We got in some new servers at work, this been the Dell R900 4U Servers and what peaked my interest was the fact that this servers comes with 2x 6 core Xeon CPU’s – that’s 12 Cores of 2.4Ghz Power. It is easy sometimes to forget what is going on in the server / business world when sitting at home and looking at awe at the 8 Core (2 x 4) Mac Pro or the new 6 Core I7 CPU. This post is just to serve as a means to show you what you can get, this is for a box that might run 12 virtual servers and maybe not quite suited to playing the latest games (the noise would annoy you too much anyhow – its like a jet taking off).

CPU

First this server can take FOUR six-core Xeon processors – running at 2.6Ghz each. What we have here folks is 24 core box that can take out any Mac Pro that may come along – yes that is no doubting some serious number crunching ability.

Memory

It can take up to 128GIG ram – combine this with your 24 Cores and we agree it can run a whole bunch of Virtual machines while taking up only one space in the rack.

Hard Drives

Let us add to this 15K RPM SAS Drives in a RAID configuration – this will stop any bottle neck that might be caused by slow 7200 RPM Drives. The goal of this server is not to serve out 100TB of data. you have other servers for that (NAS etc) but to have pure speed, even so you can stack in some 600GIG Drives x 4 or so and your good to go.

Money

One of these does not come cheap – not by a long stretch – with the money for One fully loaded server you could buy a very good car indeed. The noise of this thing when it spins up can be heard a few streets away and no space for your top end graphics card – this is not a gaming rig.

Nostalgic gamers wanting a little old-school action on the PC (without having to dig out the console) may want to steer clear of a recently-released PlayStation 2 emulator touted to be “far superior to all other PS2 Emulators released before it.”

Chris Boyd of Sunbelt Software reports that web surfers should always be wary of “free applications” on the Internet, however the post focused on this particular emulator currently residing on various websites including Appzkeygen(dot)com and movieutilitesonline(dot)com .

Called Play 2 Emulator, the PS2 program comes in three flavors: “crack,” “keygen,” and “serial.” Apparently– but not surprisingly– the files aren’t emulators at all, but something more sinister.

“A pair of files will be dropped onto your PC, including a randomly named executable in the Windows directory and xpysys.dll in your System32 Folder,” Boyd reports. “You’ve actually wound up with Trojan-Downloader.Win32.CodecPack.2GCash.Gen.”

He went on to explain that this particular trojan has been used in everything from “fake codec scams to rogue AV hijacks in previous months, and is probably going to stick around for quite some time.” He also added that, in some cases, infected surfers have reported rogue anti-virus programs appearing after acquiring the trojan.

When I got my Dell computer, along bundled with the software was Dell DataSafe Online - this is a free online service (with 2GIG Plan) to allow you to automate backing up for pictures, documents and other important files on a daily, weekly or monthly basis. While I discarded this to begin with – I have took another look at this and will explain how it works and how it is different from say dropbox.

The Cost

The prices go something like this:

2GIG – Free

10GIG – $29 per year

30GIG – $39 per year

50GIG – $49 per year

100GIG – $59 per year

How does it work

You create an account on that dell page and at the same time download the client (Windows only from what I can tell) and this will attempt to work out what to back up, picking any document, pictures and so forth. It is by no means perfect on this automated selection process and will not go and find picture stored on another drive, working only inside the User account folders. If like me to the backup came to more than 2GIG – then you will have to revert to folder view and now we can drill down and tell it what you need to back up – this part though does not count up how big each folder is.

Once you are happy with what it is you need to back up – you need to pick a frequency on how often it should backup (Daily, Weekly, Monthly) and at what time or you can tell it that the backup will be started by you on a “as needed” basis. Just a case of now pressing backup and leaving the machine to try and upload 2GIG (or close to) worth of data.

Speed

The initial backup, if you choose a lot of files (in my case 1.89GIG) and how fast your upload speed is (mine is 768K) can take 5 hours, shocking though it sounds, this is how long it would take me (roughly) to upload that much to a FTP Account. You can pause jobs while they are running should you find you have no bandwidth left for anything else or if you are subject to a restriction (such as capping).

