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Microsoft plans in April to offer developers an updated test version of Longhorn, along with more details on what's in store with the next major update to Windows.In an e-mail to developers on Wednesday, Microsoft said it would offer a new developer preview release of Longhorn at the company's Windows Hardware Engineering Conference, April 25-27 in Seattle.The company has also updated its WinHEC site with a preliminary list of tracks--many of which are devoted to Longhorn.The track descriptions suggest a number of the areas in which Longhorn will be seeking to improve on today's Windows, including enhancements to printing, improvements in power management and a new feature that will allow Longhorn-based PCs to connect directly to cellular phones. Other topics include enhancements that Longhorn will bring to mobile computing, including support for secondary displays.Microsoft lists a session devoted to the hardware requirements for Longhorn. "This session explores the components that define a Windows Longhorn-ready PC and covers core system requirements, marketing considerations, and the timeline for customer awareness leading up to Windows Longhorn PC availability," Microsoft said on the site.The updated developer preview software will be the first look at Longhorn since the software maker announced plans last fall to scale back several planned features of the OS.The company announced last August that it would make changes to all three major pillars of Longhorn. The company pulled out the new WinFS file system feature, while changing the Indigo Web services and Avalon graphics engines so that they would work with both Longhorn and Windows XP.The company has served up a couple of prior developer preview versions of Longhorn already, but those editions predated the Longhorn changes.In addition to the new developer preview, Microsoft said earlier this month that it plans to have a more full-featured beta release of the OS by the end of June. The final release of Longhorn is planned for the second half of next year, Microsoft has said.A Microsoft representative was not immediately available for further comment.

Another variant of the MyDoom worm, which spreads by sending copies of itself using its own mail engine and harvesting potential e-mail targets from search engines such as Google and Yahoo, was spreading quickly on Thursday.Last summer, a MyDoom variant pumped so many queries into Google that the search engine was unavailable or very slow for large periods of time. The same variant of MyDoom also succeeded in knocking a number of smaller search engines--including Lycos and Altavista--off the Web completely.Antivirus firm Sophos said the latest MyDoom variant searches an infected computer's hard disk for e-mail addresses and then reverts to an Internet search. Interestingly, the worm tries to search the Internet for e-mail addresses in the infected computer's domain--effectively targeting all users from a specific company or service provider.According to a Sophos advisory, the worm "will send a query to the search engine using domain names from e-mail addresses found on the hard disk and then examine the query results, searching for more addresses."Sean Richmond, senior technical consultant at Sophos in Australia and New Zealand, said that the latest variant was first detected early Thursday and that as long as people have updated their virus definitions it shouldn?t cause much of a problem."We saw a spate of samples come through over the last day into our lab. By now a lot of companies are already blocking dodgy zip files and quite a few of the infected e-mails are automatically blocked as spam. It is spreading but everyone (including alternative antivirus companies) are on top of things," Richmond said.Sophos said the worm will send 45 percent of its queries to Google, 22.5 percent to Lycos, 20 percent to Yahoo and 12.5 percent to Altavista.Antivirus firms Sophos, Computer Associates and Symantec all agree that the worm is spreading quickly but is relatively simple to remove using their latest antivirus definitions.

Microsoft is recalling power cords on 14.1 million Xbox consoles worldwide, following reports of injuries due to defective electrical components.The company announced the recall on Thursday, saying it is aimed at protecting the consoles from electrical-component failures that can pose a fire hazard. So far, such failures have been reported in 30 consoles, causing minor injury or property damage, Microsoft said. Seven customers reported burns to their hands. In the rest of the cases, the defect caused smoke damage or minor damage to a carpet or entertainment center.In Europe, consoles made before Jan. 13, 2004, will need replacement cords, the company said. In all other areas, the recall covers consoles manufactured before Oct. 23, 2003.Orders for replacement cords can be placed at the Xbox Web site. New cords will take up to four weeks to arrive. Until the new cord comes, customers should turn off consoles when not in use, the company said.Power cord problems have dogged other device makers in the past. Last year, for example, Dell recalled 4.4 million defective power adapters sold with notebooks between 1998 and 2002."This is a preventative step we're choosing to take despite the rarity of these incidents," Robbie Bach, senior vice president at Microsoft?s entertainment division, said in a statement. "We regret the inconvenience but believe offering consumers a free replacement is the responsible thing to do."

