Intel's Light Peak to Debut Thursday

The technology world loves rumors, in fact, I think that they live, breath, eat and sleep rumors. I feel that if there were no internet rumors, then we would have a lot of depressed computer people out there with nothing to do to fill their free time. It's quite sad really. But, alas, we have another rumor floating around the internet that all the little techies are drooling over and that is the rumor that Intel will officially launch its Light Peak high-speed connection technology this Thursday.

This great speculation comes from Intel telling the media that it will "host a press briefing to discuss a new technology that is about to appear on the market." CNET apparently has "an industry source familiar with details of the event" and says that it will indeed be Light Peak. Other speculation surrounding this news is concerning whether or not this launch will have anything to do with the new MacBook Pros also set to be launched on Thursday.

Rumors have been circulating since late 2010 about Apple possibly incorporating Light Peak into its 2011 MacBook Pro models. Since then, there have been leaked spec sheets floating around as well as product photos of a 13-inch MacBook Pro which would back up this rumor if it is true. If this is true, then Apple plans on renaming it "Thunderbolt". However, it is unclear whether or not Intel will adopt this nomenclature as well.

Whether you decide to call it Thunderbolt or Light Peak is up to you, but know that it is a single interface designed to replace the SCSI, SATA, USB, FireWire and PCI Express ports on a computer. The technology, which is copper-based, supposedly delivers 10Gbps bi-directional data transfers and is the main reason some people have speculated Intel has been so slow to adopt native USB 3.0 support on its motherboards, something Intel has not surprisingly refuted.

Source: Maximum PC - Intel to Debut Light Peak on Thursday, Apple Calls it "Thunderbolt"

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New Fab 42 from Intel

On Friday, February 18, Intel announced that they will be constructing a brand new $5 billion fab in Arizona. The fab will be used for the manufacturing of chips using a 14-nm manufacturing process and leading edge 300-mm wafers.

In the statement that Intel released on Friday, it was said that the new fab would be called Fab 42. Construction of the facility will begin sometime in the middle of 2011. Intel is saying that Fab 42 will be "the most advanced, high-volume manufacturing facility in the world." It should be finished in 2013.

The announcement about Intel’s latest investment was made on the same day that President Obama toured an Intel facility in Hillsboro, Oregon. While at the facility, Obama decided to go ahead and name Intel’s chief executive Paul Otellini as a member of the Council on Jobs and Competitiveness. Going along with this, it is definitely not coincidental that the new fab that Intel is constructing will create "thousands of construction and permanent manufacturing jobs" that go right along with Otellini’s new position.

One of the biggest advantages that Intel has had in the past has been its strong manufacturing line. They have constructed several different fabs around the world. These fabs have really helped to keep Intel in competition with their rival AMD, who has been trying to undermine Intel by designing more efficient chips.

The new 14-nm fab that is being constructed by Intel will be considered one of the most advanced semiconductor fabs compared to any in its category. According to PCmag, the fabs will be “putting out chips that will incorporate linewidths that are twice as fine as Intel's current ‘Sandy Bridge’ processors, which use a 32-nm process.” As of right now, a comparison cannot be made between the chips that Intel is putting out currently and those that will be made with the new process, but we can say that the new chips will most likely use less power or run much faster than the versions that Intel is currently releasing.

"The investment positions our manufacturing network for future growth," said Brian Krzanich, senior vice president and general manager for Intel's manufacturing and supply chain operations, in a statement. "This fab will begin operations on a process that will allow us to create transistors with a minimum feature size of 14 nanometers. For Intel, manufacturing serves as the underpinning for our business and allows us to provide customers and consumers with leading-edge products in high volume. The unmatched scope and scale of our investments in manufacturing help Intel maintain industry leadership and drives innovation."

In the past few weeks, Intel has been dealing with a small roadblock that the company discovered concerning a support chip that is associated with the Sandy Bridge chip processor.

At the end of January, Intel found what is now being called the “Cougar Point” flaw and were forced to recall the chip. Shipping resumed about a week after the problem was discovered, but it was under the condition that Intel and OED could both assure one hundred percent that the flaw would not manifest.

Due to the temporary roadblock that Intel was forced to deal with, its rival AMD went ahead and launched an ad campaign on Friday in an attempt to pull in customers. We’ll have to see if Intel can jump right back into the race.

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Google Searches Drop while Bing Searches Rise

In the great search engine war, two competitors reign supreme above all others, Google and Bing. While there are a lot of search engines out there, none get the attention or press like these two. Google has its name everywhere and you can hardly flip through the channels without seeing a commercial for Bing. But exactly how close are these two competitors when it comes to number of users? Closer than you might think, actually.

