- Fix for IBM Deathstar drives

Last year we were plagued by problems with IBM 60GXP and 75GXP Deskstar hard disk drives which quickly became known as Deathstar since they dropped like a fly without adequate cooling. In fact, we kicked up a big fuss trying to get some type of action out of IBM - nothing happened.

The folks over at Storage Review found a new firmware for these drives on the IBM website, which supposedly fix the problem. And "about time", we say!

The Identification Utility for IBM Deskstar hard drives, will determine if your system is configured with a hard disk drive that needs a firmware update. The utility supports IBM ATA hard drives connected to IDE ports on the motherboard. The IBM Deskstar hard drives supported by this utility have the following model numbers: DTLA-xxxxxx and IC35L0xxAVER07. The x''s on the model numbers can represent any number from 0 to 9.

- AnyDVD to the rescue

The INQ has posted a quick look at a handy program called AnyDVD. This software lets you choose which region you want to trick your DVD player into letting you watch, as well as a few other nice little features which will come in handy for the average Joe geek.

This still left me ducking my head with shame every time a friend brought over a stack of Japanese movies, and my DVD player thoughtfully flashed the 'wrong region, go away fool' message. Oh the scorn that was heaped on me, even the best tools did not help. How could I watch the legally purchased DVDs if both my computer and DVD player both choked on the discs? Was there no hope for this poor reviewer?

Actually, there was. In early July, a little company called Slysoft (here), based on the beautiful island of Antigua (here) had just the product for me, AnyDVD. It was love at first sight.

- ATI R360 finds its identity

ATI's codename R360 graphics processing unit, the upgrade from the current Radeon 9800 Pro core, will be called Radeon 9800 XT according to Fuad over at the INQ.

At last year's Computex, Gigabyte and ATI played with the Radeon 8500XT name, clocked at 300MHz rather than the standard 275MHz. So it's built on that concept.

- Articles and Reviews from around the Web

- EPoX EP-8KRA2+ KT600 @ Envy News
- Gigacube R9800 128MB Game Buster R9800 @ OCNZ
- ASUS A7N8X-Deluxe 2.0 @ A1 Electronics
- AOpen AK77-400 MAX KT400a Motherboard @ WinHQ.net