Hasta La Gadget!

Back in 2006 we were charmed by the classic looks and new-school tech offered by Leica’s M8, and then again last year by its successor, the M8.2. Now the company has another update to woo us, confirmation of last year’s rumor of an even more visually arresting version, the M8.2 Safari Special Edition. Its olive drab exterior makes it look like something you’d find slung around the neck of the Ernie Pyle’s German WWII counterpart, an included waterproof bag means you can safely take this along for your next jungle adventure, and its 28mm f/2.8 ASPH lens should work well for capturing whatever you find out there — big or small. Only 500 of these are set to be made, one of which can be yours for a typically excessive Leica price of $10,000.

[Via Impress]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Leica’s Safari Special Edition M8.2 wears olive drab, is anything but originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no veil of secrecy covering this one, but Western Digital has finally come clean with the industry’s first 2TB internal hard drive. Launched today in the USA, the planet’s highest capacity single HDD — otherwise known as the 2TB Caviar Green ($299; available now) — sits on a 3.5-inch platform, includes 32MB of cache and is based around WD’s 500GB per platter technology (with 400Gb/in2 areal density). HotHardware was able to take a sneak peek at this here device (a pre-engineering sample, as it were), and was gracious enough to host up some juicy benchmark results for those eager to see how this capacious beast performed. Against the formidable Spinpoint F1 (Samsung) and Barracuda 7200.11 (Seagate), the WD managed to hold its own, which is saying a lot for a drive of this magnitude. Check the full release after the break.

Continue reading Western Digital’s 2TB Caviar Green hard drive launches, gets previewed

Filed under: Storage

Western Digital’s 2TB Caviar Green hard drive launches, gets previewed originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 08:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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According to Rob Galbraith, that is. The veteran photographer and detail-obsessed camera reviewer has turn his lens onto notebook display, reviewing them specifically as they relate to the pro-snapper.

The shocker is that the Dell Mini 9 beats the unibody 15" MacBook Pro on color accuracy, although on viewing angle it slips back down the league table.

It turns out that Galbraith doesn’t like the new glossy glass screens Apple has forced upon its two smaller notebooks:

For the longest time, Apple laptop displays ruled the roost around here. With very few exceptions, going back to the days of the PowerBook G4, portable Macs were considerably more colour accurate than any of the dozens and dozens of PC laptops we’d profiled […] Macs are no longer at the top of the laptop display heap in our minds.

That’s got to hurt. The test also took in an old classic, the ThinkPad T60, and Lenovo’s new 17" behemoth, the ThinkPad W700. Of the four, the ThinkPads swapped first and second place between them on color accuracy and angle of view. The giant desktop replacement got the color so spot-on because of the optional $70 built in color calibrator, which – at the touch of a button and close of a lid – will set the clors right in just three minutes.

It’s interesting the see the Apple machine score so badly, though. Macs are huge amongst photographers, and getting beat by a netbook is just plain embarrassing.

A look at the evolving laptop display [Rob Galbraith]

See Also:

• Review: Lenovo’s Mega Notebook Crushes Benchmarks, Femurs

We won’t be covering all Mac malware outbreaks here, but coming as it does so soon after the iWork ’09 trojan, this new exploit is worth a mention. Intego, who tipped us off to the trojan embedded inside a pirated version of Apple’s iWork suite, has discovered much the same thing inside a crack for Adobe Photoshop CS4.

Of course, it’s not in the real Photoshop, but carried in a "crack" application which is applied to Photoshop CS4 in order to serialize it and stop it calling home to Adobe’s servers (CS4 has some pretty heavyweight piracy protection inside). The trojan, called OSX.Trojan.iServices.B, then opens up a backdoor with root access and connects on a random TCP port to two internet addresses. This gives a remote attacker complete access to your Mac.

Scary stuff, and enough to wipe the smug smile off the face of any Mac owner (like me). The answer is to be more careful. Don’t run untrusted software, and be cautious about giving anything your admin password. Above all, don’t pirate applications. Oh, and you could run Intego’s antivirus software, but – just like Windows – if you take care you don’t really need it.

New Variant of Mac Trojan Horse iServices Found in Pirated Adobe Photoshop CS4 [Intego]

See Also:

• Another Mac Virus Alert. Real This Time?
• Mac ‘Security Threat’ Evaporates in 24 Hours
• Unboxing: Trojan Vibrating Ring Condoms

Man juices in a boil? No shame, that’s Shelby Super Cars’ Aero EV in pursuit of the “world’s fastest production electric car” title. SSC just came clean with the details behind its All-Electric Scalable Powertrain (AESP) producing 1,000 horsepower and 800 lb-ft of torque that rips the Aero EV through 0 to 60 in just 2.5 seconds at a 208mph top speed. Compare that to the Tesla Roadster’s 0-60 in 3.9 seconds (or 3.7 for the 2009 sport model) and you’ll understand all the hubbub, bub. Better yet, the 150-220 mile battery can be refilled in just 10 minutes (Tesla takes 3.5 hours) from a 220V service thanks to what SSC calls its “Charge on the Run” onboard charging system — something that nearly eliminates (or at least minimizes) the need for a battery swapping infrastructure. The first full-scale, pre-production Ultimate Aero EV should be on the streets before June with production deliveries expected in the fourth quarter. Now we just need a price.

[Via inhabitat]

Shelby’s amazing Aero EV: 0 to 60 in 2.5 seconds, 10 minute recharge originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Jan 2009 06:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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