Daily Reviews Summary 08/26/06

It's R580 they're wheeling out again today, but this time with performance tweaks, new cooling and never-before-seen new memories, all in order to move the game on and give the high-end enthusiast a graphics accelerator worthy of playing the latest games at high resolution, with eye candy aplenty, and with performance to match. L

The very phrase 'year of the Linux Desktop' has been stirring debates for years now and the pro-linux and anti-linux crowds have had their fair share of bashing each other about it. I initially wanted to call this article 'Linux on the Desktop with SLED 10' but as the days ticked by I realised that my focus on the Distro changed from what Novell wanted it to be. Naturally Novell want their latest Suse prodigy to be used by Enterprises who want to use linux (or want to move away from Windows) across their organisation (desktops and of course servers via SLES 10). And in fairness, that's a brave move by Novell considering that not too long ago their flagship Netware products were their bread and butter so to speak. The company really has re-invented itself with the purchase of Suse. They have put so much time, money and effort into pushing Suse Linux Enterprise Desktop (SLED 10) as the linux distro for the Enterprise Desktop that anyone who reads this that is in a position to 'switch' should seriously consider and evaluate SLED 10.

On Thursday, August 24, 2006, Microsoft released the Release Candidate 1 (RC1) milestone of Internet Explorer (IE) 7 for Windows XP, Windows XP Professional x64 Edition, and Windows Server 2003. This release follows the Beta 3 milestone (see my review) by almost exactly two months.

Looking to improve performance - but not quite ready to ditch your investment in pre-AM2 components? We examine the Socket 939-based Asus A8R32-MVP Deluxe, which promises to deliver plenty of bang for the buck.

With solid performance, a nice package of accessories, and the potential for an overclocking monster in there, I have to be pretty pleased with the Biostar TForce 570 U Deluxe on the whole and think it will fit a nice gap in the AM2 market for those that don't need SLI but still want a motherboard that can compete with only a single video card slot. I look forward to more Biostar motherboards as the TForce 570 U certainly shows signs of brilliance.

Asus has embraced the nVIDIA GeForce 7600GT GPU and released a videocard which is not only ideally suited towards the occasional gamer and even hardcore gamer on a budget, but also doubles up the value by offering 100% silent operation which makes it ideal for home theatre PC's or just anyone who wants a quiet computer. Looking at this PCI Express videocard, we see that the Asus EN7600GT Silent/2DHT/256M/A features two dual link DVI output connectors, a socket for Component output (y, Pb, Pr), the SLI bridge connector, and the all important SilentCool thermal solution.

The modular cables included are each sleeved very well with the heatshrink tubing butt up right to the edge of the connectors. The only exception being the main motherboard cable which has about a 2" gap etween the heatshrink and the 20+4 pin connector. This must be to allow for greater flexibility since this bundle is often rather stiff without extra wrappings.