Hasta La Gadget!

Filed under: Laptops

Video: MSI X-Slim X340 emerges from office envelope originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 01:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Details are starting to come into focus on some of the finer points of Windows Mobile 6.5’s launch later this year after February’s announcement at MWC, and if you had to boil the news down to just two words, they’d be “pretty” and “support.” As “pretty” goes, it’s been announced that Microsoft has partnered up with Design Museum London and the Council of Fashion Designers of America to offer designer themes for 6.5-based devices — colors, wallpaper, and the like — with the first designs coming from fashion dude Isaac Mizrahi. If that’s not good enough for ya, the company will be releasing a Theme Generator later this year that’ll let you customize colors of UI elements on your device, pair it up with wallpaper culled from your own photo collection, and send the batch straight to your phone.

Over to the “support” front, over 25 companies will be announcing their full support for the Windows Marketplace at CTIA this week, including EA Mobile, Facebook (pictured), Gameloft, MySpace, Namco, Pandora, and Sling Media. To help improve the Marketplace’s public image, Microsoft is tweaking some policies, too: developers will now be able to issue unlimited updates to their apps free of charge, and users will have up to 24 hours to “return” apps they don’t like (very cool). Notably, Facebook’s new app will be available in April, offering direct video uploads straight to your wall if you’re into that sort of thing (you know who you are).

Finally, Microsoft’s issued a clarification regarding upgrades from 6.1 to 6.5: devices that are already out in the marketplace with a minimum of 128MB of RAM and a 400MHz processor or better are theoretically capable of being upgraded — it’s all up to licensees to decide whether they want to go to the trouble of offering the upgrades to their customers. Let’s hope, shall we?

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Microsoft announces Windows Marketplace partners, tweaked policies, designer WinMo 6.5 themes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 31 Mar 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on July 25, 2007 by CyberNet.

On my laptop that runs Vista (with the Aero Glass enabled) I receive about 4-hours of battery life on full screen brightness. I would say that is pretty darn good, but I can often squeeze out an additional hour or two if I use the free Vista Battery Saver.

This program is designed very well, and with it running you’ll be able to disable the Aero interface and the sidebar if your battery level gets too low. The Aero interface is claimed to reduce your battery life by 1-4% of what it would normally be, so disabling it along with the sidebar should definitely give you some extra time when you need it.

Click to Enlarge

Also, a new feature in Vista Battery Saver lets you choose a different power plan for Vista anytime your computer isn’t plugged into an outlet. This is nice because you can send Vista into Power Saver mode when using your battery, and have it automatically switch back to a more performance-focused state when you plug back in. And from personal experience I can get an extra hour of battery life just by using the Power Saver mode, so this is a very welcomed addition to the application.

All you have to do is download the Vista Battery Saver, install the program, and set it up once. From then on it will automatically start with Windows, and will quietly do all of the work in the background while running in the System Tray.

Vista Battery Saver Homepage
Vista Battery Saver Download

Thanks to Download Squad and gHacks for the heads up!

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I drooled at the idea of an iPhone Pro with slide keyboard and big honkin’ camera, but let’s face it: It’s probably never going to happen. So—using logic—what will the next iPhone look like?

Probably something like this: A flatter, even more tapered and slender version of the current one. After all, if you have a winning formula, why radically change it?

Matt says that he would be disappointed if it ends being something like this, just a version of the current model. I’m going to be pessimist and expect just an evolution of the current design. The market keeps growing with what they have now, so it won’t make sense for them to go through a radical design change just yet. And besides this point, there are at least three generations of smooth evolution and tweaks in Apple hardware designs until something completely new comes along (witness the iMacs, for example.)

Not that it really matters: As long as they include a bigger camera sensor while reducing the thickness to iPod touch levels, I’d be happy. But who knows, perhaps there will be a radical departure. What do you think? Do you have any original idea? Send it to us. [Dotdosh]

Got a Mini DisplayPort equipped laptop or video card and need to connect it to something… um, not Mini DisplayPort? If you’ve got a crisp Andrew Jackson, then Monoprice has an adapter for you with HDMI, DVI and VGA outs, all of which are now shipping for $14.25 and up. Unless you don’t like saving money, nor enjoy your peripherals actually working with your new machine, it’ll be hard to find a problem with this.

[Thanks, Phil]

Filed under: Displays, Home Entertainment, Peripherals

Mini DisplayPort to HDMI adapters now available for under $20 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 30 Mar 2009 21:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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