Two days after I purchased it, a brand-new hard-disk drive appeared on the market, boosting a storage capacity of 80 Gigs. Believe me, that was annoying. In the following months I had all the reasons to smash my head against the keyboard, as more and more state-of-the-art computer parts made their way on the market. Two years later, I was “driving” an antique piece of hardware, that was not worth even $500.

Keeping up with the trend is a dangerous business, and it’s likely to get you broke anytime soon. However, my losing some good money is not the point. What pissed me off most was the fact that some pieces of hardware are merely not to be purchased. It’s OK to secretly admire it and think what if you had an unit rigged into your PC, as well as it’s OK to worship it or wonder about how they managed to put things together.

Think of the following scenario: last month I was reviewing a GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics card, one of the computer parts that take pure genius to manufacture. Now, it can be purchased for a little less than $500, and in the following months I expect to find it on the shelves at ridiculous prices of sub-$300. Heck, I say… What next, a Cray supercomputer bought with change?

What’s the purpose of giving more and more computing power to the masses? Would the average Counter-Strike player become spiritually fulfilled with some extended frame-per-seconds? No, I guess. When I was of a certain age, I would read books, you know, these sheets of paper stacked together and printed across their surface. Now, the school kid would open the book and exclaim “hey, look, it’s printed in Verdana!” then toss it back on the shelf, where it belongs because they have to complete yet another level in a dumb game.

Ok, people, buy technology, be happy, then get part of a psycho botnet and start spreading malware amongst your contacts on the instant messenger. You know, I still wonder if it wouldn’t be right to own a computer after you get a driving license for it…

Sphynx Soft’s burning suite will be replaced

SphynxSoft has announced that it will cease support and distribution of the popular One Click CD & DVD Burner recording solution, as the company has introduced a new and more powerful successor of the application.

Building on the experience gained in outlining, programming and delivering the One Click CD & DVD Burner application, Sphynx Soft Romania has developed a second version of the utility, rebranded as Phoenix Burning Utilities. The updated version contains numerous bug fixes, a redesigned interface, as well as support for the newest standards in the optical recording industry, such as Blu-Ray and HD-DVD. The new burning suite also features a rewritten engine to control buffer underrun situations.

Initially envisioned for Windows XP and lower, One Click CD & DVD Burner has been redesigned to face the challanges of newer Windows OSes such as Windows Vista and Windows 7, thus ensuring full compatibility with modern operating environments and the increased user demands in optical burning technologies.

As of today, One Click CD & DVD Burner will not be supported, nor will it be available for public download via the product’s official web page. Users running the application are advised to update it to the new version at once, in order to take advantage of maximum stability and compatibility with their operating systems of choice.

Yesterday I have installed my brand-new Blu-Ray ROM that I got from Lite-on for testing. It seems that Blu-Ray playback is a little difficult in Windows Vista, and it took me more than 6 hours until I finally called it quits; the device won’t playback the movie at all. I wish I spent that time working on the website.

By the way, this week-end allowed me to focus on Sphynx Soft’s logo, as you can see it in the attached post. Enjoy; comments are welcome!

Bye now, and I’ll come back a little later, when we finish sorting out the mess on the website!