Technology News and IT Business Intelligence

Hiren’s Boot CD is a boot CD containing various diagnostic programs such as partitioning agents, system performance benchmarks, disk cloning and imaging tools, data recovery tools, MBR tools, BIOS tools, and many others for fixing various computer problems. It is a Bootable CD; thus, it can be useful even if the primary operating system cannot be booted.
Hiren’s Boot CD has an extensive list of software. Utilities with similar functionality on the CD are grouped together and seem redundant; however, they present choices through UI’s differences and options in what they can do.

Hiren’s BootCD – All in one Dos Bootable CD which has all these utilities:: Partition Tools, Disk Clone Tools, Antivirus Tools, Recovery Tools, Testing Tools, Hard Disk Tools etc.

—————————————-
Hiren’s BootCD 10.0
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+InfraRecorder 0.50
-ExpressBurn
+TestDisk for windows
+PhotoRec for windows
+Virtual Floppy Drive 2.1
+HxD 1.7.7.0
+FastCopy 1.99r4
+Angry IP Scanner 2.21
+TCPView 2.54
+OpenedFilesView 1.40
+ProcessActivityView 1.10
+RegScanner 1.77
+USBDeview 1.42
+Streams 1.56
+RemoveWGA 1.2
+RRT – Remove Restrictions Tool 3.0
Intel Matrix Storage Driver iastore.sys 8.9.0.1023 (Minixp)
PE Network Manager 0.45 (Minixp)
Security Tab (Minixp)
Pointsec Filter driver (Minixp)
Double Driver 2.1
GetDataBack 4.0
EASEUS Partition Master 4.0.1
TrueCrypt 6.2a
HDD Regenerator 1.71
Recuva 1.29.429
Unstoppable Copier 4.2
IsMyLcdOK (Monitor Test) 1.02
Samsung The Drive Diagnostic Utility (ESTOOL) 3.00g
IBM/Hitachi Drive Fitness Test 4.15
HDD Scan 3.2
System Analyser 5.3w
Astra 5.43
HWiNFO 5.3.0
CPU Identification utility 1.17
PC Wizard 2009.1.90
SIW 2009-07-28
CPU-Z 1.52
ProduKey 1.36
Wireless Key View 1.27
Content Advisor Password Remover 1.01
MessenPass 1.26
CCleaner 2.23.993
CurrPorts 1.66
Autoruns 9.53
Ultimate Windows Tweaker 2.0
Xp-AntiSpy 3.97.4 beta
ShellExView 1.40
Kaspersky Virus Removal Tool 7.0.0.290 (2908)
Malwarebytes’ Anti-Malware 1.40 (2908)
SpywareBlaster 4.2 (2908)
SmitFraudFix 2.423
PCI 32 Sniffer 1.4 (2908)
PCI and AGP info Tool (2908)
Unknown Devices 1.2 (2908)
ComboFix (2908)
Spybot – Search & Destroy 1.6.2 (2908)
SuperAntispyware 4.27 (2908)

http://rapidshare.com/files/273811704/Hiren_s_BootCD_10.part1.rar.html http://rapidshare.com/files/273810847/Hiren_s_BootCD_10.part2.rar.html

There are three “rails” of wattage in AMD’s architectural plan for its CPUs: its higher-performance SE line, its lowest-power EE line, and its hybrid HE line that trades some performance for power savings. Two months ago, AMD introduced its first six-core Opterons in the SE flavor first, setting the general trend for future rollouts; last month, it trotted out the HE hybrid line in that same series.

Today, as expected, the company is announcing stage 3 of its plan: the rollout of its first ultra-low-power six-core Opteron series, including the model 2419 EE, with 40 watts of average power consumption (ACP) clocked at 1.8 GHz. This time, AMD’s value proposition is this: Server centers that already have quad-core 75W Opteron-based units can replace them for dropped in 40W six-core units, and see better performance per watt while gaining two cores per socket in the process.

“We’re still able to achieve up to 30% higher performance, as well as just above 30% higher performance-per-watt in that particular processor,” stated AMD Senior Product Manager Brent Kirby in an interview with Betanews. Another formula that works to AMD’s advantage in this demonstration: A rack with 24 servers, all using AMD’s current line of six-core Opteron SEs at the 75W power range, could be traded for a rack of 42 servers using new six-core Opteron EEs at 40W, and stay within the same power envelope.

