COMPUTERS AND NETWORKING
UPGRADE YOUR SOUND
Some of us old fossils fondly remember the old Altec Lansing Voice of the Theatre speakers, first introduced in 1945. They were the
only speaker series to be approved by the Research Council of the
Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Science which made them the
standard for motion picture playback for decades, not to mention a
dream PA pair for rock bands everywhere. Oddly enough, these
amazing boxes were reintroduced a few years ago as the Legacy A7
model. At $5,800 each, though, we may as well stop talking about
them. So we will.
However, if you want to upgrade your PC's audio output with a
system from the legendary company, you can get the equipment and
status for a mere $79.95 in the form of the Octane Plus 2.1 system. It can also be hooked up to CD, DVD, and MP3
players, and it's specifically tuned for music, movies, and gaming with a subwoofer, a pair of down-firing 3 inch mid-range speakers, and two 1 inch micro drivers. The down-firing concept involves blasting the sound waves downward
onto a hard surface from which they are reflected around the room. This is said to provide balanced sound from a
smaller footprint. The bass comes from a 6. 5 inch woofer. Separate bass and treble controls allow you to fine-tune the
sound. As of this writing, you can get a pair directly from www.alteclansing.com or order from Amazon. ▲
■ Altec’s Octane Plus 2.1 speaker system.
FIRST 3D NOTEBOOK INTRODUCED
As previously noted here, the hot marketing craze in the world of electronics is 3D, and Toshiba ( www.toshiba.com) has jumped in with what it says is the industry's first notebook PC to support the Blu-ray 3D format. At press time, the
Dynabook TX/98MBL was still available only in Japan, but it could be in stores by the time you read this. The machine uses
WinDVD® BD software to play back content in the Blu-ray 3D™ format and NVIDIA® 3D Vision™ software and hardware
to deliver the 3D experience. It uses the same active shutter technology as movie theaters in which the active shutter LCD
glasses lighten and darken at the same 120 Hz rate as the LCD for an effective refresh rate of 60 Hz. Each of your eyes sees
a slightly different image, so the overall picture is stereoscopic. The machine comes with a pair of wireless shutter glasses
and incorporates Harman/Kardon speakers and Dolby audio. Other features include an Intel Core i7-740QM processor, a
15. 6 inch display, a 640 GB drive, and 4 GB of RAM. No official list price was announced by Toshiba, but word on the
street is that it will drain your account by about $2,750. ▲
NIST OFFERS FELLOWSHIPS
In February, the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST; www.nist.gov) awarded $19.5 million to
the University of Maryland and the University of Colorado to
administer measurement science and engineering fellowships
for graduate, post-doctoral, and senior researchers.
Applications are being accepted, so if you are interested in a
position at either the NIST campus in Gaithersburg, MD, or
the Hollings Marine Lab in Charleston, SC, it's time to belly
up to the trough. Funded by the American Recovery and
Reinvestment Act, positions are available for "highly qualified
US citizens and non-citizens from academic, industrial, and
other organizations." For information on the University of
Maryland administered portion of the program, visit
www.nistfellows.umd.edu; for information on the one
managed by the University of Colorado, go to
www.colorado.edu/nistfellows. The program will continue in
2011 and 2012, and will include undergraduates. ▲
September 2010 11
INDUSTRY AND THE PROFESSION
IBM TWEAKS MICROSOFT
There was no official announcement, but the grapevine has it that IBM has asked all of its
400,000 employees to set Mozilla's ( www.mozilla.org)
Firefox as their default Web browser. The switch is not
mandatory, but all new computers in IBM installations
will come with it preloaded, so the policy is expected
to benefit Mozilla largely at the expense of Microsoft's
Internet Explorer. Firefox presently has a bit less than
25% of the market, compared to about 60% for IE.
Other browsers remain far behind, but it's a little early
to gauge the impact of Google's Chrome. The move
probably shouldn't be viewed as a direct swipe at
Microsoft. Although, among the cited reasons for
IBM's decision are that Firefox is open source,
standards compliant, secure, and extensible. ▲
