Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang just can’t resist throwing more jabs at Intel, distracting the inaugural NVISION crowd from Battlestar Galactica star Tricia Helfer with the claim that “Larrabee hasn’t shipped so you don’t know what it is and I don’t know what it is.” The fact that we do know what it is — a next-gen hybrid CPU / GPU — shouldn’t be a concern according to Huang, because “By the time it does ship, Nvidia’s technology will be so far advanced it won’t matter.” Besides stuffing Usain Bolt-type speed into a GPU the company will keep busy working on its WinMo smartphone hardware, and software for the not-exactly-Atom-killing VIA Nano, but forget about that rumored x86-compatible hardware ‘cuz, as Jen-Hsun reminds us, “the Internet doesn’t run on x86.” For a company that lacks innovation, is “a joke,” and at least four years behind, Intel must be doing something right, because the competition can’t keep its name out of their mouths.

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Looks like Intel’s plans to enter the graphics space in a big way with its Nehalem and Larrabee lines strike NVIDIA CEO Jen Hsun-Huang as being rather foolish — in a conference call with analysts today, Huang said Intel’s integrated graphics offerings were “a joke,” and that even a tenfold increase in performance would put them behind NVIDIA’s current products. Huang didn’t stop there, saying that NVIDIA was “going to open a can of whoop-ass,” and that while Intel’s graphics chips were fine for running Office, they would never cut it for gamers and other demanding users. Huang kept going, responding to questions about all those driver-related Vista crashes by saying that NVIDIA had to support new games weekly while Intel’s chips aren’t ever put to the test. Actually, that’s toning it down a bit — what Huang actually said was “You already have the right machine to run Excel. You bought it four years ago… How much faster can you render the blue screen of death?” Yeah, them’s fightin’ words — you going to sit there and take it, Intel?

[Thanks, Mike A.]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

In an unsurprising turn of events, AMD honcho Hector Ruiz has taken advantage of a recent interview to verbally smack up competitor (and market kingpin) Intel. In the midst of a sit-down, the chipmaker’s CEO claimed that rival Intel was playing a game of catch up to AMD’s innovation, stating, “If you look at the last five years, if you look at what major innovations have occurred in computing technology, every single one of them came from AMD. Not a single innovation came from Intel.” Ruiz went on to blast the Santa Clara-based company, saying that, “Intel continues… to abuse their monopoly and that’s why around the world governments and regulatory agencies continue to go after them.” Hey — at least he doesn’t seem to be feeling bitter about the whole thing.

[Via The INQUIRER]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Cellphones, CES

You can’t help but love Steve Ballmer. Besides being the ultra-rich, ultra-faithful CEO of Microsoft, you can always count on him to deliver some choice words — especially if the competition is in the news. His latest efforts come in the wake of Google’s Android announcement, a project which clearly stands to compete with Redmond’s ubiquitous Windows Mobile platform. When asked what he thought of the forthcoming phone OS at a news conference in Tokyo, Ballmer noted that, “Their efforts are just some words on paper right now.” Okay, let’s be perfectly honest: that statement is true — but don’t you think that when a monolithic company like Google aligns itself with other giants such as Intel, T-Mobile, Samsung, and LG (amongst others), Microsoft might take it a little more seriously? Ballmer went on to say that, “They have a press release, we have many, many millions of customers, great software, many hardware devices and they’re welcome in our world.” Thanks for allowing Google into “your world” Steve, we’re sure your subjects will appreciate it.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Portable Video

Well, it looks like Former Disney CEO Michael Eisner had a fair bit to say about the current Writer’s Guild of America strike in a recent interview, with him even going so far as to recommend that the writers point their aim at a familiar foe. According to CNET’s The Social, in addition to calling the strike “stupid,” Eisner said that the studios “make deals with Steve Jobs, who takes them to the cleaners,” adding that, “They make all these kinds of things, and who’s making money? Apple! They should get a piece of Apple.” Eisner then went on to say that, “If I was a union, I’d be striking up wherever he is.”

[Photo courtesy of TVNewser]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

NBC Universal CEO Jeff Zucker clearly did not get enough raisins in his cereal this morning, because dude was not holding anything back during that speech he gave at Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Communications — in addition to saying NBC had made only $15M in iTunes video sales despite being the number one producer of content, he flat-out said that Apple and iTunes had “destroyed the music business” in terms of pricing and that video was next unless “we take control.” Of course, seeing as consumers can access Universal’s entire music catalog with various subscription services for under $10 a month ($36 a year, in the case of Yahoo Music) and entire NBC shows for free on the web, but still choose to buy songs and shows straight-up on iTunes anyway, it might be fair to say that NBC Universal is still figuring out how to monetize its content effectively, but really, where’s the fun in that? Round 7, fight!

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Apparently former Skype CEO and co-founder Niklas Zennstrom isn’t just one to take the money and run. No, he found time in his busy schedule to confess that eBay payed too much for Skype, which is something that’s become increasingly evident to eBay in the past months: the company is cutting up to $1.2 billion off the $4.3 billion potential price it agreed to with Skype two years ago. “We had to chart the trajectory of growth and how fast that would run, (but) we found out that was a bit front-loaded,” said Zennstrom. “We overshot in terms of monetization … Our position in the market has strengthened … you need to look at the long-term value of companies.” Seems a little odd for Niklas to be preaching it to eBay in this scenario, but perhaps he just wanted to clear his name now that Joost has gone public and is potentially looking of suitors. He wouldn’t predict if Skype could’ve made its original goals if he had stuck around until 2009, but somehow we doubt it.

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Desktops

Sure, we know you and your Video Toaster have been gutted over this whole AmigaOS 4 debacle… what’s that? You’ve never heard of OS 4? You didn’t know Amiga was still around? You hadn’t heard that Bill McEwan, CEO of Amiga says the company’s next OS is going to be “better than OS X?” Well time to perk up those ears, kiddo. In a truly enthralling read, the head of the defunct hardware-maker / software company says that Amiga is hard at work on a number of projects, not the least of which is the follow up to company’s OS 4 — which has been mired in development disputes with a company called Hyperion Entertainment since 2001 — AmigaOS 5. A piece of software guaranteed to surprise and thrill the technology community at large, mostly (we suspect) due to the fact that no one even knew the company was still in business. Sure, some of the detractors say they haven’t released a product in seven years, but what’s seven years when you’ve got that pile of platinum that is OS 5? Exactly.

[Via Slashdot]

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Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!