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A chance encounter between Ted Waitt, a University of Iowa sophomore studying marketing and business, and Mike Hammond, a computer store employee in Des Moines, in the fall of 1984 would lead to the two going into business together less than a year later. The company they founded, TIPC Network, was a computer mail-order business that launched on September 5, 1985. Waitt’s grandmother, Mildred Smith (known as “Mo Mo” to her grandchildren), put up her $15,000 certificate of deposit as collateral to secure a $10,000 loan used to get the operation off the ground....

The GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost also does well to make the new Radeon HD 7790 rather pointless as it provides on average 22% more performance while costing just 13% more. That said, the 7790 is not designed for resolutions as high as 1920x1200, and we found it better suited to 1680x1050 or below. When measuring frame time performance the numbers favored Nvidia as the GeForce GTX 650 Ti Boost was 5% faster than the Radeon HD 7850 and 36% faster than the 7790....

Like Overwatch we find very high frame rates in Doom, though this time it’s the R9 390 that is ahead, quite a bit once overclocked as well. Moving to 1440p again reduces the frame rate quite a bit and now the R9 390 and GTX 970’s performance is fairly similar, though the Radeon GPU is of course still faster. Mafia III is still inexplicably demanding using the high quality preset though the game does tend to favor hardware for the green team....

Gone is the single column wall of posts with the most recent updates telling ‘15 minutes of your story.’ Instead, as the name suggests, you’ll see a timeline of life events containing photos and other updates that stretches back to when you joined Facebook. Anyone viewing it can click back to any year where there are updates and see what was going on. Facebook automatically selects the most important updates and highlights them with a blue dot....

Atto Disk’s write bechmark saw all three Gigabyte Z68XP-UD3iSSD configurations max out by the time the sample data reached 32K. Both cache drives offered a mild performance gain, though Intel’s solution came out on top.

Industry leader Samsung was responsible for 24 percent of global smartphone shipments last quarter, up from 19 percent in the fourth quarter and 22 percent in the year-ago period. Apple finished in second place with 18 percent of the pie. In the year-ago quarter, the Cupertino tech giant accounted for just 15 percent of global shipments. Canalys analyst Sanyam Chaurasia said Samsung ramped up production of its popular A series to better compete in the low-to-mid-end segment while focusing on top-tier products like the Galaxy S22 series....

The 26th annual DICE (Design Innovate Communicate Entertain) Awards takes place at Resorts World in Las Vegas on February 23. The nominees, chosen by the industry experts and developers who make up the Academy of Interactive Arts and Sciences, are led by God of War Ragnarök, which is up for 12 awards, followed by Horizon Forbidden West (eight) and Elden Ring (seven). Fighting with those three titles in the Game of the Year category is post-apocalyptic cat-based adventure Stray and the incredibly popular roguelike shoot ’em up Vampire Survivors....

Across a wide variety of the tests that I performed, the Pixel 2 XL offers around an extra hour of battery life compared to the Pixel XL, which is an impressive improvement considering the hardware constraints. The lowest gains were seen in more intensive workloads like PCMark, while web browsing saw a decent gain year-on-year. The Pixel 2 XL also fares favourably compared to a range of other flagships on the market today, particularly smaller devices....

Instead I’ll be focusing mostly on the unique software components found on the Pixel 2 XL, and the general software experience Google provides. Spoiler alert: it’s great. Stock Android is still my favourite implementation of Android. It’s fast and fluid, it isn’t bogged down by unnecessary features or bloat, and the skin is consistent throughout the entire operating system and most of the apps in the Play Store. This is Google’s vision for how Android should be, and as far as I’m concerned, it’s the best you can get....

This week, GPD unveiled the successor to last year’s GPD Win Max. An IndieGoGo campaign for the new device starts Wednesday at 10 pm EST with a flexible goal of $20,000. Five models are available, all in the ballpark of $1,000. Like the 2021 model, the GPD Win Max 2 looks more like a mini laptop than a handheld game system. This year’s version offers three AMD variants and one Intel option, differing in memory and storage capacity....

