CNET: Acer will release a $400 Android AIO PC running Intel's Haswell CPU

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/31/cnet-acer-android-intel-aio/

Acer will soon release an Intel Haswell 3GHz, Core-i5-powered AIO at that cuts Windows out of the PC picture altogether by running Android, according to an un-sourced rumor from CNET. The PC maker has already dipped its toes into the Android AIO waters with the 21.5-inch ARM-powered Smart Display DA220HQL (shown above), but if the rumor pans out, it would mark the first Intel powered AIO we've seen from anyone packing Google's mobile OS. The lack of a license fee to Microsoft means the unit would cost around $400, and thanks to Android's lower hardware needs, would come with a mere 1GB RAM and 8GB ROM at a minimum. If true -- and that's a huge "if" -- it makes some sense considering Acer's desire to avoid Microsoft's Windows RT OS at all costs, but we're not sure how an Android-based tablet with pricier Intel underpinnings would go down with the public.

Filed under: Desktops, Acer

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Source: CNET

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Samsung's next Galaxy Tab will have Intel inside, says Reuters

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/31/samsung-intel-galaxy-tab/

This particular rumor has been swirling for a while already, but Reuters says its own sources are now backing it up: Samsung will switch from an ARM-based design and use Intel as the supplier of the processor inside at least one version of its next 10-inch slate, the Galaxy Tab 3 10.1. Word is that Samsung will run Android off Intel's latest x86 Atom architecture, Clover Trail+, which we've so far seen in just a handful of smartphones including the Lenovo K900 and ZTE Geek.

By way of corroboration, Korea Times is reporting the exact same Galaxy Tab 3 rumor and has also quoted an anonymous Intel employee who claimed that the number of Atom engineers based in Korea has ballooned from six last year to as many as 50 personnel today. They're said to be working on "Samsung-related projects with a mission to customize circuits for adaptation in Samsung products" -- which certainly doesn't sound like typical Intel behavior. Korea Times specifically says that Samsung is looking to reduce its reliance on the tricky supply of its own ARM-based Exynos processors, while Intel is offering the Korean giant good prices and cooperation in order to build its mobile market share. This all tallies with the idea of Atom coming to some high volume Android products -- and it's very possible that we'll see proof of that at Computex next week.

Filed under: Tablets, Mobile, Samsung, Intel

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Via: Android Beat

Source: Korea Times, Reuters

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Oppo Ulike 2S coming soon with improved 5MP front camera, larger 5.5-inch 720p display

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/31/oppo-ulike-2s/

Even though Oppo's Ulike 2 won't be leaving China any time soon (if ever), there's still hope for its larger follow-up, the Ulike 2S. Announced in Shenzhen yesterday, this new device still boasts a combo of a 5-megapixel front-facing camera plus an 8-megapixel imager on the back, but both are said to have improved performance and beautification effects. The more obvious difference is the larger 5.5-inch 720p display -- a big jump from the old 4.5-inch 960 x 540 version -- with a pretty slim bezel. On the back, the Ulike 2S has a cover that gives you access to the removable 3,000mAh battery (instead of the old built-in 2,020mAh cell), as well as the dual micro-SIM slots.

There's no word on the detailed specs or price just yet, but stay tuned for its launch within the next two months. Alternatively, there's always the smaller MeituKiss with its 8-megapixel selfie camera, if you dig the extra pixels.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile

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Source: CNMO (Chinese)

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How to Clean Out Your Overflowing Hard Drive and Get Your Space Back

Source: http://lifehacker.com/how-to-clean-out-your-overflowing-hard-drive-and-get-yo-510511720

Hard drives get messy. You save files and forget them, download huge chunks of data that pile up, and change your naming schemes a hundred times. It's spring, though, so why not do a little tidying up?

To make things simpler, we're going to look at this from the perspective of cleaning up a secondary drive that doesn't have an OS installed on it. You can use these same tactics for any drive, but there are other ways to save space on a system drive including clearing caches, eliminating old temp folders, etc. Right now, though, we just want to focus on your junk.

Find the Really Big Files

When you need to clear up hard drive space in a hurry, the first thing you want to do is find out just what's taking up all that space. WinDirStat is a crowd favorite for scanning a drive and finding out what you can get rid of to get a little extra leg room in a hurry. The results are even color-coded to let you know what are important, system files that you shouldn't delete, and what's cat GIFs and videos of your friend's wedding. If you're on a Mac, our favorite analyzer, Disk Inventory X, has a lot of the same features for the same price (free!).

