Dell's XPS notebook chilled, opened, overclocked

While my cousin Kurtis from Chattanooga, TN, may be a member of iPod generation and currently blasting music from Z-5500 speakers, you should take a good look into this one before opting for that other fruity gizmo. The fellows also kept in touch with gamers by reviewing another plastic SteelSeries S&S SteelPad. Since this mouse skating ground has as much to do with steel as I do with ballet, you have to wonder why they even bother...

Hothardware tested a Dell XPS M1710, at -9F. Yes, they are that insane. However, it is very interesting to see what happens when you take a thermally-challenged notebook and remove the "challenge" from the name. Pr0n shots of notebook were also provided.

Phoronix is watching resurrection of Abit with their test of AB9, motherboard based on Intel P965 Northbridge and ICH8 Southbridge chips. It is interesting to see a motherboard review using Linux, so head over and check the interesting conclusion. And people wonder why Linux isn't desktop user friendly...

Virtual-Hideout reviewed something which just might get you back on track with all the cabling mess you have on your desk. Logysis PC Extension Station is not something that will break the world record in 3Dmark, rather iy simply helps organise your cables. However, it does not support USB 2.0, which means I will still hurt my back everytime I need to connect a flash drive.

Ryan reviewed a product from an unusual name in the world of CPU cooling - Asustek's (yes, the name of the company is really that, Asus is a brand) second generation of CPU coolers is looking pretty interesting - Chilly Vent Lux does not look like those, now conveniently-hidden zeppelin-style fattie coolers, but still shows some interesting performance results. At the same time, German friends from PC-Treiber reviewed two low-budget coolers for AMD socket-fest as well, Artic Cooling Freezer 64 Pro and Cooler Master's Hyper TX.

RealWorldBenchmarks reviewed Logitech Harmony 880 universal remote, but an even more interesting article is an interview with Dwight Diercks from Graphzilla. Being VP of Software Engineering, Dwight ended up being grilled by RWB people, but managed to explain why Graphzilla encountered problems while digesting Windows Vista. On the other hand, AMD people switched driver development mode to .NET five years ago (required for LDDM, or Vista). Then again, Chimpzilla screwed up badly and in the end, Graphzilla is the main monkey in town when it comes to DirectX 10 and Vista.

Some Frenchies hopped the AMD line with a review of Sapphire's Radeon X1950GT, which looks like a really good-price card that has decent performance to go with it. For translation services, ask Google or Babelfish over at Altavista.

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