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NewsVac: News from around the Web

• Freescale to jettison cellular chip business 2 hours, 28 minutes ago
  
  Freescale Semiconductor announced it is looking to sell its cellular handset chip division. The products it plans to jettison comprise baseband processors, RF transceivers, and power management/audio products for handsets, says the semiconductor firm, and are likely to include its Linux-ready MXC line of "cellphone-on-module" chips.
• 10 Tips to Use Your Hardware and Software Vendor Support Effectively 5 days, 8 hours ago
  
  Companies purchase support for most of their enterprise hardwares (servers, switches, routers, firewalls etc.,) and softwares (databases, OS, applications, frameworks etc.,). They spend lot of cash on support mainly for two reasons: 1) To get help from vendors to fix critical production issues 2) To keep up-to-date with the latest version of the software and security patches released by the vendors. In this article, I’ve given 10 practical tips for DBAs, sysadmins and developers to use their hardware and software support effectively.
• Toshiba samples 256GB notebook SSD 5 days, 9 hours ago
  
  Toshiba upped the ante for 2.5-inch solid state drives (SSDs), sampling a device packing 256GB of MLC (multi-level cell) NAND flash storage. The "THNS256GE8BC" has a 3.0 Gb/sec. SATA interface, and is joined by 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB SSD modules aimed at lower-cost devices, says Toshiba.
• EPIC SBC targets graphics-intensive display apps 5 days, 18 hours ago
  
  Axiomtek is shipping an EPIC format single-board computer (SBC) for digital signage, digital video recorder (DVR), point-of-sale (POS), and gaming applications. The Linux-compatible EP840 supports Intel's 45-nm Core 2 Duo ("Penryn") processors and is equipped with a Mobile Intel GME965 chipset, says Axiomtek.
• Toshiba takes wraps off netbook 5 days, 20 hours ago
  
  It's official: Toshiba today formally launched its entry into the Small, Cheap Computer arena, following Dell's lead and equipping the Linux version with Ubuntu 8.04.
• The XO Files Part III: Re-imagining the OLPC Distribution 6 days, 4 hours ago
  
  Concern over the original distribution plan was what got me writing for OLPCNews.com. The belligerent anti-pilot-project attitude, the requirement to buy the laptops in lots of 1million units, and the hushed discussions about the costs beyond the "$100" laptop. Rapid, bulk deployment is not a good model to introduce technology, particularly in a resource-constrained environment.
• IBM Looks to Beat Intel, AMD to 22nm Node with Chip Breakthrough 1 week ago
  
  New techniques will allow tinier computer chips than ever before.
• Tilera adds a 36-core chip 1 week, 6 days ago
  
  Small start-up Tilera still beats chip giants like Intel handily on core counts. Tilera updated its line of many-core processors Monday, adding a 36-core version to the mix.
• Netbook sports 320GB hard disk 2 weeks, 1 day ago
  
  Czech vendor Eltrinex has announced a netbook computer that runs Linux or Windows XP Home Edition, and sports a 320GB hard drive. The "MobilePC" includes a Via C7-M ULV processor, 10.2-inch display, 1GB of RAM, 802.11a/b/g WiFi, and a bundled external DVD writer, the company says.
• "Substantially faster" SSDs ship 2 weeks, 3 days ago
  
  Super Talent Technology has announced a range of 2.5-inch SSDs (solid state drives) touted as "substantially faster than existing SSDs." The MasterDrive OX and PX series include SATA II interfaces, have 0.1ms access times, and offer sequential read speeds of up to 170MB/sec., the company says.
• SanDisk Rejects Samsung's $6B Offer 2 weeks, 4 days ago
  
  U.S. flash memory card maker SanDisk Corp (NASDAQ: SNDK) rejected a $5.9 billion bid by top memory chip maker Samsung Electronics, but would not rule out a deal at a better price.
• "Top Secret level" hardware encryption on 2.5-Inch SATA drives 2 weeks, 4 days ago
  
  Addonics Technologies built a hard drive kit with built-in eSATA and SATA connectors that allows any 2.5-inch SATA hard drive or SSD to be used as a removable drive cartridge or an external eSATA storage device with the highest level 256-bit AES hardware encryption. It is the first enclosure solution to provide native SATA encryption on the fly with no detectable performance degradation to the hard drive through a simple encryption key. Adding encryption to any storage environment requires no password to remember, and no software drivers or special training. Encrypting and decrypting is as simple as opening a door with the cipher key.
• 8 Cores on a Budget- Building a Better Workstation 2 weeks, 6 days ago
  
  I admit with great indignity that I had been something of a sleeper cell in the world of computer hardware for the past few years. There was a time, quite recently, when I was very much “up” on things. I was the neighborhood go-to-guy for advice on what to buy and where to buy it from. But by the time 2008 rolled by, months ago, not so much. Given, it’s a bit of a relief not to be the pro bono IT-public-defender I once was, but almost five years had passed since my last desktop purchase–and seven since my last notebook–and it felt like it was about time that I got myself some Cliff notes to cram for the final.
• Re-engineering AMD 2 weeks, 6 days ago
  
  Dirk Meyer was six months out of college and working as an engineer for Intel when he ran into Bob Noyce, the company’s legendary co-founder and co-inventor of the integrated circuit, at the punch bowl at a shareholders meeting. “He talked to me for 30 minutes – some snot-nosed kid he’d never even heard of,” Meyer recalls. “He asked, ‘How do you like my company? What do you like? What are you confused about?’”
• Feature: 8 Cores on a Budget- Building a Better Workstation 3 weeks, 4 days ago
  
  It this post Geek.com offers a walkthrough of the building of a powerful, yet affordable workstation. Each of the parts was carefully chosen and the build was extensively detailed. There were some problems, but those were worked around and the end result was an impressive 64-bit workhorse.
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