“Gamers are an extremely demanding audience that simply won’t tolerate anything on their system that detracts from gameplay,” said Rowan Trollope, senior vice president, Consumer Products, Symantec. “Norton AntiVirus Gaming Edition keeps gamers protected online and runs perfectly undetected in the background, meaning no interruptions, no pop-ups, and with the same award winning zero-impact performance of our 2009 products.”

I personally have been using the Gamer version of Norton AntiVirus 2009 for a while now and during game play I notice no slow down, and because it doesn’t alert me of any problems while I am playing a game alerts don’t fight with the game for priority on my screen, or my screen doesn’t suddenly go blank and return me to my desktop during the middle of a gun battle in crysis. Which has happened way too man times in the past.

Something to note is, just like the non gaming version of Norton AntiVirus 2009 it installs in under 60 seconds, on the Toshiba P305 I installed it on it did it in under 50 seconds, and just like the non gamer version it caught all the virus samples I had at it and protected me when I visited suspicious websites.

The user interface on the gamer version is also a bit different, and I think it looks kind of cool.

Norton AntiVirus 2009 is a Must Have for any Gamer and for that we award it our 5 Star Must Have Award.

Once installed I wanted to see if it was a resource hog and if it would bog down my system it didn’t, nor did it tie up my system when it performed full system virus scans. One of the problems in the past for me with McAfee products and most every other security bundle available. was they slowed down my system and in some cases made my system unusable. But McAfee has worked hard to streamline the bundle and make it less of a burden on your system. At any given time the software suite used no more than 10 megs of memory and I don’t think I saw the CPU usage spike over 5%, except when starting a Virus Scan.

One of the first things I did with the McAfee bundle was test how well it would protect me. So I purposely visited websites that I know push malware and other naughty software and I am happy to report that the system did not get infected with anything. I then inserted a USB stick which contains some sample viruses and as soon as I plugged in the drive into the USB port and before the Autoplay even popped up McAfee alerted me of the potentially dangerous files on the USB stick. (They weren’t actual viruses just sample files that contain signatures of viruses that I have collected)

McAfee also has website ratings where you are alerted of a potentially dangerous website before you visit it. It’s called Siteadvisor and it works with their website Siteadvisor.com. Siteadvisor basically scans websites for problems and allows people to post about the problematic sites. Green = Good, Yellow = Beware. Red = avoid. We checked our site status and we are listed as Green however a user said we spam a lot. Which we don’t we do not even have a mailing list to spam too, so while the Green, Yellow and Red ratings McAfee gives to sites seem to be accurate some comments left by users may be inaccurate. Something to keep in mind. But it is a good tool to help protect yourself from visiting a dangerous website and getting infected with something you don’t want. I know I don’t want no CTDs (Computer Transmitted Disease) on my system.

But just in case Siteadvisor fails you and the definitions on your system are not up to date, don’t fear as McAfees active protection will still protect you. If you download a file with no identification signature, and if it has traits of a Virus, McAfee will alert you even if it doesn’t match any virus definitions loaded on your system. They do this because they know that viruses sometimes make it to the wild before they can detect them and release a virus definition update. A great feature in my opinion.

Another cool feature is the network protection feature. When anything connects to your local network it will alert you and you can easily deny it access to your computer. It doesn’t annoy you though because when you first install it, it is somewhat dormant scanning your network finding friendly PCs and other network enabled peripherals. But after a few days it will alert you when a new PC connects to your network. That in my opinion is great because I personally know what systems are on my network and if I am alerted that one has connected when one shouldn’t be connecting at all I can protect my systems and not allow that system to be in contact with them and login to my router and remove the system from my network.

The firewall also works great, you can customize it anyway you like. I like that I can easily customize it and I just said easily and it is very easy because of how the entire user interface is. It isn’t as confusing as the Panda UI was.

McAfee also has identity protection tools and parental control tools, which protect you when your banking online and helps you avoid phishing attempts and of course the parental controls help protect your kids when you aren’t home.

Overall McAfee Internet Security 2009 is great, but when I try to compare it to NIS 2009 I don’t see a clear winner. They are both great programs they both have their plus and minuses. I personally would recommend to those of you looking to buy a security suite to go with the brand you trust, and those of you who are hardcore PC users who think McAfee is overly bloated and not worth it’s weight in gold. I recommend you give it another shot you definitely will be surprised.