Recovery of the files

You have a couple of choices here – you can use the client program or you can go to the website and login to get your files. At this stage of the program though, what I am not sure about is this:

If I delete some of my files and let the program backup as normal, will it delete the files that are no longer there? I will have to test this function much later and report back – I am suspecting it keeps all and you have to maybe manually go and delete them online yourself.

Is it not just another drop box?

The simple answer is no, dropbox works by creating a folder in your “My Documents” folder and anything you put in there is replicated online. Dropbox is more suited to sharing files with others easily or keeping a file in sync.

Thoughts and conclusion

The initial backing up is a long and drawn out process, this is the fault of my upload speed and not the program though. It gives you a complete dump of all your important stuff online and you can even access the files from any computer with a web browser – this can be handy in the event I need access to my CV for example.

There is MANY solutions out there, Dell are not about to go out of business and you can buy some space if that is important to you. This is not a solution to backing up your entire harddrive and I would never suggest anyone try and do that anyhow as it is a pointless task and very time consuming.

Gibe it a try anyhow – its Free and it may save your life when you need that important file you just deleted.

It’s officially official: Valve will bring its Steam online distribution service and titles from its massive library of hit games to the Mac this April, the company confirmed Monday.

The successful content-delivery service will bring Valve titles like Left 4 Dead and the upcoming Portal 2, as well as games from other publishers, to Apple computers for the first time.

The move was telegraphed last week in a series of teaser posters that mashed characters from Valve games into retro Apple ads. Dan Connors, CEO of Telltale Games, called Apple and Steam a natural fit.

“If there’s anything like iTunes on the PC right now for games, it’s Steam,” Connors said. “So you’ve got two great leaders in digital distribution coming together.”

Steam is the pre-eminent digital distribution platform for PCs. With more than 1,000 games and 25 million user accounts, Steam is by one estimate responsible for more than 70 percent of digital game purchases. Bringing the service to Macs means wider selection, quicker updates and more episodic content for Apple’s traditionally game-deprived computers.

Valve wants to position its games not as static products but as part of an ongoing, constantly updated, ubiquitous service, company co-founder Gabe Newell told Wired.com in advance of Monday’s announcement.

“The traditional model has always been that you have these really extended development times … where you do nothing for customers for several years and then you try to drive everybody into the theaters or into the stores on a given date,” Newell said. “It makes it hard to steer your decisions based on customer feedback, and customers don’t particularly like that. They would like to have the experience of being part of an entertainment community where they’re getting something on a daily or more frequent basis.

“The Mac represents a great opportunity to deliver these things.”

Bringing Steam to Mac will give gamers several cross-platform benefits, Newell said.

• If players already own the PC versions of Valve games, they’ll get Mac versions at no extra charge through a feature called Steam Play.
• By using the Steam Cloud feature that the company introduced in 2008, players can save in-progress games online, then call up those saved games no matter which version they’re playing. If you’re playing Half-Life 2 on your home PC but then head out on the road with your MacBook, you can continue your game-in-progress.

“We looked at a variety of methods to get our games onto the Mac and in the end decided to go with native versions rather than emulation,” said John Cook, director of Steam development, in Monday’s press release.

“We are treating the Mac as a tier-1 platform so all of our future games will release simultaneously on Windows, Mac and the Xbox 360,” Cook said. “Updates for the Mac will be available simultaneously with the Windows updates. Furthermore, Mac and Windows players will be part of the same multiplayer universe, sharing servers, lobbies and so forth. We fully support a heterogeneous mix of servers and clients. The first Mac Steam client will be the new generation currently in beta testing on Windows.”

Portal 2 will be Valve’s first simultaneous release for Mac and Windows, the company said.