But what is the performance trade-off, if any? Or to put it more bluntly, will those 42 EE servers perform any better, or even worse, than those 24 SE servers? We asked this question a number of different ways, and the answers we got harked back to a now-familiar AMD theme: For the customers who would consider buying EE in the first place, raw performance isn’t a real factor.

“For a lot of the cloud [server] guys, honestly, they realize that their computational utilization is not as high. It’s more about I/O and memory bandwidth, and getting them more memory,” responded Kirby. Of course, they’re trying to get the right balance of cores, but they’re also wanting to make sure they get enough memory capability, as well as I/O capability, within these servers. It becomes a more important criteria than just raw compute power.”

The importance seems a bit clearer when you consider AMD’s assertion that the power savings per server rack could come up to $50,000, or could surpass $1 million per year for a data center with 25 racks. But that assumes workloads stay the same, and a more accurate assessment of actual power savings when two racks so configured are given similar workloads, has yet to be conducted. Suffice it to say that the EE’s SPEC scores are indeed impressive: A two-way server running a pair of Opteron 2419 EE six-core processors scored a 1,614 on the SPECpower_ssj2008 benchmark test, compared to the same brand of server (ZT Systems 1224Ra) running a pair of quad-core Opteron 2384s, which scored a 1,166 on the same test. That’s to say, the 2419 delivered better efficiency for the performance it did deliver.

The EE rollout isn’t the only news from AMD this morning: Senior Product Manager Bart Arnold confirmed to Betanews that throughout the first half of next year, the company will bring back its 4000 and 6000 product line designations, to accompany the 2000 and 8000 series it’s been running with this year. This according to a plan first put forth last April.

“The 6000 series will be aimed at the performance market; that’s our ‘Magny-Cours’ product. It’s going to have two variations: one 12-core and one 8-core,” stated Arnold. “Then in the second quarter, we’re going to be releasing our C32 ‘Lisbon’ platform, the 4000 series. That is going to be aimed at the market that is very concerned with power efficiency as well as cost-efficiency; the people who are looking to get a little more bang for their buck. It’s not going to be quite as robust, it’s not going to support as much memory, but…when we release the EE version of that platform, it’s going to be really eye-popping low. I can’t really tell you at this point exactly how low yet, because we haven’t been able to test it, but we are planning on setting the power efficiency market on-end with that particular product.”

But once again, the questions will probably include, how much or how little of a performance tradeoff will there be, for those investing in the 4000 series; and what gains will data centers experience by going all the way with a 12-core setup?

“I think the answer to that is found in consolidation,” Arnold responded. “I think that the number of cores that the product is going to have, along with the memory scale with its four memory channels, will allow them to run, in the case of virtualization, a whole lot of virtual machines to consolidate their data center further.”

Here, AMD’s director of client marketing, Bob Grim, chimed in: “One of the key things, from a power perspective, we’re driving home all the time: If you move to a 12-core Magny-Cours in a single socket, versus two six-cores on a two-socket platform, the move to that single socket has a profound effect on reducing power consumption or inefficiencies at the platform level. From the onboard CPU power supplies, the drn’s [drain voltages] are reduced…Power supply sizes can be reduced. You can put 12 cores in a single socket…at a lower power threshold than having to power two CPU cores. Then you have two separate memory VRMs [voltage regulator modules] on a two-socket versus a single-socket. Then the extra fans required to cool that. So there can be some power efficiency benefits to moving to a single socket 12-core.”

So it would appear that AMD’s typical value proposition, including with its latest EE announced today — just drop it in place of your old Opteron — has a limited shelf life to it. Once the 8-core and 12-core era is upon us by Q2 2010, the argument will change to one that emphasizes the benefits of moving from a two-way to a one-way server. Just after that time also, AMD’s Brent Kirby confirmed to Betanews, the company will begin making its argument in favor of shifting from DDR2 to DDR3 memory, once costs are no longer a prohibitive factor — Kirby’s timeframe sounded to us very much like August 2010.

