Archive for May, 2008
We’ve already seen Sanyo dish out this duo in Japan under slightly different model names, but Americans who were bawling at the thought of having to fly to Tokyo in order to grab one can put away those tears. The outfit has just unleashed the PLC-XC55 (3,100 lumens) and the PLC-XC50 (2,600 lumens) here in the States, both of which feature a 1,024 x 768 resolution and Sanyo’s own Active Maintenance Filter (AMF) system. These two mark the first “portable PJs” to be equipped with such a system, and if you’re interested in knowing — we know, you’re on the edge of your Aeron — it also boasts a built-in 7-watt speaker, DVI / VGA / component / S-Video / composite sockets and audio in / out jacks. Both units are landing in July, with the XC55 demanding $1,995 and the XC50 stickered at $1,495.
Watch out, everybody, the Optimus Popularis has gone from foam mockup to proper-looking prototype. (We’re really digging that full-length display in the space bar.) With any luck, we won’t have to watch this one develop over the course of 2-3 years like we did the Maximus — and with a little more luck, this one will be easier to type on, too.
It’s not confirmed by Sony just yet, but Videogaming247 says it has it on “good authority” that the upcoming version 2.40 firmware update for the PS3 will at long last bring with it in-game XMB, as well as the slightly less-anticipated trophy support. If those sources are to be believed, the update will be dropping sometime in June, with some speculation further pointing to a release in advance of Metal Gear Solid 4’s June 12th launch. There’s apparently still some testing to be done to ensure that the in-game XMB will work with all titles, however, and it seems like features like trophies and user-music via XMB will only be supported in games created with the new developers tools that have apparently already been released in advance of the firmware update.
[Via PS3 Fanboy, thanks John]
It looks like your dreams of laptop salvation via the Van Der Led Jisus will have to wait a little, as the company has pushed back the release of its diminutive PC to the 28th of July (at least according to the product page). However, if you want to spend a tiny bit more money, they’ve got a new model that nets you a lot more bang for the buck. Enter the Jisus V2, or as we like to call it — the second coming of Jisus. The new version features a pink leather (!?) casing, a 10.2-inch 1024 x 600 LED display, a VIA C7-M 1.6GHz CPU, 1GB of RAM, a VIA Chrome9 graphics chipset, an 80GB hard drive, 802.11a/b/g, and Bluetooth 2.0 support. All this magic will supposedly be available come June 20th for an extremely affordable €349.99 (or about $546).
[Thanks, Takashi]
If you’re anything like our boy Ryan, you’ve been wearing that Wii Fit out ever since you took delivery. Unfortunately, you’ve probably been doing a bit of unintentional jogging when logging miles back and forth to the local mini-mart for batteries. If you can’t seem to keep your Wii Balance Board charged, Nyko has introduced a novel solution: the Energy Pack for Wii Fit. Our pals over at Nintendo Wii Fanboy were able to get ahold of this very unit and put it through its paces, and generally speaking, they were quite impressed with the $20 peripheral-for-a-peripheral. Head on over for the full writeup and a smattering of pics.
With all this hubbub floating around about the elusive 3G iPhone, let us not forget about the latest touchscreen smartphone to land at AT&T: LG’s Vu. After getting official earlier this month, we were able to sit down with the Mobile TV-supporting handset and form a few opinions of our own. Here, however, we’re interested in your take — do you feel the $549.99 (or $299.99 on contract) price tag is reasonable for what you get? Are you pleased with the hardware / software? Are you feeling buyer’s remorse like never before? Go on and spill it, we’re all friends here.
In a move of unsurprising proportions, StyleTap announced today that it will be bringing its Palm OS emulator to the iPhone and iPod touch… officially. This basically means that every one of those precious Palm apps you couldn’t live without will now be easily accessible via Apple’s devices, thus seriously threatening the argument for keeping your Treo 600. Gregory Sokoloff, CEO of the company, said that the response to a video posted in February of a demo version of the software convinced them to take the plunge. Palm, now might be a good time to stun us with your new OS.
