Hasta La Gadget!

Gateway seems to be on a roll with new product announcements lately. Tonight the company’s unveiled a new NV series of laptops with one-touch backup and powersaving features. Let’s get down to business: the 15.6-inch laptop’s got an LED-backlit display with 1366 x 768 widescreen resolution, up to 4GB DDR2 RAM and 320GB HDD, DVD optical drive, 802.11a/b/g/Draft-N, multi-card reader, VGA and HDMI out, four USB 2.0, 6-cell battery, and Windows Vista Home Premium. Fanciful color choices? We got you covered: NightSky Black, Midnight Blue, Cherry Red, and Coffee Brown. Doling out $499 will net you a 2.1 GHz AMD Athlon 64 with Radeon HD 3200 graphics, while the $599 option comes with 2.1GHz Intel Core 2 Duo with GMS 4500MHD. Full press release and another glimpse of the laptop after the break.

Continue reading Gateway adds the 15.6-inch NV series to its laptop lineup

Filed under: Laptops

Gateway adds the 15.6-inch NV series to its laptop lineup originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 25 Jun 2009 00:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It didn’t take long for Garmin to get into gear, once it acknowledged the firmware update had ultimately brought ruin to its nüvi 7×5 series GPS units. The company’s released a new software update that should provide a fix — it should be available now via its WebUpdater. If you’re one of those whose device won’t even turn on anymore, there’s also a support section online for requesting a return authorization to have it repaired under warranty. Garmin acknowledged a few other devices that may be affected, including 800 series, 8×5 series, zūmo 660, and GPSMAP 620 / 640. Those will all be getting updates “in the near future.”

Continue reading Garmin issues patch to exorcise brick from 7×5 series GPS

Filed under: GPS

Garmin issues patch to exorcise brick from 7×5 series GPS originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 22:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The Motorola HX1 could raise the standard for noise cancellation on a Bluetooth headset. As we’ve reported before, the HX1 uses a bone-conduction microphone in severely noisy areas to extract your voice straight from your skull, thus eliminating noise. The special bone mic is the little nub on the right hand side of the in-ear piece shown at left.

We could swear we’ve seen this before, but nonetheless, Microsoft’s Windows blog has unveiled what it’s calling the official Windows 7‘s packaging — as in, this it what we’ll be seeing in stores when it launches this fall. It’s apparently 37 percent lighter and has a 50 percent better econometrics score over the Vista box, which we can’t help but draw mental parallels to the platform’s overall performance and mindshare improvements. See it for yourself in the gallery below — couldn’t hurt to get a peek now at what you’ll be picking up come October 22nd.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Microsoft rolls out Windows 7 packaging originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 24 Jun 2009 21:08:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPhone, of course, is more than the sum of its parts, but the cost of individual components adds up–to $178.96, to be exact.

A new analysis by iSuppli details the cost of the iPhone 3GS and the motley collection of chips inside.

The entry-level (16GB) version of the iPhone 3GS carries a BOM (bill of materials) cost of $172.46 and a manufacturing expense of $6.50, for a total of $178.96, said Andrew Rassweiler, director and principal analyst, teardown services, for iSuppli, in a statement.

Apple iPhone 3GS major components and cost drivers

(Credit: iSuppli)

Service providers are paying more for the low-end iPhone 3G S than the original iPhone 3G, according to Rassweiler. “Although the retail price of the 16GB iPhone 3GS is $199, the same as for the 8GB version of the original iPhone 3G, the actual price of the phone paid by the service provider is considerably higher, reflecting the common wireless industry practice of subsidizing the upfront cost of a mobile phone and then making a profit on subscriptions,” he said.

And what are the major cost drivers? The 16GB flash memory chip is the priciest at $24–and reflects the rising cost of flash chips due to supply constraints, according to iSuppli. This part is also available from Samsung. So there could be some second-sourcing (sourcing the part from a second chip supplier) in the future.

The next rung in the cost ladder is the 3.5-inch display module and touch-screen assembly, at $19.95 and $16, respectively.

Below this, is the main Samsung applications processor. Priced at $14.46, it is the fourth most costly component in the iPhone 3GS. …

Originally posted at Nanotech – The Circuits Blog