Newegg Ships Fake Core i7s to Unlucky Customers

Sources say Newegg has received a shipment of fake Core i7 processors.

Newegg reportedly ordered a shipment of 2,000 chips from D&H and 300 of them were counterfeit. Hot Hardware cites a posting from an Overclockers.com forum member named Dreadrok who received one of the fake CPUs. Dreadlock says he ordered a Core i7 920 from Newegg and received a completely fake processor.

According to HotHardware, NewEgg says the fake processors are actually demo units but looking at the pictures below (via Dreadlock), it's a hard excuse to swallow. What's more D&H has sent out cease and desist orders to two websites running stories on the fraudulent chips.

Newegg, a trusted source among PC enthusiasts, is providing customers who received the fake Core i7s with RMAs.

AMD Wants to Know What You'd Do With 48 Cores

Tell AMD what you might do with 48 cores and you could have your plans realized!

What would you do with a 48-core system? That's what AMD wants to know – and if you give them a particularly compelling answer, you could be the owner of one such system.

The AMD Server team is giving away the following prize worth $8,189 USD:

    * Four new AMD Opteron processors Model 6174, 12-core (2.2 GHz)

    * Tyan S8812 motherboard: the motherboard is a Tyan S8812 that features 4 processor sockets with the capacity for you to install up to 8 DIMMs per socket

    * one copy of Windows Server 2008

And what might you have to do to bag such a prize? Submit your idea to AMD about what you would do with 48 cores by: Writing an essay (no more than 500 words); or creating a You Tube video (no longer than 3 minutes); or writing a blog (no more than 500 words).

AMD does give a tip that submitting a creation about playing World of Warcraft faster than anyone isn't going to help your cause. Instead, AMD urges you to think about what you can do to help society and others.

Google Says Desktops Will Be Irrelevant in 3 Years

Google's VP of online sales and operations has made the bold statement that in three years time desktop computers will be irrelevant.


Speaking at UCD in Dublin yesterday, Google Chief John Herlihy said that smartphones enhance Google’s mission to make information universal, adding that in Japan, more research is being done on cell phones than on PCs. Herlihy predicted that soon smartphones will be the center of it all.

Herlihy's statements have caused quite a stir in the tech world. There are those who wholeheartedly agree but Silicon Republic, who first reported the story, says that audience members were baffled. Indeed it's hard to imagine office cubicles without desktops and even harder to imagine laptops meeting the needs of hardcore PC gamers.

But, whether you agree with his sentiments or not, it is clear the direction Google is taking as a company. Silicon Republic reports that, not too long ago, CEO Eric Schmidt told an audience at the Mobile World Congress that the company was working on products from a 'mobile first' prospective.

Ufone’s Handset Offer – Rs. 1199

Ufone is up again with Handset offer – with what you can get a mobile phone  with built-in torch, all for Rs.1199 only.

Looks Ufone is serious with bundled handsets’ offering, however, their previous experience caused them not much luck due to un-locking of phones.

Windows Phone 7 Not Backwards Compatible

Not only will Windows 7 Phone require an entirely new device, it won't run previous Windows Mobile apps.

Today, Microsoft's Partner Group Program Manager Charlie Kindel dropped a bomb on current Windows Mobile users in his latest blog, revealing that applications developed prior to Windows 7 Phone will not work on the new platform. He cited the company as wanting a clean break from the past, to move from "good" to "great."

"To enable the fantastic user experiences you’ve seen in the Windows Phone 7 Series demos so far, we've had to break from the past," Kindel wrote in his blog. "To deliver what developers expect in the developer platform, we’ve had to change how phone apps were written." He added that Windows 7 Phone will support Silverlight and XNA.

But that doesn't mean Microsoft is forgetting its current Windows Mobile-based consumers. "To be clear, we will continue to work with our partners to deliver new devices based on Windows Mobile 6.5 and will support those products for many years to come, so it’s not as though one line ends as soon as the other begins," he added.

Kindel isn't kidding when he refers to a "clean break." Apparently Windows 7 Phone will require meatier hardware than what's currently running Windows Mobile 6.5. This means that Windows Mobile 6.x users won't be able to upgrade to Windows 7 Phone on the software front when the OS launches later this year. Instead, users will be required to trade up for a newer, qualified device.

"Because we have very specific requirements for Windows Phone 7 Series the current phones we have right now will not be upgradable," Natasha Kwan, General Manager for Microsoft’s Mobile Communications Business in the Asia-Pacific region, told APC Monday.