It struck us the other day as we were going over some back posts that since the launch of the ASUS Eee PC (and the numerous products that have followed, from the MSI Wind to the HP Mini-Note), to the best of our knowledge we’ve all yet to have any normalized, agreed-upon name for these kinds of devices. Yes, they’re technically “ultraportables” (which we usually define as being any relatively small laptop and under four pounds), but to say an Eee PC is in the same class as, say, the Lenovo X300, the VAIO TZ, or the MacBook Air would be kind of misleading.
We’ve heard “low-cost ultraportable” and “laptop-lite” used to describe these kinds of machines, but it seems best to let you decide: leave your best suggestion for what we all should all call this emerging product category, and we’ll put it up to vote next week. We’ll officially be throwing “netbook” into the ring. (Intel may have initially coined the term, but that we don’t think it should necessarily have to refer only to Intel-based products.)
The folks at Konami have been trolling the forums again, kids, and this time they’re fighting back. Reps from the game-maker have issued a statement on the company forum addressing the furor over the inflated cost of the forthcoming, limited edition Metal Gear Solid 4 bundle. According to Konami, the bumped up price ($600 for a 40GB version of the PS3, plus Dual Shock controller and MGS4 game) is due to the special material used to create the gunmetal gray system and controller casing. The company seems to take issue with the fact that some are calling it simply a “paint job,” and points out that the run of units is only 10,000, and the package also includes a version of the game with an extra disc of additional content. To put it another way: this is the deal of a lifetime!
[Via Wired]
Oh yeah, we’ve seen some undeniably bizarre Xbox 360 case mods, but this freakish homegrown covering exemplifies the art of destroying resale value. We don’t quite know what else there is to say about an incredibly detailed alligator skinned console, but if pictures really are worth a thousand or so words, there’s an epic waiting for you down in the read link. Please kids, don’t try this at home.
[Via Xbox 360 Fanboy]
Would you look at that: a thick slab of iPhone meat in a Sony Ericsson and HTC sandwich. The iPhone’s big screen is nice and all but the device is starting to look a bit portly given that the Xperia X1 sports a QWERTY with chewy HSDPA data, the latter shared with the Raphael Touch Diamond. Tasty, regardless.
Update: Er, that’s not the HTC Raphael, it’s their Touch Diamond.
[Thanks, Al]
It’s only just barely made it out into the wild, but DigiTimes is now reporting that ASUS has already stopped taking orders from resellers for its 8.9-inch Eee PC 900 in anticipation of the now imminent launch of the Atom-based Eee PC 901. That word apparently comes from some unspecified “industry sources,” who also claim that the Eee PC 900 was only ever a “transitional product” to begin with, which ASUS pushed out the door with a plain old Celeron M processor in order to get an 8.9-inch model out ahead of its competitors. Certainly a reasonable conclusion to draw, but a quick glance of online retailers shows that there’s still plenty of Eee PC 900s out there for the taking if you’re not sold on this whole Atom thing.
We’ll spare you our feelings on non-QWERTY layouts, but one thing’s for sure — Maurin Donneaud’s Carpet ‘board would certainly stretch the mind and leg muscles if used for any length of time. It isn’t the first fabric keyboard to grace the phalanges of eager typists, but this DIY concoction is definitely the largest we’ve seen. Peck the links below for more shots of the construction process.
[Via Hack-A-Day]
Almost three years after The Bridge was unveiled, the unit’s successor has finally emerged. Harman Kardon chose today to announce the simplistically named The Bridge II, which effectively connects compatible iPods and the iPhone to any H/K The Bridge-ready component. Once connected, you’ll find obligatory audio / video playback through your home entertainment system as well as on-screen iPod menus, remote control operation and charging. Folks looking for the standalone unit can acquire one this summer for $129, though it will be bundled right in with the AVR 354 receiver.
