range of end-user interfaces.

VDI Sun reflects the Windows Remote Desktop Protocol user presentations, including Linux, Solaris x86, Macintosh, the various versions of Windows, and Sun Ray thin client. VMware creates virtual machines on a central server, but Sun Desktop Connector VMware located between the pool and end users. Desktop Connector, a portion of the Sun has recently announced 2.0 VDI, manages connections to end users themselves and the policies governing connections.

“At 8:03, it may be necessary to turn 800 workstations,” said Harvey, and Desktop Connector based on 12 “or pictures” to give each user the correct virtual machine. Users 800 upgrade consists of updating or 12 images and allowing each user to receive updates to the virtual machine, a reduction in administrative costs, he said. Desktop Connector may take Microsoft’s Terminal Services Remote Desktop Protocol Protocol, and to translate it into the various end-user interfaces.

As Cincinnati Bell has experience in the use of virtual offices, he began offering customers the option of receiving virtual office machines, run by Cincinnati Bell. “During the last three quarters of our fiscal year, we acquired a small number of customers,” notes Harvey, saying that they were great.

But for the moment, it seeks to deploy additional phases of virtualization office that includes Windows for desktop computers regular PC and laptop users, and more than thin client users. Cincinnati Bell will try to leave as many choices as possible in the hands of end users on what they prefer, but Harvey agreed with the clients, “their low cost is a factor,” and “Sun has a large customer solution lightweight. ”

2.0 VDI Sun makes available at a price of $ 149 per concurrent user.