Intel releases first dual-core Atom for netbooks, the N550

Intel's first dual-core Atom processor for netbooks, the N550, is about to hit store shelves inside a number of netbooks. The new chip brings a much needed breath of fresh air to a market that has seen impressive growth over the last couple of years but not much action on the hardware specs front. Though the N550 clocks in lower than most Atom chips, at 1.5GHZ, Intel says the extra core plus twice the cache (1MB) should make up for a more "responsive" experience.

This is not the first time a dual core Atom has found its way into a netbook. The Asus Eee PC 1201N, for example, pairs a desktop chip known as the Atom N330 with Nvidia Ion graphics. But the extra performance comes at the expense of battery life. According to Intel, however, netbooks with the new chip will offer similar battery life as single-core Atom N450 offerings -- though it's expected to consume around 3 watts more with a TDP of 8.5W.

The Atom N550 will be made using a 45-nanometer manufacturing process and support DDR3 memory. The new chip will be offered in products by Acer, Asus, Lenovo, Samsung and Toshiba starting today -- though we've yet to spot any netbook announcements besides the Dell Inspiron Mini 1018, which still features the single core N455.

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Gmail creator: Google just can't compete with Facebook

Google has been working on a Facebook killer for many months now. Many have criticized Google's approach, including Facebook CEO Mark Zuckerberg, saying the search giant simply does not understand social. Now, former Google employee, Gmail creator, and FriendFeed founder Paul Buchheit has come out and explained why it's so hard for the company to create a successful social network like Facebook, Twitter, or Foursquare.

"I'm actually rather optimistic about Google overall," Buchheit told Gawker. "The inevitable doom of ChromeOS is due in part to the huge success of Android. As for social, I expect that Google will find greater success with their self-driving car and moon landing initiatives. I think it's worth noting that the two most successful Facebook competitors, Twitter and Foursquare, were both started by people who were relatively unsuccessful at Google. The only good strategy I can see for Google is to create something fundamentally different from Facebook (like Twitter or Foursquare were), but Google probably doesn't have the right people doing that because of this problem."

When he says "this problem," Buchheit is referring to story of Dennis Crowley, who sold his check-in service Dodgeball to Google in 2005. He left the company two years later due to a lack of engineering resources. He then launched Foursquare, a virtually identical service, which has done very well in a market that Google now considers quite valuable.

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Natural Diabetes Treatment

People suffering from various diabetes related symptoms can ease their disorder. Using natural substitutes may at least let the entire organism recuperate from regular insulin intakes in the most severe cases. However, there is a number of ways to keep this very common disorder under control. First of all, patients suffering from any type of diabetes must have a very controlled and easy-going lifestyle. Eleotin claims to treat diabetes with natural ingredients.

Whoever is capable of living with consciousness of diabetes lives a quality life. Once adopting our organism to a regular exercise habit is an important start of this change. Preventing being obese and gaining weight is a powerful tool of maintaining blood sugar. That is why people with diabetes should perform mild but regular exercises, such as intensive walking, swimming or cycling.

Diabetes needs control in food. Healthy and nutritive dishes will provide and maintain the level of blood sugar. Naturally, alcohol and smoking should be avoided at all times. With diabetes, it is not recommended to take dishes containing sugar. However, with substitutes for people with diabetes, it is possible to eat sweets too. If there is a need for a glass of alcohol containing drink, a person has to eat something.

Most diabetic suffering people get used in time to eat frequently. However, their portions should be smaller, which helps irregularities in blood sugar fluctuation. Having healthy snacks between the meals is advisable. However, unsweetened juice, tea or water is also recommended. Avoiding all types of fuzzy beverages is a benefit. Coffee is also a drink to avoid, which is not a problem with varieties of decaf drinks.

Being in control of one’s life is a key to live with diabetes and yet live normally. One of the most important factors today is to care about the stress. As much as it is dangerous to the healthiest people, it is known to affect also diabetic men and women severely, messing up the level of their blood sugar intensely. It is recommended to try yoga or similar relaxation techniques.

Naturally, diabetic men and women must not avoid medication, if prescribed. They all have to be taken at proper time and in prescribed quantities. With today’s modern medicine solutions, diabetes is very easily controlled. Using various patches, which release insulin when needed, it is a great novelty in the diabetes medications market. However, regular doctors’ checkups are a necessity.

