Toys & Gadgets

Not even a full day after hearing that the Windows Vista / Server SP2 beta would be breaking loose for select individuals tomorrow, in flies word that a Windows 7 beta could be out and about as early as next month. Granted, this conjecture is far less written in stone, but on the official MSDN Developer Conference website we’re told that “all attendees will receive a Windows 7 Beta 1 DVD.” The events are scheduled to run from December to January, and given the whole “attendees at events scheduled for December will have DVDs mailed to them when they become available” coupled with the line we quoted before, it’s a pretty safe bet that next month is it. Hang tight, Windows lovers — your first real peek into the wide world of WinVII could be just around the bend.

[Via PC World]

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Microsoft Windows 7 beta due out in January 2009? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 16:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fujitsu Siemens has been showing off its AMILO Sa 3650 and AMILO GraphicBooster add-on for a few months now, and we even recently saw the combo put to the Crysis test, but it looks like both are now finally, actually rolling out to the general public. In case you missed it, the laptop itself is a 13-inch, AMD-based number (your choice of Turion X2 or Athlon X2 processors), with an ATI Radeon HD 3200 graphics card, up to 4GB of RAM, and either and either a 250GB or 320GB hard drive. The GraphicBooster add-on, which currently only works with the Sa 3650, is based around an ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3870 graphics card, and promises a 470% increase in graphics performance over the laptop’s built-in graphics. No word on prices just yet, unfortunately but both the laptop and the GraphicBooster add-on will apparently be available at some “specialist retailers” this month.

[Via MobileTechReview]

Filed under: Gaming, Laptops

Fujitsu Siemens rolls out AMILO Sa 3650 laptop, GraphicBooster add-on originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 14:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It looks like the kids at Buffalo are hard at work making sure that all of you netbook-lovin’ Engadget readers aren’t stuck with the minimal storage that has plagued early adopters of the solid state drive. In addition to their recent Eee PC-compatible SSDs, the company is now offering 16GB and 32GB drives for Dell’s Inspiron Mini 9. Due out sometime this month, the 16GB should set you back ¥5,300 ($57), or you can shell out ¥9,400 ($101) for the 32GB.

[Via Slashgear]

Filed under: Laptops

Buffalo unveils 16GB and 32GB SSDs for Inspiron Mini 9 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 03 Dec 2008 12:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Lenny Engelhardt, N-trig's VP of Business Development

(Credit: N-trig)

Wanting to know more about N-trig’s multitouch technology, now that it has reached the consumer market with the HP TouchSmart tx2 tablet, I spoke with N-trig’s VP of Business Development, Lenny Engelhardt, earlier today. Here’s what I learned.

The HP TouchSmart tx2 tablet features similar multitouch functionality as the enterprise-focused Dell Latitude XT with a few differences. Both tablets provide multitouch gestures such as dragging and dropping, flicking, and pinching. If you make an M gesture with your finger on the TouchSmart’s screen, however, you’ll launch HP’s MediaSmart application. For its part, the Dell Latitude XT includes two gestures not found on the HP: two-finger scrolling and a double-tap gesture that turns off the display and touch sensitivity. The scenario for the double-tap is this: you have the tablet in slate mode and want to pick up it up and move to another room. You can carry it with your palm or fingers gripping part of the screen without worrying about moving the cursor. Simply tap the touch pad, mouse button, a key, or remove the stylus from its garage, and the screen and touch sensitivity return.

…

(Credit: CNET Networks)

Acer is readying a 10-inch version of its Aspire One Netbook, according to a report in DigiTimes. The publication attributed the news to Scott Lin, president of Acer Taiwan, and said to expect an official launch of the new Netbook in February or March of 2009.

Lin …

 
Samsung’s US subsidiary will soon be selling a decent range of laptops to fight for the market share this upcoming holiday season. They’ll also be letting loose its first netbook, NC10 soon for a modest price of $499.
Notebooks to be launched are – X360, X460, Q310, R610, P460 and P560. The first two notebooks, X360 [...]

This is Steve Weinger, senior marketing manager for flash memory at Samsung.  In his hand is a Samsung SSD; off to the right is a three-story drop.  Since solid-state memory is always being credited with extra durability over traditional drives, Steve introduces the SSD to the drop by launching it off the side of the building.  Check out the video after the cut.

Waiting at ground level is a laptop and a man with a screwdriver.  Despite the fall, the SSD - which is a non-ruggedized, standard drive - boots up no problem, something I don’t think could be said for a platter-based drive.

The demo is perhaps a little clichéd (though I bet, like me, you get a little shiver of pleasure at seeing a relatively expensive device being thrown off a building) but it does tell you a lot about why SSDs are such good news for mobility and portable computing.  Faced with the prospect of dropping my laptop, I know which technology I’d prefer to have storing all my documents.

Click here to view the embedded video.

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The HP HDX18 offers a 18-inch display, which shows content with a resolution of 1.920 x 1.080 pixels. Furthermore, a BluRay ROM is included too. The mass storage device consists of two hard drives with 250 GB each and therefore it provides an overall capacity of 500 GB. The rest of the [...]

Section: Communications, Mobile, Computers, Networking, Wireless

With all the latest news that are circulating around concerning WiMAX and what it is capable of doing, I’m sure a lot of you geeks out there would want to try it out. However, getting a WiMAX signal also means that you will need to spend exorbitantly just to buy a brand new laptop or desktop that’s equipped with a WiMAX signal receiver. Well, worry no more! Here comes Motorola WiMAX USB dongle to the rescue.

Motorola offers various band selections such as 2.3 GHz, 2.5 GHz or 3.5 GHz which may vary from country to country. Since Motorola broke out each band as its own peripheral, world travelers will probably need three versions of this adaptor.  The USB plug and play feature makes it all too easy for users to utilize WiMAX now. Notebook users do not need to worry about this device being a power-hungry monster because Motorola has assured that it will have a low power consumption. It is compatible with Windows XP (SP1/SP2/SP3) and Windows Vista. No word on Mac compatibility, though.

This is indeed a great news for all of WiMAX worshippers out there who are trying their best to get their hands on WiMAX and at the same time keep their wallet full throughout the month. Albeit there’s no pricing for it yet, it is anticipated that it’ll be in the market as early as October 2008.

Via [Motorola’s WiMAX USBw 100 Adaptor]

Full Story » | Written by Cheng Hung for Gadgetell. | Comment on this Article »

Filed under: Storage

Get your flash here, red hot flash memory. Toshiba is now sampling its new 256GB SSD with a 120MB max read and 70MBps write via 3.0Gbps SATA interface — not the fastest consumer SSD but not not bad. This 2.5-inch slab measures just 3.0-mm thick and targets laptops looking to shed the 9.5-mm constraint presented by standard hard disks. Like Samsung, Tosh also announced new 8GB, 16GB and 32GB SATA flash modules aimed directly at the booming netbook market with speeds topping-out at 80MBps for reads and 50MBps for writes. All the drives feature MLC-based NAND which accounts for the less-than blazing SSD speeds. On the other hand, that should help keep the costs low when these things ship in quantity later this year.

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