TechieGroups

Work on CyanogenMod 9 continues: yesterday saw the release of an experimental development build for the Samsung Galaxy Note, the first port of the new Ice Cream Sandwich-based OS to support the device. Samsung's official Ice Cream Sandwich upgrade for the Note is scheduled to be released before the end of the first quarter of 2012.

The new port is labeled "experimental" for good reason – while wi-fi, cellular data, audio, the touchscreen, and the GPS and sensors should be working properly, Bluetooth, battery usage, MTP mode, and the camera aren't. The team says that the camera won't work until it gets access to one of Samsung's official Android 4.0 builds for the Note, while the build's current graphics drivers are Gingerbread-based and can cause some rendering problems. As with any in-development software, you should hesitate to put this on any phone you rely on in your day-to-day wheelings and dealings.

While CM9 builds to this point have mostly targeted Samsung phones, as development continues we should see builds made available for most CM7-compatible devices beginning with the most recent hardware and working backward (excluding the original Motorola Droid). The download page for the Note port confirms that the CyanogenMod team is still targeting a January or February date for a final release, though we probably won't see all older devices supported until a few months after that.

Source: XDA

IF YOU WANT to build a small yet competent PC then Thin Mini-ITX is the way to go, and here’s a guide on how to build your own from start to finish.

To start you’ll need to select a motherboard to use, since the entire system revolves around this component. Mini-ITX boards are small at just 170x170mm and normally have a height of around 44mm. Thin Mini-ITX cuts the height down to just 25mm so these are even more compact.

We’ve selected Intel’s DH61AG for our system, which uses the LGA1155 socket and the H61 chipset. It supports the latest Intel Sandy Bridge processors up to the Core i7. One thing to note is that it only accepts chips with a thermal design power (TDP) rating of up 65W so you can’t whack the fastest Core i7 in it, which is rated at 95W TDP.

Although it’s small the board has a long list of features including two DDR3 SO-DIMM RAM slots for up to 16GB of memory, two SATA ports, a full size mini-PCI Express slot, a half size mini-PCI Express slot and one PCI Express 2.0 x4 slot.

External connections on the rear of the board consist of an external power connector, two USB 3.0 ports, two fast charge USB 2.0 ports, a DVI port, an HDMI port, an e-SATA connector, an Ethernet connector, and microphone and headphone ports. For the comprehensive list of specifications for the motherboard take a look at Intel’s specifications web page.

For a processor, we opted for the Sandy Bridge Core i5-2405S, which runs at 2.5GHz and has Intel HD3000 integrated graphics on-die. We chose this one because it’s the only 65W chip to have the latest graphics core, rather than the older HD2000 revision. With Intel’s Turbo Boost 2.0 technology the chip we selected can reach a maximum of 3.3GHz.

You might want to opt for the higher clock speed of a Core i5-2500S at 2.7GHz or a Core i7-2600S at 2.8GHz if you’re going to use a dedicated graphics card in your system.

We’re here in Anaheim, California at Microsoft’s BUILD conference. As has become tradition Microsoft has been holding major developer conferences for their new OSes roughly a year ahead of launch. In 2008 developers and the press got their first in-depth look at Windows 7 at Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC), and here in 2011 BUILD is doing much the same for Windows 8.

Today the show kicks off in earnest with a keynote that begins at the same time as this article went live, however yesterday was the first press session, with Microsoft spending most of the day running the press through a series of presentations focused on the end-user. We also had a chance to spend some time using an x86 tablet running Windows 8, with the tablet being the focal point of Microsoft’s new Metro interface. But before we get too far ahead of ourselves, let’s start at the beginning. There’s a great deal to discuss about Windows 8, and Metro is the centerpiece.

KOREAN ELECTRONICS GIANT Samsung will build a smartphone with a 2GHz dual core processor by the end of the year.

Speaking to the Korean website daum.net, a spokesperson for Samsung said, “We are planning to release a 2GHz dual core CPU-equipped smartphone by next year.” This is an improvement of 800MHz on the 1.2GHz dual core processor that’s found in the Galaxy S II smartphone, which is currently the fastest chip in a phone.

Maybe the handset to feature this processor will be the Galaxy S III. The INQUIRER has contacted Samsung for comment but we’re still waiting for its reply.

Apparently it’s likely that the chip will be launched under the Exynos brand that Samsung launched in February. At 2GHz the chip will rival or even surpass some PC and laptop processor speeds, and we think it’s likely that we’ll see more products like the Motorola Atrix Lapdock, which uses the phone to power a netbook.

Samsung is also said to be putting this fast chip up for sale as an individual component, under the Exynos brand, for other manufacturers to use for their own smartphones or other devices.