Intake of particular natural remedies also improves life quality in persons suffering from diabetes. Consumption of celery, garlic and onion is a great benefit. It cleans the blood-vessel system and provides a constant level of blood sugar. Daily consumption of gourd juice is also recommended in patients with diabetes.

Various beverages, such as mango leaves, tea or cinnamon in water proved excellent controllers over blood sugar level. Once a person suffering from any type of diabetes adopts completely different, health oriented lifestyle, the chances for keeping it under control are much higher. With moderate exercises and nutritional plan, most of the patients can live a quality life. Combining medications with natural remedies only help the entire organism fight the disease more successfully.

Americans can't live without high-speed Internet, or e-mail

Adults agree that the expansion of high-speed Internet has had the greatest technological impact on society over the past decade. A Zogby International interactive survey polled 1,950 adults from December 8 to December 10, 2010 to ask them what technology they found to have made the biggest difference in their lives.

High-speed Internet came in first place at 24 percent, followed close behind by Facebook at 22 percent, and Google settled for third place with 10 percent. Men and those over 55 said high-speed Internet has had the greatest impact on society while women and adults under the age of 55 found Facebook had the most impact. Of the technologies most said they cannot live without, high-speed Internet came in first at 28 percent, e-mail was second at 18 percent, while Facebook only grabbed 3 percent among all adults. 15 percent of young adults (aged 18-24), however, said they cannot live without Facebook.

24 percent of Americans believe the greatest technological advancement for the next year will be in home entertainment while only 16 percent believe it will be in general computing. In the next decade (by the year 2020), the following will take place:

43 percent of Americans believe we will see regular use of stem cells and cloning techniques to create human organs for transplant40 percent of Americans believe we will see computer chips implanted in people to monitor their health40 percent of Americans believe we will see robots capable of performing manual labor jobs36 percent of Americans believe we will see virtual reality incorporated into home entertainment

Zogby International said slight weights were added to region, party, age, race, religion, gender, and education to more accurately reflect the overall US population. The data was given a margin of error of +/- 2.3 percentage points.

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Acer, Asustek, Lenovo to launch ultra-thin notebooks at CES?

Acer, Asus, and Lenovo are developing notebooks built around Intel's Sandy Bridge platform, which is hardly a surprise. What we didn't know, however, is that these companies will be launching 13.3- to 14-inch notebooks that feature ultra-thin designs, by the end of the first quarter next year, according to sources from notebook players cited by DigiTimes. Acer's ultra-thin notebook will take over its TimelineX series product line, but there is currently no name for the new design.

With the Macbook Air, Apple adopted an open-cell assembly, where panel makers only complete the cell part of the LCD module. They then ship the unfinished product to backlight unit makers to finish the backend part of LCD module assembly using panel modules 3 to 5mm thinner than the traditional procedure others use. Naturally, Acer, Asus, and Lenovo want in on this process.

The biggest problem with thin notebooks is their price tag. Apple's option is expensive, and so was Dell's Adamo XPS, even though it was quite an "engineering marvel." Hopefully, with more companies entering the fray, we'll see competition result in a good old price war that benefits all types of consumers.

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Acer readies Aspire One 522 with AMD Fusion

Acer is reportedly among the manufacturers looking to utilize AMD's forthcoming Fusion chips, which incorporate a CPU and GPU into the same package. According to Macles, the Taiwanese system builder is preparing at least one mobile PC that is powered by AMD's C-50 Ontario APU, which features two 1Ghz Bobcat x86 cores (9W TDP) as well as Radeon 6250 graphics with support for DirectX 11 and UVD3 for accelerated video decoding.

Macles reports that the Acer Aspire One 522 uses a similar chassis design to the Aspire One D255, except it loses the textured touchpad and dons a new green color scheme. The netbook will sport a 10.1-inch 1280x720 display, HDMI and VGA-out, three USB ports, a webcam, and a multi-card reader. Acer will supposedly market the system with an emphasis on HD media, given the 720p screen and support for video acceleration.


Most of the Aspire One 522's remaining specifications will mirror the D255's, though it only carries a single speaker. Interestingly, battery life is rated at six hours, which is two hours less than the D255. We haven't seen any information about pricing or a release date, but we assume it will be available shortly after Fusion hits the market. We expect more information to slip out when CES kicks off in early January.

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Why is it necessary to update your PC’s hardware drivers?

