Ever have one of those times where you needed to get data off a hard drive but didn't feel like opening up your case to connect it? If so, then NewerTech has your solution! NewerTech's USB 2.0 Universal Drive Adapter is USB device that allows the user to connect any ATA device without the need to open up a case.

Yesterday Hewlett-Packard (HP), best known as a leading personal computer manufacturer, announced what may be one of the most significant electronics breakthroughs of the decade. Researchers at HP Labs, the central research center for the company, confirmed the existence of the previously theorized fourth fundamental circuit element of electrical engineering.

The new component is called the “memristor” -- a word blend of "memory" and "resistor". The physical working model and the mathematical model of the component were presented side by side in a paper in the journal Nature, yesterday. Four researchers at the lab, led by R. Stanley Williams, presented the device which retains the history of information passed to it.

The device could make for computers that need no boot-up, never forget, use less power, and associate memories much like the human mind. Such possibilities were long considered the realm of science fiction. The realization of the device was 37 years in the making, and many had come to think it would never be created.

The Aquaduct 360 XT was tested on a red-hot, dual-core Presler 955 CPU and NVIDIA 8800 GTX video card under four different sets of conditions (fan speeds). The Aquaduct 360 XT lowered full load CPU temperatures by almost 27°C with all three fans running at 1,200 rpm and by 24°C with the fans set to a very quiet 600 rpm. Overall, the Aquaduct 360 XT delivered excellent performance with minimal noise thanks to the ability to tweak all the various cooling parameters from within the Aquasuite program. The Aqua Computer Aquaduct 360 XT proved to be an excellent water cooling solution capable of handling the latest CPUs and video cards. And the advanced Aquaero controller and Aquasuite software places the Aquaduct 360 XT in a class of its own.

The obvious first question for potential 3DMark Vantage users is "what's new?" The first major change is the move to DirectX 10 technology. Where DX9 was the catalyst for the 3DMark05 and 3DMark06 benchmarks, DX10 and the new Windows Vista operating system are responsible for the shift to 3DMark Vantage. The benchmark was designed from the ground up to take full advantage of DX10 and because of that this is a VISTA ONLY application. Windows XP users are out luck.

All of the main tests, including the two graphics and two CPU benchmarks, are completely new and based on improved visual and computing technologies. The graphics tests use DX10 exclusive features, parallax mapping and more. The CPU tests sport brand new AI and physics modeling that we'll discuss on the individual pages.

Another change to the functionality of the 3DMark Vantage is the addition of testing presets. These presets are basically pre-defined settings for various gaming segments that will produce different 3DMark scores for budget, high-end and extreme options.
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Users that have seen and tested their system with PCMark Vantage will find the new 3DMark Vantage testing methods very familiar. The free version of 3DMark Vantage will only run on your system ONE TIME and will present an overall 3DMark score as well as allow for uploading of your results to the Futuremark servers. If you want to run the test an unlimited number of times the cost is $6.95 for the Basic version.

The online auction giant eBay is suing the popular internet community ad site Craigslist to "safeguard its four-year financial investment". In a statement, eBay claimed that in January, Craigslist executives took actions that "unfairly diluted eBay's economic interest by more than 10%". No details of those actions were given by eBay.

In its company blog, Craigslist said it was surprised and disappointed by eBay's "unfounded allegations". The company said eBay's legal action "came to us out of the blue".

The case, which is sealed, has been filed in a court in Delaware, where Craigslist is registered. In a press statement, eBay claims that Craigslist's founder Craig Newmark and its chief executive Jim Buckmaster adopted unspecified measures in January that have disadvantaged eBay and its investment. eBay's general counsel Mike Jacobson said: "Since negotiating our investment with Craigslist's board in 2004, we have acted openly and in good faith as a minority shareholder, so we were surprised by these recent unilateral actions. He continues: "We are asking the Delaware court to rescind these recent actions in order to protect eBay's stockholders and preserve our investment."

Craigslist, the seventh most popular English-language page on the Web, hit back in a blog. "We have always treated eBay fairly as a minority shareholder, and plan to continue doing so, despite this unfortunate development," it said. "eBay has absolutely no reason to feel threatened - unless a hostile takeover of Craigslist, or the sale of eBay's stake in Craigslist to an unfriendly party, is their ultimate goal."

Diet versions of existing products tend to be hollow representations of the originals, so we were understandably a little cautious when Asus announced its new Xonar DX sound card. The PC hardware giant stormed onto the sound card scene with the Xonar D2X just a few months ago, putting longtime market magnate Creative on notice. A $180 asking price put the D2X firmly in luxury territory, but with PCI Express connectivity, high quality components, innovative features, and useful bundled extras, it's definitely worth the price—especially when you consider the card's solid gaming performance and exceptional sound quality.
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The popularity of multi-core processors (and more importantly, games that leave multiple cores unused) has lessened the need for hardware-accelerated 3D audio, but there's still a big gap between EAX 2.0 and 5.0. Asus bridges that gap with a software feature it calls DirectSound 3D GX 2.0, which is capable of emulating EAX 5.0 functionality that had previously only been available with Creative's X-Fi cards.

Cisco's Linksys brand may disappear sooner than expected, according to a top executive for small business at the company.

The company sells networking gear for small and medium-sized businesses (SMBs) under both the Cisco and Linksys brands, which has created some confusion, vice president of SMB Solutions Marketing Rick Moran acknowledged on Monday. Linksys was a successful vendor of home and SMB networking gear that Cisco acquired in 2003. There are routers, wireless LANs and other products under both brands that are aimed at small businesses.

Chairman and CEO John Chambers said last year at an event in Europe, captured in a YouTube video, that Linksys would disappear under the Cisco brand over time. Linksys followed up by saying its brand wasn't going anywhere in the near term.

