The cat's out of the bag, folks. Apple has just sent out a press wire announcing that their much-awaited Mac OS X version 10.5 Leopard is now being readied for sale this Friday, October 26, at an expected retail price of US$ 129. Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 is further expected to host a total of 300 new features - we've listed some of the more interesting ones below:

• Stacks: A new way to easily access files from the Dock
• Redesigned Finder: Lets users quickly browse and share files between multiple Macs
• Quick Look: A new way to instantly see files without opening an application
• Spaces: A new feature used to create groups of applications and instantly switch between them
• Time Machine: An effortless way to automatically back up everything on a Mac.
• Improved Parental Controls
• The complete Boot Camp release: Previously available only as a beta, making it possible to run Windows natively on Intel-based Macs
• Web Clip: Bringing anything that a user wants from a web page to Dashboard as a live widget
• New Photo Booth features: helping users create animated iChat buddy icons or fun effects and backdrops with still or video images
• An enhanced Dictionary with Wikipedia built in: Allows users to access up-to-date information
• A newly updated iCal with multi-user calendaring based on the new CalDAV standard
• An updated version of Front Row, making it even easier to play music or watch movies, TV shows and photos on a Mac using the ultra-simple Apple Remote.
  

Mac OS X Leopard 10.5 will require at least 51 2MB of RAM, and is designed to run on any Mac computer with an Intel, PowerPC G5, or G4 (867 Mhz or faster) processor. Set your calendars, and double-check with your resident Apple stores.

FastMac, a company specializing in upgrades for Apple products, announced that it plans on releasing the first 2X Blu-Ray burners for the Powerbook, iBook and MacBook Pro, iMac, and MacMini computers.

The new optical drives can read, write, and re-write to single and dual layer Blu-ray media up to 2x speed. The new component can also read and burn DVDs at 8x speed in single layer and 2.4x speed in dual/double layer modes.

In addition, it can rewrite both DVD-R and DVD+R at 4x speed. If for some reason you need to burn a CD or CD-RW, the new drive can also burn at 8x. Here's a short list of the different systems it is compatible with:

• iBook G4
• iMac G5
• iMac Intel
• MacBook Pro (17-inch)
• Mac mini
• PowerBook G3 Pismo
• PowerBook G4 Titanium (667 Mhz or higher)
• PowerBook G4 Aluminum

If you plan on picking up the FastMac Blu-Ray Drive, it is going for US$ 999.95. It comes with a one year warranty and a 30 day money back guarantee. If you want to know more, click on our Read link below.

Auran Games has made public the full prize list for the Fury Challenge. Over US$ 2 million are at stake in the tournament, with clans battling for GeForce 8600 graphics cards while individual entrants duke it out for a chance to win one of three Dell computers. Check out the full prize list below.

• 1st - Dell XPS M2010 Notebook + US$ 500 Gamestop Voucher
• 2nd - Dell XPS 720 + G15 Keyboard
• 3rd - Dell XPS 720 + G5 Mouse
• 4th - US$ 250 Gamestop Voucher
• 5th - US$ 250 Gamestop Voucher
• 6th - 15th - Merc Keyboards + US$ 50 D2D gift Vouchers
• 16th - 100th - Merc Keyboards
• 1st - 1,000th - CyberShotz 12 Pack
• 1st - 100,000th - 1 Month Gamerail Subscription

The Fury Challenge is an open beta event that pits players against each other in what is being billed as the world's first 100% PvP MMO. This ladder-based competition runs until October 7, so if you've set your eye on any of the prizes listed above, you better get cracking.

Fury is scheduled for an October release.

So what's better than today's Intel dual core processors? Why a new quad-core processor, that's what. The Xeon 7300 series is twice as fast performance-wise, more than three times the performance per watt over the old dual-core processors, and up to four times the memory capacity.

