NVIDIA Ion to begrudgingly support Core 2 Duo by Q4?

It’s easy to overlook amidst all PowerPoint-fueled fisticuffs but, in addition to slinging rebuttals at Intel and muttering insults under its breath, NVIDIA also appears to have dropped a bit of news about its next-generation Ion platform. While we had already heard that Ion 2 would be supporting VIA’s Nano processor in addition to Intel’s Atom, it looks like it’ll also support Core 2 Duo processors, and even Pentiums and Celerons for good measure. That, of course, is not all that surprising given Ion’s roots in NVIDIA’s current MCP79M/MCP7A chipset platform, and there’s certainly plenty of time for things to shake out further before that promised Q4 rollout date — and, knowing these two companies, things probably will.

[Via Electronista]

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NVIDIA Ion to begrudgingly support Core 2 Duo by Q4? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Access hard drives conveniently with NewerTech Voyager

(Credit: NewerTech)

If you do a lot of work that involves transferring data from one hard drive to another, you’ll probably love the NewerTech Voyager hard drive dock.

This the first quad-interface hard drive docking station that supports FireWire 800/400, USB 2.0, and eSATA. The device can turn any 2.5-inch or 3.5-inch SATA hard drive, up to 2.0TB, into a fully bootable and hot-swappable external drive solution.

NewerTech Voyager is compatible with both Macs and PC and features plug-and-plug installation with no software or driver needed. All you need to do is plug in a new hard drive, and format it if need be. You can of course–and I believe this is the main use of the device–put in an old hard drive to access data from it.

The 17-Inch MacBook Pro Review

While Apple grandly updated their notebook line to the new unibody design, the 17-inch MacBook Pro, Apple’s granddaddy of mobile computing, was left behind. Now, the 17-inch model joins its siblings—with promising bonus features.

Design

With nothing to scale this image, it’s nearly impossible to tell the new 17-inch MBP from the 13- or 15-inch unibody macs. From the outside, it’s the same thing, only bigger. At first it’s a little intimidating to see such a large, unadorned block of metal. But at 6.6 lbs, it’s actually not as heavy in your hands as you’d expect. And at .98-inches in stature, it’s only ever so slightly thicker (.03 inches) than the other two MacBooks.

Apple will tell you that the MBP17 is the thinnest, lightest 17-inch notebook in the world. We’ll tell you that for a monster of a laptop, it manages to not be too monstrous. The 17-inch (1920×1200) screen is a sharp, contrasty and colorful panorama, but it’s the little touches that make the MBP17 manageable: The system’s near-silent operation (using a 256GB SSD instead of a hard drive) is almost unnerving. Its underside gets warm, but never hot. And the unibody design makes particularly good sense in this larger size, as the wide chassis does not flex to your grip as you might expect.

The battery is one of the only components that’s significantly different than that of the smaller machines. Striving for 8-hours of battery life the newly designed power pack screws right into the chassis. (Lots more on that topic below.)

What’s missing, however, is the underside hatch that made for easy hard drive and battery replacement. This smart design feature, recently introduced in Apple’s 13- and 15-inch unibody laptops, has been replaced by a series of screws to remove the bottom panel, and another series of screws to remove the battery. Removing a few screws is by no means a horrendous exercise, but we can’t help but feel that it’s a step in the wrong direction. The most spend-happy pro users will be the most likely to crack the lid of their laptops—so this design choice will likely annoy a key part of the MBP17’s target audience.

What’s Different About It?

Compared to the MBP15

• Supports 8GB of RAM; the MBP15 only supports 4GB

• Includes a 256GB SSD option; the MBP15 only a 128GB

• The MBP17 includes five speakers with a wider frequency response

• There’s one extra USB port (3 total)

• Slightly faster processor options

(note: shot comparison of 13-inch model)

Compared to the old 17-inch MBP

• 40% larger battery (95WH vs. 68WH)

• Glossy and matte screen options are now available

• The screen has equal resolution, but a 60% wider color gamut

• Unibody structure, of course

Performance

The MBP17 features a 2.66 or 2.93GHz processor, up to 8GB of RAM and dual Nvidia 9400M (integrated) and 9600 (discrete) graphics cards. A 320GB 5400RPM hard drive comes standard, but that can be upgraded to a 320GB 7200RPM drive or a 128GB/256GB solid-state drive. (Note: There’s no option for a 500GB hard drive, though they are readily available if you want to swap one in.)

The model we tested was fully loaded, with a 2.93GHz processor, 8GB RAM and 256GB SSD.

Still, because the MBP17 is so similar to the 15 internally, we’re going to point you in the direction of our last review for benchmarks on the dual Nvidia 9400M and 9600 graphics cards. We also ran Xbench and uploaded the predictably impressive results to their database. However, one feature we wanted to be sure to check out was the new 256GB SSD option, a drive made by Toshiba. It’s a $750 upgrade that we were able to test in our review model.

SSD Speed Benchmarks:

Against the stock drive that comes with MBPs, the speed gains are obvious. However, the SSD market is still very young. There are only a handful of drives out there, so how do you know if Apple’s $750 offering is price competitive?