The latest report from 3DCenter shows that the RTX 3000-series and the Radeon RX 6000 cards at major German retailers are above their MSRP by 41% and 35%, respectively. That’s still more than what you should be paying for the GPUs, of course, but it’s the lowest prices we’ve seen since January 2021, when they were 42% (AMD) and 34% (Nvidia) over MSRP. Click to expand Prices for both companies’ latest cards have been falling since December 12, when they were more than 80% over MSRP....

Grid Studio takes classic electronics like the Game Boy, the original iPhone and the Sega Game Gear, disassembles them, then uses the parts to build an informative diorama. Collecting and displaying hardware from yesteryear is one thing, but Grid Studio takes it a step further by highlighting the hardware within that made the magic happen. Pricing varies depending on the display, but on average you can expect to pay anywhere between $150 and $400....

Need for Speed: The Run has been completely off our radar this year, and with 18 titles in the franchise now, it’s easy to see how one would lose track. Nonetheless, there are certainly some elements to be excited about, including the use of DICE’s Frostbite 2 engine – the same framework behind Battlefield 3. Players will partake in illicit underground races on over 300km of track (triple that of Hot Pursuit) stretching from San Francisco to New York as they attempt to outrun a “mysterious criminal organization” and law enforcement....

There are numerous ways to backup your Gmail data and deciding which way to go will largely depend on the level of effort you want to put into it. You could simply setup Gmail to forward all your mails to another email account and call it a day, for instance. But there are also a handful of other options that offer a bit more flexibility and convenience. Below, we’ve listed a few of them, so you can choose whichever best suits your needs....

To kick things off I think it is best to explain the difference rebooting and resetting. Rebooting is the same as restarting, and close enough to powering off and then turning off your device. The purpose is to close and reopen the operating system. Resetting, on the other hand, means taking the device back to the state in which it left the factory. Resetting wipes all your personal data. Although the terms may seem similar they are quite different....

What’s even more concerning is that many people don’t even look at their monthly bill. Checking your bill and eliminating some of these unnecessary perks can go a long way to putting some extra dough back in your pocket each month. Here are 12 ideas to help cutting back on your wireless cell and data plan: Despite what you’ve probably been taught, everything is negotiable. Your mileage here will vary but you’ll never know unless you ask....

HP has still done a good job styling the ProBook 6360b. HP is using a magnesium-reinforced ABS chassis with a bead-blast aluminum display enclosure. The outer shell, touchpad and palm rest are tungsten colored and treated with HP DuraFinish, a smudge / wear / scratch-resistant coating that will keep the system looking newer for longer. The 1.3" thickness is likely a result of the included optical drive which has virtually vanished from the ultraportables of today....

HTC Asia-Pacific general manager Charles Huang reportedly told DigiTimes (paywalled, via Android Authority) that the Taiwanese consumer electronics specialist will launch a “metaverse phone” in April. It’s said to be a high-end offering, presumably something powerful enough to drive VR / AR applications. Others have tried and failed. Google discontinued its Daydream virtual reality platform in late 2019. Samsung effectively killed off its Gear VR efforts a year later. What HTC does have going for it is the fact that it’s one of the top players in the PC virtual reality space with a solid catalog of content to work with....

This week, security group Dr. Web published its June 2022 mobile virus activity report describing around 30 popular Android apps containing trojans, adware, spyware, and other malware. Some had hundreds of thousands or even millions of Google Play Store downloads. The malicious apps mostly appear as photo editors, theme customization, and wallpaper apps. The list also had an emoji keyboard and note-taking app hiding malware in their coding. Once users install them, they will display intrusive ads, scam customers, and grab information from devices while hiding themselves from users....

Older CPUs would simply fail if they started to overheat, but modern CPUs adjust their frequency based on temperature (among other things) to prevent a dramatic failure. Because of this, it stands to reason that once you reach certain temps, you will no longer be getting the maximum performance from your CPU because it will be busy protecting itself. But what is that temperature? And do you really need a high-end liquid-cooled system to get peak performance, or is the little stock cooler that comes with most CPUs enough?...