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SATA-IO to Host Serial ATA Plugfest and Interoperability Workshop in Taipei, Taiwan

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By Business Wirevia The Motley Fool

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SATA-IO to Host Serial ATA Plugfest and Interoperability Workshop in Taipei, Taiwan

TAIPEI, Taiwan–(BUSINESS WIRE)– Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO)

WHAT: The Serial ATA International Organization (SATA-IO), the consortium dedicated to sustaining the quality, integrity and dissemination of Serial ATA (SATA™) technology, will host a Plugfest, Interoperability Workshop and Training Session May 20-23, 2013 in Taipei, Taiwan.

  • Serial ATA Plugfest – May 21-22, 2013: Offers plug-and-play opportunities, including availability of all host and device vendors and ad-hoc testing. This provides a good forum for those who are early in the product design phase, or those who are looking to test their products with multiple hosts/devices in one place. This event is open to all companies working on SATA-compatible products including system and motherboard makers, host bus adapter vendors, HDD suppliers, SSD manufacturers, cable vendors, silicon suppliers, storage enclosure makers, operating system suppliers, BIOS vendors, test tool providers, etc.

  • Serial ATA Interoperability Workshop – May 21-23, 2013: Allows mature products to undergo a highly structured and rigorous set of tests that verify the product’s adherence to the SATA specification. Passing products are eligible to use the “SATA-IO Certified” logo and are placed on the SATA-IO Integrators List. This event also provides the single best opportunity to discuss interoperability related questions with industry specialists.

  • Serial ATA Training Session and Members Reception – May 20, 2013: Provides SATA-IO members with a chance to learn about a variety of topics such as SATA test methodologies and new technology features. The final agenda of session topics will be published prior to the event. Following the training session, members are invited to attend a reception.

WHERE: The Westin Taipei Hotel: 133 Nanjing East Road, Section 3 Taipei, 104 Taiwan

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at DailyFinance

Computers

HP Envy Phoenix h9-1420t review: Gaming power in a subtle form

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By gaming standards, the HP Envy Phoenix h9-1420t’s appearance is positively subdued. This midsize tower PC has some red backlighting and a clear pane so that you can gaze at the liquid cooling unit, but aside from that it could easily pass for a conventional HP desktop. Although it doesn’t have much in the way of bling, the Phoenix delivers better-than-average performance at a cheaper-than-boutique price. Down-the-road upgrade options, on the other hand, are limited by its decidedly nonenthusiast motherboard.

Components and performance

Our $1840 h9-1420t test configuration sported an unlocked 3.5GHz Intel Core i7-3770K processor. Thanks to the liquid cooling unit, the system had no problem maintaining 4GHz, and it likely has at least a little more headroom. The Pegatron (that’s Asus’s OEM arm) 2AD5 motherboard offers minimal overclocking controls in its BIOS, but it isn’t completely locked down. You can set each core’s maximum frequency multiplier separately, but you get no provisions for tweaking the operating voltage, for instance. The board also has just a single full-size PCIe slot, so you can forget any dual-card graphics upgrade via SLI or CrossFire.

Fortunately, HP picked a strong graphics card, inserting an Nvidia GeForce GTX 680 with 2GB of GDDR5 memory. With that card in place, the Phoenix managed a playable frame rate in Dirt Showdown right up to the 2560 by 1600 resolution of our 30-inch test display. The game wasn’t as silky smooth at that resolution as it was at lower ones, but it was certainly playable. Should you decide to buy an h9-1420t online, HP allows you to customize the configuration to a degree, but your options don’t include Nvidia’s best GPU, the GeForce GTX 690.

The other core components on our test machine included 12GB of DDR3-1600 memory and a 2TB, 7200-rpm hard drive, which helped the h9-1420t produce a very good WorldBench 8 score of 87. A solid-state drive would have boosted the score even more, but that option wasn’t available when we ordered our evaluation unit. HP has since corrected that omission, but there’s no getting around that single multilane PCIe slot, which is a puzzling design decision in a PC whose primary reason for existence is performance.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Fujitsu's new Lifebook E Line laptops come in three sizes, but share accessories

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Fujitsu promises that although the new business laptops in its Lifebook E Line come in screen sizes from 13.3 inches to 15.6 inches, all will use the same standard components, including the main board, drives for the modular expansion bay, and AC adapters.

