Tech News

• Good: That HP Spectre X2 sale for A$1275 (which works out to US$825 plus tax) is still on.  While I was waiting for some funds to arrive (I sold one of my domain names - not one of the mee.* flotilla, another one - for a quite useful amount of money) it came into stock for next-day delivery, went to "hurry, limited stock" and sold out.  But they have more on the way, I just need to wait a couple of weeks.
  Remember me?
  
  The specs again: Intel Core i7 7560U (2 core / 4 thread, 2.4GHz base, 3.8GHz peak); 16GB LPDDR3 1866MHz RAM, 512GB NVMe SSD, and a 3000x2000 12.3" display.  Two USB-C ports supporting charging and DisplayPort 1.2 output, but not Thunderbolt; MicroSD; and headphone jack.  Keyboard included in the price but not sure about the pen, though it works with any Windows Ink pen including HP's own and Wacom's Bamboo Ink.  The CPU includes Iris Plus graphics, so double the usual number of graphics cores and a 64MB L4 cache.
  
  This sale is Australia only, but given that the retail price of the next model down is over A$3000 it's a crazy bargain on a great computer.  It has a couple of limitations: It's dual core rather than quad core, and it doesn't have all-day battery life like, say, a MacBook.  But at about 70% off I don't care one iota.  And it has USB-C charging so you should be able to use an external battery pack.
  
  I bought two.  Because I'm an idiot.  And because I had some completely unexpected funds come in at exactly the right time.  (Well, almost exactly the right time.  If the funds had cleared two days earlier I would have had these for a week already.)
  
  And because at this price they're cheaper than buying an Intel NUC.  Or to put it another way, a single Microsoft Surface Pro with half the memory and half the storage costs within $100 of two of these.  And then the Surface keyboard costs extra.  So I was...  Slightly irked when they ran out, and I'm rather pleased that they came back into stock.
  
  Assuming they don't run out of stock again and I get both and they work as expected, they will be named Index and Railgun.
  
  Do I actually need two of these?  Nyaa....  Do I want two of these, though?  Hell yes.
  
  Update: Out of stock again already.  Double extra out of stock, in fact; the store page has been hidden and there's no buy button if you kept the link.  Hope I got my order in in time.
  
  
• AMD announced four new CPUs.  (AnandTech)
  
  Not much excitement as these are all variants of Ryzen 2, not a new die.  But the 45W 8-core 2700E and 6-core 2600E are interesting.  The 2700E is barely slower than my Ryzen 1700 but at 45W rather than 65W.  Which means that (a) you could see 8 core laptops with sensible power budgets, and (b) AMD could turn out a 90W 16 core part any time they wanted to.  (In fact they have announced exactly that but for embedded servers rather than desktops.)
  
  
• If you have an AMD Threadripper 2990WX Death Metal system and an Nvidia graphics card you probably haven't been too happy lately.  Fortunately, you don't.  Also fortunately Nvidia have fixed their drivers.  (PCPer)
  
  
• Bad: No, Microsoft Edge.  Just no.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Though if Google continue to fuck Chrome up, maybe.
  
  
• Intel's Whisky Lake runs dry.  (Tom's Hardware)
  
  Well, no surprise if you name it that.
  
  
• Apple invited me to join their live stream.  At 3AM.  Hahahano.
  
  
• Intel's 8 core Coffee Cups are coming.  The fastest chip is expected to beat AMD's 8 core Ryzen CPUs - but also to cost more than AMD's 12 core Threadripper CPUs.  (Reddit)
  
  

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