Searching through the XBench results forums, we found a user who tested out a G. Skill Titan 256GB SSD on a unibody mac. It’s not rated to be as fast as Samsung’s $1000 SSD gold standard, but according to these benchmarks, it’s still considerably faster than the drive Apple will sell you. The catch? The Titan runs $500, or $250 less than Apple’s bundled Toshiba. In other words, as with most upgrades, you’re still better off going through a third party for your SSD.

The other bonus to SSDs is how quickly they boot. From the picture, you can see that our MBP17 booted in 31 seconds, despite me having a few hundred icons on the desktop. The MBP15 (normal hard drive, 4GB RAM) took about 90 seconds to load a similar configuration, or “three times longer” in marketing speak.

Battery Life

Everything so far about the new MBP17 is all well and good, but we think there’s one claim in particular that’s going to interest consumers the most: A 7-8 hour battery life*.

*Assuming screen at half brightness, Wi-Fi on, light browsing, light word processing (so no Bluetooth but otherwise a standard configuration). 8 hours on integrated graphics, 7 hours with more beefy discrete GPU.

Indeed, the MBP17’s battery is huge. It takes up roughly the whole bottom half of the computer’s underside. To make the battery as big as possible, Apple removed even the battery’s removal mechanism. Apple’s lithium polymer pack screws in and promises a shelf life of 1000 complete charges—which also means 2000 half recharges or 4000 quarter recharges—before the battery depletes to 80% capacity.

And while we didn’t have the time to test Apple’s 1000 recharge claim, we were able to run some battery tests.

First we put the system up against a day of blogging. This test was admittedly harder than Apple’s cushy benchmarking, but I wanted to see how it would stand up to true pro use. So with the screen just a hair above half brightness, Wi-Fi on, Bluetooth off, backlit keyboard on, discrete graphics on, heavy web browsing and occasional Photoshop work, we achieved 3 hours 57 minutes of run time.

Should we be pissed? After all, Apple offers 7-8 hours in their ads! That’s your call. In truth, we’ve found that most laptops hit about half their rated battery life under real world conditions (cough, netbooks, cough). If we can only cover our ears and hum through Apple’s latest marketing campaign, we’re actually fairly pleased with about 4 hours of heavy use from a fully loaded 17-inch laptop—especially since that metric includes no real compromises to our workflow.

We also wanted to simulate watching a movie on the plane. So we played back an MPEG4 with the screen at half brightness, discrete graphics off, backlit keyboard off, Wi-Fi off, Bluetooth off and headphones in. We received 4 hours 39 minutes of run time. That’s nearly two hours longer* than we received from the MBP15, and 2 hours 30 minutes longer than we received from the MB13. That’s basically the difference between watching one movie and watching two.

*The previous MBP tests had Wi-Fi on, the backlit keyboard on and speakers on. These alterations should account for a small amount of the increase, but my no means a majority. The 17-inch unit also has an SSD, but these non-spinning drives don’t necessarily mean power savings.

For the Lazy Readers Needing a Summary

A 17-inch notebook has never been designed for the mainstream consumer. But then again, nothing about this MacBook Pro is aiming for the mainstream. It’s a laptop that starts at $2800, and our fully loaded test model runs a hair over $5,000. Its screen is as big as most CRT monitors from just a few years back.

The thing should feel like a beast on the couch, but it actually doesn’t. It’s almost frightening how quickly you adjust, appreciating the extra screen space while disregarding that this system is supposed to be a “laptop” in name only.

If you can get over the purported 8 hours of battery life and settle for longevity around half that number, you’ll be welcomed with a laptop that feels like a desktop but is actually a laptop. It’s a Cadillac that you can just about park, a triple cheeseburger in the bun of a double, a stocky man in a well-tailored suit. And we’re liking it. We just can’t help but ask, why can’t Apple fit a 256GB SSD or 8GB of RAM—or even a 4+ hour battery—into a 15-inch MBP?



It’s a big honking computer in a smallish package



As with the other unibody systems, the MBP17 runs cooler and quieter than past MacBooks



Battery life is reasonable, but will fall short for pro users looking for a true day of use



Apple’s Toshiba SSD upgrade is pricey for its performance



There’s no easy pop-off bottom panel like in other unibody models

External Sources [ifixit, Xbench]

Google Finally Brings Some Of Their Services Together

This article was written on August 28, 2006 by CyberNet.

A little while ago I signed up to have Google manage my email accounts because I wanted to take advantage of their excellent spam filtering. It looks like they are beginning to go beyond managing your business’s emails and want to do much more.

As you can see in the screenshot above there are a few other services available to me now: chat, calendar, and domain web pages. The real question is where are the collaborative services that Google currently offers such as Spreadsheets and Writely? I think some smaller businesses would really find those useful being integrated into the new list of services. Larger businesses, however, probably wouldn’t want to risk having their information located on a server that they don’t own.

Google really needs to be on top of things because other companies, like Zoho, could step in and offer features that would be appealing to large corporations. Maybe Zoho would sell a server with their whole productivity suite on it. That way you could have full control of the server and the documents all while giving the entire office access to a planner, chat, word processor, spreadsheet, and presentation applications.

