performance

Intel wants to give overclockers some peace of mind with its new Performance Tuning Protection Plan.

PC performance enthusiasts will know that Intel has always taken a hands-off approach toward overclocking. Among other reasons, by advising its customers to ramp the speed of its CPUs beyond their shipped settings, Intel would invite liability if the overclocking resulted in damage to the system or its components.

Instead, Intel has taken a more passive approach to overclocking. By shipping its "K" series CPUs, for example, with unlocked clock speed and memory bus settings, advanced users and boutique PC vendors are … Read more

HTC trudged through a difficult fourth quarter, but all in all, 2011 was a solid year for the handset maker.

The company said today that during the fourth quarter of 2011, it posted a profit of NT$11 billion ($364 million), which, while strong, was down a thumping 26 percent compared to the same period last year when it generated NT$14.8 billion in net income. It was the company's first profit drop in two years.

HTC saw a similar story on the revenue side, as sales dropped from NT$104 billion in the fourth quarter of 2010 … Read more

Amazon released a promised over-the-air update for its Kindle Fire this evening.

Amazon says the update "enhances fluidity and performance, improves touch navigation responsiveness, [and] gives you the option to choose which items display on the carousel." It also includes the option of adding a password lock to Wi-Fi access.

The update, which will be delivered automatically to the devices, comes in response to performance issues with the Internet retailer's Android-powered tablet. Users had complained of problems accessing Wi-Fi networks and the Internet, slow and erratic scrolling, and inefficient apps.

However, users who have rooted the device'… Read more

Netflix has endured an exceedingly difficult year. But things will only get worse in the coming months, says Wedbush analyst Michael Pachter.

Writing to investors in a research note today, Pachter said that Netflix "is broken," and its decision earlier this year to raise prices on customers who want to both rent DVDs and stream video content proved to be the catalyst that brought those flaws to light.

"It is clear that a price increase was necessary, and equally clear in hindsight that a 60 percent increase on the hybrid customer was too much," Pachter wrote … Read more

Apple's iOS 5.0.1 update, which the company released today ahead of schedule, apparently fixes the battery drain problem, at least according to some early testers.

Based on comments made by users who've installed the update, Wired found that most are enjoying a big boost in battery power. Followers of Wired on Twitter chimed in after the magazine posted a tweet asking who has updated to iOS 5.0.1 and if it improved their battery life.

In response, Wired reader Donald Kuntzman reportedly called the update "nothing short of amazing," saying that his iPhone … Read more

Since Intel's Apple-only Thunderbolt standard offers up to 10Gbps of bandwidth, it doesn't seem to make sense to use it in a single-volume external storage device. This is because the device's internal drive, which would currently cap at the 6Gbps of the latest SATA 3 standard, will be the bottleneck of the whole package's performance.

LaCie, however, believes otherwise. Case in point: the Little Big Disk SSD, the first single-volume Thunderbolt storage device that's also based on an internal solid-state drive. And for the most part, it's a success.

The new external drive is … Read more

Mozilla has decided that when it comes to Android devices, performance is more important than the wealth of add-ons that can be used to customize Firefox.

Yesterday, Mozilla Director of Firefox Engineering Johnathan Nightingale announced on a mailing list that Firefox will move to Android's native user interface, ditching the XUL technology that's been in use by Mozilla since before there even was a Firefox.

"Firefox on Android is a critical part of supporting the open Web, and this decision puts us in a position to build the best Firefox possible," Nightingale said.

Firefox is widely … Read more

Apple's iPhone 4S was called "underwhelming" by some who were hoping for a major update to the company's iPhone 4, but it appears that shareholders are more than happy to see the device launch today.

As consumers scooped up the new device, the company's shares closed up 3.3 percent at $422, the highest closing price on record. The highest intraday share price Apple stock had ever tallied was $422.86, but it never closed this high.

The success of Apple's stock underscores the company's tremendous resilience. As noted, when Apple showed off … Read more

Performance and improved memory use were the goals of Firefox 7, which arrived on schedule today from Mozilla. Firefox 7 is available to download for Windows, Mac, Linux, and Android.

The wide-release version of Firefox 7 brings changes to the majority of Firefox users that the beta and Aurora channels have been playing with for some time. These include claims of significant gains in reducing memory use, "often 20 percent to 30 percent less, and sometimes as much as 50 percent less," a company representative wrote in a blog post based on work by Firefox developer Nicholas Nethercote. … Read more