TECHNOLOGY is EVERYTHING

VIA Technologies, Inc. Joins Linux Foundation Home VIA Technologies

VIA ups its investment in Linux as market demand moves towards affordable, low power mobile devices

SAN FRANCISCO, September 8, 2009 – The Linux Foundation, the nonprofit organization dedicated to accelerating the growth of Linux, today announced that VIA Technologies, Inc. has become its newest member.

VIA offers highly integrated low power x86 processor platforms that are being adopted in a wide range of netbooks, notebooks, desktops, servers, and embedded devices from leading brand names such as Dell, HP and Lenovo.

VIA is among a growing number of processor platform vendors that recognize the importance of working with the Linux community. By collaborating at the technical and business levels, VIA can ensure its hardware and the technology of its partners are supported in the Linux kernel releases. The company opened its specifications and code and began to adhere to a quarterly release schedule more than a year ago. This move allows open source developers to easily support VIA’s components.

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The first step in repairing any laptop or notebook is troubleshooting the problem accurately. For example, some people will run out and buy a new battery on the assumption it’s failed when the problem is a frayed wire or a bad connector on the power cord, something that can be fixed with a little solder or electric tape. Likewise, a “dead” LCD screen could be a mainboard or video ac adapter failure, a bad inverter or a burnt out backlight. When the LCD itself needs replacing, it will probably be due to a physical crack in the glass or blocks of dead pixels. If your CD or DVD drive won’t work anymore, make sure you’ve tried a selection of discs and try a cleaner kit before replacing the drive, and always double-check the connection before discarding the old drive. About the only problems that will identify themselves as imminent failures are increasingly loud hard drives or steadily decreasing battery life over time.

Power Failure

The troubleshooting process always starts with identifying what works. If the problem is power related (whether battery or a question of the laptop not turning on) the first step is establishing that power is getting to the laptop. This means checking that the LED on the transformer brick is lit, and if it isn’t (or doesn’t have an LED), that it’s plugged into a good power outlet. You can check that by unplugging the transformer and simply plugging in a lamp. Some of the oldest notebook models have an internal transformer, so the line power (110 VAC in the U.S., 220 most other places) goes directly into the laptop body. The next question is whether or not any of the little LED status lights on the laptop light up with the power plugged in. Even the oldest models usually have a power good status light. If you have positive power status and the notebook simply won’t turn on, the next check is the battery. Some models of notebooks will not operate without a good battery installed, but most will, so Google up your particular model with a search like “operating without battery” and find out if your laptop will operate with a dead or missing battery. If the battery isn’t an issue and the laptop still won’t turn on one with the power good status light lit, it could be a switch failure, but it’s more likely a power regulation or mainboard failure. Troubleshooting power regulation or the motherboard requires test equipment or spare board to swap out, and is beyond the scope of these articles.

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The WiiKey Fusion is the successor to the very popular and successful Drive Key solderless modchip, it combines ALL the functions of the Drive Key with the new ability to load games from a stylish external SD card reader which is included with your WiiKey Fusion purchase.

With the introduction of the newest Wii consoles including the black Wii which have drives with the D3-2, D3 mini and D4 chipsets, Nintendo have disabled the playing of backups from disc/DVD. This rendered all previous modchips unusable, the WiiKey Fusion gets around this problem by allowing you to load backup games from standard SD/SDHC (Secure Digital) memory cards.

The WiiKey Fusion supports both standard SD cards as well as larger SDHC cards up to 32GB in size allowing you to fit a large number of games on one card alleviating the need to switch discs to change game.

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The WiiKey Fusion is the successor to the very popular and successful Drive Key solderless modchip, it combines ALL the functions of the Drive Key with the new ability to load games from a stylish external SD card reader which is included with your WiiKey Fusion purchase.

With the introduction of the newest Wii consoles including the black Wii which have drives with the D3-2, D3 mini and D4 chipsets, Nintendo have disabled the playing of backups from disc/DVD. This rendered all previous modchips unusable, the WiiKey Fusion gets around this problem by allowing you to load backup games from standard SD/SDHC (Secure Digital) memory cards.

The WiiKey Fusion supports both standard SD cards as well as larger SDHC cards up to 32GB in size allowing you to fit a large number of games on one card alleviating the need to switch discs to change game.

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When it comes to excellence in processor performance, Intel continues to pull all the stops with its newest entries into the market. Launched in early September, 2009, the Intel Core i5 processor is one of Intel’s recent innovations, which offers smart performance with a speed boost. This processor delivers solid performance for day-to-day applications, not to mention its ability to increase speed as required for the more demanding tasks. And already, it’s being touted as the mainstream version of Intel Core i7.

Mobility

Intel Core i5 processor will power an ultra thin laptop to boost not only your performance, but your style as well. You can now indulge in a much faster, smarter and thinner laptop than before, in an ultra-sleek design and with enhanced battery life. A thinner laptop weighs less and is more portable, therefore allowing for greater mobility.

Performance

Intel Core i5 Turbo Boost Technology allows for automatic speeding up of the processor when the PC requires extra performance, thus giving you smart performance with a speed boost. This feature is however only available in select models of the Intel Core i5 processor-based systems.

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