by Jay Garrett on June 26, 2009
Microsoft obviously wants to rid people’s minds of ‘Vista’ and all of its hang-ups and has just confirmed official release dates and prices whilst showing off the finalised Windows 7 packaging.
The base prices for the three main Windows 7 flavours, available in October, are as follows: Home Premium costs £149.99, Professional is £219.99 and Ultimate is £229.99.
Up until 31 December 2009 you can upgrade to Home Premium for £79.99, Professional for £189.99 or Ultimate for £199.99. A saving? yes. A bragain? Hmmmmmmmmmmm…. no
There is another way – a very special pre-order deal will get you Window 7 Home Premium for £49.99 or Professional for £99.99. Both offers start on July 15 and end on August 14, or until ‘stocks’ run out.
If, however, you don’t have a PC to install Windows 7 on to and need to get one pronto, don’t worry. If you buy a Windows Vista PC after June 26, you’ll get a free upgrade to Windows 7.
Windows 7 launches on October 22nd and you’ll be able marvel at it’s smaller and lighter packaging – apparently it’s had 37% weight reduction compared to the previous Windows.
Gosh! 
by Jay Garrett on December 19, 2008
If you opt for a netbook you do so with the knowledge that it will crumble when faced with Crysis, Left4Dead and the likes.
Well, Nvidia plans to introduce “chip technology” that could allow low-cost netbooks run those lovely high-def games and media.
The Ion platform, announced on Thursday, effectively combines Nvidia’s GeForce 9400 graphics processing unit (GPU) with Intel’s Atom chipset. According to Nvidia, this combination will provide “up to ten times the graphics performance” of other graphics chipsets currently used with Atom in small, low-cost PCs.
The GeForce 9400 has 16 processing cores and is more than suited for graphics-intensive apps such as Adobe’s Photoshop CS4.
It’s already chugging under the hood of Apple’s latest MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.
“Until now, a high-definition, affordable PC was an oxymoron,” said Drew Henry, general manager of Nvidia’s media communications processor business unit, in Thursday’s statement. “The Ion platform pairs the GeForce 9400 with a truly great Intel Atom CPU and lets consumers surf the Internet, play top games, edit photos and watch videos — all in high definition.”
Nvidia said that the new Ion platform will be designed to support the full Windows Vista user interface, however, and the upcoming Windows 7. That news may be exciting to some of you I guess……….
In addition, it will be capable of running “full-spec 1,080 [pixels]” high-definition video and games as graphically intensive as Call of Duty 4.
According to Nvidia, “the GeForce 9400 GPU does all of this in about half of the space of today’s Atom CPU-based solutions, with minimal effect on battery life”.
The Ion platform will also let netbook users experience full Blu-ray playback on the smallest PCs and laptops, according to Alice Chang, chief executive of optical-drive maker CyberLink, who was quoted in Nvidia’s statement.
A spokesperson for Nvidia told ZDNet UK yesterday that the company expects manufacturers to offer netbooks using Ion sometime towards the end of the first half of 2009.
Portable gaming a-go-go! FTW! 
Znet
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