At CES, we spent some time with CoolIT Systems. These are the guys that were touting their liquid-cooled Xbox 360. In fact, CoolIT seems to be headed to the forefront of the PC cooling market, and we will have a look at their main products shortly. For now, check out this video of the liquid-cooled Xbox 360. We took some time to talk with Geoff Lyon, CoolIT’s CEO, to get the scoop on how they got their Xbox 360 to stay chilled. Here’s how to get the video:

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Be sure to check out some images of the liquid-cooled 360 after the jump.

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Click to continue reading CES 2006 Video: Liquid-Cooled Xbox 360 From CoolIT Systems

Gallery: CES 2006 Video: Liquid-Cooled Xbox 360 From CoolIT Systems

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Still don’t have a 360?  If it’s because the stores around you keep running out, you’re in luck.  This application will tell you when your local retailers will get their next shipment of Xbox 360s.

This app automatically checks your local BestBuy, Circuit City, and FutureShop’s website for the XBOX 360 Premiums at a time interval you specify and alerts you via Text-Message and/or Email. This is intended for those who really don’t have the time to frequently check on those online-store trackers, and would prefer to be seamlessly alerted when an XBOX 360 premium is in-stock at a near-by store.

We eagerly await a beta version for the Playstation 3.

(Thanks, munkyxtc!)

Read More | Untitlednet

Gallery: Xbox 360 Inventory Tracker

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Hybrid hard drives are similar enough to the drives we all use today, but with the addition of NV (non-volatile) memory on board.  The memory acts similarly to the cache on the current crop of drives, but since it’s non-volatile, a system crash won’t cause you to lose everything that hasn’t been written to the disk.  Microsoft is encouraging manufacturers to release hybrid drives in preparation of it’s Vista operating system, which is due for release later this year.  The hybrid drives would increase performance and allow the system to boot faster (if configured to boot off the NV RAM).

However, the aforementioned type of hybrid isn’t what Microsoft and Samsung were showing off with the current prototype.  Instead of persuing performance gains alone, they’re also looking to save power in mobile applications.  The drive utilizes 1GB of Samsung’s OneNAND flash memory, and uses it to store any data destined to be written to the drive.  The drive doesn’t actually start spinning until the cache is completely full, and then does a quick dump to the disk.  By operating in this fashion, the drive only spins 30 to 45 seconds during a 30-minute window of time.  Since a hard drive normally consumes up to 15% of a laptop’s battery charge, the hybrid drive could significantly extend runtime as well as reduce overall noise.  The drive is expected to start shipping in quantity in late 2006.

Read More | CNet News

Gallery: Samsung Hybrid Hard Drive

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While hanging out with Major Nelson a few weeks ago, he broke out his metal briefcase that was full of his custom Xbox 360 goodies. Above, you can see his custom hard drive that he had etched with his GamerTag. As it turns out, the Xbox team got to get their drives engraved with their choice of lettering, but when Major requested his to say “Vista Emulator” or “Halo 3 Beta” they wouldn’t go for it. Still, nice try Major. You can check out his custom controller after the jump.

Click to continue reading Major Nelson’s Custom Xbox 360 Hard Drive And Controller

Gallery: Major Nelson’s Custom Xbox 360 Hard Drive And Controller

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We were able to spend a few minutes chatting it up with a Microsoft employee going over some of the more interesting changes we can expect when Windows Vista ships. We recorded a video of the demonstration that we got while going hands on with Vista at CES. In it, we talk about:

• Animation effects
• Legacy metadata for 2000 legacy games built-in to the OS
• The new PC performance rating replacing “system requirements”
• Vista desktop search
• Vista’s way of alerting you of potential system problems
• The new Windows Defender Antivirus and Antispyware program
• The three official Windows Vista SKUs
• The new Breadcrumb Bar

Here’s how to get the video:

|iTunes| - Subscribe to our iTunes video feed
|RSS| - Subscribe to our video RSS feed
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - MPEG-4

Here's how to get the show:
|Download| - iPod-formatted H.264
|Download| - MPEG-4

Gallery: CES 2006 Video: Microsoft Gives Us A Windows Vista Preview

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