“Checking in code produces a PC build and Mac build at the same time, automatically, so the two platforms are perfectly in lock-step,” said Josh Weier, said Portal 2 project lead in the press release. “We’re always playing a native version on the Mac right alongside the PC. This makes it very easy for us and for anyone using Source to do game development for the Mac.”

Bringing Valve’s gaming engine Source, and the company’s Steamworks development and publishing suite, to the Mac will make it easier for developers to bring games to OS X.

“Steamworks for the Mac supports all of the Steamworks APIs,” said Jason Holtman, Valve’s director of business development, in the press release. “We expect most developers and publishers to take advantage of Steam Play.”

Easy updates

Steam lets the company take full advantage of the freedom that the PC and Mac platforms give it to constantly update and tweak its games. For instance, the developer has updated its 2007 game Team Fortress 2 more than 100 times, Newell said.

This wouldn’t be possible on a closed system like Microsoft’s Xbox Live, he said: “Microsoft’s QA fees … would be several hundred thousand dollars to do the updates that we did to Team Fortress 2. And that ignores the fact that the cycle on these closed platforms would have taken years to get all these updates through.”

Most recently, Valve leveraged its ability to push updates through Steam and engage its fan base by dropping hints into its 2007 cult hit Portal about the game’s upcoming sequel, letting the fans be an active part of the game’s announcement.

“We want to bring content creators and consumers closer together to minimize the latency between what somebody on the team does versus a fan’s ability to participate in that experience, not put more barriers between them,” Newell said.

Valve isn’t the only PC developer with a strong, engaged fan base looking to Mac. Telltale Games, creator of the episodic Sam and Max games, announced last month that it would be moving to Mac, even inviting fans to vote on which of its games should be ported over first.

While Telltale has not confirmed any of its games will be on the Mac version of Steam, Connors called getting his companies titles on Valve’s digital-distribution platform “a no-brainer.”

“We have games that run on the Mac and we have games that run on Steam, so our goal is to be there,” Connors said. “We think they’re going to do a great job with getting the Steam client over there and we want to continue to be a part of it.”

Asked to name other developers that we’d see on Steam, Valve’s Newell demurred. But Steam’s popularity means that as Valve goes, so go other gamemakers. Steam on Mac means many more games on Mac.

“(Mac) has all of the right pieces, and we know other developers see that as well,” Newell said.

While Intel’s Atom has a near-monopoly on the netbook market, that’s not the only place the processor will be practicing its power-miserly ways. Intel launched at CeBit its first Atom processor-based platform optimized for networked home and small office/home office (SOHO) storage devices.

The energy-efficient platform consists of the Atom processor D410 single-core or D510 dual-core and the 82801IR I/O Controller to run network-attached storage (NAS) devices that organize, manage, protect and share documents, photos, videos and music.

The new platform features six PCI Express lanes, 12 USB 2.0 ports, a port multiplier function and eSATA ports that give OEMs the ability to add peripheral devices and expand storage capacity outside of the box. It also features hot plug capabilities for easy capacity upgrades and an integrated gigabit Ethernet MAC controller for improved data transfers to and from the home server or small office NAS device.

“NAS systems have traditionally been found in businesses to manage, store and access data,” said Seth Bobroff, general manager, Intel Data Center Group, Storage. “Today, households and small offices have an ever-increasing number of computers, laptops, netbooks and mobile phones that create and consume digital content. This advancement in mobility coupled with the explosive growth of data and media are creating the need for centralized, easy-to-use network storage solutions for the home and small office.”

LaCie, LG Electronics, QNAP, Synology and Thecus are signed on as product partners for Intel’s platform.

Last week reports of a “man-in-the-middle-attack” surfaced in regards to Blizzard’s MMORPG. World of Warcraft. Apparently hackers have created a tool that grants them access to accounts protected by an authentication tool. Once they are in control of the account, hackers can thus steal virtual gold and possessions until the account password is reset. Currently there’s no indication if the hackers gain access to data such as credit cards or other personal information.

