More information about the newly renamed Circuit City in-home services department are surfacing every day, including this view of firedog's repainted vehicles.
It's definitely … um … unique.
Category: Technology
ATI Radeon X1900XTX
My recently purchased ATI Radeon X1900XTX PCI-Express video card arrived via FedEx today.
I can't believe how incredibly heavy this thing is, thanks to a large card-length, copper heatsink and fan that take up two full card slots. With it's 512MB of DDR3 ram running at 1550MHz and core clocked at 650MHz this card runs very hot.
I haven't benchmarked the card, but it's definitely an improvement over my previous Radeon X800XL. I'm now able to run the game F.E.A.R. at full resolution with all the graphical details and effects turned to their highest settings.
Now to go back through my stack of older games and see how they look with everything maxed out.
Belkin Protects and Organizes Your Cables
Circuit City’s PC Services Department Gets Official Name
According to Circuit City employees who attended a company meeting in Las Vegas, this is the new name for the company's in-home and on-site PC services department.
Although most of the public knew the company's PC service department as the "IQ Crew ", this was only a test name used in a limited market.
According to employees, the name did poorly in numerous focus groups and marketing studies held by Circuit City. For most of the year, the PC services at your local store have simply been known as "PC Services".
The Firedog name comes originally from Oklahoma company Firedog Technology Solutions , which mentions that "[t]he name we have used for more than 7 years was such a great name, that someone wanted to buy it." They've now changed their company name to 3Nines Technologies.
Broadband in US Homes Continues to Grow
C|Net's News.com is reporting that US high-speed internet access adoption increased 33% in 2005 over the previous year. According to the article, over 50 million broadband lines are now in service.
The split between cable and DSL broadband did undergo a change during that year, however. While cable broadband still accounted for over 57.5 percent of last year's new connections, they did drop 3.5 percent from last year's new activations. DSL, with only 40.5 percent, gained 3.3 percent over the same time.
This isn't too surprising, as many consumers new to the market are being tempted with the lower-priced DSL service, despite those packages having an average slower download speed than entry-level cable packages. New services in areas where cable was the only broadband option available have helped the increase as well.
For most consumers, though, the differences between cable broadband and DSL mean little, and therefore DSL will continue to grow with it's current package offerings that are generally equal or even cheaper in monthly costs than most major dial-up services such as America Online or Earthlink.