Even though Google is still the leader of the U.S. search engines, it did see a drop in market share slightly in January whereas Bing continued to pick up more steam. For the first month of 2011, Google's portion of all searches dropped by 1 percentage point to 65.6%. While this was happening to Google, Bing's portion of searches jumped up 1.1 percentage point to 13.1%. This left the other search engine Yahoo flat with a 16.1% cut of all searches in January.

These numbers are right in line with a pattern that for the past several months has plagued Google in which the company sheds a little bit of their shares while Bing edges up slightly. The good thing for Google is that these drops have usually only been fractions of a percentage point as opposed to the full point the company saw in January.

The number of core searches tallied rose from 16.4 billion to 16.9 billion from December to January, a 3% increase. Google hit the number one spot with a total of 11.1 billion searches. Yahoo came in second with 2.7 billion, followed by Bing who tallied only 2.2 billion. These numbers represent a 1% increase in January for Google, a 4% increase for Yahoo and a 13% increase for Bing.

These figures are derived from explicit core searches. This just means search terms manually entered into the search bar. This data also takes into account all of a company's search sites. So, in Google's case, these results included searches on Google's main page and the ones on YouTube, Google News, Google Images, and other proprietaries.

These numbers also include "powered by" searches. In January Google's number of "powered by" searches on its own sites and on AOL and Ask.com was 62.8%, whereas Bing searches on Microsoft and Yahoo reached 25.6%. This showed yet another loss pattern for Google as the company lost a small percentage of their "powered by" searches as well.

While Google does remain in a commanding lead, Bing could slowly creep up and surpass Google as the leader of the search engine world. However, you do have to take into account the recent battle between Google and Bing where Bing was accused by Google of stealing search results. If proven guilty, this could have a serious effect on Bing and their search engine.

Source: cnet News - Bing continues to grab more searches

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'Jeopardy!' Contestants Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter Face Off Against Watson, the Super Computer from IBM

It will be a battle fit for the record books, one that will go down in history alongside Gettysburg and World War II. Only this one will not be fought with swords, guns or armies, but with little clickers and incredible knowledge. That's right, I am talking about the epic showdown set to take place on Jeopardy! this coming Monday which pits two of the show's biggest all-time winners, Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter, against Watson, a computer designed by IBM.

If you are not familiar with the popular game show that tests contestants' knowledge in a wide range of categories, then you will not know who Ken Jennings or Brad Rutter are. To put it simply, Jennings won a grand total of $3,022,700 on the show coming in second only to Brad Rutter who took home a total of $3,255,102. Needless to say, these gentlemen are extremely smart and ready to test their wits against the ultimate competitor, technology.

According to Stephen Baker, author of Final Jeopardy: Man vs. Machine and the Quest to Know Everything, "The computer is fast on the buzzer, and if it's given certain specialties - it's good on facts about facts it can find and nail down - it could win. But humans are better with complex English, puns, nuances, so..."

This challenge was initiated by IBM after its scientists worked on Watson for four years. The outcome has already been determined as the show does not air live, but it is a secret. The episodes were taped on January 14th, 2011 and are set to air on Monday, February 14th, 2011 and conclude on Wednesday, February 16th, 2011. Alex Trebek, the host of Jeopardy! since 1984, isn't budging on giving away the result either.

"I think the guys have a slight edge on knowledge because their memories are good," says Trebek. "In terms of speed, it's no contest. Watson has the edge there. But it'll all come down to luck." Trebek also added that Watson could not see or hear him "so it was pointless to comment in his direction!"

Executive Producer of Jeopardy! Harry Friedman noted that putting the show together was definitely a challenge. Nobody has every done this before and the closest thing to be done like this was when chess grandmaster Garry Kasparov took on an IBM computer known as Deep Blue. He lost. According to Friedman, "Producing for people and with people is one thing, but dealing with a computer was another."

Friedman sees the competition as a "fascinating exhibition of technology" and not a tournament or a competition. "It is to be judged for what technology can do," he says. However, don't tell that to Jennings or Rutter. Jennings stated that he was spooked by the setting, which took place inside the labs of IBM. "No one was cheering for me. It was at their (IBM's) home arena. It was an away game for humanity."

Rutter, who has won the highest accumulative amount on Jeopardy! ever, says that he does not think humans are becoming outdated and that he enjoyed being a "guinea pig" playing against a computer. According to Rutter, "People watch the show to see the contestants and how they react. Watson will never jump up and down when he gets it right."

The contest is going to air this coming Monday, Feruary 14th, 2011. Check your local listings so you can tune in and see who is smarter, man or machine.

Source: USA Today - 'Jeopardy!' champs compete against computer

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How to recover recycle bin on my computer

I'm going to start with the easiest of fixes for this.  At times our recycle bin on the computer has moved off the screen, and we just can't see it anymore.

If this fix doesn't work?  You don't have to undo anything, but we will move on to 2 other choices.

