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Monday, August 10, 2009

Gigabyte T1028X TouchNote brings fresher specs, steeper price

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/gigabyte-t1028x-touchnote-brings-fresher-specs-steeper-price/

It's only been a few months since Gigabyte unveiled the 1028M netbook / tablet hybrid, but its successor is already available to buy in Europe. Announced in Hong Kong last month, the 1028X ups the resolution to 1366 x 768 on the 10.1-inch swivel display and bundles a 6-cell 7650 mAh battery for a purported six and a half hours of juice. There's also an utterly meaningless 60MHz CPU upgrade from the Atom N270 to the N280, but the most surprising thing of all might be the price: €622 ($877). That's an awful lot of damage for what is still very much a netbook, but then if you simply must have a touchscreen display in that specific size range, there isn't much competition going around. At least for now.

[Via Slashgear]

Read -- Gigabyte product page
Read -- European reseller

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

Gigaby! te T1028 X TouchNote brings fresher specs, steeper price originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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WinMo 6.5 build 23022 caught on video, in all its finger-friendly glory

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/winmo-6-5-build-23022-caught-on-video-in-all-its-finger-friendl/

It's been a hot minute since we first laid eyes on those WinMo screen grabs featuring big ol' buttons at the bottom of the display -- signaling, we hoped, an all-around effort to minimize stylus use in the mobile OS -- and now we have a video for you that seems to further make the case. While WinMo 6.5 build 23022 is still pretty clumsy, those finger-friendly (well, at least, "finger-friendlier," or maybe "not as finger-hostile") buttons grace the bottom of the display, and there is an iPhone-esque magnifying glass option for zooming in on and editing text. Technical details for this build are available at the read link -- but first, make sure you peep the thing in action at the break.

[Via SlashGear]

Continue reading WinMo 6.5 build 23022 caught on video, in all its finger-friendly glory

Filed under: Cellphones

WinMo 6.5 build 23022 caught on video, in all its finger-friendly glory originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 13:14:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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NVIDIA inks deal for SLI support on Intel Core i5, i7 systems

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/nvidia-inks-deal-for-sli-support-on-intel-core-i5-i7-systems/

The relationship between the two companies may have descended to the level of a schoolyard fight at times, but it looks like NVIDIA and Intel are now doing their best to get along -- in public, at least -- united, in part, by AMD's entirely in-house CrossFire graphics solution. This latest gesture of goodwill comes in the form of an announcement that NVIDIA will indeed be licensing its SLI graphics technology to Intel and various motherboard manufacturers for use in upcoming Core i5 and Core i7-based systems, which Intel describes as the "perfect complement" for each other. Intel further goes on to say that "NVIDIA and Intel share a combined passion for furthering the PC as the definitive platform for gaming," while unconfirmed reports also have NVIDIA holding up its fingers in a comical gesture behind Intel's head during the announcement.

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Desktops, Gaming

NVIDIA inks deal for SLI support on Intel Core i5, i7 systems originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 15:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Zune HD on-screen keyboard and browser caught on camera

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/zune-hd-on-screen-keyboard-and-browser-caught-on-camera/

Oh, you want even more Zune HD news today? You got it! Yahoo! Tech managed to get a hands-on with the device, snapping some pictures of the browser and, more importantly, the on-screen keyboard. It's only a minor glimpse, but it definitely looks sleek. Shot of the browser after the break, and hit up the read link for full gallery. Seriously, Microsoft, add a 3G chipset and dialer app, and you can go ahead and draft those "million seller" press releases already.

