The Tech Report

This week's episode starts off with a bang. Damage Labs adds a new member to the team, and Scott and Jordan discuss the joys of patriotic explosions. For the most part, the remaining episode tackles software and storage. We discuss Google's just-announced Chrome OS, Firefox 3.5, and VLC 1.0.0. We even take a look at our own web server stats to see which browsers you, the readers and listeners, use the most. To break things up, we have another MSI sponsored segment, which includes motherboard tech discussion and an interview with competitive overlocker Gautam Bhatnager. We also answer two listener mail questions. Finally, a veritable pod of storage stories finishes up the show, as we talk SSDs, hard drive history, and backup strategy.

As the month of June comes to a close, we turn off the noisy air conditioning and swelter in our studios to record another episode of the TR Podcast—at least, that's what I did. This episode starts with a variety of gaming topics: everything from the campy and somewhat uninteresting Battlefield Heroes to the acquisition of id Software, the reasoning behind which we discuss at length. We then talk phones, as the iPhone 3G S has made its way into two of our panelists' hands, and Scott has wandered back into his old Sprint store to check out the Palm Pre. Cyril and Scott go on to introduce the Pocket Swiss Army Knife from the latest TR system guide, and we share our (mixed) feelings about Windows 7 pricing. Later, Scott examines MSI's new consumer ultraportable laptop, we round up the latest netbook news, and we wrap up with high-end Socket AM3 chipsets. What a show!

If you've been following the news from Computex, or perhaps looking for a concise overview of the biggest stories from the event, you'll love this episode. We kick things off with Cyril, Scott, Jordan and Geoff covering the coolest innovations and new products from companies like Intel, AMD, Nvidia, Gigabyte, Corsair, and Synaptics. We go on to bring you the latest about our solid-state drive tests, Scott's CPU benchmarking extravaganza, and France's failed anti-piracy law. Also in this episode, Jordan and Joshua Buss discuss TR's latest processor cooler roundup.

We're all stretching our brain muscles as we kick off yet another TR Podcast episode. Wolfram|Alpha, our first point of discussion, is both confusing and brilliant, but we're not holding our breath to see it become the next big web thing. Moving on to yet another ad-war, we discuss Apple's response to the Microsoft laptop hunter spots. Does Apple stick with tired rhetoric or truly take the lead? Soon after our ad discussion and a short iPhone rumor roundup, Scott and Geoff tackle our latest SSD roundup and the controversy surrounding it. The sinking U.S. dollar means Intel is getting fined just a little bit more each day in Europe, and Scott gives us a cool AMD CPU sneak preview.

Tune in this week for our thoughts on everything from the tragedy of 3D Realm's death to the narrow-mindedness of Microsoft's latest ad campaign. We also talk about our favorite new ultraportables and Intel's rock stars.

We're back after a brief hiatus with a well-rounded podcast episode. Scott kicks off the conversation with a frustrating revelation about Lenovo's new ThinkPad automatic update feature, then we share our thoughts on Time Warner Cable's bandwidth quota trial saga. We also give Apple a shout-out for making all iTunes Store music DRM free—despite the ensuing price increase.On the CPU front, we examine AMD's latest Phenom processor as well as the chipmaker's new Opteron roadmap. Finally, Matt gives us the rundown on OCZ's first foray into the netbook world, we discuss the merits of Nvidia's Ion chipset, and our latest poll prompts Scott to comment on the Atom processor's usefulness. A quick reminder: we've switched to a twice-a-month schedule for the podcast, so our next episode will air on May 9. The episode after that will go up on May 23.

Listener mail is back, starting one of our longest episodes ever with an interesting question about the effects of general-purpose usage on a GPU's life span. Our editors also dive into the debate generated by Microsoft's latest "I'm a PC" ad, giving their take on whether Microsoft has hit a home run or a foul ball. Then, after we lament the expansion of Time Warner Cable's bandwidth quotas to several U.S. cities, Cyril rants about a draconian new copyright bill in France. Other topics in this episode include Geoff's review of a handy little Mini-ITX motherboard, the newest and blazingly fast Xeon 5500 processors from Intel, and a variety of netbook and handheld news.

This week's podcast gets off to a spoilerific start. Now that our panelists have seen the Battlestar Galactica series finale, we follow up on last week's predictions with a spoiler-heavy review... you have been warned. It's been a while since we've done a good gaming news roundup, so we also spent some time on sequel watch, analyzing what we know about Bioshock 2, Modern Warfare 2<, and Mass Effect 2. Other gaming-related topics include Valve's "DRM free" claims, Havok and AMD's physics demo at GDC, and the next generation of fancy network cards from Bigfoot Networks. Also in this episode: Cyril finds another mechanical keyboard to lay his hands on, the Pirate Bay wants to cloak its users for a small fee, and Geoff asks what we'd like to see in an instant-on motherboard OS

This week's episode starts off in geek central with a short Battlestar Galactica series finale discussion, which is sure to amuse the BSG fans who already saw the climactic finish last night. Matt then kicks off our actual tech talk with an overview of WD's TV HD Media Player and how it compares to other media-center options on the market. Moving on, we beat the iPod shuffle dead horse just a tad more, and we segue into equally cynical commentary about Dell's latest attempt at a MacBook Air competitor. Cyril later explains the current processor landscape in terms of bang for buck, after which Geoff goes over affordable Core i7 motherboards, we speculate on Intel and AMD's latest schoolyard fight, Geoff tells us why Nvidia's Hybrid Power technology is dead on the desktop, and much more

This episode features our largest panel ever, with both our regular team and new TR blogger Jason Fox. We kick off the show by exploring Jason's first post, in which he described his recent exodus from cable TV to over-the-air HD broadcast. After discussing services like Hulu and Boxee, our panel gets down and dirty in a platform debate over the latest Mac hardware upgrades. As the show goes on, we get schooled by Intel's Convertible Classmate PC, explore Nvidia's mobile GPU branding controversy, and dig through Geoff's closet to find legacy tech toys.