* Web browsers * Microsoft CorpThe Mozilla group expects to run a thank-you ad in the New York Times by Christmas as new market share numbers showed continued progress against Microsoft.The Mozilla Foundation, an open-source group founded by Netscape Communications to develop its browser and spun off last year by AOL Time Warner, has been executing an unorthodox, volunteer marketing campaign. To mark last month's official launch of the Firefox browser, the group planned to take out a full-page New York Times ad thanking financial contributors.That fundraising and marketing scheme inspired so many contributions that Mozilla volunteers ran into technical difficulties squeezing all their names onto a single ad. Now, with the unsolicited help of an Adobe Illustrator engineer, the group has surmounted those problems and submitted the ad to the Times for what volunteers expect will be a pre-Christmas run date."We're looking forward to getting this ad out so everyone can use it as an example of community marketing in action," said Mozilla volunteer Rob Davis, who is spearheading the ad effort. "It was nice to hear from the folks at Adobe and get the tweaks that made the process go faster."Mozilla, which on Sunday marked its 10 millionth Firefox 1.0 download, has opted for a cheaper rate at the Times by giving the paper discretion to run the ad on any day in a two- to three-week window.Mozilla promised both a surprise in the ad and a longer term goal of doubling the download number."Now it's done and we're pushing to get the ad out in the next few days, giving us just enough time to celebrate our 10 million download success before we make a move to double that number!" wrote a Mozilla volunteer on the group's Spread Firefox marketing Web site. "We'll let you know the day before the ad is set to run. You'll want to be sure to stake out a copy for yourself--we've got a surprise for you!"Firefox market share increasesWhile the group and its 10,000 donors wait to see their names in the paper, new numbers from Web site metrics firm WebSideStory indicate that Firefox's first month as a full Version 1.0 release boosted its market share by a point at the expense of Microsoft's Internet Explorer browser.Firefox has won good reviews and a number of awards. But its biggest selling point up until now is that it isn't IE, whose reputation has suffered amid an ongoing series of security problems.Firefox's "usage share" climbed from 3 percent to 4 percent since just before the launch of Version 1.0 in early November, according to San Diego-based WebSideStory, which sells Web site traffic monitoring software and services. Firefox appears to have taken that percentage point directly from IE, which slipped from 93 percent to 92 percent.Another Web site metrics firm, Amsterdam, Netherlands-based OneStat.com, last month showed IE dipping below the 90 percent mark.By WebSideStory's count, non-Firefox Netscape browsers accounted for 3 percent of the market, unchanged from the prior month, and other browsers--which include the Opera browser and Apple Computer's Safari browser--accounted for 1 percent of usage.On a daily basis, WebSideStory derives its global data from the travels of 30 million Internet users from more than 200 countries visiting more than 20,000 sites."Firefox's gains are clearly accelerating," Rand Schulman, WebSideStory?s chief marketing officer, said in a statement. "Much of it has to do with the release of Firefox's version 1.0 on Nov. 9, after several months of offering a preview version. Firefox's stated goal of gaining 10 percent of the market over the next year no longer seems unattainable."Microsoft declined to comment directly on the new market share numbers, but acknowledged demand for competing browsers."While Internet Explorer is the choice of hundreds of millions because of the unique value it provides, we respect that some customers will choose an alternative," a Microsoft representative said in a statement. "We also know that choosing a browser is about more than a handful of features. Microsoft continues to make major investments in Internet Explorer."In other Mozilla news, the group said it expected to mark the millionth download of its recently released Thunderbird e-mail management software on Thursday.

I recently attended Nintendo?s ?Ultimate Fantasy? event in Redmond, WA, the focus of which was Nintendo?s upcoming RPG lineup for the Game Boy Advance. Fire Emblem, Mario and Luigi: Superstar Saga, and Sword of Mana were publicly demoed and offered in playable units, and copies of Final Fantasy Tactics Advance were provided to take home. We?ll have a FF:TA review on the site in the coming days, so it won?t be covered in this feature. For all the info made available on the other three high-profile RPGs, though, be sure to keep reading.Fire EmblemFire Emblem has always been one of Nintendo?s most popular franchises in Japan, with seven titles stretching over the Famicom, Super Famicom, and Game Boy Advance systems. Up until now, however, none of these titles have made their way over the Pacific. Nintendo has chosen to premier the series in America with the most recent GBA title, Fire Emblem: Rekka no Ken, referred to only as Fire Emblem for its North American debut.According to Nintendo, this iteration of the Fire Emblem series was actually designed with intent to be launched worldwide from the start. Developed by Intelligent Systems, the same people responsible for the Advance Wars titles for the GBA, Fire Emblem is actually the second title in the series to be released on the Game Boy Advance. The in-game timeline takes place a generation before the first GBA title, though, so you won?t be missing out on any of the storyline if you opt to pick it up this fall.In fact, for those who wonder about what storyline elements they?ve missed from the Famicom and Super Famicom games, the