Update: CNET has posted some more pictures of the browser and keyboard, including Facebook in landscape mode.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Continue reading Zune HD on-screen keyboard and browser caught on camera

Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Zune HD on-screen keyboard and browser caught on camera originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 19:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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USAA's Deposit@Mobile app puts check deposits a mug shot away

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/usaas-deposit-mobile-app-puts-check-deposits-a-mug-shot-away/

The problem with banks, you see, is that they're one of the few remaining weak links in our ultimate goal of eliminating all human interaction. If you've got a check you need to deposit in your account, you've got to trek all the way out to your local branch; sure, granted, you can slip the check in an ATM, but your odds of encountering another living creature in the process of doing that are nonzero. Fortunately, USAA -- which counts military personnel as a significant percentage of its customer base -- is helping to close that loop with its "Deposit@Mobile" service, a component of its just-launched mobile banking app in the iPhone's App Store. The secret, you see, lies in the iPhones magical camera which can "take" a "picture" of the check, transmit it to USAA, and boom -- your cash is instantly deposited. No muss, no fuss, and no pesky people to get between you and your hard-earned cash. Of course, that doesn't change the fact that you've got to get the check from someone in the first place... but, you know, one thing at a time.

[Via The New York Times]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

USAA's Deposit@Mobile app puts check deposits a mug shot away originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 21:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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TG Sambo announces trifecta of Full HD 16:9 monitors

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/tg-sambo-announces-trifecta-of-full-hd-16-9-monitors/

TG Sambo is all set to refresh its display line with four new models, three of them proudly pimping full 1080p panels and making your 4:3 display look all the more tired and washed up. The 24-inch TGL 2400A, 23-inch 2300A and 21.6-inch 2250A all have an integrated digital TV tuner, 2ms response time, 20,000:1 dynamic contrast ratio (which probably means real contrast is around 500:1), HDMI, DVI, VGA, and menu presets for internet, movie and gaming use. There's also a similarly outfitted 2000A version, which alas loses the 1920 x 1080 resolution. Only the price for the biggest 'un is known at present: 449,000 KRW ($336), but the PR indicates "the second half of the market strategy is to attack," so we'll go ahead and assume availability is coming shortly.

[Via AVING]

Filed under: Displays

TG Sambo announces trifecta of Full HD 16:9 monitors originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 22:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Five Best Video Players [Hive Five]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/aTnkUs-uhBc/five-best-video-players

We've come a long way since animated GIFs and video-game-style MIDI files were considered cutting edge computer-provided A/V entertainment. Take advantage of today's high-quality video with one of these five most popular video players.

Photo by horsager.

Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite video player. We've tallied up the votes and now we're back to share the results. Below you'll find the five most popular video players among Lifehacker readers. If you're dissatisfied with the features of your current player, it's a great shopping list of alternatives.

The movie used in the screenshots below is Big Buck Bunny—a completely open-source generated and Creative Commons-licensed short movie.

Media Player Classic (Windows, Free)

Media Player Classic started out as a project to preserve the simplicity and lightweight playback of the old Windows Media Player while keeping codecs and features current for the present generation of video. The outcome is an extremely lightweight, free, portable, and self-contained video player that has built-in codecs for a wide variety of media playback. The upside of such a design is you can use it on a machine that doesn't have the proper codecs installed for the video you want to watch. The downside is in some instances—although rare—it can conflict with an u! pdated c odec you have installed on your machine.

MPlayer (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)

Originally designed to fill the void of a lack of adequate Linux media players, the development for the robust media player MPlayer has branched out and now includes versions for Windows and Mac, among others. MPlayer supports a wide variety of content and, perhaps owing to its Linux roots, pays extra close attention to hardware and hardware optimization to squeeze the most playback power out of your system.

GOM Player (Windows, Free)

GOM Player is another entrant in this week's Hive that, like VLC, excels at playing damaged and incomplete video. Originally designed as the streaming media player for GOM-TV, a Korean TV network, it is available outside of Korea with the GOM-TV streaming functionality disabled—although folks outside Korea still have access to the live streaming of StarCraft matches (StarCraft is so wildly popular among Koreans playing it is practically a national sport). GOM Player also includes a wide variety of sub-title tweaks, an important feature for a player from a country that consumes a lots of foreign media.

VLC (Windows/Mac/Linux, Free)

VLC is a media player with far-reaching appeal. It is available for over ten operating systems including systems as obscure as BeOS. Built with open-source code and fueled by free decoding and encoding libraries, it has a history of innovation and performance; it was, for example, the first player that could play back encrypted DVDs on Linux. VLC allows you to play incomplete or damaged videos, so you can decide if it is worth finishing a download or repairing a video file. VLC can also play a variety of formats not commonly supported by media players, such as a raw DVD ISO file or AVCHD—a format currently used by many HD camcorders. VLC is available as a portable application.

