Nintendo 'least green tech firm'

Games firm Nintendo has come bottom of a ranking of the world's most eco-friendly electronics firms.





The quarterly Greenpeace Guide to Greener Electronics ranks 18 electronics firms by how green their production processes and products are.

In the latest guide most firms have seen their ranking plummet as the charity introduced new, stricter guidelines for evaluating companies.

Nintendo said its scored low because it had not provided data for the survey.

"Greenpeace chose to conduct a survey and produce a report, which graded companies upon the voluntary submission of information," the firm said in a statement.

"Nintendo decided not to take part in the survey and were therefore 'ungraded' in the resulting report.

But Greenpeace countered the company's statement and insisted it had been graded.

"There is no choice," Iza Kruszewska, toxics campaigner for Greenpeace, told BBC News.

She said the charity had regularly contacted the games firm since 2007 but had not had any response. The charity had been forced to use information from Nintendo's website, she said.

""They've decided not to engage," she said.

Strict standards

The guide was first started in August 2006 and is now in its eighth edition.
Bill Gates Microsoft were second from bottom in the latest list




It ranks the top market leaders of the mobile phone, computer, TV and games console markets according to their policies and practices on toxic chemicals and recycling.

The charity said that the guide has already led to a reduction in the amount of toxic chemicals being used in the electronics industry.

"We know that brands are putting pressure on their suppliers to meet our commitments," said Ms Kruszewska.

The latest guide also includes new stricter guidelines.

"For this edition we tightened the e-waste and chemical criteria and we also added a new energy requirement," said Ms Kruszewska.

The new energy guidelines score a company for disclosing their greenhouse gas emissions, their commitment to absolute cuts in their own emissions and support for mandatory global emissions reductions.

In particular, Greenpeace has asked companies to state support for a "strong post Kyoto agreement" on their international websites.

"We see companies scoring zero on all energy criteria," added Ms Kruszewska.

"Clearly it is going to take companies some time to improve on our demands,"

The latest guide also assessed the energy efficiency of a selection of each company's products to see if they meet or exceed the US Environmental Protection Agency's Energy Star rating.

This sets minimum standards for energy efficiency for many types of electronic products.

"Not only should all their products meet these standards, but 30% should exceed it to score full marks," said Ms Kruszewska.

In the latest version Sony and Sony Ericsson were the only companies to score more than five out of 10.

Nintendo came bottom of the list with a score of less than one.

Earlier this year, Nintendo was criticised by Greenpeace for its "non-existent" environmental policy.

Microsoft came second from bottom; a position that reflected its "low score on climate criteria".

A spokesperson for the firm said: "Microsoft is committed to environmental sustainability and has many programs and policies in place to lessen our footprint.

"In our consumer electronics business, we comply with and exceed all environmental guidelines and regulations.

We are committed to making ongoing progress on environmental issues while maintaining product durability, safety and performance."

NVIDIA vs AMD: Round 1 - A look at NVIDIA's recently released GT200 series cards

This week, as most of you already know, the Santa Clara-based chip manufacturer, NVIDIA, has decided to get official with its latest graphics card lineup. What followed was a series of benchmarks and reviews that shared some light on the performance level of NVIDIA's GT200-series. But because these cards have been extremely anticipated, everybody had high hopes regarding their performance level. And fortunately for NVIDIA most of the ongoing benchmarks and reviews revealed that both the GTX 260 and GTX 280 provide an improvement in graphics performance, as compared to anything else that is now available on the market.

The innovation

Technical sheet of NVIDIA's latest GeForce graphics cards

Before you start reading, be sure to check out this specification list of NVIDIA’s top GeForce graphics cards, so you can better understand how they have evolved. The performance level of these cards is undoubtedly high, but then again this was to be expected from the current leading manufacturer of computer graphics. What is really interesting is that unlike NVIDIA’s previous GeForce series, these new GT200-based cards have came out with two new technologies that are meant to boost their overall performance. I’m talking here about PhysX and Cuda.

A PhysX ready product has been expected from NVIDIA since the green company acquired Ageia. But users who want to benefit from NVIDIA’s physics technology will require one of its PhysX-ready cards and its PhysX drivers, which it hasn’t made available yet. The PhysX factor in NVIDIA’s latest GPUs is meant to deal with a number of hardware demanding physical gaming environments that can enhance a user’s overall gaming experience.

But if the PhysX technology has been designed to enhance visual experience for gamers, when it comes to CUDA, we’re talking about a totally different thing here. CUDA is meant to improve the overall performance of a computer system by unlocking the GPU processing power to accelerate the most demanding system tasks. This is why the technology has been touted to bring an end to the CPU, as a single CUDA-enabled GPU could perform better on both general computing and graphics performance. Still, nobody rushes to claim that NVIDIA’s new GT200-series will be everything a computer user will need (leaving out the need for a standard CPU), but it will sure bring better graphics (than previously available) for desktop computers.

NVIDIA's GT200 GPU

Also take into account that NVIDIA’s cards are not only your everyday gaming toy, they provide large amounts of power, which has been put into practice in more than one way. I am talking about FASTRA, the desktop supercomputer built by researchers at the University of Antwerp, which used four GeForce 9800 GX2 cards, for medical applications. This project should help you form an idea about what NVIDIA’s GeForce cards are really capable of.

