Hasta La Gadget!

In very short order, MSI has gone from a faceless manufacturer of other people’s hardware to a recognized brand that makes some very interesting kit. It started with the little Wind netbook, but now MSI’s MacBook Air-alike, the X-Slim, has come to the US.

The X-Slim is, as the name suggests, thin. At just a shade under an inch thick it’s not MacBook Air thin (0.76 inches) but it’ll slide into a bag easily enough. The five-pound machine also has a 15.6-inch screen (1366 x 768), 320GB hard drive and a hefty 4GB RAM. On top of that it doubles the Air’s number USB ports to two, adds an SD card reader and has both Bluetooth and a webcam. In short. everything you need.

But there’s more. Because there is no built-in optical drive, MSI throws an external one into the box, and there’s also a real graphics card in the shape of the ATI HD 4330 and an HDMI port. The only thing that might put you off is the CPU, and Intel SU3500 running at a stately 1.4GHz. All for $900.

If I was ever in the market for a Windows laptop, I would probably take a close look at this one.

Product page [Amazon. Thanks, Mark!]

The problem with your product not existing is that it’s hard to make money off of it, and after a while, would-be buyers start to hate you and everything you stand for. On the plus side, redesign costs hover near zero, so why not play around and shoot for the moon with wild specs that we’ll likely never have the opportunity to own? As far as we can tell, South Korea’s MIU is no closer to launching its do-everything HDPC than it was a year and a half ago — and if anything, they’ve actually managed to regress a bit since they actually had a real live prototype back then. Anyway, the latest round of virtu-changes gives us a larger primary display that’s up to 1024 x 600 (we’ll take all the resolution we can get since the $900 flavor is supposed to run XP), a grand total of three cameras, integrated GPS, HDMI out, and a T-DMB tuner. Strangely, the MID’s phone face has taken on a distinctly E90 accent, right down to the inexplicable S60 screen shot used in the mockup — but rest assured, you’ll be able to buy, sell, and buy an E90 again before you’ll be able to get your paws on the HDPC, which MIU says it’s shopping around to distributors. We’re keeping our easily-dashed hopes in check.

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

MIU’s vaporware HDPC now looking like a Nokia E90, but less buyable originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Aug 2009 04:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just received a pair of pics from “next week’s” Target Ad. As has been heavily rumored, the Xbox 360 60GB Pro system will be cut to $250 while the 120GB Elite will drop to $300. Knowing that Target’s weekly ads run from Sunday to Saturday we fully expect to see the new pricing go into effect on Sunday the 30th. One more image after the break.

[Thanks, Tyce]

Continue reading Xbox 360 Pro and Elite price cuts confirmed in Target ad for next week

Filed under: Gaming

Xbox 360 Pro and Elite price cuts confirmed in Target ad for next week originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 Aug 2009 02:26:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Electronics and small, potentially lethal bouts of combustion go together like peas in a pod, but you know phones — they’re always branching out, conquering new markets, getting smarter, and doing things they’ve never done before. Take the common exploding battery, for instance; what happens when that trick gets played out? One creative option would be to find the closest source of natural gas and ignite it from afar, which is what one New York gentleman’s Sony Ericsson (a classic P910i, we believe) has taken to doing. It seems that the phone somehow triggers the burners on his Magic Chef range to ignite when it’s called — in fact, they don’t just light up, they go straight to the hellish “HI” setting, as the appliance’s display is eager to point out — and other phones tested have incited similar effects. For its part, Maytag (Magic Chef’s parent company) says “this situation is highly unusual,” so we wouldn’t freak out about setting our phones on unlit ranges just yet — unless you’ve already got a healthy fear of burning your $500 phone to a crisp for other unrelated reasons.

[Via Yahoo! Tech]

Filed under: Cellphones

Deprived of a defective battery, phone resorts to remotely starting oven to satisfy pyromania originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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

Microsoft has decided to let users remove or disable the WGA notifications, but they didn’t make it easy! They could have made some simple tool that you could download or even a patch, but no they make you go through and do the dirty work. Here are the steps that you need to take to DISABLE the notifications (removing the WGA checking is a long process):

1. Log on to the computer by using an account that has administrative permissions.
2. Make sure that the WGA Notifications version that exists on the computer is a pilot version. The version format for the pilot version is 1.5.0532.x. In this case, you can uninstall versions 527-532 only. For example, you can uninstall versions that range from 1.5.0527.0 to 1.5.0532.2. To find the WGA Notifications version, follow these steps:
   1. Click Start, and then click Control Panel.
   2. Double-click Add or uninstall Programs, locate and then click Windows Genuine Advantage Notifications, and then click Click here for support information.
   3. In the Support Info dialog box, verify the version number, and then click Close.
3. Rename the following files by changing the extension to .old:
   • Rename %Windir%\system32\WgaLogon.dll to %Windir%\system32\WgaLogon.old
   • Rename %Windir%\system32\WgaTray.exe to %Windir%\system32\WgaTray.old
4. Restart the computer.

I would post the instructions for removing WGA as well but those are much much longer. If you want those instructions then you can follow the article Microsoft had posted on disabling/removing WGA. God speed to you!

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