Fire Emblem games operate over completely independent game universes. Much like the Final Fantasy series, every game or two completely scraps the storyline from the previous games and starts fresh. One and Two were the same universe, Three was a remake of both One and Two, Four and Five were their own universe (I believe), and Six and Seven on the GBA are yet another universe.Fire Emblem on the GBA prompts you for your name, birth month, and gender at the start. Based upon these specifications, you actually become recognized as a participant in the game. You come across a young girl early on in the first chapter, and you take on the role of a tactician and guide her against some marauding bandits. This is your job throughout the game ? commanding the various units and characters you come upon during your adventure.According to the folks at Nintendo, the number of characters in the game is truly astonishing. A good chunk of the game?s storyline elements take place during the battles you fight, and you can only take several of the many characters available to you into the fray at one time. As such, the storyline elements that unfold can be different depending upon who you choose to bring with you. Also, depending upon who you choose to battle with, certain other characters may become available to you. If you receive a tip in a town that highly suggests you have a specific thief character in your party, for example, you?d be wise to bring them with you. Chances are that that thief will have some history with another character on the field, and will be able to convince them to join your forces.This is probably a good chance to explain how the game works in general. While there are occasionally some cut-scenes that further the story, the majority of the game takes place on the battlefield. Things are controlled from a top down perspective on a generally gridded terrain. Think Advance Wars, and you?ll have a pretty good idea of how things work. Control alternates between you and the enemy, and you have the opportunity to move your units anywhere within their range on their individual turns. After moving into position, they can attack any enemy unit within their attack range. Most battles end after the leader of the enemy troops is defeated, or the enemy base is captured.There?s a rock-paper-scissors mentality to the way attacks are executed. When you sidle up against an enemy and choose to attack, you are given the opportunity to choose the weapon that you want to strike with. What you choose should entirely depend upon what weapon the enemy is brandishing. Swords best axes, axes best lances, and lances best swords. While this is a general rule, there are some specific weapons that break the mold and reverse the pattern. For example, there is a type of sword that excels in overpowering a lance-wielder. Anyways, once you choose your weapon, the perspective changes to a side view of your character battling the enemy.Let me take a moment to comment on how beautiful your fighter?s ensuing animations can be. There are a ridiculous number of frames to each character?s attack, and the fluidity can be almost hypnotizing at times. Some of the attacks are simple jabs and thrusts, while others are spectacular anime-influenced snippets of cinematography. I don?t quite know how it happened, but the girl you meet at the beginning of the game finishes her last foe by drawing her sword, crouching and holding it horizontally, dashing backwards with incredible speed, vanishing, and enveloping her foe in a whirlwind of strikes. It?s truly a sight to behold.There?s more to the battlefield than the enemies you fight, though. Several types of terrain cover the landscape, and each holds a specific advantage for any unit occupying it. For example, moving a unit into the forest will make it harder for him to be hit by enemies, and gives a slight defensive bonus. You get similar results if you place a unit on a mountain or a pillar. Parts of the battlefield are destructible, as well. An enemy leader surrounded by a thick wall can only be attacked after you break through a weak part of the wall. Various towns also dot the battlefield, and visiting them allows you to get advice from the locals, visit shops, and recruit new characters. All this during the normal flow of battle.The game starts out with an enormous tutorial mode, where you?re walked through the main functions of the game. After the tutorial is complete, you proceed through the game chapter by chapter. The storyline is said to get pretty messed up at points, almost to the point where Nintendo was considering giving the game a Teen rating. None of your characters are exempt from dying in the field, and as an added incentive to keep them up and fighting, dead characters never come back. Nintendo employees working on translating the game have been known to play certain battles upwards of 30 times if it means getting through the mission without losing anyone. This is no game for little kids ? it will take a very long time to beat, and it gets very hard as you progress.Nintendo is considering releasing Fire Emblem: Fuuin no Tsurugi in America, the first Fire Emblem title to be released on the GBA in Japan, if sales of the first American release are strong. And if you?ve noticed a character strongly resembling Roy from Super Smash Brothers Melee in screens for the American release of Fire Emblem, you should be interested to know that that?s actually Eliwood, Roy?s father. Roy is featured prominently in Fuuin no Tsurugi, however, so if you ever want to see his story released stateside, let Nintendo know you care and pick up Fire Emblem this fall. While the demo at this showing was very similar to the one shown at the last E3, it remains a very addictive and entertaining game. I can?t fathom why it?s taken Nintendo this long to bring it to the rest of the world.