Alienware’s Area-51 7500 series of desktops can reach some pretty lofty prices, but the folks at Computer Shopper recently got their hands on one of the company’s recent, more modestly-priced configurations, and they’ve awarded it some considerably higher marks than its pricer predecessors. Of course, at $1,499, it’s still not exactly a budget PC, but that does get you a decent 2.66GHz Core 2 Duo E8200 processor, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive and most importantly, two NVIDIA GeForce 8800 GT cards in an SLI configuration. All that, Computer Shopper says, added up to some “excellent performance for the price,” including some “flat-out great results” in their gaming tests — results that only took a slight dip when they bumped things up to the DX10 test. On the downside, you do have to give up some of the more premium features like water-cooling or an upper-tier processor, but if you’re looking to keep things well under the two grand mark, Computer Shopper says this one is about as good a bet as any.
There hasn’t exactly been much mystery surrounding this one, but Crave’s UK arm has now gotten word straight from ASUS that the company will indeed be launching its new Eee PC 1000 series laptop at Computex in Taiwan next Tuesday and that, yes, it will a 10-inch model. This one won’t actually be available for sale until November, however, at least in the UK. Unfortunately, ASUS apparently isn’t quite ready to confirm if the laptop will be Atom-based or not, but everything certainly seems to be pointing in that direction.
[Thanks, Joe]
It’s far from the first supercomputer created with the help of some gaming hardware, but this rig built by a group of researchers from the University of Antwerp is certainly impressive enough in its own right, with it employing four of NVIDIA’s high-end GeForce 9800 GX2 graphics cards (which combined pack eight GPUs) to help develop new computational methods for tomography. Dubbed the FASTRA, the system also packs an AMD Phenom 9850 processor, 8GB of RAM, and 750GB hard drive, all of which is powered by a 1,500W power supply (and tastefully lit up with some blue LEDs). That apparently lets ‘em do calculations that previously took an hour in just a few seconds, not to mention finally get a decent frame rate in Crysis. Be sure to check out the video after the break for a thorough (and more entertaining than it should be) overview of the system.
Continue reading Researchers create supercomputer with four GeForce 9800 GX2 cards
With the price of gas these days, it’s no wonder people are skittish when it comes to mowing lawns. What’s more, gas-powered mowers have been shown to pollute up to 7 times as much as vehicles. Sure, you could go get a manual mower and get some exercise, but why do that when you can convert your gas-powered mower into an electric one? This modification takes you through three steps to do just that, including: removing the engine and installing an electric replacement, converting the engine to one powered by solar panels, and installing the solar panel. Expect conversion costs to run around $1,500. Of course, you could always just buy a Huskvarna and skip all this tomfoolery.
Stellar photography seems like a wonderous thing: you and a loved one on a starry night taking beautiful images of the heavens — before making out. Unfortunately, anyone who has tried it knows it’s more often a frustrating exercise of fiddling with exposure and aperture settings on your SLR while it hangs precariously off the side of your telescope, held in place only by a flimsy adapter ring. The Imaging Source has a simpler option, a series of digital cameras designed for slotting into your scope like an eye piece, capturing the night sky at up to 60-minute exposures over USB or FireWire. The range starts at $390 for a monochromatic VGA model, going all the way up to $870 for color and 1280 x 960 resolution. Not cheap, but it’s probably a lot less than you paid for the equatorial mount on your new reflector.
[Via Picture Snob; thanks Jay]
MSI’s been making a lot of noise with the Wind lately, but we’d heard the company was going to be bringing personal navigators and PMPs to the US back at CES, and it looks like the first one has hit the FCC — say hello to the MS-5654. As always, the gov’s photographers don’t exactly bring out the inner beauty of the device, but there’s enough to see that the unit features a 4.3-inch, 480 x 272 touchscreen, a 372MHz Centrality processor running Windows CE 5.0, 1GB or 2GB of internal storage with SD expansion, and the usual basic PMP features. Of course, there’s no pricing or availability info, but if you’re into detailed RF reports, heaven is just beyond the read link.
[Thanks, jkkmobile]