The tool in question is a keylogger, possibly a file named emcor.dll which can be found in C:/Documents and Settings/Users/[username]/Application Data/Temp. Once the user launches the keylogger, the PC is infected and will in turn cause World of Warcraft to crash. Once the players re-start the game and log back into the account, the authenticator code is intercepted by the hacker. A different code is sent to Blizzard’s servers, locking the player out.

So how do players get the keylogger on their PC? It all starts with a sponsored link in Google showing up as a top result for WowMatrix, a free World of Warcraft add-on installer and updater. The problem is that the listing isn’t a genuine, leading gamers to the malware. “Several downloads are available and I decided to check out the installer / updater,” reads this forum post. “Results are pretty low at virustotal for the executable. The detection of the DLL hooked into our system is even worse, only 1 antivirus suspects some illegal activity.”

Because authenticator codes only last for 30 seconds, hackers have access to the WoW account until they log out. “This is still perpetrated by key loggers, and no method is always 100% secure,” Blizzard said in this forum post.

WoW gamers are warned to stay away from the following sites, which are actually based on legitimate WoW related sites with a typo at the end of each URL:

• wowmatrixf(dot)com
• Cursea(dot)com
• deadlybossmodss(dot)com
• gamesacca(dot)com

Full credit to Belkin for coming up with a router that stands out from the crowd. Based on the N1 model this N1 Vision stands vertically, so that you can clearly see the LCD display.

Belkin has ditched the usual array of flashing activity lights and instead has used a monochrome LCD display to keep you up to speed with the doings of your router, starting with the initial configuration. It’s much easier to check the power is on and the cables are plugged in when you have a message that spells out the situation.

Once up and running, the display allows you to monitor upload and download speed, see how much bandwidth is being used, allow guests access to your secure network and check out who is connected to your network without referring to the Belkin Networking Utility on your laptop. The guest feature is very neat, as the press of a button will generate a temporary password for visitors to your home or office that allows them access to the network with the minimum of hassle.

Easy to set-up

The most useful features of the N1 Vision come into play when you’re setting up the network; so once you’re finished the screen loses a part of its value, but that’s no problem as you can switch the display into a different mode and it becomes a digital clock. The fact is that most routers would benefit from a switch to disable the array of flickering activity LEDs, but Belkin has made it a reality.

The router part of the equation is an excellent example of second-generation Pre-N or Draft-N hardware that provides good coverage in conjunction with the F5D8053 USB adapter.

You can plug the adapter directly into your laptop or you can use the one-and-a-half metre extension cable, which has a solid base that stands the adapter vertically to give it the greatest possible chance of sniffing out a wireless signal.

PCs often find themselves the playground for over-hyped tech – it’s almost as if manufacturers believe gamers will buy anything if you force enough marketing down their throats. Almost.

Cue the latest in a long line of interesting ideas rendered flesh in the hope of making a pretty penny: Bigfoot Networks Killer NIC.

Prioritise gaming

Its premise is interesting: offload management of the Windows network stack from the CPU and prioritise UDP gaming traffic in dedicated silicon. This releases the CPU to concentrate on more important frame rate-boosting stuff, and also improves ping times. That’s the theory at least; in practice things aren’t quite so exciting…

We tried the card in a pair of machines – our high-powered test rig, and an older machine that would almost cost less than this card. The first machine garnered no obvious improvements, while the improvements from the second were uninspiring to say the least.

Disappointing performance

A marginal increase in frame rates (from 53fps to 57fps in WoW Battlegrounds) and slight improvement in the ping times (from 155ms down to 140ms) hardly got us excited. We couldn’t spot any change in Team Fortress 2, Quake 4 or Call of Duty 4 however.

That’s a lot of cash for a few more frames, especially when it’s only going to affect network play.

That money’s far better spent on CPUs, graphics card and RAM. And if for some unfathomable reason, you still like the sound of this card, at least go for the cheaper K1 rendition.

The core’s clocked at 333MHz as opposed to 400MHz, but this won’t affect its ability to do its job.