Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Tuesday, March 31, 2009

Ion-based Acer Hornet nettop specs leak out: 1080p HDMI playback, Wii-like gaming, $299

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/31/ion-based-acer-hornet-nettop-specs-leak-out-1080p-hdmi-playback/

Well, well, what's this? We just received a ton of information on that hot little Acer Hornet nettop we'd heard about a while back, and if this pile of documentation is as real as it looks, this thing could be the holy grail of cheap HTPCs -- not only does it support 1080p video playback over HDMI, the "Media Center" version will indeed come with a Wii-like remote that can be used for gaming as well as media control. Specs look more than decent for the targeted $149-$299 price range: the low end model pairs what sounds like an Atom N230 with 1GB of RAM and an 80GB drive preloaded with Vista Home Basic, while higher end models get 2GB of RAM, a 160GB drive, and a "Boxshell" quickboot OS in addition to Vista Home Premium. All this plus super-quiet sub-26dB operation and a slick diamond-shaped chassis designed to hang off the back of your flatscreen? We're potentially in love -- when you gonna make our dreams come true, Acer? Full spec chart after the break.

P.S. We know that upper-right image is a ripped Nintendo press image, but this slide actually leaked from elsewhere a month ago -- and unless someone's decided to go way beyond the usual fakery by meticulously crafting the 20-page technical and supplier info document and lengthy presentations we received today, we're thinking this is actually real and not some April Fools thing. Let's hope!

[Thanks, Anonymous]

Continue reading Ion-based Acer Hornet nettop specs leak out: 1080p HDMI playback, Wii-like gaming, $299

Filed under: Desktops, ! Home Ent ertainment

Ion-based Acer Hornet nettop specs leak out: 1080p HDMI playback, Wii-like gaming, $299 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 19:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Clearwire's Clear Spot portable WiMAX / WiFi router now official, coming early April

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/31/clearwires-clear-spot-portable-wimax-wifi-router-now-official/

Good news for those who happened to live in Portland -- and elsewhere in the years to come. Clearwire's announced that the CradlePoint-manufactured portable WiMAX-equipped WiFi router we saw back in January will be hitting stores in early April as the Clear Spot Personal Hotspot. Up to eight 802.11 b/g-compatible devices will be able to share the 4Mbps bandwidth. Price is $139 for the unit, but of course you'll have to pay The Man beyond that to actually use the service. The company promises more devices like this in the coming months.

Filed under: Wireless, Networking

Clearwire's Clear Spot portable WiMAX / WiFi router now official, coming early April originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 20:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Verizon MiFi 2200 EVDO hotspot leaks out, will sell like Canadian bananas

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/30/verizon-mifi-2200-evdo-hotspot-leaks-out-will-sell-like-canadia/

It's not quite as sexy as the brushed aluminum version we saw back in December, but these leaked images showing a Verizon-branded Novatel MiFi 2200 personal hotspot are certainly enough to get the blood pumping. If you don't recall the concept, the MiFi is a battery-powered EVDO router the size of a credit card that can provide network access over WiFi for up to four hours on a charge. There's still a lot of details up in the air here, like how many devices can connect at once and the max data rate, but if this thing comes in anywhere close to its estimated $200 price tag we'd say a lot of those answers might not matter. Couple more pics at the read link.

Filed under: Wireless

Verizon MiFi 2200 EVDO hotspot leaks out, will sell like Canadian bananas originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 17:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sony PSP hacked for use as PC status monitor

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/31/sony-psp-hacked-for-use-as-pc-status-monitor/

No money for a secondary display? No use for that worn-down PSP? There's hope for the future, friend. Hacker avi has discovered that Sony's handheld makes for a wonderful status monitor, providing a clean look at your PC's CPU usage, memory allocation and system temperature levels. All you'll need is a bit of training in Python, Lua for the PSP and a sister willing to stop watching UMD movies long enough for you to give this a go.

Gallery: Sony PSP hacked for use as PC status monitor

Filed under: Displays, Gaming

Sony PSP hacked for use as PC status monitor originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 03:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Thecus's N0204 miniNAS is world's smallest, apparently

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/31/thecuss-n0204-mininas-is-worlds-smallest-apparently/

Thecus's N0204 miniNAS is world's smallest, apparently

We track a lot of things claiming to be the smallest or thinnest this-or-that, but, when it comes to network-attached storage, we can't say as we've been breaking out our rulers all that often. So, when Thecus says its N0204 miniNAS is the world's smallest, we'll take them for their word. Little bigger than an external 3.5-inch drive enclosure, the N0204 actually sports room for two 2.5-inch drives, serving them up concatenated or in RAID 0 or 1 configurations. Despite its size it still offers the same functionality of many of the bigger boys, including the ability to act as an iTunes or DLNA server, print server, and webcam host. It even allows hot-swapping. Apparently the only thing it can't do is tell you when it'll release or how much it'll cost when it does. For that we'll just have to wait and see.