Left click on an open space on your desktop.  Then Right Click, and a menu will appear.  You are looking for the option to 'sort' or 'arrange' depending on your operating system.  SORT BY is what my Vista computer states.  This will rearrange your icons on the desktop, and if your recycle bin was just off the screen?  It should be placed in order at this point.  It basically 'rearranges' everything.  Check if the recycle bin is present.

If you have an older operating system like Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows 2000, or even Windows XP?  If you need to recovery the recycle bin Annoyances.org has an article for you, and also software that you will need.

Windows XP can also try the options below first if you wish.  Vista and Windows 7 can use the below to recovery their recycle bin.

When I had got my Vista computer one of the FIRST things I did by accident was 'delete' the recycle bin on my computer.  Can I say I was a bit freaked out by that?

I deleted by RECYCLE BIN!

Some of my friends when they received their computer found their recycle bin on computer wasn't present on their desktop at all.

Where can I find my recycle bin on my computer?
Where is the recycle bin?

 And for those of us that have deleted the recycle bin on our computer we knew we had to find a way to recover the recycle bin. 

How to recover recycle bin?

 Most found the following helpful to retrieve the recycle bin on the computer no matter what happened to it.

I was relieved that it was actually pretty easy.  YEAH!

The first thing you want to do is left click on an open spot on your desktop.

You then are going to right click right after that. 

At this point a menu comes up with choices.

As you can see you want to select 'personalize'.







A menu will come up next, and you want to look for Change Desktop Icons - See Red Arrow

 

Once you click on Change Desktop Icons yet another menu will come up.

You want to be sure your 'recycle bin' is marked as above.

If it is?  Delete it - then RE select it!  (then skip next line - *)

*If it isn't go ahead and select it.  You want to be sure that check mark is present.  Some computers may use an 'x'.

After you have CHECKED the recycle bin on your computer look to the bottom of this menu you will see the 'apply' button.  We want to click to 'apply' for this change (recovering the recycle bin on your computer).  Then click 'okay'.

At this point you can get rid of the rest of the menus that we used if they are still present.  Look to the top right hand corner, and click the "X" to exit out of them.

You should see the recycle bin on your computer desktop at this point.  If you don't see it try one more thing before I show you a work around.

Left Click an open spot on your desktop like we at the beginning.  Right Click again as we did as well.  We will NOT select the 'personalize' option, but the refresh option this time.  Here is our picture again, and you notice the third option down says REFRESH.

At times our desktop just needs a bit of refresh in order to show changes.

If all else fails, and you STILL don't have a recycle bin on your computer?  Microsoft recommends this 'work around'.  If you are using Windows XP you may wish to go to the annoyances.org for your work around.

   1. Click Start, and then click My Computer.

   2. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.

   3. Click the View tab, and then click to clear the Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) check box.

   4. Click Yes when you receive the warning message, and then click OK to close the Folder Options dialog box.

   5. Click Folders on the toolbar.

      Note If Folders is not visible on the toolbar, point to Toolbars on the View menu, and then click Standard Buttons.
   6. In the left navigation pane, under Folders, locate the Recycle Bin folder, and then drag the Recycle Bin folder to the desktop.
   7. On the Tools menu, click Folder Options.
   8. Click the View tab, and then click to select the Hide protected operating system files (Recommended) check box. Click OK.

Note This procedure does not re-create the original icon. However, this procedure restores most of the features of the Recycle Bin. This includes the following:

    * Delete a file by dragging it to the Recycle Bin icon on your Desktop.
    * Retrieve a file that you deleted by double-clicking the Recycle Bin icon on your Desktop, right-clicking the file that you want to retrieve, and then clicking Restore.
    * Empty the Recycle Bin by right-clicking the Recycle Bin icon on your Desktop, and then clicking Empty Recycle Bin.

Note When you use these step to work around this problem, you cannot right-click the Recycle Bin shortcut to access the Recycle Bin Properties. To set properties for the Recycle Bin, follow these steps:

   1. Double-click the Recycle Bin shortcut on the Desktop. The Recycle Bin folder opens.
   2. In the upper-left corner of the Recycle Bin folder, right-click the Recycle Bin icon, and then click Properties.

If this procedure did not fix the problem, you can contact support (http://support.microsoft.com/contactus) .

-----------------------------------------

I hope this helps you recover your recycle bin!

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Computer Recycle Bin: How do you delete files, folders, and icons?

All windows computers come with what we call a ‘recycle bin’.  Some of the pictures of the icon almost remind me of a trash can.  When I got Vista it was different this time.  It almost reminds me of a glass doesn't it?

Think of the recycle bin on your computer LIKE a trash can, because we use it to get rid of icons, files or folders that have outlived their use for us.  It will be a basic computer operation for you in time!

Just like a trash can there are times in which you will empty the recycle bin on your computer, but that will be the next lesson.

