Performance

Over the weekend of April 28, Ferrari hosts its Racing Days at Infineon Raceway in Northern California. The featured event will be the Ferrari Challenge, a one-model race with the 458 Challenge version of the 458 Italia.

Ferrari aficionados will want to see the 599XX Evo take laps. An example of this rare, 740-horsepower Italian stallion will be on hand, letting Ferrari engineers test its active aerodynamics system. Ferrari will also be running an FXX for testing purposes.

Race history buffs will also enjoy seeing laps by historic Ferrari F1 cars.

To win, be among the first 20 to correctly … Read more

Gamers might buy these just because of their name, which might have been the case of another product offered by Bigfoot Networks awhile ago.

Qualcomm Atheros announced today its latest Wi-Fi and Ethernet controllers called Killer Wireless-N 1202 Wi-Fi Module and Killer E2200 Gigabit Ethernet Controller. These are network adapters with built-in QoS designed to "provide unprecedented performance and advanced control by automatically classifying and prioritizing gaming, video, and audio network data," Qualcomm claims. Basically, they are great for games and entertainment-related applications.

Both of these new solutions comes with an exclusive technology called Advanced Stream Detect that … Read more

SALINAS, CA--On a recent Friday at Mazda Raceway Laguna Seca, Nissan hosted a group of 2012 GT-R owners as part of the rollout of the revised 2013 version of the car. This was one of three such gatherings nationwide, and about 35 owners were present with their cars, while Nissan provided demo versions of the 2012 GT-R for invited members of the media. Also on hand were instructors from the Skip Barber Racing School, providing tips on driving lines and technique in a series of morning sessions using the current cars, and giving full-tilt rides in the new cars in … Read more

Every automaker realizes the importance of China's growing thirst for cars, and the unique requirements of the market. Audi comes to the 2012 Beijing auto show with a concept vehicle that mixes practicality and excitement.

The RS Q3 concept is based on Audi's Q3 compact SUV. Not sold in the U.S., the Q3 seats five and has a little cargo area. It is similar to the BMW X1 that will be coming to the U.S. this year. If BMW is successful with its car, maybe Audi will follow suit.

The Q3 can be had with a … Read more

Before solid-state drives (SSD), Western Digital's Raptor family of hard drives had always been the fastest internal drive for consumers. And spinning at 10,000 RPM, these drives are still very fast though offering less storage than other 7,200rpm hard drives.

That gap has just gotten narrower; the company announced today the latest VelociRaptor hard drive that caps at 1TB of storage space.

While 1TB seems small compared with other 3.5-inch hard drives that offer up to 4TB, the new VelociRaptor, like the previous two generations, actually comes in the 2.5-inch standard. However, it is extra thick and has an added metal frame to be as physically big as a regular 3.5-inch hard drive. … Read more

When it comes to Thunderbolt storage devices, generally the more internal drives it has, the faster performance it offers. This is because the Thunderbolt standard offers 10Gbps speed, while the fastest internal drive, be it a regular hard drive or a solid-state drive, is limited by the SATA 3 standard that caps at just 6Gbps.

The more drives means the vendor can aggregate the performance of each drive into a total throughput that's faster than the top speed of each drive. For this reason, Promise's Pegasus R6, a six-bay Thunderbolt drive has always been the fastest. Now, the G-RAID with Thunderbolt drive can challenge the Pegasus.… Read more

If you've been wondering when Thunderbolt is available for Windows, the answer is now.

LaCie, one of the two storage companies that participated in the introduction of the Thunderbolt standard, told me today that it will be showing off two Thunderbolt devices, the Little Big Disk SSD and the 2big Thunderbolt, at NAB Show 2012.

While these two devices are not new, this is going to be the first time they are demoed on both platforms: Mac and Windows. Up to now, Thunderbolt has been available only to Macs, exclusively. LaCie also revealed that the support for Thunderbolt in … Read more

Beside death and taxes -- and April 17 is approaching, in case you don't pay attention -- the loss of data might be the third thing that's certain in life; it's just a matter of time. But there's hope.

Since you can file an extension to do the tax return, which you should avoid, there's also a way for you to further prevent data loss, which you definitely should do. And the Solo G3 from IoSafe is one of the best, if not the best solution, all things considered.

In a nutshell it's an … Read more

The 2.5-inch standard Vertex 4 solid-state drive (SSD) is a clear signal that OCZ wants to move to use its own Indilix Everest controllers rather than those from SandForce, which was used in the Vertex 3.

And that would be a good decision. The new Vertex 4 now uses the second generation (Everest 2) of the controller and offered great performance in my testing.

It's the first SSD I've seen that took just a second to be formatted and was immediately recognized by the system when used as a secondary drive.… Read more