[Via Legit Reviews]

Continue reading Thecus's N0204 miniNAS is world's smallest, apparently

Filed under: Storage

Thecus's N0204 miniNAS is world's smallest, apparently originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 09:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Reckitt-Benckiser to Shift $20 Million From TV to Web - http://ping.fm/M4P5Z

Market Research Must Get Real - should reflect real behavior rather than theoretical models - http://ping.fm/TZJ6V

@bmorrissey - Web Ad Growth Deteriorates - sign of the times or simply lack of effectiveness? http://ping.fm/QtolE

Monday, March 30, 2009

NVIDIA revs up pro graphics lineup

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/30/nvidia-revs-up-pro-graphics-lineup/

Squabbles with Intel aside, NVIDIA's engineers have been keeping busy, and the company's got a whole slew of new high-powered workstation graphics chips to talk about this morning, along with new SLI virtualization support. The new gear ranges from the Quadro NVS 295, which'll drive two 30-inch displays for under $100, all the way up to the monster 4GB Quadro FX 5800, which packs 240 CUDA cores onto a PCI Express x16 card for $3150. The 5800 and baby brothers Quadro FX 3800 and 4800 all support SLI Multi-OS, which allows workstation users to tap into the cards using multiple OSes in Parallels -- the HP Z800 is the first machine off the line to offer the capability, but more will follow. Pretty geeky stuff, head to the read links for more info.

Read - Workstation graphics press release
Read - SLI Multi-OS press release

Filed under: Desktops

NVIDIA revs up pro graphics lineup originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 10:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Western Digital enters SSD market via $65m SiliconSystems acquisition

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/30/western-digital-enters-ssd-market-via-65m-siliconsystems-acquis/

Man, the consolidation efforts are really heating up. Just days after Cisco forked out a small fortune to acquire Pure Digital, HDD mainstay Western Digital has penned a check for $65 million in cold, hard cash in order to acquire SiliconSystems, Inc. Said outfit is an Aliso Viejo, California-based supplier of solid-state drives for the embedded systems market, and rather than wasting any more time falling behind in the SSD realm, WD figured it prudent to just buy the technology it needed to position itself as a legitimate competitor. WD has already made clear that it hopes to sell SSDs for the netbook, client and enterprise markets, and given that integration will begin "immediately," we're hoping to see some shipping products sooner rather than later.

Filed under: Storage

Western Digital enters SSD market via $65m SiliconSystems acquisition originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 11:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Asus makes optical-endowed Eee PC 1004DN official

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/30/asus-succumbs-makes-eee-pc-1004dn-official/

Asus makes optical-endowed Eee PC 1004DN official

What's that, didn't trust last week's DigiTimes rumory confirmation of the new 1004DN addition to the Eee PC family? Rest easy, as Asus has come forward and made the first optical-offering Eee officially official. The machine packs a Super-Multi DVD writer, what looks to be the same pinkie-friendly chiclet keyboard as the 1000HE, a 1.66GHz Atom N280 processor, up to 120GB of storage, and even a fingerprint scanner. Price and release date are still undecided, but it shouldn't be long before we find out just how well those legendarily long-winded Eee batteries fare at spinning up your Battlestar Galactica boxed sets.

Filed under: Laptops

Asus makes optical-endowed Eee PC 1004DN official originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 08:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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LG Xenon, Neon join Samsung Magnet and Impression on AT&T

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/30/lg-xenon-neon-join-samsung-magnet-and-impression-on-atandt/

