Hasta La Gadget!

Power hungry, are you? ASUS has just the rig for you, as it just launched its newest Republic of Gamers laptop here at a CES press event. The G73hj is doing its darnedest to make every other gaming lappie out there look downright weak, with this one boasting a Core i7-720QM CPU, up to 8GB of DDR3 RAM, 8-channel HD audio, up to 1TB of HDD space and DirectX 11 compatibility thanks to the internal ATI Radeon HD 5870. You’ll also get a spacious 17.3-inch display, a 1,920 x 1,080 resolution, Blu-ray / DVD combo drive, 8-cell battery, a 2 megapixel webcam, 802.11b/g WiFi, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.1, an 8-in-1 card reader and a mini-VGA connector. Naturally, Windows 7 Home Premium will be running the show, and this thing is far from being slim and sexy. There’s no word yet on a price and release, but we’ll keep you posted.

Update: We nabbed a quick hands-on, check it out!

ASUS ROG G73jh launches with Core i7, Radeon HD 5870, bragging rights originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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CES just wouldn’t be CES without a few new introductions from LaCie, now would it? Nah. Up first from the sexiest name in storage is a fresh member of the LaCinema multimedia hard drive family, the Mini HD. Equipped with 802.11n WiFi and a penchant for serving up 1080p video, this DLNA media player boasts an HDMI output, internal hard drive, USB socket (for uploading media or playing files back from a USB drive) and an extensive list of supported codecs that includes MKV, AVC and DivX. This one should be filtering out now in the US and Europe for an undisclosed amount. Moving on, we’ve got the simply titled Network Server, which sports five drive bays, gigabit Ethernet and Windows Home Server running the show. LaCie also enables users to backup their backups via its own Wuala technology, though exact pricing and availability details won’t be revealed until later in Q1. Lastly, there’s a new trio of USB Keys, which look an awful lot like actual keys. Sadly, these aren’t ready to handle the beast that is SuperSpeed USB, but they do promise transfers as fast as 30MB/sec, and they’re also waterproof and available in sizes as large as 32GB. The company’s also throwing in 4GB of web-accessible Wuala storage for the first two years of ownership, with the CooKey and WhizKey available in 4GB, 8GB, 16GB, and 32GB capacities for $19.99 and up, up, up. The full releases are just past the break.

Continue reading LaCie serves up LaCinema Mini HD, Network Server and Wuala-infused USB keys

LaCie serves up LaCinema Mini HD, Network Server and Wuala-infused USB keys originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 16:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There’s no hiding the fact that the first images of the Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid amazed us, and now after seeing the device we can say the feeling was well-founded — the detachable resistive multitouch display worked better than we ever expected for such an early preproduction unit. Check the mouthwatering gallery below and then head over the break for full impressions and a few videos showing off the U1’s finer points.

Continue reading Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid hands-on and impressions

Lenovo IdeaPad U1 Hybrid hands-on and impressions originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We just got a chance to play with Lenovo’s Skylight smartbook, which runs the company’s new Skylight lightweight Linux OS on a 1Ghz Snapdragon. It’s an impressively clean little package, with a 10.1-inch display, an integrated WWAN card, and a neat flip-out USB thumb drive for housing user data. Ports-wise you’re not looking at much apart from mini-HDMI out, an SD card slot, and a second USB jack, although there is an internal microSD slot for more storage on top of the 8GB system drive. The idea is that all your personal info will live on the thumb drive, allowing users to just plug into any other Skylight and go — and there were some hints that accessories like Skype handsets would eventually fit into that slot and connect over USB. As for the OS itself, the six-panel interface was certainly workable, although clearly not production-ready: it managed to load webpages and do some light Twittering, although there was some stuttering along the way. We’re big fans of the chiclet keyboards Lenovo’s got going here, but the mulitouch touchpad still needs some work. The biggest sell of this thing over a netbook seems to be its promised 12 hours of battery life and its trim body, but at $499 (when most netbooks are at least $100 cheaper) we aren’t sure we get it. We can’t get that thinness of it out of our head, but we’ll be waiting on the AT&T subsided pricing on this one. Video walkthrough after the break.

Continue reading Lenovo Skylight hands-on and impressions (video)

Lenovo Skylight hands-on and impressions (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Jan 2010 15:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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