Many of our regular talks with AMD thus far have begun with the oft-repeated phrase, “The market is moving,” which is sometimes augmented by “The market is broadening.” Come next July, we expect to hear both phrases used again, but in new and different ways.

Following complaints from the Italian Newspaper Publisher’s Federation (FIEG), Italian authorities have launched a probe to find out whether Google abuses its position of the world’s most popular search engine to deprive others of advertising revenue.

At the heart of FEIG’s complaint is Google News and its mystery algorithms for listing top stories. FEIG complained that since it is unknown how Google News decides which stories are listed at the top, content providers don’t know how their stories should be written so as to gain top billing in Google News listings. Conversely, sites also have no say if they do not want their content listed on Google News.

Furthermore, the group alleges that content that doesn’t make it into Google News listings also fails to become available through Google Search. If true, this would of course greatly reduce a site’s potential traffic, with a detrimental effect on the site’s value to advertisers.

The anti-trust authority was quoted by Italian news service ANSA as saying, “[We] have decided to launch an investigation against Google Italy to check whether the conduct of the company, given its undisputed dominance in the provision of Online search services, is capable of unfairly affecting competition in the market for Online advertising sales, and if it has consolidated its position in brokering advertising space.”

Two months ago, Comcast announced a limited beta trial of an online TV service involving networks of Time Warner’s Turner Broadcasting division, where Comcast subscribers may be treated to earliest availability of post-airdate programming from networks including TBS and TNT. This morning, Verizon announced the launch of an almost identical trial, involving exactly the same networks, in a deal that makes one wonder whether it’s Turner that’s in the driver’s seat here.

As part of Turner’s “TV Everywhere” initiative, select FiOS fiberoptic service subscribers will be offered first crack (perhaps at the same time as Comcast customers) at online availability of shows like Raising the Bar, Saving Grace, and The Closer. Rather than seeing those shows first through online portals such as TNT.tv, logged on users to Verizon Online will receive invitations to join the carrier’s limited trial.

One problem which Verizon will inevitably run into during this trial is the fact that FiOS service is not available everyplace nationwide, sometimes for any number of bizarre reasons often involving small municipalities and contract negotiations. Since this FiOS TV Online initiative will theoretically be accessible by FiOS customers anywhere in the world, Betanews asked Verizon today, once the online service fills out as Verizon is planning (deals with Paramount, MGM, and Lionsgate are in the works, the company says), why couldn’t a non-FiOS customer pay to subscribe, at least to the online service?

A Verizon spokesperson did not rule out that possibility, responding to Betanews this afternoon. “Right now, the service is available to FiOS TV customers who are also Verizon broadband customers,” the spokesperson told us. “As we progress with the trial, we’ll be looking at a number of things to determine how to make this the best possible experience for our customers.”

One of the benefits of working in an organization whose founding premise is based on openness is that mistakes can be openly admitted, and thus more quickly rectified. An example of this principle in action comes from the blog for Mozilla’s own analytics team, which earlier this week presented a very telling discovery from a survey of Firefox 2 users who continually declined making the upgrade to version 3.0 (we’re not even dealing with 3.5 yet).

The most oft-cited reason users declined to make the upgrade — from one declining user in four, or about 1,250 users, according to survey results — was the apparent fact that a user’s history of previously viewed Web sites could not be deleted from the address bar. As a result, when typing in an HTTP, any user could discover the addresses of similarly-named Web sites that any other user of that same browser (under the same logon name) had previously viewed.

“The browser is not very secure if browsing history cannot be deleted from the location bar,” reads the team’s citation of an actual comment from a browser user.

As a reviewers’ guide to Firefox 3.5 indicates, a new feature in the Privacy panel under Options lets users limit the categories of information the “Awesome Bar” may provide, making it arguably less awesome but, in some minds, more secure. More frequent use of the Private Browsing feature, which does not record the user’s history when active, may also appease these users’ concerns.

The problem is, many of these users may already have been turned off of Firefox, and as result, will not have read either the reviewers’ guide that points these facts out, or this article that attempts to shed extra light on them. So the analytics team openly suggested a change to Firefox itself: incorporating, in a future edition, the filtering control from the Options panel directly into the address bar itself.