Intel has unveiled the new series of processors yesterday designed specifically for multi-processor servers running heavy applications with unmatched performance, reliability and scalability. The more energy efficient quad-core processors will enable customers a much more cost efficient ownership of the new machines according to its performance. Intel plans to overhaul their microarchitecture to the new processors within the next 15 months.

Here are just some of the new features that the Xeon 7300 series is sporting:

• Includes frequencies up to 2.93GHz at 130 watts, several 80-watt processors and a 50-watt version optimized for four socket blades and high-density rack form factors with a frequency of 1.86GHz.
• The Intel® 7300 chipset with Data Traffic Optimizations provides a balanced platform design with several new technologies that enhance data movement between the processors, memory and I/O connections.
• HP* delivered a new blade world record** for SAP® Sales and Distribution (SD) Benchmark with a result of 3,500 SD users on a HP ProLiant BL680c G5 blade server with four Quad-core Intel® Xeon® processor model E7340s running at 2.4 GHz.

Tom Kilroy, Intel vice president and co-general manager of Digital Enterprise Group had this to say about the new processor:

Intel Xeon-based multi-processor servers are the backbone of the enterprise. With the Xeon 7300 series, Intel is delivering new levels of performance and performance per watt, and driving the Intel Core microarchitecture into such innovative systems as four-socket, 16-core blades that use less energy than our older models. It's simply amazing.

Those of you tech savvy people may want to take a look at the benchmark performance of the Xeon 7300 series at the Intel website through the via link. The estimated price range of the new processors are somewhere within US$ 856 to US$ 2,301 in quantities of 1,000. Given a little time, we're pretty sure we'll be seeing these new processors go commercial and give us the chance to play our favorite game without any (or at least considerably less) of those annoying lags in between frames.

 

What happens when you take your everyday benchmarking test and run it against Sony's PS3? You get some interesting numbers, that's for sure. Not much you can backlink to... sorry. :(

Primate Labs ran some Linux benchmarks to see how the PS3 would handle non-optimized code. As you've probably guessed from the title, the PS3 isn't exactly the best at running general purpose code compared to an Apple Power Mac, but it still does a pretty nifty job. Compared to a benchmark rating of 1000 for the G5, Primate Labs notes that the PS3 only did well in terms of memory performance. In terms of overall performance, the PS3 was a close second to the G5.

It's a test against the odds, so to speak. Taking code that isn't optimized for the Cell processor and running it through its paces as part of a benchmarking test relative to a Power Mac G5 isn't exactly fair, but you have to admit... those numbers are still pretty high, regardless.

A second test against Cell-optimized code will probably work in favor of the PS3, but let's face it, so long as the console does a good job playing our games, we're happy right?

Some Guild Wars players are probably still shocked at Guild Wars 2's announcement. Why would ArenaNet make a sequel instead of continuously supporting a very successful MMORPG? They say it's to make the ultimate Guild Wars, but saying goodbye to a world fans loved would definitely be painful.

For now, all we can do is enjoy what's left and what's in store for loyal Guild Wars players. To celebrate GW's glorious days (and to promote the first and last true expansion, Guild Wars: Eye of the North), ArenaNet is holding the "Return to Tyria" Sweepstakes. Lucky winners will receive good prizes for their gaming needs.

• Grand Prize: Complete Alienware Area 51 Multimedia Computer System
• 1st Place (5 winners) : ATI Radeon HD 2900 XT Video Card
• 2nd Place (5 winners) : Logitech X-540 Speakers, Logitech G15 Gaming Keyboard, Logitech G5 Laser Mouse
• 3rd Place (5 winners) : Sound Blaster Xi-Fi Xtreme Gamer Sound Card

All winners, including ten 4th placers will also receive developer signed copies of Guild Wars: Eye of the North. To join, or see the specs of the grand prize gaming powerhouse, go to the Guild Wars site via the Read link below.

