Anyone who's using Ubuntu knows how rapidly tehe development of this operating system is taking place. In fact, you may have a recent version of it and would like to upgrade to the latest, 8.04. Well the good news is that its quite simple.

The Ubuntu folks have a pretty easy guide on how to do it. Hit the link for instructions. 

After waiting more than 2 years, WD finally released an update to the Raptor series of harddrives. This ones got a new name, the Veloci-Raptor. Sure, thats got marketing speak written all over it, but you've got to admit its a great name.

 
As for the drive itself, there's a whole new format. Its a 2.5" drive. Yes, you read that right, its a 2.5" drive. Quite a few drives in the highend enterprise market have been moving to 2.5" in servers and other high performance applications. So, its not entirely surprising that WD went to a 2.5" format for their premier desktop drive. As you can see in the image here, this smallish drive is mounted in a massive heatsink making the mounting of it in a 3.5" tray as simple as can be. Boys and Girls, this is the new benchmark for high performance on the desktop.

I'm sure enterprising users will figure out how to squeezee this into their laptops. Now, they probably won't venture too far from a power outlet while they've got it in there but they'll enjoy some insane performance.

You can read reviews from PC Perspective, Hot Hardware, Maximum PC and The Tech Report.

So, I'm not one to beat up on companies when they make a mistake unless its a really bad one and its not getting the attention it deserves. Well, what's happening here is quite bad and doesn't seem to be getting fixed. So, I'm asking for the great intarwebs help for John.

 Here's the story: John's purchased a very nice product, an EVGA 680i motherboard and soon enough EVGA offered an upgrade to their 780's. It was a great deal so John jumped on it and orders the trade in. He waited 2 months before he saw the replacement board from EVGA. And, this is after he emailed and called numerous times to even get it at all.

The last independent physics simulation company, Ageia, was bought by Nvidia recently. Part of Nvidia's strategy was not to continue selling the PPU, a custom piece of hardware that the Ageia engine runs on. Rather it is to convert it to run on Nvidia's hardware of choice, video cards. Intel, never being one to miss a bandwagon decided to start working seriously on getting physics to run well on their multicore cpus. Both companies’ goals are clear: to sell more hardware to their existing customers.

It looks like Nvidia's winning. Their physics simulation is currently running roughly 30 times faster than Intel’s. Go Green Team!  

Right now a lot of attention is being given to the new release of Ubuntu as well it should. This is an important operating system that is rapidly developing into something that challenges Windows and Macs. Still, installing a new operating system is a difficult thing and there are a ton of people who would like to give it a try but can't afford to lose any time. much less any data. We're glad to provide a guide to installing Ubuntu under Windows XP or Vista. Its an extremely easy to use guide and something you can start in just a few minutes. The best part? If you don't like it you can remove it as easy as unstalling any other Windows program.

Ubuntu 8.04 LTS Beta released!! Yeah!