What were users’ thoughts on that? Not a complete solution, many said, because that doesn’t resolve the issue of bringing back the users that didn’t upgrade. Another user was the first to invoke the dreaded “p” word: A user who may be viewing porn may not want the opportunity to accidentally leave any trail of attempting to not leave any trail, and a switch that can be left to filter out history may provoke skepticism.

Firefox security contributor Jesse Ruderman pointed out the irony of users refusing to upgrade to a demonstrably more secure browser, for security reasons. “It sounds like users declining major updates is the main way we lose users to insecure versions, but it’s not the only way,” Ruderman wrote. “Should we try surveying users who uncheck ‘Automatically check for updates’ to find out why they do that?”

But perhaps the most enlightening comment came from a contributor who pointed out that the “freedom of expression” that characterized the original Firefox 3.0 “Awesome Bar” probably did raise some concerns during Mozilla’s long beta period. Had enough attention been paid to beta testers’ concerns at that time, before 3.0 went RTM in June 2008, the entire survey itself might not have been necessary.

“I think the other half of the solution is to see if there are ways to help developers predict or better gauge the response during beta releases,” wrote “Lucy.” “Obviously not every issue brought up during beta turns out to matter, but how to do a better job of telling them apart?”

This afternoon, the Federal Communications Commission gingerly passed measures that will result in the publication of three “Notices of Inquiry,” seeking public input not only on the status of wireless broadband communications in this country, but what measures it should take to better judge just what “good” or “bad” means for that industry. While all those positive words were being spoken on the industry’s behalf, however — references to “the spirit of American innovation” abounded from both sides of the bench today — from the other end of the building this afternoon, the FCC formally announced it will be launching an inquiry to “identify concrete steps the Commission can take to support and encourage further innovation and investment in the wireless marketplace.”

“Wireless mobility has become central to the economic, civic, and social lives of over 270 million Americans,” a statement from the FCC said this afternoon.  “We are now in the midst of a transition from reliance on mobile voice services to increasing use of and reliance on mobile broadband services, which promise to connect American citizens in new and profound ways.  A robustly competitive mobile wireless market will be essential to realizing the full benefits to American consumers and channeling investment into vitally important national infrastructure.  The FCC is seeking to ensure that competition in the mobile wireless market continues to bring substantial benefits to American consumers.”

The FCC announced its intention to vote on this inquiry last week, and now the commission will develop a framework for analyzing the wireless industry that will shape regulatory issues moving forward.

There have been a couple of form factors in recent years that have completely failed to capture the public’s imagination, despite their promising capabilities: Tablets and Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).

However, with the dramatic level of rumor circulating about Steve Jobs and Apple’s pet tablet project, there may be hope for that form factor after all. And with Nokia’s announcement of the N900 today, the MID concept looks like it might stick around too.

But it may not gain traction, so much as evolve into a new high-powered mobile phone category, akin to a “smartbook,” but minus the bookishness.

Nokia has been making MIDs for about four years, and the N900 will be the successor to the N810. However, it will be radically different from its predecessors, if only by the simple fact that it now contains quad-band GSM and HSPA cellular radios and can be used as a phone.

With the N900, Nokia has resolved some the issues which prevented MIDs from breaking through. First, MIDs were typically built to be Wi-Fi devices, anchoring them down to hotspot and home use. Not really as mobile as the name “Mobile Internet Device” would suggest. Nokia attempted to beef up the mobility of the form factor by aligning with WiMAX, but with dissolving interest in the wireless standard, the company said it was bringing 3G to its tablets in late 2008. And then reportedly sacked the WiMAX effort at the beginning of 2009. By equipping the device with cellular and mobile broadband signals in addition to Wi-Fi, it has finally become a mobile form factor. The addition of cellular connectivity also plays into the price, which I’ll talk about later.

Secondly, MIDs are awkwardly fashioned in between standard form factor sizes. They’re too big to fit in your pocket, and too small to view at laptop distance. You’d have to hold them as close as you would a phone, but without any of the ergonomics of a phone. Nokia solved this by keeping the resolution up (800 x 400) and shrinking the screen down to 3.5 inches, the now-standard touchphone screen size.