Often it so happens that people are not satisfied with the speed of their computer though they have a very good antivirus and other protections installed. The system slows down without the presence of any malware such as a virus. One probable reason behind this phenomenon may be hardware drivers that they have forgotten to update. Many times the problem of a sluggish computer can be attributed to hardware drivers that have not been updated.

The easiest way to keep your computer performing in a smooth manner is to update hardware drivers. You keep updating software but do not think of hardware. Drivers for hardware actually connect it with the operating system. The software that you use makes this connection possible. Software allows hardware and operating system to understand and communicate with each other without any glitches.

Despite it being necessary to update drivers at regular intervals, some people do not perform this action. Drivers are an important part in the set up of any windows based system and affect the performance of the system. Manufacturers take huge effort to release hardware updates just as software makers do. They do this to take out bugs and also to increase the efficiency of their hardware components.

People use a plethora of devices with their PC like a camera, scanner or a printer that do not work efficiently as there are bugs in the drivers. Old drivers having one or the other problem make it difficult for your computer to keep performing at a high level. Either because of any invalid response from you or because of the presence of any virus, driver files may be deleted or get corrupted. Single missing or deleted files simply means that the devices attached to the PC may not work at a desired level.

Often your system begs you to update drivers but you fail to notice distress signs. This is when the sound of the system suddenly changes and then the system crashes or when the system goes blank playing a video game. This simply tells you that you need to update both sound as well as picture drivers.

Drivers are supplied free by the manufacturers along with hardware and if you feel they have become outdated, you can always download updated drivers from the site of the manufacturer. Sometimes, out of love and habit, people keep using old operating system despite using new hardware. This also causes a mismatch between the two and updating of hardware drivers becomes a must.

The problem of outdated problems is unique to systems that are Windows based as Windows it is that offers so many choices when it comes to using devices that leads to a mismatch between hardware drivers and the OS. It is natural for Microsoft to think that users would take care of drivers while using different devices.

Updating hardware drivers makes it sure that you are always making use of latest drivers. You can easily get them for free on the site of the manufacturer thus making it a very easy process. You can also go and check these drivers on driver databases on the net. A program called driver navigator has a huge database of more than 2 million drivers for you and updates the drivers automatically.

The necessity of updating your PC’s hardware drivers

People feel let down by the speed of their PC even though they have got a strong antivirus in their system. The system runs slow even if there may not be any virus or any other malware in the PC. One common reason why people face this problem is because of use of old and outdated hardware drivers. Even though the problem of old hardware drivers is common, people never think of it.

By updating hardware drivers, it is easy to keep a computer performing at an optimum level. It has been seen that people update their software but forget about hardware. The OS used by a person is connected to the hardware by these drivers. This connection is done with the help of software called “driver”. It is when there is a better understanding between hardware and OS with the help of driver software that the system performs at its maximum speed.

Despite it being necessary to update drivers at regular intervals, some people do not perform this action. Drivers are an important part in the set up of any windows based system and affect the performance of the system. Manufacturers take huge effort to release hardware updates just as software makers do. They do this to take out bugs and also to increase the efficiency of their hardware components.

People love to use several devices with their computer but if there is any problem in the drivers, these devices will not work properly. Bad or outdated drivers stop a PC to achieve its optimal level. It is also possible that the files associated with drivers may become corrupt or infected by virus. It is difficult to get a device to function normally even if one or two files are deleted or corrupt.

Sometimes your computer itself tells you about any problem present in the drivers but they get unnoticed by you. It normally happens that the sound of the computer may behave abnormally and then the system crashes or the PC goes blank in between a game telling you that there is something wrong with the drivers of hardware. It is not only audio but also video drivers that need updating frequently.

Manufacturers keep updating drivers and they are freely available on the net which means that you can update your hardware drivers whenever you think they have become outdated. Then there are people who become used to an older operating system despite having latest hardware drivers. This mismatch also causes problems and necessitates matching of hardware drivers with the OS.

Driver problems are associated with Windows based computers as there are lots of devices that can be attached with your PC which often causes a mismatch between drivers and operating system. It is assumed by Microsoft that users are smart enough to match their drivers with devices that they are using with their PC.

Updating hardware drivers makes it sure that you are always making use of latest drivers. You can easily get them for free on the site of the manufacturer thus making it a very easy process. You can also go and check these drivers on driver databases on the net. A program called driver navigator has a huge database of more than 2 million drivers for you and updates the drivers automatically.