We're always looking for ways to conserve money, especially in today's economy. What with $400+ video cards and ram prices being controlled by the "Ram Cartel", we ALL need to find ways to build systems cheaply. The following link should help those individuals who have never built a computer, but wanted to try, for practically NO money at all - Dr. Ashen Presents - How to Build a Computer for Almost No Money at All! - http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/ WARNING - Be advised that is VERY British humor and that this site (the above link) probably won't be up for very long. What typically happens is that this guy (Dr. Ashen) gets his site up and running and it then gets SO many hits that it exceeds it's bandwidth alotment (for the YEAR!). Consequently, it's up and down fairly regularly. Also be advised that if you follow this guy's directions and burn your house down, I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE !!!

A nice little tweak for XP. Microsoft reserve 20% of your available bandwidth for their own purposes (suspect for updates and interrogating your machine etc..)Here's how to get it back:Click Start-->Run-->type "gpedit.msc" without the "This opens the group policy editor. Then go toLocal Computer Policy-->Computer Configuration-->Administrative Templates-->Network-->QOS Packet Scheduler-->Limit Reservable BandwidthDouble click on Limit Reservable bandwidth. It will say it is not configured, but the truth is under the 'Explain' tab :"By default, the Packet Scheduler limits the system to 20 percent of the bandwidth of a connection, but you can use this setting to override the default."So the trick is to ENABLE reservable bandwidth, then set it to ZERO. This will allow the system to reserve nothing, rather than the default 20%.Have fun.Note: This Doesnt Work with Windows Xp Home.

I learn an old thecnique to how to recover damaged or scratched diskswith some lost of data. In this case i have one borrowed game - MAX PAYNE 2with a chunck of 4 mb lost with a scratch in CD1 Install. Here we cover somespecial thecniques of how to create a full working CD from the scratched one.First some tools will be needed:1. Alcohol 120%2. UltraISO3. Windows XP/2000 (not tested on 95/98/me)3. Small piece of cotton4. Dry cleaner paperFirst step - preparing the CDGet the cotton and drop some water, start cleaning vertically the surface of CD.Do it 3 times and dry the water with a piece of dry cleaner paper. With a new pieceof cotton, drop some oil for cooking and start to wet the surface like you arewashing the CD with the oil. Dry carefully now. Some particles of oil will stay on themicrosurface of the scrath. It's okay. Seems the oil helps the laser of the CD/DVD driverto read the surface again. Sure this will work with small unreadable scratchs - some hardscratchs loose parts of the surface of the CD where we have data and it's lost forever.But if it is loosed try anyway. Whith this tip 80% of the small scratched CD's coud berecovered.Second Step - testing the CDWith Alcohol 120% make an ISO - image making wizard - and lets see if the app canread the loosed surface. In my case Alcohol 120% had recovered 60% of the data.This is not enough. Have tryed other appz, they do not recover all the data. But theCD/DVD driver laser CAN recover all data in this case. the data is still there, what we do?third step - making the new CDWith the main copy system of windows explorer you can do it. Just create one folderwith the same name of the CD label for future burn reference, and copy the CD contentto the folder. When the CD copy process find the scratch, in majority of the cases, it'sslow down the reading and will recover ALL loosed data.If not, it just tell you there'san unreadable sector. In this case your CD is lost. But it's not my case, finallywindows explorer got all the data from the scratch and made a copy in the folder.with the ultraISO, wrote the original CD label, drop the content of the folder andsave as Iso. You can Test the new CD just mounting the iso in the Alcohol 120%. In mycase i did ISO of the two discs from MAX PAYNE 2 and tested installing from the mountedISO. Works like a charm. I got the 4 mb lost again. So, I have burned the CD and now ihave a working copy from the scratched one.Sounds too bizzarre, but works. Course you can jump the cleaning process and try to copythe content with Windows explorer. But in my case did not work without oil...smile2.gifAny comments are welcome.

o All,Some of you are having trouble called PASV Mode.. Most of time they are perfer PASV Mode OFF is better way to do with Firewall or connections problems.. It very imporant to read the any Post that been labeled "Please Turn your PASV Mode OFF" is most commons around. So, for FlashFXP, Check your user guide or Help search how to turn off. Be sure you check your vendor software and also be sure you check like Firewall as ZoneAlarm to permit to in and outgoing executeable program to able allow zonealarm to learn to know.IF you are using like Hardware Router (Gateway) you don't need all extra feature. but best way to uncheck PASV Mode or Disable Pasv Mode.========= FlashGet Configurations ==========For FlashGet 1.4 to 1.6 (Full Version). Really Piece of cake!1.) Open you Flashget program, click Tools2.) go down to Options3.) Go to PROXY tab4.) Click Edit as Direct Connection and Uncheck PASV Mode..5.) Click OK or Apply..One another thing, IF you are using Zonealarm, be sure you are "ALLOW" incoming and outgoing Flashget.exe this will help better performace..