The truth

The question is: Who really needs a $650 graphics card? I tend to think it won’t be gaming users, as they will probably find their necessary graphics power by searching for more affordable alternatives. And I also tend to believe that NVIDIA thinks that gamers will search for lower priced cards, which is why they will bring two new cards to the market, but as part of their GeForce 9000 series.

NVIDIA's GeForce GTX 280 cards in SLI

By now, most people believe that AMD’s ‘yet-to-get the official treatment’ HD 4870 will no be able to provide the same graphics power as NVIDIA’s current flagship model. But it will come pretty close at a better price tag, which will make it more appealing to gaming users who want to upgrade their gaming rigs. This is exactly where the GeForce 9800 GTX+ (plus) and GeForce 9800 GT come into play. These two cards are part of NVIDIA’s GeForce 9000 lineup, but will be different than any other card NVIDIA currently offers. The cards will be built using the same manufacturing process as on AMD’s HD 4000 series, the 55nm.

The 9800 GTX+, a 55nm overclocked version of NVIDIA’s 9800 GTX, is going to provide more power at a lower price tag (somewhere in the $220 area). If the card is released, NVIDIA will most probably also lower the price tag for its GeForce 8800 Ultra and 9800 GTX. This also means that those who have already acquired one of NVIDIA’s 9800 GTX cards would have spent more money on a card with a performance level below the "plus" edition.

With the 9800GT NVIDIA hopes to provide users with an affordable alternative to AMD’s Radeon HD 4850. This card is also going to benefit from a 55nm fabrication process but will come with lower performance than the 9800 GTX+ model.

At this point, no one can tell for sure when these two new G92-based cards are going to hit the store shelves, but speculations indicate August as a potential timeframe.

Conclusion

NVIDIA did a great job at marketing its new products, but then again this is one thing that the Santa-Clara chip manufacturer does best. And considering all the recent reviews that have put the cards in the spotlight, NVIDIA will most probably continue its reign over AMD as the leading manufacturer of high-end graphics cards. And with the new GeForce 9000 products, they will also have a more that smooth ride on the mainstream market, a place where AMD is at its best.

Next week AMD will have the scene, as the company is expected to finally release their new Radeon HD 4000 series cards.

Kingston to Release SSDs in Q3 - According to the company's Regional Manager

Without a single doubt, hardware manufacturers are taking the question of the future of storage very seriously. To put it differently, nowadays everybody seems to be concerned with developing, manufacturing and releasing SSD storage solutions. And this is precisely why major companies, such as Intel, SanDisk, TDK or Samsung, have already announced and released flash-based storage devices.
On that note, it appears that another major manufacturer is planning to roll out its own SSD solution – and it actually aims to do so by the end of this year.

The manufacturer in question is the US-based Kingston, from which we should expect a flash-based storage product sometime in Q3 this year. At a press event held in Bucharest, Romania, one of our colleagues was able to find out a possible release date for Kingston's Solid-State Drives. During a face-to-face talk on the company's financial achievements and product lineup, Mr. Pawel Smigielski, Kingston's Regional Manager for Eastern Europe, stated that we should be seeing the company's SSD products in Q3.

Mr. Pawel refused to comment any further on the subject and didn't give out any details regarding the price tag or even the storage capacities of such products. But the news is important nonetheless as several other manufacturers, including Seagate, have already announced their plans regarding the future of SSDs. This also proves, once more, that 2009 will be a big year for the storage market, since we will be seeing more affordable SSDs rolled out for the large consumer market. Furthermore, the cost of business SSD solutions is expected to drop, as the demand keeps increasing and technology advancements allow for a more cost effective manufacturing process.

As most of you already know, flash-based storage products have certain advantages over the traditional HDDs. But, unfortunately, they can't be considered a reliable alternative to today's current storage standard yet, mainly because of their high price tags and limited write cycles.

What to Do If Office 2007 Holds Your Documents Captive

File Block Functionality is a little known security feature implemented into version 2003 and 2007 of the Microsoft Office System. The Redmond Company wanted to fix the notoriety aspect on May 21, concomitantly with announcing the availability of the Microsoft Office Isolated Conversion Environment. File Block Functionality was designed to deliver an extra barrier of protection to Office 2003 and Office 2007 users when handling potentially malicious documents.

Unlike MOICE's additional mitigation technologies associated with the file format converters between the 2007 and 2003 editions of the Office productivity suite, File Block is a mechanism offering control over the usage of Office file types. Specific
documents can be blocked from being executed.

"The File Block Functionality for Microsoft Office 2003 and the 2007 Microsoft Office system allows administrators to restrict via registry and Group Policy specific Office file types that can or cannot be opened when using Microsoft Word, PowerPoint, and Excel. Blocking specific Office file types allows administrators to temporarily deny users the ability to open certain files, such as when a threat of attack from a given Office file type exists," Microsoft revealed.

Microsoft has made available a total of three Knowledge Base articles dealing with the File Block Functionality. 922849, 922848 and 922847 will reveal the actions that users need to take in order to resolve error messages that have been generated due to File Block. Office 2003 and 2007 users which no longer have the ability to open Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents will be able to find out how to recuperate their files.

The impossibility to execute Word, Excel and PowerPoint documents in the context of error messages pointing to issues related to the registry policy setting, is connected to File Block. Just access the Microsoft KB articles in order to understand how to modify the Windows registry in order to fix the problem.