Get Rid of Duplicate Files

Whether they're big or small, duplicate files take up unnecessary space. Windows, Mac, and Linux users can all use the handy Duplicate File Searcher to track down any files that you've downloaded more than once. Windows users can also use Duplicate Commander to remove the extra copies and replace them with hard links. This clears up the space while still making sure that any apps referencing the files are able to continue to operate without interruptions. Duplicate Cleaner Free also offers a nice, three-tabbed interface for finding duplicate files without all the mess.

Find the Really Old Files

Finding the big stuff isn't always helpful. After all, you probably downloaded those giant videos for a reason. If you'd rather just find the old stuff, you can do that with simple search operators in the search box for Windows 7 and up. You can search for the last date modified, accessed, or when a file was created, and further sub-filter by size or type. Unfortunately this method lacks the nice visualization of file size that WinDirStat has, but it can go a long way in whittling down the stuff you don't need or use anymore. There are bunch more search operators you can use to narrow down your searches here.

Rename Your Files

Okay, so you definitely want to keep those 12,462 wedding photos, but wouldn't it be nice if they were named something better than IMG01827.jpg? Batch rename apps allow you to bring a more uniform sorting scheme to your collections. Apps like Rapid Streams (Windows) or Name Changer (Mac) are straightforward utilities for doing simple renaming tasks. However, if you want to crank it up a notch or ten, Bulk Rename Utility for windows has more options than you could ever use. On OS X you can use the built-in Automator tool to accomplish many of these same tasks as well.

Move Your Files

Now that all your files have meaningful names, put them somewhere equally meaningful. Apps like TeraCopy will allow you to quickly move a bunch of files around and set batch settings for overwriting or renaming duplicate files. Ultra-copier is a cross-platform solution that works on Windows, Mac, and Linux and is frequently much faster than the built-in solutions you find on most OSes.

Keep Your Private Files Really Hidden

Most of us have something that we'd rather not share with the world. Sensitive work documents, birthday gift ideas, etc. You can hide files in both Windows and OS X, but this only really makes your folders slightly nicer to look at. There's no real security there. You can use apps like TrueCrypt to lock down files, or even simple zip applications like 7-Zip to keep a collection of files under lock and key from anyone who may stumble on to your machine. These only really help protect against casual access to your machine, of course. If you want more powerful protection in case your hardware is ever seized or stolen, you may want to create a hidden, encrypted partition to store sensitive files on, using your main volumes as a decoy.

If you're like me, you probably have years and years worth of files laying around on your system that need to be cleared out, but it's not necessary to go through them by hand to clean them up.

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Electronic Bricks Means the Future Of Lego Is Even More Wonderful

Source: http://gizmodo.com/electronic-bricks-means-the-future-of-lego-is-even-more-510488026

At Sony Computer Science Laboratories' recent open house in Tokyo, the company gave the public a glimpse of some of the innovative research its team has been working on. Including a project called Toy Alive: a joint venture between Sony and Lego to develop microchip-embedded bricks that add a new level of electronic interactivity to the popular building toy.

Led by Alexis Andre, the project has already resulted in custom Lego bricks that allow creations to be controlled by a PlayStation controller, but that's just the beginning. LED-embedded bricks can be programmed to glow in unison when combined, so a model of a house can flicker like it's on fire. The new Lego pieces can also interact with a computer, allowing them to be remotely controlled or triggered with some basic Mindstorms-like programming. The researchers are even working on embedding bricks with tiny wireless cameras for an awesome minifig's eye view of a playset.

Sadly, the enhanced Legos are still a few years away at best. The crappy state of batteries means playtimes are currently very limited. But thankfully, in the meantime, good old-fashioned imagination is still perpetual. [Japan Times via Gizmag]

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Nvidia GeForce GTX 780M: The New Best Graphics Card For Your Laptop

Source: http://gizmodo.com/nvidia-geforce-gtx-780m-the-new-best-graphics-card-for-510469807

Intel's new integrated graphics are better than ever, and AMD's are nothing to shake a stick at either, but if you really want to game on a laptop, nothing's gonna beat discrete. And Nvidia's new GeForce GTX 700M series just rolled into town with the best graphics you can put in your laptop.

The new GTX mobile cores come in 4 different flavors—760M, 765M, 770M, and the beastly 780M—and unlike last years GTX 600Ms which had a pair of Fermi stragglers, this year's batch are all the latest and greatest Kepler architecture, through and through. All four boast the full suite of Nvidia graphical enhancements like PhysX and GPU Boost 2.0 for overclocking, and they'll snap right into GeForce Experience for auto-customization and auto-driver downloading goodness.

