WOW-FI
Several college students from Ohio
recently won a Wi-Fi shootout
in Nevada by establishing Wi-
Fi connectivity between two
computers, with full 11Mb/s
bandwidth, at a distance of
125 miles. It was a
new record for an
unamplified
connec-
tion. The
record for
an amplified
Wi-Fi signal
stands at 192 miles,
but it was achieved using a weather
balloon as well as signal amplifiers. Wi-Fi
purists scoff at such techniques that side-
step the inherent limitations of ground-
based networks.BUYING CRAP ON EBAY
A Missouri man is being sued by the state
attorney general for sending random
crap—and we mean that literally—to
people who won his auctions on eBay.
He contracted to have a third party send
boxes of arbitrary items, including human
feces, unwanted clothes, and industrial
rags, to the hapless eBay patrons.MONKEYS FLY OUT OF OUR...
Holy mother of pearl. Apple has finally
released a two-button mouse! Dubbed the
Mighty Mouse, it features a
one-piece shell that is
touch-sensitive. So
the mouse retains
the smooth Apple
trademark look,
while sporting two
perfectly usable but-
tons. It even has a
scroll ball. And it has
side buttons too. Not too
shabby, Jobs.CHEAPER IPOD BATTERIES
Speaking of Apple, the quirky Cupertino-
based computer maker known for its
black-turtlenecked company culture has
announced a price reduction for replacing
the battery in an out-of-warranty iPod.
The company previously charged $99 to
replace the battery, but has now lowered
that fee to a more manageable $59.
Thanks, Steve!C
ool and cheap. That’s the motto for VIA’s
new C7-M CPU. The company says its new
proc will sip 7 watts—a similarly clocked Pentium
M guzzles 21 watts. It has No Execute bit support
and onboard encryption hardware. Performance?
VIA says it’s not as fast as Pentium M, but it’s
also not as slow as Transmeta.FUNSIZENEWS
New AMDSockets on
the Way
We’ve wondered when AMD
would make the leap from
DDR memory to DDR2 SDRAM
ever since Intel switched over
last year. Though AMD won’t
confi rm any of this informa-
tion, scuttlebutt has it that the
answer is mid-2006. In order
to make way for the super-
fast memory, which runs at
667MHz compared with DDR’s
400MHz, the company will
consolidate its current CPU
sockets—Socket 939, 940,
and 754—into two all-new
sockets in 2006. The socket
switch will not only simplify
AMD’s product line, but will
pave the way for the company
to migrate from DDR SDRAM
to DDR2 SDRAM—a move
that many in the industry
feel is long overdue, as Intel
has been offering DDR2 in its
fl agship chipsets for more
than a year now.
The socket for home
users—dubbed Socket M2—
will sport a 940-pin design
and use DDR2 dual-channel
memory. It’s reported that
by mid-2006, all of AMD’s
consumer-level CPUs,
including the budget-priced
Sempron, Athlon 64, 64-FX,
and X2 dual-core CPUs, will
use the M2 platform. By
consolidating current Socket
939 and Socket 754 proces-
sors, motherboard choices
(and upgrading options) for
the enthusiast should be
greatly simplified.
AMD also has plans to
transition its server-oriented
Socket 940 platform to a
new 1,027-pin platform
named Socket F. Socket F
will also support DDR2 and
will be used exclusively for
the company’s high-end
Opteron processors (the 100
series will temporarily use
Socket 939, then move to M
next year).New V IA CPU for Lil’
No tebooks
World’s Smallest Hard Drive
Teeny 2-gigger arrives
A
ccording to the Guinness Book of World Records ,
Toshiba’s 2GB 0.85-inch hard drive is the smallest in
the world. And by the time
you read this, it should
be appearing in Imation’s
new Micro Hard Drive. The
internal drive is smaller than
a quarter yet it boasts an
impressive 2GB capacity.
There’s even a 4GB ver-
sion waiting in the wings for
release this winter.
Imation’s wee drive
is shaped like a padlock,
with the USB 2.0 cable
forming a loop that you
can hook to a belt loop or
pierced appendage. It will
offer full 128-bit hardware
encryption and will retail
for about $150.IBM will fab VIA’s new power-
efficient C7-M notebook CPU.Tiny hard drives are
usually painfully slow,
but we don’t really mind
when they’re as cute as
this 2GB Imation drivequick start THE BEGINNING OF THE MAGAZINE, WHERE ARTICLES ARE SMALL
12 MA XIMUMPC OCTOBER 2005