[H]ard|OCP

Will Blu-ray Drives Drain Laptop Batteries?

Now that Blu-ray is the winning HD format, will laptop batteries be able to hold a charge long enough to watch a Blu-ray movie? You’d think that a manufacturer would factor that in when designing a laptop with a built in Blu-ray drive.

But the promise of viewing an increasing variety of HD movies on your laptop may be overshadowed by ongoing concerns over the technology's vampiric effect on battery life. Indeed, if the first generation of Blu-ray equipped laptops are any indication, you might not get more than halfway through that movie before running out of juice completely, analysts say.

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[H]ardware Round-Up II

ETC.

Extending Ubuntu's Battery Life @ Phoronix

Switching From Windows To Ubuntu @ tkArena

Memory

A-DATA Nobility N702 4GB Flash Drive @ ThinkComputers

Video

ATI CrossFireX Triple CrossFire Preview @ Legit Reviews

Sapphire HD 3870 Atomic (German) @ Technic3D

Prolific Spammer's Conviction Upheld

The Virginia Supreme Court upheld the nation's first felony conviction for spamming today. The courts ruled that Virginia's anti-spamming law does not violate free-speech rights.

"This is a historic victory in the fight against online crime," state Attorney General Bob McDonnell said in a written statement. "Spam not only clogs e-mail inboxes and destroys productivity; it also defrauds citizens and threatens the online revolution that is so critical to Virginia's economic prosperity."

Personally, I don’t see how it is a “right” to be able to harass me, spam me or send porn links on a service I pay for. Am I wrong? Leave your thoughts in the comment section.

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Robin Williams Saves TEC Presentation

Imagine that you are in the middle of a presentation at the Technology, Entertainment and Design conference when a glitch suddenly stops everything in its tracks. Normally this would be a horrifying experience, unless of course Robin Williams is there. The actor comedian, much to the delight of the crowd, took the stage and saved the day.

Williams was then invited to take the stage and the crowd roared. He spent the next ten minutes or so riffing on Stephen Hawking (who spoke at TED earlier in the day from Cambridge, England) and the end of the universe -- which will take place "exactly in one hour," he said, looking at his watch.

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Curved iMac Concept

[H] reader Dave A. sent me a link to some dudes portfolio that has probably the most amazing looking iMac I have ever laid eyes on. The chances of me switching from PC to Mac just went way up (don’t get excited, it went from 0.00% to 0.50%)...but that’s saying a lot! Follow the link for more pictures.

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Gaming News

Battlefield Heroes Has No In-game Ads @ Shacknews

Call Of Duty 4 Xbox 360 Update @ Major Nelson

Eidos Parent Company Cancels 14 Games @ VE3D

Gaming Turns Social, Industry Shifts Strategies @ NYT

Street Fighter IV Visual Impressions @ Kotaku

Video Card Blow-Out Sale For [H] Readers!

Anyone looking for a great deal on a video card had better hit this link and see what kind of deals we have in our forums right now. How “good” are these deals? How about $170 off an EVGA 8800GTX 768MB video card just for being an [H] reader? Or $90 off an EVGA 8800GTS 640MB card? You can get $70 off this EVGA GeForce 8800GTS 320MB too. For those of you looking for a real budget card, this 8600GT 256MB video card is only $59.99. That is $70 off the regular price. Remember, all EVGA cards come with a killer warranty too. So what are you waiting for? Hit the link above for the exclusive promo codes to take advantage of these deals!

[H]ardware Round-Up

Cases & Modding

Apevia X-Supra G Type @ Overclockers Club

ETC.

Scythe "KAZE MASTER" 3.5" Fan Controller @ DSM

Motherboards

Intel Core 2 Duo E8500 Wolfdale CPU @ HotHardware

Video

3-Way NVIDIA SLI 3X 8800 GTX @ Legit Reviews

GeForce 8800 GS/GT/GTS Voltmodding @ techPowerUP!

I'm the Idiot Who Bought an HD-DVD Player

While many people that bought an HD DVD player are saddened by Blu-ray’s win in the format war, most realize that they can still use their relatively inexpensive player as an upconverting DVD player and still watch their HD DVDs. This guy is taking things a little harder. How many people feel like an “idiot” for buying HD DVD?

While I freely admit my moronitude, I still believe the HD-DVD owner is an unfairly maligned creature. It wasn't dumb to jump on the HD-DVD bandwagon: Toshiba's technology was cheaper and more consumer-friendly than Sony's. It was dumb, though, to assume that the forces of good would triumph.

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USB Pottery Wheel

The guys at EverythingUSB must’ve seen that USB fan video we posted yesterday and thought “I can top that”…and top it they did. Check out the DIY USB pottery wheel, that’s right…I said “pottery wheel.”

Using just a few simple spare parts that most of the enthusiasts are sure to have laying around, and a very simple knowledge of electronics, the video shows you how you can make your own too

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Mozilla Plans Mobile Firefox by Year End

All you alternative browser users out there will be excited to know that Mozilla has plans for a mobile version of Firefox by the end of the year.

Mozilla is in informal talks with mobile operators about its mobile Firefox project, which the organization hopes will shake up the market as much as the introduction of the desktop browser did in 2004. "Mozilla's mission is to break open a closed market," said Mike Schroepfer, Mozilla's vice president of engineering.

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World's First Powerless Air Cooler on a Mainboard

MSI, one of the leaders in mainboard technology, will bring new life to old technology with new concept on mainboard products. While everybody is looking forward to have a more ECO friendly design, more mainboard makers are trying to save energy on the mainboard side with PWM design, MSI already has very efficient power design, but we research more than only PWM design enhancement, trying to offer the total ECO solution we now give you the heat transfer power concept on mainboard cooler design!

The "Air Power Cooler" transfers the chipset heat into air momentum, when the air becomes hot, the air will expand then push the fan to rotate and In doing so cooling the heatsink immediately. After the air moves from the bottom to top of the piston, the air will become heavy to push the up piston down. The better air piston design can transfer over 70% heat power and transfer to air power, that's great efficiency transfer from Stirling engine theory.