On the whole, the crew of cards boasts (on average) a 30 percent performance increase over their respective 600M predecessors, with the new low-end 760M able to tackle beasts like Far Cry 3 and Bioshock Infinite on high settings at 1080p, and the high-end 780M able to rock those suckers on ultra/max settings with that same high-resolution. You know, real gaming.

You can expect to start seeing these bad boys rolling out from OEMs in the onslaught of laptops that'll be running Intel's upcoming 4th generation Haswell chipset, like that dope new Razer Blade. Your laptop still won't (ever) be a perfect substitute for a classic, upgradable gaming desktop, but these should be pretty killer.

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Hell Yes, Razer Made the World's Most Powerful Small Windows Laptop

Source: http://gizmodo.com/hell-yes-razer-made-the-most-powerful-small-windows-la-510358373

Yep, this might be incredible. The new Razer blade is a 14-inch monster... ultrabook. With a discrete Nvidia GTX graphics card. Basically, this is the smallest, most badass gaming laptop-cum-ultrabook we've seen.

It's Razer, so obviously this is expensive. The new 14-inch Blade starts at $1800, and scales up from there if you want to upgrade the 128GB SSD to 256 or 512GB. The full specs include next-gen Haswell Intel processors; 8GB onboard DDR3 RAM; Nvidia GTX 765M (2GB GDDR5 memory) & Intel HD4600 graphics; 14-inch 1600x900 display; and 3 USB 3.0 ports. It's claiming six hours of battery life, but good luck with that; we'll let you know what the number looks like under a gaming load once we get our hands on a review unit. Overall, there's nothing unexpected in the specs, really. The real news comes from Razer's well-made Blade sizing down to 14 inches.

There are other 14-inch gaming laptops, of course. But like the original 17-inch Blade, this one is a good deal slimmer than its predecessors. The Alienware M14x, for example, is 14 inches and 6.5 pounds (and comes with a 1.3-pound power block—Razer's always had nice power supplies).

Comparing it to non-gaming laptops and ultraportables, the 14-inch Blade's tininess holds up, more or less. The Blade weighs 4.135 pounds and is 16.8mm thick. The Aspire S7, one of our favorite ultrabooks, has a 1080p 13-inch screen is weighs just 2.86 pounds (11.9mm); the 13-inch Yoga is 3.4 pounds. A 13-inch MacBook Pro is 4.5 pounds (24.1mm), and the Retina 13 is 3.57 pounds (19mm). So it's is brawny and trim—thinner than a retina MBP 13, even—but not exactly an ultralight.

Until now, anyone who wanted a nicely made and designed but still powerful laptop was mostly looking at a 15-inch MacBook Pro. Nothing wrong with that, really, but some people like Windows. And Windows manufacturers have been sticking their A-team designers on less robust ultrabooks for a few years now (and didn't even have A-team designers before that, really).

Add in the fact that Razer's keyboards have been great on the past two Blades, and that the 14-inch drops the gaudy Switchblade keys on the right-hand side, and this should be a pretty awesome Windows laptop, and the best small one with a real graphics card.

The old 17-inch Blade, now the Blade Pro, also got bit of a makeover. It's mostly the same as last year's updated model, and shares the same specs as the 14-inch, except for that bigger 1080p screen. But now its Switchblade macro keys are updated to work better with professional uses. To that end, it also comes stocked with full versions of nice apps like Photoshop, Premiere Pro, and Maya. It starts at $2300.

We'll have full hands-on impressions shortly, so check back for that, but for now, going by the specs, this looks like it could be incredible. Assuming you've got the coin.

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Pioneer announces XDJ-R1 all-in-one digital DJ deck with MIDI, iOS control features (video)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/pioneer-announces-xdj-r1/

Sure, DJ controllers might be the emerging force in spinning, but CDJs are still largely the club standard. Pioneer has always had thumbs in both of these pies, of course, but the new XDJ-R1 sees the brand uniting them for the first time. The all-in-one unit offers two CD players, USB media playback and MIDI controller functionality. Additionally, you can keep things moving wirelessly via an iOS device thanks to a new dedicated "remotebox" app. Wireless direct means that you won't need to worry too much about flaky connections while you wander into the crowd with your iPhone. You'll still be able to control almost everything directly in the app. Back on the physical (and built-in) two-channel mixer you can spice things up with the usual loop, sync, hot cue and sampling features, plus a choice of color effects. The inclusion of XLR outputs and booth out shows that Pioneer wants to see this in the DJ box, and at $1,099, it should appeal to anyone who'd been eyeing up the component parts. It's available in June, but in the meantime there's a video tour cued up past the break.