Thirdly, MIDs were priced out of the range of mobile phones and in the range of notebooks, despite not being as powerful. It is actually the same issue which doomed the Foleo to failure yet made the Eee a triumph. The price to power ratio was just uneven for MIDs. This has not exactly been resolved yet. The N900 is expected to sell for $711, yet it only carries a 600 MHz processor, 256 MB RAM and 32 GB of storage.

However, since it’s a full-fledged cellular device, it will likely be subsidized through national wireless carriers and brought down into the smartphone price range.

Even the chipset treads the fine line between MID and Smartphone. The TI OMAP 3430 is described by Texas Instruments as supporting “all levels of handsets, from the entry-level multimedia-enabled handsets to high-end Mobile Internet Devices (MIDs).”

Adding to the categorical confusion is Maemo, Nokia’s Linux-based tablet OS which the N900 runs. Anssi Vanjoki, Executive Vice President of Markets at Nokia said, “The Nokia N900 shows where we are going with Maemo and we’ll continue to work with the community to push the software forward. What we have with Maemo is something that is fusing the power of the computer, the Internet, and the mobile phone, and it is great to see that it is evolving in exciting ways.”

So it’s got the chassis and connectivity of a smartphone, and the guts and operating system of a MID. It looks like Nokia has either rejuvenated the MID, or created a new mutant.

Just last month, Dell issued an out-of-cycle earnings warning telling investors the underpinnings of its business didn’t look as solid as it thought, and gross margins could be headed for a freefall rather than the anticipated steep decline. If Dell had to make another financial reporting error, perhaps this one was the one to make: The company’s $4 billion cost-cutting initiatives kicked in when it needed them most, resulting in an operating income improvement of 62% over the first quarter of the year, and a quarter-to-quarter gross margin increase by 10%.

Not that 18.7% gross margin is anywhere that Dell, or any other company, would want to be for any sustained length of time. But rather than the dire straits the company’s July warnings were foretelling, Dell ended up with a better second quarter than its first in several departments — this while its biggest competitor, HP, took a bigger hit that it expected.

A few weeks ago, HP reported shipment increases for personal systems of about 2% annually. The big question at the time was, did that 2% come at Dell’s expense, or was it a result of an economic recovery in the works? Yesterday, Dell reported its shipments rose by 10% over the previous quarter. If those numbers are independently confirmed, Dell may avoid falling to the #3 spot worldwide against Acer anytime this year.

It’s the bright, sweet-smelling rose on what was otherwise a pretty smelly quarter by anyone’s standards. Unit shipments, while on the uptick, are 14% lower now than they were at this time last year. The company reaped just under $10 billion in revenue during the last quarter, when it was raking in $11.5 billion at the same quarter last year. But that rising operating income to $671 million was hailed by investors yesterday as an extremely positive sign for the economy — a sign that orders are back up, and that Dell may have a plan for cashing in.

Having learned its lesson during the Windows Vista upgrade cycle, CEO Michael Dell is refraining from betting on early adopter upgrades to Windows 7 to help float those order numbers. Instead — and very shrewdly — he believes that the new OS will need maybe a few quarters to stabilize, to make up some ground, before consumers and businesses start treating it seriously.

But then they’ll treat it seriously, Mr. Dell believes, because that huge backlog of Windows XP-based machines — the sheer number of which Dell is intimately familiar with, from servicing them all and even downgrading Vista machines at customers’ request — will be ripe for replacement.

“When you look at the age of the install base, we know that after a certain period of time the cost just becomes pretty onerous,” stated Mr. Dell yesterday (our thanks to Seeking Alpha for the transcript), “and the percentage of these machines out there that are based on Windows XP, which again is an eight-year-old operating system in another month or two, you know also what many of you may not have done and I would encourage you to do is go to dell.com, buy a modern PC, put Windows 7 on it, put Office 2010 on it, you will love your PC again. And as more and more people do that, I’m here to tell you there’s going to be a refresh cycle next year. It’s not all going to come in the first month or the second month, but over the course of the year there will be a big refresh cycle.”

In the latest indication that Apple tends not to show as much love toward its customers as its customers do toward it, the company made a statement to AFP press this morning effectively saying that fewer than 10 reports from its customers of overheating iPhone batteries are to be believed. Further, it added that anyone who finds herself with a cracked iPhone needs to look into the mirror for the cause.