Perhaps if Samsung does sell its hard drive business it will be able to put more investment into developing faster processors for smartphones, tablets, netbooks and hybrid devices. µ

The pricetag of Lenovo's ThinkPad X100e has come down a couple of hundred dollars from its lofty perch when it entered the market more than six months ago, but it still remains a pricy alternative to CULV and Atom-based ultraportables. The X100e is saddled with AMD's outdated Congo platform, but is there more to a notebook than just the hardware under the hood? We think so, and we took the ThinkPad X100e for a spin to prove that the platform isn't always what counts.

IT LOOKS LIKE Asus is designing a mini-ITX mainboard for AMD’s first low-power Fusion chip code-named Ontario.

Details about the motherboard are hard to find. It would appear that Asus wants to put it under the bonnet of home entertainment systems that it has planned, but it could equally end up as part of an EeePC or similar setup.

Word on the street is that AMD’s Ontario chip will have the same power as an Athlon II X2 250U, but with a DirectX 11 graphics chip built in and running on only 18W.

If it can do this then it looks like Ontario will be a viable rival to Atom in the mini-ITX market.

Asus is keeping details of performance or the board’s eventual use close to its chest, although Bit-Tech even applied a Chinese burn to the press officer.

All Asus will say is that it is still early days for its mainboard design. µ

 

Comment on this article Flame Author Print Share this: del.icio.us Digg Facebook Linkedin reddit! StumbleUpon Twitter Share Related articles Pine Trail gets launched and tested A game of spin the Atom Tuesday, 22 December 2009, 08:10 AM Read more Hemlock launches, sites review Pick your poison Friday, 20 November 2009, 10:06 AM Read more AMD’s Phenom II X4 965 BE C3 stepping A harbinger of chips to come Thursday, 5 November 2009, 09:42 AM Read more Athlon II X4 620 and 630 reviewed Quad core on the cheap Thursday, 17 September 2009, 18:08 PM Read more 4GB ASUS GTX 285 tested Rare graphics card shock Friday, 28 August 2009, 09:55 AM Read more Core i5 750 as powerful as i7 920 Uh-oh? Thursday, 20 August 2009, 09:55 AM Read more < Previous article| Next article > Comments Not even close

18 watts for the Graphics chip alone? I get that it’s more powerful than an X3100, but people aren’t building their HTPCs as FPS machines. A high end dual core Atom is 13 Watts FOR EVERYTHING.

AMD, you fail once again.

posted by : Dan, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment @Dan

Umm…did you read the article? It’s 18 W for the CPU + GPU + Northbridge. And, given that it will be profoundly more capable than the Atom at pretty much everything , I think it will be quite competitive, in both performance and power.

posted by : Ryan, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment @Dan

Boy, can you read? "Word on the street is that AMD’s Ontario chip will have the same power as an Athlon II X2 250U, but with a DirectX 11 graphics chip built in and running on only 18W." 18 watts for everything. I’m not going to argue about the rest you said because i couldnt care less about it, i use a CPU + discrete in my PC and will not use ontario. But man, you gotta start reading more accurately

posted by : StickyGlue, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment Agree

I agree with Dan, but I’m mad as a box of frogs.

posted by : Bob, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment Passive

I hope the final product is passively cooled and the whole thing with disks, 4GB of memory and other IO takes under 60W at full load so I can build that nice, small computer for the little sister moving out of home. The Ontario family should have some "cooler" members as well..

posted by : Anonymous Coward, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment @ Anonymous Coward

You may want to look into an Atom-based system. I built a home server using one several months ago and couldn’t be happier. The whole system (including 4 500GB HDDs, minus monitor) only uses 36 watts according to my Kill-A-Watt. The chip is passively-cooled with a big aluminum heat sink, so the only fan in the system is a big 120mm on the rear of the case. It runs cool, even tucked away in a corner under a desk in my home office.

I’ve been thinking about buying another to replace an old Dell P4 I’m using as a HTPC when it finally croaks (which it will. Soon. It’s one of the shoddy Optiplex models they’re being sued over), but this all-in-one solution may be a more viable option.

posted by : Jon, 13 August 2010 Complain about this comment @dan

Did you get a good paycheck from intel this week?

posted by : AMD Fanboy, 14 August 2010 Complain about this comment atom still sucks for HD

If this system can make a nice HTPC with limited gaming capability, I might be game. And this is just because I deposited my last check from Intel last week.

posted by : Rob, 14 August 2010 Complain about this comment Most read Most commented Most watched Tesco offers a cheap Sim-only mobile phone deal A scary number of security suites fail on Windows Vista An AMD 3.0GHz Thuban processor is in the shops Google tries to save face after its Verizon deal O2 Iphone 4 prices tip up Apple releases a 12 core Mac Pro Nokia N8 tips up online Windows XP SP2 could live on thanks to Grand Theft Auto PC sales are falling AMD talks up the GPU Sony motion controller video demo

check out the glowing orb

Microsoft Kinect athletics game video demo

INQ readers must watch this

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