Today I'm was looking at a recipe that I placed on my desktop for a Crunchy Chinese Chicken.  It was basically an shortcut I had placed on the computer desktop to remind me to make it one night for dinner. 

Now I have decided I really don't need that shortcut on the computer anymore, and I want to get rid of it.  I'm going to show you a couple of different ways I can get my file, folder or icon into the Recycle Bin on my computer.

Keep in mind you can't remove programs doing this.  You need to go remove programs section under your control panel for that.   YES you can delete the program icon, but the program will still be on the computer itself.

The first portion for any of the steps below starts with selecting the item to be sent to the recycle bin on my computer.  You do this by using your left click button on top of what you wish to send to the recycle bin on your computer.

As you can see from my picture my Crunchy Chinese Chicken recipe is highlighted.

At this point you have a couple of different options you can use to send it to the recycle bin.

1)  When I click to highlight the icon pictured I DON'T let go!  I click once to highlight and HOLDING down that click I then DRAG the icon over the icon picture of the recycle bin on the desktop.  Once you are OVER the icon picture of the recycle bin you let GO!  It should be gone!

2)  The second way is again highlight the item you wish to send to the recycle bin.  Then RIGHT click.  You then are given a couple of options like the picture I have supplied.  You want to click the word 'delete' in this case.

As you can see you have a couple of different choices in this picture.

You can use your left click button again to click on 'delete'.

3)  The last option I find is the easiest.  You highlight the icon as I mentioned before, and then you look on your keyboard to find the 'delete' button.

Once you find that delete button you PUSH IT!

Like to so many other things we do on the computer you may get a message when attempting to send your item to the recycle bin.  It is basically asking us ARE YOU SURE you want to send it to the recycle bin?

If you notice the right below the question it mentions the recipe I was trying to get rid of by 'FILE name'.  

Its a nice double check for ourselves.  I tend to go rather fast when I delete things, and on occasion I click the WRONG file, folder or icon.  I don't notice I picked the wrong item until this prompt comes up with the question, and of course the NAME of the file I'm getting rid of shows up.  I can say NO at that point if I made the mistake, but in this case I have chosen the correct item.  

I tell the computer YES I want to send this file to the recycle bin on my computer.

This is a picture of a computer FILE folder.  I use these at times to keep organized.  For example, in this file folder I keep shortcuts to websites I read on a regular basis.

You may have seen this type of icon, and it will hold videos, photos, and documents for some examples.

You can delete these files just like you have seen above for files and icons.  Just keep in mind that EVERYTHING inside that file will also deleted.  Its always a good idea to double click on the folder to make sure everything in the folder is something you want to get rid of.  You would then CLOSE the folder, and follow either step 1, 2 or 3 above.

I find at times a visual is better at explaining things.  I made a video showing the above examples regarding the computer recycle bin.

If you can't see the video Click HERE.

I hope this helps others, and you are now more comfortable with deleting files, icons, and folders with your computer recycle bin.

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Intel Design Flaw Affects HP Availability

The tech world has been buzzing over Intel's second generation of processors known as "Sandy Bridge", but now they might be buzzing in a slightly different way as a major design flaw is stirring things up with not only Intel but other technology companies that have invested in devices using the processors.

HP has stated that the availability of some of their devices will be "impacted" by the design flaw in the chips that was recently disclosed by Intel. This flaw will also delay a product presentation by HP that is scheduled to take place in San Francisco next week.

According to a statement by Edelman Public Relations Worldwide, "We are postponing the business notebooks briefing on February 10 as the availability of HP products will be impacted by the flaw outlined by Intel." Intel said in a statement on January 31 that it will incur $1 billion in missed sales and higher costs to fix this design flaw. This flaw is also affecting PC makers like Samsung, who said they will offer refunds on some PCs, and NEC, who said they may push back the release of four new models.

The flaw is in a support chip, or chipset, for Intel's latest Sandy Bridge processors which were designed to improve PC graphics and repel a challenge by Advanced Micro Devices Inc. HP sells many computers that use chips other than the Sandy Bridge ones from Intel. According to Marlene Somsak, spokeswoman for HP, "HP has the broadest lineup of PCs in the industry and there are many HP choices using a wide variety of processors."

Dave Frink, spokesman for Dell, stated in an e-mail that "the Intel flaw affects four Dell products sold under its XPS, Vostro and Alienware brands." Frink went on to say, "We're committed to addressing this with customers who have already purchased one of the four products, will work directly with them and provide further details as they become available."

Devices that could potentially have the faulty chips have been sold since January 9 and Intel said it has corrected the flaw and has already begun manufacturing a new version of the chip to resolve the issue.

Intel plans on delivering an updated version of the Sandy Bridge processors, known as Cougar Point, to customers in late February with full production happening in April. Eight million Cougar Point chips have already been shipped out by Intel that will have to be replaced.

Source: Business Week

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