IDF 2011 and BUILD coverage articles

The Intel Developer Forum kicked off this morning and when it comes to desktop hardware all the focus is on the companies upcoming X79 chipset and the new LGA 2011 socket that will debut along with it. We heard rumors months ago that many of their retail boxed processors without CPU coolers as they would be offering an optional CPU water coolers for overclockers and enthusiasts. It appears these rumors were true as we ran into the Intel RTS2011LC CPU Water Cooler Today!

Intel is getting ready to launch Sandy Bridge-E processors and the company was showing off the Intel DX79SI desktop ATX motherboard at IDF 2011. The Intel X79 Express chipset is the successor to the X58 Express chipset that is more than due for an update. This means that the Intel X79 platform with the LGA2011 socket will become the flagship platform for Intel customers.

As is traditionally the case, Intel’s CEO Paul Otellini opened up the Intel Developer’s Forum with a keynote address in the theater at the Moscone Center in San Francisco. The focus of Otellini’s talk was the “future of computing” and how Intel plans to capitalize on current trends and growth in the mobile device market. Otellini’s opinion is that we are still in the early stages in this evolution of computing and moving forward, no one device will be at the center of the computing experience. But of course, Intel plans to capitalize on all of them.

Windows 8 is damned impressive. That's our one-sentence summary of the company's keynote and it applies despite the appearance of a few bugs and hiccups during the on-stage OS demonstrations. The new operating system shares certain design elements with Windows Phone 7, but it's far from a large-screen version of Microsoft's smartphone OS. When Steven Sinofsky, President of the Windows division at Microsoft, wrote that "Windows 8 re-imagines Windows" and implied that this would be the largest overhaul since Windows 95, he wasn't exaggerating.