KMPlayer (Windows, Free)

If you like all your media player's settings at your fingertips, KMPlayer has a lot to offer. The right click context menu is absolutely enormous and gives you nearly instant access to all manner of settings, including screen ratio, playback speed, video bookmarking, filters, and other effects. You can set KMPlayer to change its skin based on what media type you're playing or if you're running it on a media center you can use an overlay skin to provide easy remote-based navigation. KMPlayer supports an extensive number of formats including DVD playback and is easily customized to your specific needs.

Now that you've had a chance to look over the contenders for Best Video Player, it's time to cast your vote in the poll below:

Which Video Player is Best?(survey)

Can't believe your favorite didn't make it? Shocked we didn'! t mentio n your favorite feature of your player of preference? Set us straight in the comments.

First Football Game In Cowboys Stadium Played On World's Largest HDTV [HDTV]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/iAp8shT0ozk/first-football-game-in-cowboys-stadium-played-on-worlds-largest-hdtv

The first football game to *officially* grace the brand spankin' new Dallas Cowboys stadium was in fact rendered for all to see in glorious 1080p high definition.

The game played out on the stadium's 160ft. x 72ft screen—the world's largest 1080p HDTV—as part of a fan appreciation day sponsored by EA and PlayStation. More than 10,000 were expected to attend.

Driving the game as it unfolded high in the air was a humble (in comparison) PlayStation 3. [Kotaku]

AdAge: Massimo continues w/Arnell; Pepsi Top Talent Exit in Droves who'd blame them, after costly, useless rebrandings - http://bit.ly/1Yf1L

HTC Touch Pro2 spotted again, this time with AT&T branding -- to be called Tilt 2?

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/htc-touch-pro2-spotted-again-this-time-with-atandt-branding/

Alright, listen up: we're going to play a little game we like to call, "what carrier isn't getting the Touch Pro2?" Sound easy? Not so fast, partner -- this bad boy gets around like a record, if you know what we're saying. In fact, the beefy, all-business WinMo superphone is well on its way to becoming the first handset carried by every top-tier North American carrier in we-don't-know-how-long (granted, we don't have solid intel on Bell or Rogers, but we wouldn't be surprised to see them coming). We suspected AT&T was signed up for it some time ago, and now we've got it snapped in the flesh, complete with an AT&T logo conveniently assigned as the function on the down key. We don't know when this'll be available, but seeing how all notions of exclusivity appear to be out of the window on this one, we could see an announcement any day now. Better list that Fuze on eBay now, ladies and gentlemen.

[Thanks, Ahres]

Update: It'd stand to reason that this is going to be branded Tilt 2 in light of the screen shot posted earlier; kinda strange that AT&T would return to the Tilt branding, but... you know, marketing departments work in mysterious ways that we'll never understand.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC Touch Pro2 spotted again, this time with AT&T branding -- to be called Tilt 2? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 00:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Indilinx firmware cleans dirty SSDs, restores performance while idle

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/indilinx-firmware-cleans-dirty-ssds-restores-performance-while/

You know those quirky, not-at-all convenient issues that can cause certain solid state drives to lag with extensive use? Yeah -- not cool. Thankfully, the engineers at OCZ Technology and Indilinx are fed up, and rather than sitting around doing nothing, they've both collaborated on a breakthrough firmware that can actually clean and restore one's "dirtied" SSD while the drive sits idle. In short, the firmware instructs the SSD to perform a "garbage collection" process in order to mitigate the unwanted block re-writing quandary, where the drive actively seeks and removes garbage that hinders read / write performance when handling small chunks of data. The crew over at HotHardware managed to run a few speed tests with said firmware firmly implemented, and the results are downright shocking: after just five minutes of idle time, the SSD was restored to near new, with an hour of downtime being enough to "totally restore" performance. Don't believe us? Give that read link a tap, bub.