Services You Can DisableThere are quite a few services you can disable from starting automatically.This would be to speed up your boot time and free resources.They are only suggestions so I suggestion you read the description of each one when you run Servicesand that you turn them off one at a time.Some possibilities are:AlerterApplication ManagementClipbookFast UserSwitchingHuman Interface DevicesIndexing ServiceMessengerNet LogonNetMeetingQOS RSVPRemote Desktop Help Session ManagerRemote RegistryRouting & Remote AccessSSDP Discovery ServiceUniversal Plug and Play Device HostWeb Client--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Cleaning the Prefetch DirectoryWindowsXP has a new feature called Prefetch. This keeps a shortcut to recently used programs.However it can fill up with old and obsolete programs.To clean this periodically go to:Star / Run / PrefetchPress Ctrl-A to highlight all the shorcutsDelete them--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Not Displaying Logon, Logoff, Startup and Shutdown Status MessagesTo turn these off:Start RegeditGo to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\policies\systemIf it is not already there, create a DWORD value named DisableStatusMessagesGive it a value of 1--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Clearing the Page File on ShutdownClick on the Start buttonGo to the Control PanelAdministrative ToolsLocal Security PolicyLocal PoliciesClick on Security OptionsRight hand menu - right click on "Shutdown: Clear Virtual Memory Pagefile"Select "Enable"RebootFor regedit users.....If you want to clear the page file on each shutdown:Start RegeditGo to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\ClearPageFileAtShutdownSet the value to 1--------------------------------------------------------------------------------No GUI BootIf you don't need to see the XP boot logo,Run MSCONFIGClick on the BOOT.INI tabCheck the box for /NOGUIBOOT---------------------------------------------------------------------------------Speeding the Startup of Some CD Burner ProgramsIf you use program other than the native WindowsXP CD Burner software,you might be able to increase the speed that it loads.Go to Control Panel / Administrative Tools / ServicesDouble-click on IMAPI CD-Burning COM ServiceFor the Startup Type, select DisabledClick on the OK button and then close the Services windowIf you dont You should notice--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Getting Rid of Unread Email MessagesTo remove the Unread Email message by user's login names:Start RegeditFor a single user: Go to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMailFor all users: Go to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\UnreadMailCreate a DWORD key called MessageExpiryDaysGive it a value of 0------------------------------------------------------------------------------Decreasing Boot TimeMicrosoft has made available a program to analyze and decrease the time it takes to boot to WindowsXPThe program is called BootVisUncompress the file.Run BOOTVIS.EXEFor a starting point, run Trace / Next Boot + Driver DelaysThis will reboot your computer and provide a benchmarkAfter the reboot, BootVis will take a minute or two to show graphs of your system startup.Note how much time it takes for your system to load (click on the red vertical line)Then run Trace / Optimize SystemRe-Run the Next Boot + Drive DelaysNote how much the time has decreasedMine went from approximately 33 to 25 seconds.--------------------------------------------------------------------------------Increasing Graphics PerformanceBy default, WindowsXP turns on a lot of shadows, fades, slides etc to menu items.Most simply slow down their display.To turn these off selectively:Right click on the My Computer iconSelect PropertiesClick on the Advanced tabUnder Performance, click on the Settings buttonTo turn them all of, select Adjust for best performanceMy preference is to leave them all off except for Show shadows under mouse pointer and Show window contents while dragging---------------------------------------------------------------------------Increasing System PerformanceIf you have 512 megs or more of memory, you can increase system performanceby having the core system kept in memory.Start RegeditGo to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory Management\DisablePagingExecutiveSet the value to be 1Reboot the computer---------------------------------------------------------------------------Increasing File System CachingTo increase the amount of memory Windows will locked for I/O operations:Start RegeditGo to HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SYSTEM\CurrentControlSet\Control\Session Manager\Memory ManagementEdit the key IoPageLockLimit-----------------------------------------------------------------------------Resolving Inability to Add or Remove ProgramsIf a particular user cannot add or remove programs, there might be a simple registry edit neeed.Go to HKCU\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Policies\UninstallChange the DWORD NoAddRemovePrograms to 0 disable it4096 - 32megs of memory or less8192 - 32+ megs of memory16384 - 64+ megs of memory32768 - 128+ megs of memory65536 - 256+ megs of memory-------------------------------------------------------------------------------There too many more tips I've mined all over. Just all those shown that has increased performance quite abit. Hack away!!!