Filed under: Misc

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NVIDIA reveals GeForce GTX 700M series GPUs for notebooks, we go eyes-on

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/nvidia-geforce-gtx-700m-gpus-eyes-on/

We've already seen a couple of new desktop GTX cards from NVIDIA this month, and if the mysterious spec sheet for MSI's GT70 Dragon Edition 2 laptop wasn't enough of a hint, the company's got some notebook variants to let loose, too. The GeForce GTX 700M series, officially announced today, is a quartet of chips built on the Kepler architecture. At the top of the stack is the GTX 780M, which NVIDIA claims is the "world's fastest notebook GPU," taking the title from AMD's Radeon HD 8970M. For fans of the hard numbers, the 780M has 1,536 CUDA cores, an 823MHz base clock speed and memory configs of up to 4GB of 256-bit GDDR5 -- in other words, not a world apart from a desktop card. Whereas the 780M's clear focus is performance, trade-offs for portability and affordability are made as you go down through the 770M, 765M and 760M. Nevertheless, the 760M is said to be 30 percent faster than its predecessor, and the 770M 55 percent faster.

All of the chips feature NVIDIA's GPU Boost 2.0 and Optimus technologies, and work with the GeForce Experience game auto-settings utility. The 700M series should start showing up in a host of laptops soon, and a bunch of OEMs have already pledged their allegiance. Check out a video with NVIDIA's Mark Avermann after the break, where he shows off a range of laptops packing 700M GPUs, and helps us answer the most important question of all: can it run Crysis? (Or, in this case, Crysis 3.)

Gallery: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 700M slide deck

Filed under: Gaming, Laptops, Peripherals, NVIDIA

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Razer reveals the Blade Pro and 14-inch Blade gaming laptops (update: $999 Pro for indie game devs)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/razer-blade-pro-14-inch-models/

Razer promised it was aiming to iterate its Blade gaming laptop on a yearly basis, and despite the company's recent focus on tablets, it appears to be keeping its word. Today, a mere eight months after releasing the second-gen Blade, Razer unveiled two new members of the Blade family: the 17-inch Blade Pro and its 14-inch sibling. As you might expect, the Pro tops its elders with new silicon and storage options. It's exchanging third-gen Intel Ivy Bridge silicon for a fourth-gen Haswell chip and upgrading from an NVIDIA GTX 660M to a GTX 765M GPU. Oh, and Razer's nixed the HDD options from the big Blade's menu -- the Pro packs a 128GB SSD standard, with optional upgrades to 256 or 512GB. That new hardware is evidently smaller than what it's replacing: though the Pro shares the same size chassis as its predecessor, it packs a 74Wh battery (the older Blade has a 60Wh cell). Other than that, the Blade Pro comes with Razer's Switchblade interface, a trio of USB 3.0 ports, 802.11 a/b/g/n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0 and a 1920 x 1080 display, just like the prior Blade.

Meanwhile, the new 14-inch Blade will come with mostly the same hardware as the Pro, meaning it's got a Haswell chip and GTX 756M graphics along with a buffet of SSD choices. Those components are stuffed inside a chassis that measures 13.6 x 9.3 x 0.66 inches, and weighs 4.13 pounds. Naturally, given its smaller size, it lacks the Switchblade LCD and buttons, has a 1.3 megapixel webcam (as opposed to the Pro's 2 megapixel unit) and a 14-inch 1600 x 900 display. And, despite its relatively svelte dimensions (for a portable gaming rig), the baby Blade still has a 70Wh battery inside. The Pro starts at $2,299, or $200 less than prior Blades and the 14-inch model will set you back a minimum of $1,799. Each will be available in North America in Q2, with a worldwide rollout of the Pro coming sometime later this year.

Update: Good news, Indie game developers! Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan just announced that those devs with a successfully funded Kickstarter can get a new Blade Pro for just $999.

Gallery: Razer Blade Pro and 14-inch Blade press shots

Filed under: Gaming, Laptops

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NVIDIA announces GeForce GTX 770 for under $400, says it's faster than last year's GTX 680

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/nvidia-announces-geforce-gtx-770/

It probably won't come as a huge surprise, given the GTX 780's appearance last week, but today's launch of the GTX 770 nevertheless brings us a very interesting product. The card is claimed to be about five percent faster than last year's much more expensive flagship, the GTX 680, thanks to a faster memory interface (7Gb/s instead of 6Gb/s), a slightly higher base clock speed (1,046 vs. 1,006GHz) and an equivalent number of CUDA cores (1,536). Seeing as how the the GTX 680 still holds its own with current games, this performance parity strikes us as something of a deal -- assuming independent benchmarks back it up. We're still awaiting a confirmed US price, but we'll eat our SATA cables if it's anything other than $399 for a 2GB model (the press release just says "under $400"). UK and European prices match those of the GTX 670 (£329 inc. VAT, 329 euros exc. VAT), and availability begins today. Check out NVIDIA's slide deck for more details, including power consumption and noise, SLI scaling (which looks healthy) and some in-house frame rate comparisons against other products.