Filed under: Storage

Indilinx firmware cleans dirty SSDs, restores performance while idle originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 02:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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MSI X-Slim X600 reviewed: an 'attractive choice'

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/08/10/msi-x-slim-x600-reviewed-an-attractive-choice/

MSI's X-Slim X600 may not be the quickest, most nimble or most powerful 15.6-inch laptop on the market today, bit with a thickness of just 0.75-inches, it's definitely got the ultrathin motif down pat. The kind lads and ladies over at Laptop Mag recently secured one of the machines for review, and they seemed adequately impressed with the combination of a low-power CPU (1.4GHz Core 2 Solo SU3500) and a multimedia-friendly discrete GPU (ATI's 512MB Radeon HD 4330) -- a tandem that's hard to find anywhere, let alone for $799. All told, the machine performed satisfactorily across the board, notching decent scores in a wide array of benchmarks and looking good all the while. Still, critics noted that Sony's VAIO NW would be more suitable for those with a Blu-ray craving and that Gateway's $599 NV is probably better for those looking for raw horsepower. If style is atop your list, though, it'll be tough to dodge the "buy" button on this one.

Filed under: Laptops

MSI X-Slim X600 reviewed: an 'attractive choice' originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 07:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Saturday, August 08, 2009

Auslogics Duplicate File Finder Helps Declutter Your Disks [Downloads]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/53cOxQG1K-E/auslogics-duplicate-file-finder-helps-declutter-your-disks

Unintended duplicate files can chew up a lot of disk space. Auslogics Duplicate File Finder will help you find dupes even when the file names don't match.

By scanning and compiling the MD5 hash of of each file it scans, Auslogics Duplicate File Finder can dig through your disks and find duplicates with mismatched names. Multiple copies of music and other media, even when oddly named, will be matched up. You can filter by file size and file type. Matching can be contingent on file name, date and size, and the file hash.

If you have a favorite tool for finding duplicate files, let's hear about it in the comments. Auslogics Duplicate File Finder is freeware, Windows only.

Auslogics Duplicate File Finder [via gHacks]

Use Ubiquity to Make Google Voice Calls [Ubiquity]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/lifehacker/full/~3/4134cD6GsRE/use-ubiquity-to-make-google-voice-calls

It's fairly easy to head to Google Voice's homepage, paste in a number, type out a contact, then click a button to call. It's far easier, however, to use Ubiquity with Firefox to highlight a number and just type "call."

The earth2marsh site posts a Ubiquity command that requires just a little bit of configuration to hook up with your Google Voice account. Once it's set up, however, making a call with your pre-determined default phone is a simple matter of highlighting a number, activating Ubiquity, and using the action verb "call." Need help using or adding commands into Ubiquity? Check out Gina's guide to making Ubiquity your ultimate Firefox commander.

Google Voice Ubiquity Command [earth2marsh]

Cloud-Generating 1900-Ship Armada to Sink Climate Change [Science]

Source: http://feeds.gawker.com/~r/gizmodo/full/~3/bYIc_cG3v1c/cloud+generating-1900+ship-armada-to-sink-climate-change

The Copenhagen Consensus Centre—a respected European think tank which used to be skeptic on climate change—is now advising that we should spend $9 billion in building 1900 cloud-generating ships like the one above. Why? To cool down Earth:

When you spray saltwater into the air, you create nuclei that cloud condenses around, creating bigger and whiter clouds, thus bouncing more sunlight back into space.

That's what David Young, a member of the panel that created the report, says. The fully automated vessels will cross the oceans absorbing water and spraying it into the skies. They say this will help the formation of big, whiter clouds, which will make the sun light bounce, lowering temperatures.

The idea seems neat, but the concept of anyone in planet Earth claiming to understand how climate works to this extend blows my mind. We are still trying to grasp how a complex system like the weather works, but someone wants to put an idea like this in motion, without knowing about the ultimate consequences? Like we say in my home country: Do you experiments with pop soda. [Copenhagen Consensus via Daily Mail]

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