I found this on my travels & thought it might be helpful smile2.gifIf you have the latest Internet Explorer version and all your Windows Updates, you can safely ignore the DSO Exploit as a potential problem when Spybot Search and Destroy or other spyware removal tools discover it. However if you would rather fix the exploit so it does not show up again, follow these steps to edit your Windows Registry. Please be careful however, incorrect changes to the Windows Registry can cause Windows to not boot.1) Make a note of the location of the exploit shown in Spybot, something similar to:HKEY_USERS\S-1-5-21-1614895754-73586283-725345543-500\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Internet Settings\Zones\0\1004!=W=32) Click on Start, Run, and type REGEDIT and Press Enter to open the Windows Registry Editor3) Find the location of the exploit above in the registry by clicking on the pluses(+) next to each title4) After opening the Zones section and clicking on '0' look to the right window, under 'name' is the key '1004' and the type is REG_SZ simply right click and delete this REG_SZ value.Then right click and create new>DWORD Value, name it 1004, then right click on that and goto modify, give it the Hex Value of 3, Click ok.If there is only a DWORD Value for the key (in this case 1004), then double click on the key and change the HEX value to 3 and click Ok.5) Close the Registry Editor and Reboot your computer6) The DSO Exploit should now be removed and it should no longer appear in the Spybot Search and Destroy log as a problem

Nintendo of America, together with developer Exile Interactive, have announced they will bring Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball to the Nintendo GameCube on April 4. David Ortiz of the Boston Red Sox (2004 World Series Champions) will be featured on the game's cover.Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball is said to include players from every Major League Baseball team, all 30 current Major League ballparks, and more. The game has also been licensed by the Major League Baseball Players Association and the National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, with statistics and ratings provided by STATS, Inc. Veteran sportscasters Bob Brenly, Rick Rizzs and Tom Hutyler will provide commentary in the game. Nintendo Pennant Chase Baseball's official website will be opening shortly at http://forums.xisto.com/no_longer_exists/.

Nintendo Europe has announced several details regarding its planned launch of the Nintendo DS handheld. The most prominent news reveals that the Nintendo DS will launch in the UK on March 11 at a retail price of ?99.Nintendo Europe said it will bring the DS to market with the support of a ?35 million marketing campaign littered with the slogan 'Touch Me!'. Nintendo said that it expects to ship a total of 650,000 DS units on launch and that each of those will come bundled with the Metroid Prime: First Hunt demo and PictoChat instant messenger software. Additional games will cost between ?19.99 and ?29.99. The UK launch on March 11 will be supported with the following 14 titles: * Asphalt Urban GT (Gameloft/Ubisoft) * Mr. DRILLER: Drill Spirits (Namco) * Ping Pals (THQ), * Pok?mon Dash (Nintendo) * Polarium (Nintendo) * Project Rub (Sega) * Rayman DS (Ubisoft) * Robots (Vivendi) * Spider-Man 2 (Activision) * Super Mario 64 DS (Nintendo) * The URBZ: Sims in the City (EA) * Tiger Woods PGA Tour (EA) * WarioWare Touched! (Nintendo) * Zookeeper (Ignition) Nintendo reminds us that the Nintendo DS is also fully backwards compatible with all 550 Game Boy Advance titles. Furthermore, Nintendo says that over 120 games are currently in development for the Nintendo DS. Some of the future software titles to look forward to include: * Advance Wars DS * Another * Castlevania DS * Jam With The Band * Mario Kart DS * Need for Speed Underground 2 * Nintendogs * Retro Atari Classics * Yoshi's Touch and Go

CPU: It's been rumored for a while that an IBM CPU would grace GameCube Next, and there is no better chip coming out of that firm than the PPC 970 in this editor's humble opinion. For anyone who doesn't know - this is the core of the G5 towers from Apple. It's a sweet chip - very well designed - with efficient use of power, less heat created than a Pentium 4, 64-bit registers, and a component of one of the top 5 fastest computers in the world (the Virginia Tech G5 cluster).Currently this chip goes as fast as 2.4Ghz (although these have yet to ship), but most of them run at 2.0Ghz - which makes the 2.7Ghz figure kind of surprising. However, Steve Jobs has promised 3Ghz from the chip by the end of this year. On this front we'll just have to see.As for their clockspeed - please don't jump into comparisons with the Pentium 4's being at 3.4Ghz and whatnot. At 2Ghz, the G5 is about as fast as a 3.4Ghz Pentium 4 (perhaps a little slower.) At 2.7Ghz, or dual 1.8Ghz CPUs, the G5 screams.Interesting how this article suggests they are considering a dual processor system and a single processor system. My gut says that the single chip solution would be better. After all, single threaded programming is much easier to do and 2.7Ghz of power is no slouch when it comes to the crunch. The dual 1.8Ghz setup would be a very good performer and makes