September 2003

XBox in a phone?
According to various published sourcs, at its Developers Forum, Intel spoke of the next generation XScale processors, codenamed "Bulverde," that will include MMX multimedia instructions and thus enable much better mutlimedia and gaming performance. Inel also plans on including other Pentium-style innovations such as SpeedStep Technology to lower power consumption. Digital camera and video encoding are enabled which will mean quicker compression and higher frame rates. Whether or not all this will result in "XBox performance in a smartphone" remains to be seen. We'd be happy with some significant improvements in Pocket PC. -- Posted Saturday, September 20, 2003 by chb

SanDisk CF Card survives wash 'n dry
As editors we're always extra careful with equipment, but every once in a while something gets a good workout. That's what happened to a SanDisk Ultra 512MB Compact Flash card. I stuck it in my shirt pocket and the shirt ended up in the wash machine. And then in the dryer. No problem. The SanDisk card survived completely unharmed and unscratched, and with all data intact. Good job, SanDisk! -- Posted Wednesday, September 17, 2003 by chb