Hasta La Gadget!

Leander Kahney, of the Cult of Mac blog, doesn’t like this Mac-alike PC notebook. In fact, he hates it. Listen:

[…] a butt-ugly MacBook Air knockoff. It promises to be dirt cheap but misses the point by being fatter and uglier. The knockoff also has a smaller screen — 11″ instead of 13″ — runs a shit processor and has no RAM (1.6GHz Intel Atom and 1GB DDR2).

Don’t hold back, Leander. Say what you mean. The knock-off is detailed at Shanzai.com, and manages to pack in a few things not found in the MacBook Air: Two USB ports instead of one, an ethernet jack, an SD card reader and a removable battery. It’s unlikely it’ll ever come to the US, but if it does, you’ll be able to spot it by its Windows key. And the fact that, viewed from any angle but the one above-left, it’s butt-ugly.

MacBook Air Clone – Full Metal Jacket Edition [Shenzai via Cult of Mac]

Not that we had any doubt but Microsoft has made it official: Xbox 360 price cuts are coming Friday. The entry-level Arcade will remain at $200 while the top end Elite will drop to $300 from $400. The mid-range Pro (reduced to $250 from $300) will be phased out just as soon a they can eliminate stock. As a footnote to the announcement, Microsoft wants to remove all doubt about future project natal compatibility by saying it, “will work with every Xbox 360 sold today and tomorrow.” So what’s it going to be kids, PS3 Slim or Xbox 360? Blu-ray or Netflix?

Update: According to the BBC, while the Xbox 360 Elite will drop £30 to £200 in the UK, the price of the entry level Xbox 360 Arcade will actually increase to £160 from £130. Ouch.

[Via Reuters]

Filed under: Gaming

Xbox 360 price drops go global on Friday, it’s official originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 04:53:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Fanboys have been running Ubuntu on Sharp’s deceased Zaurus lineup of PDAs for years. Now Sharp makes it official with the launch of this 5-inch, 1024 x600 TFT LCD touchscreen NetWalker smartbook, aka the PC-Z1. It’s not a Zaurus per se, but the compact 161.4 x 108.7 x 19.7 ~ 24.8mm / 409g device certainly resurrects its ghost. Underpinning the device is an 800MHz Freescale i.MX515 CPU built around the ARM Cortex-A8 architecture, 512MB of memory, 4GB of on-board flash storage (with microSDHC expansion for another 16GB), 802.11b/g WiFi, 2x USB, and QWERTY keyboard going 68 percent of full-size. Sorry, no 3G data. The PC-Z1 features a 3-second quick launch, non-removable 10-hour battery, and is purposely positioned by Sharp as a taint — it ain’t quite a smartphone and ‘t ain’t quite a laptop. Good luck with that Sharp. The device is expected to hit Japan on September 25th for ¥44,800. That’s about $479 whenever it might come Stateside.

It’s worth noting that the current US ban on the import of BGA-packaged products like Freescale’s i.MX processors should not affect the import of the PC-Z1 as Akihabara News contends. As we understand it, that ban affects the import of the chips, not the systems using them and assembled elsewhere. Otherwise, Amazon wouldn’t be selling its Kindle, dig?

[Via Akihabara News and Engadget Japanese]

Read [warning: Japanese PDF]

Filed under: Handhelds, Laptops

Sharp’s 5-inch PC-Z1 NetWalker honors Zaurus legacy with touchscreen Ubuntu originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 03:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We don’t usually get into politics here, mostly because, as Murray Rothbard observed, the State is nothing more than “bandit gang writ large”. Japan has been in the interesting position of being run by the same gang since the war (with a very brief exception), but the principle stands.

Luckily, we have people like Adamu at Mutantfrog and Tobias Harris to do the heavy lifting for us. With the election coming up in mere days, I figured I had to post something though. Cue Marxy and Neojaponisme for snark when needed.

The Happiness Realization Party hits the roads with lots of waving and shouts of “onegashimasu!”.

Will the ruling establishment party get taken out by the non-ruling establishment party? Stay tuned!

Aiming a cameraphone at a computer monitor conveniently displaying names, dates, and prices of upcoming products always seems to end in sweet, sweet leakage, doesn’t it? New shots over at SprintUsers are showing some low-end noise in the mix like an orange Rumor 2 and a pair of Sammies apparently too lowly to get actual names, but the real news has to be that the long-awaited Touch Pro2 (Sprint should know better than to question HTC’s wisdom in nixing the space between “Pro” and “2” here) looks finalized for a September 8 launch. We wouldn’t freak out at the $599.99 retail price, necessarily — bear in mind that’s a totally unsubsidized, rebate-free price that few customers will actually be paying.

Interestingly, the screencap is accompanied by a PDF identified as an internal “Quick Reference Brief” for the Touch Pro2; part of the doc includes a comparison chart that pits the phone against AT&T’s LG Monaco and HTC Warhawk along with Verizon’s Omnia II, all phones that have yet to be released. Wondering where they’d get the lowdown on unannounced competitive hardware? Us, it turns out — zoom in on the chart for a good look at a super low-res Engadget logo watermarked across the Warhawk. You’re most welcome, Sprint — buy us a drink sometime and we’re square.

[Via wmpoweruser.com]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

HTC Touch Pro2 looking good for September 8 launch on Sprint originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 27 Aug 2009 02:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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