Gallery: NVIDIA GeForce GTX 770 slide deck

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming, NVIDIA

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LG's Optimus G Pro launching across Asia in June

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/30/lg-optimus-g-pro-asia/

Right now, Asians who want LG's Optimus G Pro have to make a sneaky trip over to South Korea, but not for much longer. The handset will begin rolling out across the continent through June, starting in Hong Kong and spreading to places like Taiwan, Singapore and Malaysia before the end of that month. Just remember, that unlike the Galaxy Note II, you'll have to spring for the stylus yourself.

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, LG

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MediaTek unveils quad-core MT8125 processor for budget tablets

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/29/mediatek-unveils-quad-core-mt8125-processor-for-budget-tablets/

MediaTek told us to only expect its tablet-focused SoC in the summer, but it's clearly something of a keener: we're already looking at the part today. The new MT8125 builds on the familiar formula of a quad-core Cortex-A7 processor and PowerVR Series5XT graphics, with most of the improvement coming from a higher 1.5GHz clock speed. That extra grunt helps the chip handle up to a 1,920 x 1,200 display on top of earlier support for 13MP cameras and 1080p videos. Focusing on tablets gives MediaTek some freedom in configurations, too -- it can offer the SoC with basic EDGE cellular data, full HSPA+ or WiFi alone. Customers won't have to wait long to try the MT8125 when tablets like Lenovo's IdeaTab S6000 series should be using it now, although there's no word on how much of that hardware will reach the US.

Filed under: Tablets, Mobile, Lenovo

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Source: MediaTek

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Lenovo's dual-SIM S820 unveiled, joins the Chinese league of feminine phones

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2013/05/29/lenovo-s820-china/

Following the likes of the Oppo Ulike 2 and the MeituKiss, Lenovo's decided to join the fun with yet another phone targeted at Chinese female users. Dubbed the S820, this Android 4.2 device appears to be prettier -- with a hint of HTC's One X on both sides -- yet also more gender neutral than the older S720, but Lenovo's marketing team has been working hard to emphasize the phone's vivid redness, soft curves and velvet finish to back its case. Even the launch event yesterday featured bikini-clad models holding the new product, though that might have backfired a little.

Unlike the two aforementioned devices from the competition, the S820 only comes with a 2-megapixel front-facing camera instead of a 5- or 8-megapixel version, but it does have a 13-megapixel imager on the back. You'll also find a 4.7-inch, 720p gapless IPS display on top of a 1.2GHz quad-core MT6589 SoC with 1GB RAM and 4GB internal storage. Removing the flexible back cover reveals a removable 2,000mAh battery, dual SIM slots (WCDMA 2100 and GSM 900/1800/1900) and microSD expansion of up to 32GB. Not bad for ¥1,999 or about $330, and it's already available for pre-order from now until June 2nd. For now, you can check out a hands-on video of the S820 after the break, courtesy of a Dongguan-based trading company.

Gallery: Lenovo S820

Filed under: Cellphones, Mobile, Lenovo

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Via: CNMO

Source: Lenovo

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The Visual Effects Behind Iron Man's HUD in Iron Man 3

Source: http://gizmodo.com/the-visual-effects-behind-iron-mans-hud-in-iron-man-3-510227528

Iron Man's HUD has always been one of the cooler details in any sci-fi movie. The way it pops up, the way it shields the face, the way it works—it's fantastically unreal and yet completely believable. And the beauty is in its impressive details.

John Likens posted this video breaking down the visual effects of the HUD. Created by Cantina Creative, the HUD was generated and rendered from CINEMA 4D. Likens writes:

Marvel tasked us with designing all the elaborate 3D head-up displays (HUDs) – a virtual graphical interface that Iron Man sees from within the helmet environment of his armored suits that communicate essential data and statistics ranging from his physical condition to weapon and navigational diagnostics – While putting strong emphasis on the new ultra-high-tech Mark 42 suit, we also delivered upgraded HUDs to match the new suits seen in the film. It was great fun.

Like Google Glass but way cooler. [John Likens]

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