Here a roundup of todays reviews and articles:

Acer Chromebook C720 SSD Upgrade To MyDigitalSSD M.2 (NGFF) 128GB SSD
AMDs New Athlon/Semprons Give Old Phenom CPUs A Big Run For The Money
Biostar launches A68N-5000 Kabini board, but its not an AM1
GAMDIAS HEPHAESTUS 7.1 Virtual Surround Sound Gaming Headphones Review
Gigabyte AM1M-S2H Review
How to Install and Dual Boot Linux on a Mac
HP Chromebook 14 Review
Xbox Music Field Guide 0.6

Acer Chromebook C720 SSD Upgrade To MyDigitalSSD M.2 (NGFF) 128GB SSD

If you are looking for a new computer and are a typical PC user, you need to take a look at the Google Chromebook. There are three brands of the Chromebook (Acer, HP and Samsung), it is SSD driven which means lightning fast startups and operation, they get anywhere from 8 to 10 hours battery life, and they are CHEAP! After spending a few days with this new Acer C720 Chromebook and getting to learn the ins and outs, I can honestly say that this is the simplest PC I have ever held. In fact, this will be going to my wonderful mother (72 yrs old) who has never had a PC before this. The person that will have the most difficulty ‘refitting themselves’ to the Chromebook, are us PC geeks that have gotten used to things just being a certain way.

Read full article @ The SSD Review

AMDs New Athlon/Semprons Give Old Phenom CPUs A Big Run For The Money

Curious how AMD's new AM1 platform APUs compare to the original AMD Phenom processors? Wondering myself, I ran some tests showing how the Sempron 2650 and 3850 along with the Athlon 5150 and 5350 compare to the original Phenom 9500 and Phenom II X3 710 processors with RS780/RS880 motherboards. Besides the new APUs being competitive against the old hardware while costing much less than the original Phenom CPUs, their power consumption is also at a fraction of AMD's former high-end processors. Here's a brief but nice look at AMD's processing evolution in going from Phenom CPUs to today's AMD budget APUs.

The Phenom 9500 (Agena) was one of AMD's original quad-core Phenoms and came clocked at 2.2GHz with a 95 Watt TDP and was introduced in late 2007. Meanwhile, the Phenom II X3 710 (Heka) came in 2009 and was a 2.6GHz processor with a 95 Watt TDP. It should be fairly interesting to see how these former high-end AMD CPUs compare to today's ultra-budget APUs. The top-end AM1 APU, the Athlon 5350, costs just about $55 USD and has a 25 Watt TDP.

Read full article @ Phoronix

Biostar launches A68N-5000 Kabini board, but its not an AM1

AMD launched socketed Kabini parts a few weeks ago, along with the all new AM1 platform and FS1b socket (now renamed to AM1 socket). We checked it out a couple of weeks ago and as we pointed out in our brief review of the Athlon 5350 we really like the idea of bringing the flexibility of socketed platforms to this price tier.

However, the AM1 platform is brand new and it has some drawbacks. First of all the choice of motherborards is relatively limited and there are only four APUs to choose from. Since the socket and 25x25mm package are new, there are still no aftermarket coolers for AM1 chips. This means you’re stuck with AMD’s stock cooler for the time being and it stands about 50mm tall. In other words it won’t fit into many stylish mini-ITX chassis designed for HTPCs.

Read full article @ Fudzilla

GAMDIAS HEPHAESTUS 7.1 Virtual Surround Sound Gaming Headphones Review

During the last week I saw a video of a woman hear for the first time ever, she had been deaf since birth. In the same weeks time I had to take my grandfather to the optometrist a few times because he had lenses implanted in his eyes years ago, but they tore loose from his cornea, and now his eyes are bleeding, so he has to go get shots directly in his eyeball. It got me thinking, would I rather be deaf or blind? I honestly couldn’t come up with much of an answer to that but I think I would rather be deaf, even though I love music, and I think gaming would be much harder, I suppose it would be impossible if I were blind.

Sometimes I think we forget just how much we, as humans (and really all animals), depend on hearing to alert us to things we cannot see yet. That is especially true in gaming where sight and hearing are really the only senses we have. A perfect example is in the game DayZ, as I run around and try to find some food and drink, I am often alerted to other people’s presence by their gun shots or footsteps or one time a guy stopped to eat right outside a room I was in. He died a glorious death. The point is just that being able to hear clearly and know which direction sound is coming from is extremely important, so a great set of headphones can make or break a player.

Read full article @ HiTech Legion

Gigabyte AM1M-S2H Review

The Gigabyte AM1M-S2H motherboard is an AMD AM1/FS1b motherboard that's sized for micro-ATX enclosures, offers a fine set of budget features, and costs just over $30 USD.

The Gigabyte AM1M-S2H is obviously designed for the just-launched AMD Athlon and Sempron APUs we have been covering a lot on Phoronix the past two weeks. This ~$30 motherboard features Gigabyte's UEFI BIOS, Ultra Durable Technology, multi-display support, USB 3.0 connectivity, Gigabit Ethernet, and other modern features.

Read full article @ Phoronix

How to Install and Dual Boot Linux on a Mac

Installing Windows on your Mac is easy with Boot Camp, but Boot Camp wont help you install Linux. Youll have to get your hands a bit dirtier to install and dual-boot a Linux distribution like Ubuntu. If you just want to try Linux on your Mac, you can boot from a live CD or USB drive. Insert the live Linux media, restart your Mac, press and hold the Option key, and select the Linux media on the Startup Manager screen. We installed Ubuntu 14.04 LTS to test this process. Install rEFInd rEFInd is a boot manager that will allow you to choose between Mac OS X, Linux, Windows, and other operating systems when you boot your computer.

Read full article @ Howtogeek

HP Chromebook 14 Review

I expected the HP Chromebook 14 to be like a tablet, slow and simple, but it has surprised me in its functionality, ease of use, and power over the week.

Read full article @ Muktware

Xbox Music Field Guide 0.6

Here's another interim update to Xbox Music Field Guide, the second edition of what used to be called Paul Thurrott's Xbox Music. This update adds a number of new sections of content, but is still quite incomplete.

Read full article @ WinSupersite