For more information visit: http://www.mcafee.com/us/

The seven “Engine Room” episodes aired in the United States on mtvU – MTV’s college network – and on MTV channels around the world. All of the “Engine Room” episodes are online at http://www.mtvengineroom.com, where viewers can check out the challenges, learn how to tackle them on their own PCs, interact with other digital artists, and showcase their work by creating portfolios to be seen by fans around the world.

Updated to add team photo.

Prior to installing the software I had timed how long the dv4 took to get to the Vista Desktop several times, and it averaged 43 seconds, after the software was installed I rebooted the system several times again and it averaged 45 seconds. Not much of a difference and nothing to complain about.

After I timed my system to see how long it would take to boot up with Pandas software, I decided to open up the software and try it out and I have to say it has a pretty nice user interface that is easy to understand, so easy my mom could probably figure it out.

However even though the interface was easy to understand it wasn’t easy to use. For example the Panda Software told me I needed to solve an issue, the issue being that the virus definition database needed to be updated. I would click solve, and nothing happened. I would click it 10 to 20 times and nothing happened. I finally click the update button on the top, again nothing happened, I clicked “Update Now” nothing happened, I clicked the panda head on my task bar and selected Update, nothing happened.

Well call me a n00b because something was happening, and I don’t know who to blame Panda or Microsoft, bu when ever I clicked “Solve” or “Update” the Update Wizard did pop up, however it opened under the main screen so I could not see it, and it did not appear in the taskbar because it was being grouped with the Main screen.

So if that little problem fooled me and caused me issues imagine novice users.

But other than that the Panda software worked pretty well. It really didn’t put a lot of strain on the CPU except when scanning the system which is expected however it also at times used up to 20 Megs of memory even when it wasn’t scanning my system. But that really isn’t a problem on systems that have 4 Gigs of ram.

The Anti Spam filter for it worked wonders, it picked up almost every single spam email I received over a 2 week period. I never seen a product accomplish that.

My favorite thing about Panda was the Identity protection, it was easy if not the easiest, but it can get a bit annoying. The NIS 2009 Identity protection wasn’t as easy to set up but definitely a lot less of an annoyance. However you can change the settings for the Panda software to make it less annoying.

Come to think of it, Panda pretty much alerted me about every little thing, 99% of the time they were non issues and pretty much annoyed me. I almost always wanted to click don’t bother me again but at the same time I did not want serious alerts to go ignored by me. So I found my self spending a lot of time tweaking the settings to get it just right for me.

The firewall also worked pretty good, but again annoying I have my home network to allow sharing of media, when ever a computer here would connect to download a file or a movie It blocked it and alerted me asking if I wanted to allow it. Would be nice if Panda could tie into my media sharing settings to see which computer are and aren’t allowed. NIS 2009 did this flawlessly.

Another cool feature was the automatic backup, which is pretty cool. I didn’t use it much as I have a windows homeserver but I tested it out and it worked as advertised. There is also an online back up option.

To test how well the AV software performed, I visitd a few sites that I know try to inject trojan onto your system and each time Panda protected me. I even installed programs that I knew contained viruses and again I was protected by Panada so while it may not always get every single little virus or trojan out there. The 10 I tested it on were detected.

Overall Panda Internet Security 2009 works well, it does what it is supposed to do. However even though its user interface is easy to understand and friendly it did get a bit confusing, but hopefully Panda will update the software to correct some of the minor issues with the software.

Panda also needs to catch up to the competition. NIS 2009 has a far smaller foot print than Panda but we do have to give Panda credit their program did perform well.

For more info and special savings on Panda Internet Security 2009 visit the Panda Website.

Updated 6:20 am EST
AMD and Dubai based ATIC (Advanced Technology Investment Company) today officially announced the Foundary Company a new US based company that will officially take over the manufacturing side of AMD.

AMD will contribute to The Foundry Company its manufacturing facilities, including two fabrication facilities in Dresden, Germany, as well as related assets and intellectual property rights. ATIC will invest $2.1 billion to purchase its stake in The Foundry Company, of which it will invest $1.4 billion directly in the new entity and the remainder will be paid to AMD to purchase additional shares in The Foundry Company. The Foundry Company will also assume approximately $1.2 billion of AMD’s existing debt. ATIC has committed additional equity funding to The Foundry Company of a minimum of $3.6 billion and up to $6.0 billion over the next five years to fund the expansion of The Foundry Company’s chip-making capacity beyond the manufacturing facilities initially contributed by AMD. These funds will be used by The Foundry Company to (i) proceed with capacity expansion at its fabs in Dresden, Germany, including an upgrade of one of its fabs to a state-of-the-art facility, and (ii) begin construction on a new state-of-the-art facility in Saratoga County, New York, subject to the transfer of previously-approved New York State incentives. The New York facility is expected to create more than 1,400 direct jobs, and, through its operation, to generate an additional 5,000 jobs in the region. Once operational, the New York facility will be the only independently-managed, leading-edge semiconductor manufacturing foundry in the United States.