So we told you before how the possible release of the Mac OS X v10.5 Leopard this Spring could be delayed. It turns out that this rumor holds no truth. Apple has responded to these reports, saying that Leopard will be released this Spring as scheduled and not on October, as previously thought.

We all know how risky believing in rumors is, but sometimes it's nice to dream. We guess the worth of the rumor must always depend on the worth of the sources. There were a lot of clues that eventually pointed out a Spring release for the Leopard. Besides, it's always safe to stick with the official announcements from the Apple people themselves.

It's a couple of days late, but we think it can still afford to be labeled important news. Now up for beta testing is the Gentoo PPC64 PS3 LiveCD, which will enable you to use a GNOME desktop environment on both the PS3 and the G5 Apple PowerMac.

If you don't know what GNOME is, it's a kind of open-source desktop environment that people have updated with open source versions of the software normally found in other operating systems. In other words, it's an alternative desktop choice that also has a big, supportive fanbase for newbie questions.

In addition to GNOME, the LiveCD also has Audacious, Evolution, Firefox 2-X (Bon Echo), Gaim, Gimp-2, and Xchat software included, which make it a pretty hefty package. You can find more information on the ins and outs of this new development at the source, and feel free to check the additional link for download mirrors. Just look for the "experimental/ppc64/livecd" directory in your respective mirror sites. Enjoy!

Offsite Link: [Gentoo Download Mirrors]

Are you having sleepless nights already playing Resistance? Or are you still trying to install Fedora Core 5? We know you can't get your hands off your new PlayStation 3 and so the guys over at online site GeekPatrol. Being the, well, geeks that they are, GeekPatrol wasn't content with just playing or exploring the PSP-like XMB of the console.

In case you're wondering what are they up to, be informed that they just managed to get a beta version Geekbench for Linux PPC and compared PS3's performance against one of the first Power Mac G5. The setup is as follows:

    PlayStation 3: Cell Broadband Engine @ 3.2GHz, 256 MB RAM, Fedora Core 5, Geekbench 2006 (Build 243)
    Power Mac G5: PowerPC G5 @ 1.6GHz, 1280 MB RAM, Fedora Core 4, Geekbench 2006 (Build 243)

A PowerMac G5 1.6GHz running Mac OS X was used as the metrics for the experiment, meaning that setup will yield a score of 100 when  measured. Power Mac G5 got a score of  106.9 while the PS3 got 105.2. We are then suddenly reminded of earlier comments that the PS3 is actually a stripped down PowerPC-based like current Apple chips. Judging from the numbers, it seems that the console is indeed A-OK. Anyway, here are the rest of the results of the experiment:

Integer Performance

Emulate 6502 (single-threaded scalar)

PlayStation 3: 42.1

Power Mac G5: 73.9

Emulate 6502 (multi-threaded scalar)

PlayStation 3: 57.3

Power Mac G5: 73.8

Blowfish (single-threaded scalar)

PlayStation 3: 118.7

Power Mac G5: 107.0

Blowfish (multi-threaded scalar)

PlayStation 3: 165.6

Power Mac G5: 107.0

See the rest after the jump!

Mobility is what the Apple Remote offers for those who live day-in and day-out with their Macs. The remote lets you do things even if you're 10 ft away from your Mac. But, like any gadget, it can only do so much -- unless some really cool software comes along and liberates you from its limitations. Now, imagine your Apple Remote integrated with any Mac - yep, any Mac - and with just IR receivers on USB G3, G4, G5 & the new Mac Pro. Also, imagine that you can import and export application profiles which you can share online. It's now possible with mira.

Basically, mira allows you to personalize the control of your Apple Remote. It's like "easy" made "easier". It comes bundled with over 40 profiles for popular programs which you can easily change according to your own settings. Where you used to only open Front Row, with mira you'll have a giant menu that you can view across the room. The software application allows us to control any program even without knowing how to create scripts.

mira comes with a host of other features which you can check at Twisted Melon, but meanwhile you can check out some of the application's screenshots here.