a lot more sense for games on a console than dual CPUs do for PC gaming. Still: two separate CPUs presents a challenge for programmers trying to code in low level languages. The single processor setup would yield better performance for most people, and thus would be the better choice. However, the dual 1.8Ghz design would be theoretically more powerful and it would be much cheaper to make. By the time the 2.7Ghz parts come out, IBM will be on a 90nm manufacturing process, and a 1.8Ghz CPU would be easier and cheaper to produce.Both choices are good ones and would certainly give X-Box and the PS3 a run for their money. This is probably the best chip on the market right now (maybe not the fastest, but just generally best clock for clock) - and sticking to the Power PC instruction set from the GameCube would make for a very nice transition into the next generation for current developers.GPU: This is exciting.First of all, ATI is just about to debut their line of chips to be for sale early this summer (perhaps slightly before.) The specs on these chips are 12 "pipes" at 500Mhz and 16 "pipes" at 600Mhz. Both of these chips are actually identical, but because of yielding issues the chips that don't work to the high-end spec can have parts disabled and slowed down to work at the slower spec so they can still be sold and not thrown away. This is what companies do when they are using a new manufacturing process (in this case, 130nm.)These GPU's supposedly have six shader units which perform the vertex "shading" operations that we all hear so much about. Now the 600Mhz, 16 pipe part is a beast. The GameCube has a 4 pipe part at 167Mhz. Unlike regular CPUs, you can calculate very precisely the theoretical performance of GPUs using how many "pipes" they have by their clockspeed (pipes, by the way, represent the simultaneous number of pixels that can be rendered and textured in a single clock cycle of the GPU). To understand exactly how much of a leap these chips are, consider that if you go to the store right now and plop down roughly $450 for the fastest card on the market, the ATI 9800XT, you get 8 pipes at 412Mhz, giving you a fillrate of about 3.3 Giga pixels per second. The new R420, with 16 pipes and 600Mhz provides a theoretical max fillrate of 9.6 Gpixels/s. This is a fillrate jump that is leaps and bounds over just about anything before. NVidia has a similar card that was just unveiled and will hit the stores pretty soon (400Mhz and 16 pipes.) This is an incredible jump forward - in the case of ATI, literally trippling performance (imagine going from a 3Ghz to a 9Ghz Pentium - maybe not quite so drastic, but you get the picture.)So, all that rambling was about the cards that ATI just put out this month, that have similar specs to what was posted here - with one exception (and this is what excites me.) Normally, transistor counts aren't really that important. Really it's a meaningless figure that only points to chip complexity, and when compared to previous incarnations of the same chip, can give you an idea of heat/power requirements), but in this case we have two chips which are seemingly identical except for their transistor count. The R420, the 600Mhz, 6 shader unit, 16 pipe beast mentioned above uses 160 - 180 million transistors.This is significant. This means there's something extra aboard that chip. Given the specs (500Mhz or 600Mhz and probably 16 pipes on both counts) this could mean one of a couple things that I will speculate on. First, it could mean more shader units. This is always a plus - the more shader units, the more powerful effects that can be performed in-game. The other has to do with something similar, but relates to a slightly different element. Right now, there's somewhat of a complaint about a supposed weak point in ATI's seemingly jack-of-all-trades GPU. It is limited with 24-bit precision in pixel shading, as opposed to the 32-bit precision of the GeForce. What these extra transistors could account for is the extra 8-bits in register size.Basically, this new GPU would be great. Going from 0.67 Gpixels/s and no vertex shading on the GameCube to a 9.6 Gpixels/s Vertex shading beast would be superb. As for the 128MB of GDDR3 RAM - this stuff is fast and essential. The upcoming R420 uses it, and it has a 1200Mhz memory bus providing something along the lines of 35-40 GB/s of bandwidth. Crazy, isn't it?Blue laser disc format: This, too, is quite tasty news. A blue laser has a narrower wavelength than a red laser, the type used in current DVD players ? and a narrower wavelength allows for higher data density on the surface of an optical disc, thus providing more storage space. We know that this means we?ll have a very large storage capacity for the next system (assuming this rumor holds true). What we don?t know is exactly how large, or what format will be used. There are two major blue-laser formats being developed: the popular Blue-ray format, and HD DVD.Both of these are propositioned as the replacement for the current DVD format, allowing high definition content to be stored, and both of them provide more storage space (Blu-ray with 27GB per layer, and HD DVD with 15GB per layer ? with current DVDs storing 4.7GB per layer). Due to Nintendo's relationship with Matsushita, it is my opinion that