Upon closing, The Foundry Company will:

Have a total enterprise value of $5.0 billion, consisting of AMD’s contribution of manufacturing assets and intellectual property (including its fabrication facilities in Dresden), intellectual capital and employees valued together at $2.4 billion; ATIC’s contribution of $1.4 billion in new capital; and $1.2 billion of debt assumed by The Foundry Company from AMD;
Be consolidated with AMD for purposes of financial reporting;
Have a board of directors whose membership is equally divided between representatives of AMD and ATIC;
Have only AMD and ATIC as stockholders, each of which at the closing will have equal voting rights;
Be owned 44.4 percent by AMD and 55.6 percent by ATIC on a fully converted to common basis. ATIC’s economic ownership will increase over time based on the differences in securities held by AMD and ATIC, and depending on whether AMD elects to invest proportionately with ATIC in future capital infusions to support The Foundry Company’s growth;
Have its principal headquarters in Silicon Valley, and its research and development and manufacturing leadership teams and ecosystems in New York, Dresden, and Austin;
Have an exclusive supply agreement with limited exceptions to manufacture AMD processors and to manufacture, where competitive, certain percentages of other AMD semiconductor products;
Begin construction of the Fab 4X manufacturing facility in New York in the middle of 2009, directly employing more than 1,400 workers in Upstate New York when the facility is in full operation;
Expect to increase capacity through completing the 300mm conversion of a second state-of-the-art facility in Dresden in 2009;
Join the IBM technology development alliance for both SOI and bulk silicon technology, greatly expanding the addressable market of The Foundry Company;
After the upgrade and expansion in Dresden and the build-out of the New York facility, The Foundry Company envisions expanding its global manufacturing footprint over time, if commercially justified, to also include new fabrication facilities in Abu Dhabi; and
Announce its permanent corporate name and identity.
Upon closing, AMD will:

Have equal voting rights with ATIC in The Foundry Company;
Own 44.4 percent of The Foundry Company on a fully converted to common basis;
Improve its liquidity through The Foundry Company’s assumption of approximately $1.2 billion of AMD’s debt, ATIC’s $700 million payment to AMD for ownership interests in The Foundry Company and Mubadala’s purchase for $314 million of 58 million newly issued AMD shares and warrants for 30 million additional shares;
Tightly focus on the design and development of the next generation of innovation based on the fusion of computing and graphics processing;
Elect a Mubadala designee as a member of its board of directors;
Excluding its consolidation of The Foundry Company for financial reporting purposes, improve its net cash position by $2.1 billion, through The Foundry Company’s assumption of approximately $1.1 billion in debt (net of approximately $100 million cash transferred by AMD to The Foundry Company) and cash payments from ATIC and Mubadala aggregating $1.0 billion;
Have the option, but not any requirement, to provide additional capital funding to The Foundry Company in response to future capital calls; and
Have an exclusive supply agreement with The Foundry Company, with limited exceptions, to manufacture AMD processors and to manufacture, where competitive, certain percentages of other AMD semiconductor products.
Upon closing, ATIC will:

Have equal voting rights with AMD in The Foundry Company;
Own 55.6 percent of The Foundry Company on a fully converted to common basis;
Invest an initial $2.1 billion, of which $1.4 billion will be invested directly in the new company and $700 million will be paid directly to AMD;
Commit a minimum of $3.6 billion and up to $6.0 billion in additional funds over the next five years for the upgrade and expansion of fabrication facilities in Dresden and construction of a new facility in Upstate New York.
Upon closing, Mubadala will:

Purchase for an aggregate of $314 million 58 million newly issued AMD shares and warrants for 30 million additional shares, giving it a total stake in AMD of 19.3 percent on a fully diluted basis; and
Have a right to designate a representative for election as a member of the board of directors of AMD.

For more information visit: http://web.amd.com/newglobalfoundry/

So how much for the cards? $45 - 55 for the 4550 and $39 for the 4350.

Something I noticed is that it is using Hulu content, which is a joint venture between NBC and News Corp, but Fancast definitely has a better looking sute than Hulu.