Can an iPod be a poor man's iPhone?

I try to keep a stiff upper lip about not having an iPhone. Just couldn't afford it — not with the $75 a month or so AT&T charges for service on top of the $199 upfront cost for the device.

I could, however, afford the $229 iPod Touch — and got it as a gift, as it happened. It has most of the same goodies: a Web browser, e-mail, YouTube. And it stores way more music than the iPhone. (Ha!) Plus, the other day I used it to call China.

Yup, a call around the world — on a device that doesn't have a phone. A handful of applications on Apple Inc.'s iTunes store will let you do this, as long as you're in a Wi-Fi hot spot.

My iPhone complex hasn't disappeared, but at least now I have a device that looks just like it, has no monthly service fees, and lets me make free or cheap phone calls.

The best part of these applications — which require the second-generation iPod Touch that came out last year — is that they are free to download, and calls to other people using the same app won't cost you anything.

Two of the services I've tried, Truphone and Fring, will also let you make free calls to Google Talk users and type instant messages to friends online. Both automatically queue up a list of buddies from different services you might have, including Gmail chat, AIM and MSN Messenger, once you log in.

But it's Truphone's pay feature that puts it ahead of the others. TruPhone charges you to make calls to landlines or regular cell phones, but generally at better rates than most wireless carriers. And it's upfront about what you pay.

Your balance — which you can add to with a credit card, either on the device or on your computer browser — pops up with the dial screen. Calls in the U.S. are all 5 cents per minute (2 cents if you sign up to pay a $4 monthly fee).

Rates outside the U.S. vary wildly but you can check in the application before you dial. To call cell phones in China, for instance, is only 5 cents per minute, while France is 25 cents. Antarctica? A whopping $2.25.

You can make regular calls with Fring using a Skype account, but that's another layer to deal with.

The calls on these services sound pretty good, a little tinny but clearer than my regular cell phone connection. IPod Touch users will need Apple's $29 ear buds that have a tiny microphone on the back of the volume control along the cord.

The most serious drawback is the most obvious: While the iPhone uses AT&T's wireless network to provide Internet access anywhere, on the iPod Touch you'll need to stick to Wi-Fi hot spots. For rural or suburban dwellers who don't encounter lots of free Wi-Fi zones, that may very well mean limiting yourself to your house, or other places where there's a computer with the same Internet phone call capabilities anyway.

That means these apps probably won't replace your cell phone. But they can moderate your iPhone envy.

Agencies

Own a personal supercomputer!

US technology firm NVIDIA rolled out high-performance “personal supercomputers” that let desktop workstations handle mind-boggling tasks once far beyond their capabilities.

Computers built with innovative NVIDIA graphics processing units (GPUs) are capable of handling calculations typically relegated to expensive supercomputing “clusters”, a technology breakthrough the company says could soon bring lightning speeds to the next generation of computers aimed at the consumer market.

NVIDIA’s Tesla Personal Supercomputers deliver approximately 250 times the processing power of current computer workstations for similar prices, according to the California-based company. “This changes everything. This supercomputing power is being brought to the workstation,” Tesla computing products general manager Andy Keane said.

Massachusetts Institute of Technology and other universities and research facilities are already using GPU-based personal supercomputers. “GPU-based systems enable us to run life science codes in minutes rather than the hours it took earlier,” said Jack Collins of the Advanced Biomedical Computing Centre in the US state of Maryland. “This exceptional speedup has the ability to accelerate the discovery of potentially life-saving anti-cancer drugs.”

NVIDIA, founded in 1993, became renowned for GPUs that drive sophisticated computer game and video hardware. While CPUs typically handle tasks in a linear style, zipping from start to finish in series, GPUs work on tasks simultaneously in order to do things such as get colour pixels together on screens to present moving images. Sets of NVIDIA chips built for speed, power, and superior graphics production are built into upgraded Macintosh notebook computers recently rolled out by Apple.

GPUs that could do parallel computing mathematics at lightning speed were engineered by NVIDIA to make Tesla chips that put desktop workstations on par with supercomputers at one 100th of the price. “You can’t ignore the GPU; you can’t say it is just a game chip,” Keane said.