if Nintendo went with a blue laser format, it would go with the Matsushita backed Blu-ray standard. Of course, knowing Nintendo, it?s entirely possible they are using some other format, or even one they made up on their own (perhaps 5GB GCN sized discs?).Another exciting aspect of this is that the Blu-ray format is inherently re-writeable, the possibilities of which are enticing. As for DVD playback ? this isn?t exactly consistent with the blue-laser spec. Of course, there could certainly be an additional laser packed in there (lots of DVD players do this to play Audio CDs). That tidbit could, however, lead one to believe that perhaps the new Nintendo system will playback DVDs in the Blu-ray format - meaning, high definition. All of this seems a little doubtful, simply because Blu-ray won?t really be accessible to the average American consumer till about 2006 when it?s expected the technology will be cheap enough for adoption, but if Matsushita is retained as a partner, perhaps this is more realistic than one would expect. We?ll just have to see.RAM: If we presume that this article is indeed legitimate then the 512 MB configuration would be ideal. Of course, it may come down to going with 512MB of slower RAM or 256MB of the faster (Nintendo always seems very cost conscious.) I have no idea what they'd be looking at with the RAM issue, but my guess would be something along the lines of PC4200. I wonder if 1T SRAM is still on the plate?As for those audio specs, if they are going for 196Khz, then they'll most certainly need the dedicated 64MB. This number indicates the sampling rate. The highest sampling rate for the DVD-A format is 192Khz (Dolby Digital DVD movies tap out at 96Khz.) Sample rate isn't the frequency range, but rather the frequency of samples done on the specific audio channel, comprising the resolution of the channel if you will. I'm really curious about this spec, mostly because of bandwidth issues. The DVD-A spec calls for a sample rate of 192 Khz for 2 channels (stereo), and 96Khz for 6 channels - these conditions require about 9.6Mbps of bandwidth and an entire DVD disc for about two hours of this (this is DVD Audio mind you, there?s no movie on here, just music.) This means either a) this spec is wrong, this spec only refers to 2 channel sound, and is reduced for the proposed 7 channel operation, or c) the N5 has one huge optical media format (something like Blu-Ray.) Even taking into account compression, this is a very hefty spec and would require lots of storage and lots of RAM, which they seem to be supplying. This spec on its own could possibly make or break the validity of the entire document.Hard Drive: I'm not really surprised. Remember the whole debacle about sports saves sucking and Nintendo execs commenting that they'd fix this problem? Hard drive is the cheapest way. 15GB is way small though - I don't see much in the way of downloaded content. 30GB, in my opinion, would have been a sweeter spot. However, it's little things like a small hard drive that might point to this document being true. The fact that not everything on the spec list is top of the line is actually a good sign, as a 300 dollar machine can not contain all top-of-the-line components.Good times, eh? Hopefully this will give you a nice idea of what to expect from Nintendo's next-gen endeavors. And even if they aren't 100% accurate, they should at least prove that Nintendo is playing hardball. Hopefully the rumors of Nintendo releasing a system barely more powerful than the GameCube will begin to die.

Next Generation Game Boy We don?t have any specific numbers for the next Game Boy, but we?ve got plenty of information nonetheless. Do note, this isn?t information about the DS. The next Game Boy will supposedly launch some time in 2006. * The working title is ?Game Boy Evolution". * The system will have a flip-top design, similar to the GBA SP. * Games will come on mini-discs, as opposed to cartridges. * The graphics will be slightly better than those found on the Sega Dreamcast. * Bluetooth wireless networking will be built in. * The system will feature backwards compatibility, but not in the same way the GBA plays old Game Boy games. Supposedly there will be a device that will allow you to download games from their carts into a harddrive-like element of the new Game Boy. Confusing, yes, but that?s all we?ve managed to gleam. Speculate as you like. * The system?s screen will be lit, similar to the GBA SP. GameCube Next Now, a bit of clarification is necessary here. We have two sets of specs to talk about. Supposedly Nintendo has two sets of benchmark specifications they?re working with, and one will be chosen when they are closer to actual development. We?ll talk about both in the analysis. System 1: * 2.7 Ghz PowerPC G5 Processor * 512 Megs total Ram (128 for video, 64 for sound) * 600 Mhz graphics chip System 2: * Dual 1.8 Ghz IBM G5 PowerPC processors * 256 Megs DDR Main memory (64 dedicated to sound, using a 7.1 sound system at 196 Khz) * 128 Megs GDDR3 Video memory * 500 Mhz graphics chip (ATI developed, 16 Pixel Pipe, 220 Million transistors) Shared Information: * Built in 15 Gigabyte harddrive * Blue-laser disk technology * Potential DVD playback * Case design philosophy more like the N64, less like the GameCube