Outside of the smartphone realm, AT&T's really stepping up its game in the feature phone game, too -- so let's take this clockwise from the top left, shall we? First up, we have the brightly-colored Samsung Magnet, targeted squarely at the teen audience looking for serious texting power in a cheap package. Pricing hasn't been announced, but it should be easy on the wallet; it'll be available in the next few weeks. Next is the Impression -- also from Samsung -- which we'd previously known as the a877, the very first handset to officially launch on a US carrier with a full AMOLED up front. The screen's 3.2 inches of organic touchscreen awesomeness, accompanied by a 3 megapixel cam and a full HTML browser, all launching on April 7 for $199.99 on contract after rebate. Down below, we have the LG Neon -- a phone that's already launched up north on Rogers -- offering a full landscape QWERTY keyboard in addition to a touchscreen display for a low price, thanks in no small part to its lack of 3G data. The launch day hasn't been set for this one, but it'll come shortly. Finally, we have the long-rumored Xenon, featuring 3G, a 2 megapixel cam, QWERTY slide, GPS, and your choice of colors -- black, blue, or red -- all for $99.99 when it launches on April 8.

Filed under: Cellphones

LG Xenon, Neon join Samsung Magnet and Impression on AT&T originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Skype Coming to iPhone Tuesday, BlackBerry in May [Skype]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/bYXsHkJ6NX4/skype-coming-to-iphone-tuesday-blackberry-in-may

Landing a day earlier than predicted, Skype's official iPhone client will show its green 'n' white face in the App Store tomorrow. The other conspicuously neglected market, BlackBerry owners, can expect a client by May.

The iPhone client feature set is more or less what we've come to expect from Skype mobile apps: free Skype-to-Skype calls, SkypeOut support, pretty interface integration (they went with the iPhone aesthetic over the Skype desktop aesthetic, thankfully) and instant messaging to other users. You can even snap a profile picture from within the app. The app will also support 2G iPod Touches with external mics.

But! For those of you who held onto the vain hope that an official client might be able to somehow skirt the universal App Store ban on voice over IP over 3G (VoIPo3G?), forget it—you won't be able to Skype unless you're connected to a wireless network, and text messaging has been entirely excluded. You can't even top up your SkypeOut account or purchase other services like voicemail, which, by the way, can't be accessed from the app.

Not to poop on Skype's party, but this announcement leaves me with questions—specifically, why should I download this? Third party apps like Fring picked up Skype's slack a long time ago, and lump in multiprotocol IMing, something which gives them a distinct advantage over this official client on the one-app-at-a-time-plea! se iPhon e. Skype told CNET that their app will have better voice quality (and probably lower latency), but aside from that was unable to offer many significant advantages over other apps. [CNET and NYT —Images from CNET]

GeoBulb LED light bulb uses just eight watts, rings up at $120

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/29/geobulb-led-light-bulb-uses-just-eight-watts-rings-up-at-120/

Ah, progress. Right around two years ago, we spotted a LED-filled light bulb that used "just" nine watts and cost a staggering $65. Now, we've got yet another option that sucks down even less power and costs nearly twice as much. C. Crane Company has been working on its so-called GeoBulb for a solid three years now, but at long last the device is shipping to affluent homeowners and headstrong Earth lovers. The bulb can provide as much light as a traditional 60W incandescent with just 7.5W, and it features a 30,000 hour (10 years) lifespan with typical usage. Now, the hard part: choosing between cool, soft and warm white.

[Via Times-Standard]

Filed under: Household

GeoBulb LED light bulb uses just eight watts, rings up at $120 originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 29 Mar 2009 23:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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AT&T pulls trigger on Nokia E71x and Samsung Propel Pro

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/03/30/atandt-pulls-trigger-on-nokia-e71x-and-samsung-propel-pro/

Kicking off what's sure to be a fun-filled week of announcements surrounding CTIA out in Vegas, AT&T's smartphone lineup just got a little beefier thanks to the official introduction of a couple devices we've been expecting for a hot minute now. First up, the Nokia E71x is just about ready for shelves, bringing WiFi, AT&T Navigator (which hopefully won't preclude the use of Nokia Maps and other GPS-enabled apps), and all of the lauded physical design characteristics you're used to from the original, unbranded E71. The best thing here might be the price -- just $99.99 on contract after rebate, thankfully beating rumors of $200 and $150 by a country mile; it'll hit shelves "in the coming weeks." Next up is the Samsung Propel Pro, a device that shares very little in common with its Propel namesake other than a form factor, mainly because this sucker's a full-out smartphone running Windows Mobile 6.1. It's got WiFi, a slide-out full QWERTY keyboard (naturally) and will be available on April 14 for $149.99 after all your discounts have been applied and your two-year agreement is filed away.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

AT&T pulls trigger on Nokia E71x and Samsung Propel Pro originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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