Date: August 23, 2009 Time: 1:34:43 Hosted by Jordan Drake Co-Hosts: Scott Wasson, Geoff Gasior, Cyril Kowaliski Special guest: Loyd Case Listen now: Download: MP3 (65MB) | M4A (88.9MB) Subscribe with RSS | Subscribe with iTunes

Sponsored by MSI's Master Overclocking Arena 2009. Don't miss our on-site coverage from Beijing on the next episode of the TR Podcast. Visit the official website or follow TR's sponsored coverage for more.

Show notes
We begin this week's episode introducing our special guest: Loyd Case, a veteran tech journalist and ExtremeTech's former Editor in Chief. His current projects include a personal blog, Improbable Insights, as well as a Twitter account and freelance writing for publications like PC World and Maximum PC. Jumping right into the meat of the show, Scott and Loyd talk about Gigabyte's MicroATX P55 motherboard, what the two expect from Intel's new platform, and what other manufacturers like Asus and MSI are bringing to the table. Scott also gives his two cents on the new Phenom II X4 965 from AMD.

Moving on to a set of laptop stories, Geoff has been testing Acer's Aspire Timeline 13.3" ultraportable, Scott just purchased a new Samsung NC20, and Dell and MSI have some noteworthy notebook updates to discuss. We the end the show with Geoff's headphone-focused sound card testing, thoughts on the Zune HD, and debate over DVD fair-use rights.

Send in listener mail, and we'll answer on the podcast. - jdrake@techreport.com

Tech discussion:

We introduce our guest (0:02:59)

Gigabyte aims for microATX with P55 boards (0:05:27)- Read more

MSI and Asus have P55 boards too! (0:22:33)- MSI's board - Asus's board

AMD's Phenom II X4 965 Black Edition processor (0:29:44)- Read more

Acer's Aspire Timeline 13.3-inch ultraportable notebook (0:34:40)- Read more

Dell and MSI's latest laptop updates (0:50:05)- Dell's Inspiron 11z - MSI's X340 and X410

Headphone-oriented sound cards from Asus and Auzentech (1:01:08)- Read more

Zune HD officially goes up for pre-order (1:15:52)- Read more

RealNetworks' DVD backup software ruled illegal (1:26:02)- Read more