By providing choices yet standardizing the components, BIOS software and accessories such as the drives and port replicator for the Lifebook E Line, Fujitsu hopes to combat the rising management costs and security risks it says enterprises face as employees bring their own devices to work.

The laptops will go on sale across Europe, the Middle East and Africa from Tuesday, the company said, and will be shown on its stand at the Cebit trade show in Hanover, Germany, through Saturday.

The smallest of the three new models, the Lifebook E733, has a 13.3-inch (33.8-centimeter), 1366 x 768 pixel screen and weighs 1.7 kilograms. There’s a 14-inch (35.6-cm), 1600 x 900 pixel display on the midrange Lifebook E743, which weighs 1.9 kg. The largest of the three, the Lifebook E753, weighs over 2.1kg and has a 15.6-inch (39.6-cm) screen available in either 1366 x 768 pixel or 1920 x 1080 pixel resolutions.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Linux

Redirecting console output to ILOM during installation

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By u_paludan

Hi,
I need to install solaris remotely via the ILOM port on a x4170 box, and I have downloaded the Solaris 11 for x86 – text install image and burned it on a DVD.
When I boot the box, it’s showing the boot_archive loading percentage on the SP console, but when it’s done and start the interactive install menu, it’s not displayed on the SP console, only on the VGA screen.

In solaris I would solve this by using the eeprom console command, but I don’t know how to set the redirection during installation.
Do I need to somehow set it up in the BIOS?

Any help is much appreciated

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at The UNIX and Linux Forums

Computers

Secure boot loader now available to allow Linux to work on Windows 8 PCs

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Freeing the way for independent Linux distributions to be installed on Windows 8 computers, the Linux Foundation has released software that will allow Linux to work with computers running the UEFI (Unified Extensible Firmware Interface) firmware.

The Linux Foundation Secure Boot System solves a fundamental problem for many Linux distributions, by providing a way for a Linux-based OS to run on new hardware controlled by UEFI firmware, also known as “secure-boot” technology.

“The Linux Foundation wishes not only to enable Linux to keep booting in the face of the new wave of secure boot systems, but also to enable those technically savvy users who wish to do so to actually take control of the secure boot process by installing their own platform key,” wrote Linux Foundation technical advisory board member James Bottomley, who led the development of the bootloader, in a statement.

As a potential replacement to the long-used BIOS firmware, UEFI is an industry initiative to secure computers against malware by designing the computer’s firmware to require a trusted key before booting the operating system, or any hardware inside the computer, such as a graphics card.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld

Computers

Sony suffers snag during OLED rollout (video)

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LAS VEGAS—Demo glitches can happen to the best of us—even Steve Jobs had to deal with his share of uncooperative equipment. You would just prefer that when something goes awry, it doesn’t happen at the world’s largest trade show. And you really don’t want it to involve one of the marquee products of your presentation.

Unfortunately for Sony CEO Kazuo Hirai, that’s precisely what happened during Sony’s press presentation at CES 2013 on Monday. In an otherwise tight presentation that tackled Hirai’s focus since becoming Sony’s chief executive nine months ago as well as the unveiling of the Xperia Z smartphone, Hirai ran into a bit of trouble when it came time to show off a 56-inch prototype of a 4K OLED TV. Hirai called it the world’s largest OLED display. Unfortunately, it soon featured the world’s largest Blue Screen of Death on an OLED display, as you can see in the footage below from our colleagues at IDG News Service.

To Hirai’s credit, he pressed on with his presentation even as the TV jumped from a blue BIOS screen to a black screen displaying a Windows error message. “Sony will continue to push the envelope of what you can do, what you want to do, and what you haven’t even dreamed of yet,” Hirai said.

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Source: FULL ARTICLE at PCWorld