Cisco had already moved to allow its SMB channel partners to sell both Cisco and Linksys products, starting about a year ago, but in the process found out most of them didn't want to carry both, Moran said. Those that sold Cisco gear weren't interested in selling the simpler Linksys products because they wanted to sell their customers system integration services, and Linksys resellers were more geared toward selling individual products, he said.

Microsoft announced yesterday the worldwide extension of the availability of Windows XP Home for an emerging, new class of mobile personal computers commonly known as ultra-low-cost PCs, or ULCPCs. Windows XP Home for ULCPCs will be available until the later of June 30, 2010, or one year after general availability of the next version of Windows.

That extension does not apply to other editions of Windows XP; such as Professional, Tablet and Media Edition.

PressPass: Will Microsoft extend sales of other editions of Windows XP?

Dix: No, there is no plan to extend sales of other editions of Windows XP beyond June 30, 2008. We are very proud of the progress that we have made with Windows Vista over the last sixteen months. Since its launch, Windows Vista has become the fastest-selling operating system in Microsoft history, and more than 100 million Windows Vista licenses have been sold worldwide.

Last fall, our OEM partners asked us to extend sales of Windows XP to give their customers more time to transition to Windows Vista while we worked with other software vendors to expand application compatibility. Today, more than 2,500 applications have received the Windows Vista logo (a ten-fold increase since launch) and more than 78,000 devices and components are supported by drivers either in-box or on Windows Update. On NPD’s list of the top 100 consumer applications selling at retail, 98 are now compatible—and the latest versions of the top free downloads (Adobe Reader, Shockwave and iTunes) are all compatible.

Be careful your product lives up to what you advertise it to be and be careful it does what you say it will do; that's the lesson that many tech companies are learning the hard way. Microsoft recently found that out as its facing an uphill battle to fight against a class lawsuit alleging it intentionally deceived using "Vista Capable" stickers to sell chipsets.

Now Apple is mired in a similar mess, based on some of its a bit exaggerated claims. Apple's bold advertising claim that its MacBooks support "millions of colors." The only problem -- MacBook LCD are only 6-bit TFT models, only allowing for only 262,144 colors. A true 8-bit display would indeed support "millions of colors", 16,777,216 colors in fact. However, Apple opted to ditch the eight bit display in favor of a cheaper 6 bit one, despite the high cost of Macs.

There are so many hard drive enclosures out on the market today that it can be a tough decision on which model is right for you. We've reviewed several enclosures in the past, and while all perform their function, the Rosewill RX81-MP-SC certainly does it in style. Featuring USB 2.0, FireWire 400 & 800, and eSATA connections, the Rosewill enclosure offers supreme versatility.

• A 2.35 times raw gate density improvement over 65nm
• Active power down-scaling of up to 15% over 45nm
• Smallest SRAM cell size and macro size in the industry
• General Purpose and Low Power versions for broad product applications
• Dozens of customers in the design pipeline today
• Frequent and regular CyberShuttleTM, MPW prototyping running

In the past we have always been impressed with Cooler Master's cases, they really seem to stay on top of the technology and incorporate features that enthusiasts want. Cooler Master never leaves anything at "good enough", with each new case they are constantly refining and improving to make the best product available to the consumer.

Call it a Hamlet moment for the PC industry, filled with political intrigue and machinations worthy of the great Shakespeare play: to wait for XP SP3 or move to Vista now that Microsoft has released Vista SP1? Or in other words: "To XP, or not to XP?" That is the question.

It's a question that is burning up the blogosphere with some speculating that Microsoft has delayed XP SP3, a long awaited release that could boost the performance of XP, to get more users to adopt Vista, a potential cash cow for Microsoft and PC makers given the operating system's robust hardware refresh requirements.

With many in the blogosphere speculating that Microsoft could release the final version of XP SP3 this week, Microsoft late Tuesday snuffed out all hope that users would see the service pack, originally slated for release in 2006, any time soon.

Sleek and silent seems to be what Cooler Master was going for when they designed the Cosmos 1000 computer chassis. This case has style, from the brushed aluminum sides, to the piano black finish on the door, even the black mesh for the front drive bays. This isn’t your average case, this case was designed for performance, silence, and you.

• HardOCP
• Fudzilla
• OverclockersClub
• Anandtech
• Tomshardware
• Bjorn3D
• Motherboards.org

"The GX2 performance matched that of GeForce 8800 GTS 512MB SLI. The real advantage to the GeForce 9800 GX2 is going to be its ability to allow non-SLI motherboard owners a better performing alternative than the current 8800 GTX. ...The real star of the show however seems to be GeForce 8800 GT SLI which came very close to the performance of the 9800 GX2 for a lot less cash. " - HardOCP

Alex St. John, DirectX architect, swims against the current and predicts the demise not of PC gaming, but of game consoles, in this exclusive two-part interview at ExtremeTech. In addition, Alex discusses how Microsoft and Intel have been a thorn in the PC Gaming industry, and how the future of graphics and CPU technology will pave the way for PC dominance as a gaming platform.

Thermaltake's second backroom-surprise on its sprawling stand was a concept that landed late yesterday. The company was unsure whether to even show it at CeBIT 2008 but we're glad that it did.

It's a refrigerated system that's still very much at the concept stage. But Thermaltake hopes to use its research to push niche solutions out into the mass market.

• Anandtech
• Legit Reviews
• PC Perspective
• HardOCP

Intel will ramp up its solid-state drive operation next quarter with the introduction of a range of notebook-oriented units running to 160GB of storage capacity.

According to Troy Winslow, Intel's NAND Products Group Marketing Manager, interviewed by News.com, Q2 will see the chip giant roll-out 1.8in and 2.5in SSDs with capacities ranging from 80GB to 160GB.