I also believe that Zoho’s services are beyond what Google has to offer for Online Office alternatives. Google Spreadsheets couldn’t even open one of my documents because it said the file used more than 50,000 cells (which it definitely has less than that) but Zoho had no problem. Google should be worried that a company, like Yahoo, will snatch Zoho up and then be way ahead of them in an instant. This competition is good for us because it just means we will see better products at little to no cost. :)

Thanks for the tip Ed!
Google Apps For Your Domain Homepage

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Researchers use nano-origami to build tiny 3D devices

MIT researchers are developing a new technique to create simple 3D structures out of nanoscale materials. Called “nano-origami,” the kids are essentially using traditional micro- and nano-fabrication techniques to make 2D objects, at which point they are folded into pre-determined shapes. The folds can be induced by a number of means, including metal deposits (usually chromium), helium ions, and by running electricity through gold wires embedded in the material. While the process is still in its infancy (and all these options only work to a point) a simple 3D nanoscale capacitor has already been built. The current model has only one fold, but the researchers are hoping to increase the number of folds — the more folds, they point out, the better the storage potential. Video after the break.

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Researchers use nano-origami to build tiny 3D devices originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:13:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Softbank to give 8GB iPhones away for free

Softbank is launching a promotion that involves giving away an 8GB iPhone 3G with a new contract.

(Credit: Apple)

Softbank Mobile, the iPhone carrier in Japan, plans to introduce a new program Friday that will give some iPhones away for free with a new two-year contract.

The 8GB iPhone will …

Originally posted at News – Apple

Is your DISH Network DTVPal DVR having issues?

Crickey! DISH Network’s hotly anticipated DTVPal DVR — which, by the way, is the first standalone OTA HD DVR to come out in years — seems to be causing all sorts of frustration amongst owners. So much, in fact, that DISH now has engineers trying to replicate problems and issue firmware updates; in the meanwhile, the box has suddenly “sold out” from the DTVPal website. A whole swath of users over at AVSForum have reported erratic freezing, reboots and scheduling gaffs, and DISH is candidly admitting that replacement units are apt to have the same issues. In other words, those experiencing quirks have little choice but to wait things out until a solution is found and an update is distributed. Have you run into any issues with your box? Everything humming along smoothly? Tell us, dear readers.

[Thanks, Joshua]

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Is your DISH Network DTVPal DVR having issues? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mapping robots equipped with visual vocab filters for more accurate mapping

Mapping robots have been tooling around the earth for quite some time, but a new development in their tech seems to be leading them in the direction of far more accurate results. In general, these mapping bots scan the territory they are in, but often have trouble recognizing a location they have previously seen because of incidental changes, such as the addition of a car here and there. The research team, working in Oxford, England, has worked out a way to get the robot to “ignore” such negligible variables, by having it assign identifiers, in the form of words, as it trucks along the terrain. The robot can assign up to a thousand words every two seconds to a location as it moves, with related words linked together as a “bag of words” so that if it revisits a location and sees a bicycle seat and a bicycle wheel, it identifies this bag of word as one item, preventing the bot from attaching too much significance to several missing items. The robot is currently set to map a 1,000 km piece of land in Oxford, which would apparently be the largest stretch ever by a bot. Check the video after the break (warning: it autoplays!)

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Mapping robots equipped with visual vocab filters for more accurate mapping originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mobui Audience Chat: Socialize while watching TV

If you’re a couch potato, there’s now a way for you to exercise your brain and socialize, a little bit, while watching TV.

Mobui, a mobile-application developer that acquired Action Engine awhile back, announced Thursday the launch of Mobui Audience Chat.

Basically, this is a mobile app that …

MacBook Air hinge defect not covered by Apple’s warranty?

Our rocky history with the MacBook Air Rev. A has been well documented, and while Apple would very much like us to forget all about it and plop down another $1,800 for the much-improved Rev. B, not everybody has that sort of birthday money to throw around. Reports of cracked hinges on the laptop are nothing new, but we always assumed Apple would eventually ‘fess up to the problem and comp those repairs. Sadly, that doesn’t seem to be the case, and we just got another report of a hapless MacBook Air owner who has a broken hinge that Apple says will cost $800 to repair, despite the fact the laptop is under warranty. Our own MacBook Air Rev. A had the exact same problem — the hinge becomes loose over time, then suddenly catches and cracks from normal use, it’s not from undue stress — and Apple did the repair for free, but only after we escalated the issue to a manager, who let us know how very nice of them that was. From reading various reports, that seems the exception to Apple’s repair policy, which lists this sort of damage as “accidental,” and we’re wondering how widespread this issue may be. If you or a loved one has been affected, hit up the poll below and pour out your heart in comments. If you’re unscathed or MBA-free, feel free to show very little compassion to your fellow man. Wiggle hinge and broken hinge video is after the break.

[Thanks, Alex, and sorry for your loss! Photo courtesy of LanDung2008]

View Poll

Read – Apple Discussions forum thread
Read – MacRumors forum thread
Read – Crashzone’s link roundup

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MacBook Air hinge defect not covered by Apple’s warranty? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 15:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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