Windows/Mac/Linux: Last week Google announced a free DNS service designed to speed up your browsing, but just because Google wants to be fast doesn’t actually mean they’re the best option for you. Namebench finds the fastest DNS server for your connection. More »
ZDNet’s Hardware 2.0 blogger stacks an early beta build of Windows 7 against 32-bit Vista (and an SP1 upgrade) on the same hardware. In three out of four tests, even a non-optimised Windows 7 trumps Vista. As Adrian Kingsley-Hughes points out, it’s just one system’s benchmarks on test that, for the most part, throw a range of apps at a system and see how they fare. But given that Windows 7 will likely be optimised a bit for final release, it’s promising to see it beat Vista’s speeds in all but one rendering-related test—and even that one was close. [via]
Windows only: Free application PC Wizard is a portable tool that analyzes and benchmarks your PC. At its most basic, PC Wizard gives you an in-depth look at your hardware and system specs. But the app has a surprisingly rich feature set beyond that, including a password recovery tool for apps like Outlook in the System Information tool and a slew of cool benchmarking tools. The benchmarks measure everything from your processor and RAM to hard drive performance and even MP3 compression speeds. As a cherry on top, PC Wizard is available in a portable version you can carry on your thumb drive. PC Wizard is freeware, Windows only. PC Wizard [via Download Squad]
On Tuesday I detailed how how I built a Hackintosh Mac from start to finish on the cheap, but one obvious question remained unanswered: How does my Hackintosh stack up to the Apple-built competition? To find out, I put my Hackintosh, a Mac Pro, and a MacBook Pro through the paces. Here’s what I learned. More »