“To date, there are no confirmed battery overheating incidents for iPhone 3GS and the number of reports we are investigating is in the single digits,” an Apple spokesperson told the AFP. The report goes on to say that cracking in iPhone glass cases is due to a phenomenon it has termed “external force.”

While overheating continues to be reported by many iPhone 3G and 3G S users on Apple’s support forums, perhaps a more common complaint in recent days has been apparent fast drain times. Topics seeking help such as this one asking whether or not Apple has acknowledged an issue with fast drain times, are often met with a flurry of responses from non-official sources. Some refer the complainers to this Apple disclaimer on battery life, which they claim to be evidence that such drainage is impossible. Others refer complainers to official Apple statements like the one this morning to the AFP, saying such issues may not even be occurring; and some tell the complainers to take their phone to the Apple Store’s “Genius Bar” and stop bothering them about it.

Some take the unusual tactic of denying the presence of other threads on the topic: “Apparently no one else has had this issue yet,” said an early responder to a recently launched topic on drainage and overheating. One responder attempted to compare the ratio of people complaining about the issue, which he estimated in the hundreds, to the total size of the iPhone market to reduce the apparent severity of the problem. In one instance, the complainer was admonished for having purchased an iPhone in the first place, knowing full well that iPhone batteries have been exploding for years — if he can’t take the heat, the post essentially said, he shouldn’t have invested in an iPhone.

Then many others take to the time-honored tradition of calling the complainer a moron.

In amidst all the calamity, however, there are some contributors who are offering a potential solution: Have the battery drain once completely, then recharge completely to see if that resets the battery. Some have reported success with this tactic; others who try it, but report that their batteries tend to run hot. Often bringing up the subject of heat on top of drainage collapses the entire thread into a political debate over whether naysayers are trying to slander the iPhone by saying it runs hot, when all batteries run hot. (Similar catastrophes can be found on support threads dealing with MacBook battery issues.)

The case cracking issue is particularly important for many users because Apple’s warranty does not cover damage due to stress or personally-applied “external force.” Nearly all support threads we’ve browsed on the topic this morning (there were many more than we had time to read) are from individuals seeking alternatives to completely replacing their phones, especially in situations where they actually appear to work just fine except for the crack.

Apple’s stance is an indication that the company does not want to open the worm-can on possible design defects, which could lead to a nightmare scenario where it becomes responsible for replacing units that arguably were damaged due to everyday forces.

Apple’s treatment of the glass cracking and overheating issues as separate may be particularly clever, though, especially since these issues could be related: stress fractures on a phone can cause the battery to ignite, as seen in this demonstration video above (which does not appear to involve an iPhone).

When Microsoft made its deal last month with Yahoo to provide the search infrastructure for its home page, using technology from Bing, it left open and non-exclusive the fate of several deals the one-time #2 search provider had already made, especially with carriers. Specifically, does Bing become the default search provider for services that had previously made a deal with Yahoo? The answer appeared to be no.

Today, that suspicion was roundly confirmed, as one of the world’s largest cooperative portals with Yahoo — one which still bears the Yahoo brand — quietly but obviously switched its search box to one that was “powered by Google.” In a move first discovered by the UK-based blog Connected Internet, BT’s Web portal BT Yahoo became a carrier of Google search rather than Bing.

The move marks the apparent beginning of the dismantling of Yahoo-based search engine resources, as the company itself moves over to Bing technology. But that non-exclusive deal apparently does not bind its partners from making the same move. As of this morning, the US’ AT&T Yahoo portal page (still known to customers by its previous name, SBC Yahoo) still bears Yahoo’s search engine.

The non-exclusive nature of the Microsoft deal could mean that a multitude of lucrative deals Yahoo made last year with mobile carriers, including UK-based Virgin Mobile, may leave an opening for something other than Bing search. Yahoo had re-announced its Yahoo Mobile service last February, at the pinnacle of which was the mobile edition of its oneSearch mobile search platform, with voice search features. Google’s mobile search has similar functionality, pointing to the possibility that mobile services as well as PC pages could open unforeseen doors for carriers that haven’t seen any lucrative value in Microsoft’s presence in mobile in recent months, to perhaps move to Google without disturbing the spirit or even the letter of their Yahoo deals. Mobile carrier deals are where the money is.