Hasta La Gadget!

In the last quarter, Chrome, Safari and Opera all set new personal bests for browser market share with 4.63, 4.46 and 2.4 percent respectively. This period marks the first time Chrome has beaten Safari to third spot, while their collective prosperity comes at the expense of IE, which continues to hemorrhage users at a rate of 0.92 percentage points a month. Microsoft’s 62.7 percent slice might still look mighty, but projections from Net Applications suggest it could shrink to below 50 percent by May of this year. Unless something magical happens. You’ll probably also want to know that Net Applications monitors incoming traffic to over 40,000 websites and generates a sample size of about 160 million unique visitors each month — making the veracity of its claims pretty robust. One hidden sign of our collective laziness: 21 percent of all users last quarter were still fulfilling their browsing needs with IE 6. For shame.

Internet Explorer losing users as other browsers set share records originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 17:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It appears that the Vaio T’s return is only the tip of a giant iceberg of refreshes coming out from Sony HQ this month. Greek e-tailer Compuland has a trio of new models listed — seemingly prematurely — for sale: the Vaio Y11 (pictured) is a relatively standard 1.3GHz Core 2 Duo SU7300 machine with 4GB of DDR3 memory and 320GB of storage, and its nomenclature seems to fit given that its specs land somewhere between the underpowered X and fully-equipped Z series. Speaking of the latter, Sony is adding a Core i5-520M to its refreshed Z line, as well as to the new 16-inch F11 model which adds a half terabyte storage drive just for kicks. The lesser Core i3-330M Arrandale chip finds a home in the new 13-inch S11 laptop, which may or may not be replacing the SR series we know and love, as well as a freshened up CW number. Hit the read links for early pricing and more details, and if you hope really hard maybe we’ll get proper announcements from the official channels some time soon.

[Thanks, SpaceCowboy1973 and Al]

Read – Compuland (VPCY11S1E)
Read – Compuland (VPCF11M1E)
Read – Compuland (VPCS11X9E)
Read – Laptopshop.nl (VPCZ11X9E)
Read – Laptopshop.nl ( VPCCW2S1E)

Sony Vaio Y11, S11 and F11 leaked ahead of launch, Z and CW series refreshed originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 15:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Already feeling the pinch of a mere 25GB per layer on a Blu-ray disc? Neither are we, but it looks like Sony and Panasonic have been busily working on ways to boost capacity nonetheless, and they’ve now devised a new method that seems to be on the fast track to becoming a standard. The best news is that it doesn’t involve a change in Blu-ray optics, but rather something called the Maximum Likelihood Sequence Estimation evaluation index (or i-MLSE — the “i’ is just for kicks, it seems), which is a new means of estimating the read error rate of discs on the fly that has apparently be made possible thanks to “recent hardware advancements.” According to Sony and Panasonic, that should now allow discs to hold up to 33.4 GB per layer, but it’s not exactly clear what that means for existing Blu-ray players (a little firmware assistance seems to at least be a conceivable option, though). There’s also no timeline for a rollout just yet, but Sony is reportedly now set to propose widespread adoption of i-MLSE to the Blu-ray Disc Association, of which it just so happens to be the leading member.

New standard could pave way for higher capacity Blu-ray discs originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 10:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on February 01, 2007 by CyberNet.

I’m sure you’ve seen Snap previews before. You must have! According to Snap, over 500,000 blogs and websites use this service.  The pop-out previews are meant to be a tool that will give readers the chance to “preview” the sites that you’re linking to without having to leave the site.  In the end, it’s supposed to save reader’s time by helping them decide if they want to click on a link. For me, it just seems to slow everything down! There’s nothing worse that pop-outs, even if it’s not an advertisement.

 A lot of the sites that I read regularly use it, and I think it’s just one of those trends that bloggers are wanting to get in on.  Everybody wants on the bandwagon. I can tell you this much, CyberNet will probably never implement this.  It’s just one of those things that gets under my skin. I thought I was standing alone on this one until I came across this article this morning.

Yes, I’m not the only one that finds Snap highly annoying, and there’s even a way to disable it! Snap creators themselves have posted a very simple way to get rid of the pop-out previews.  They’ve created a cookie to download that will disable all of the pop-outs. Just click here to download that cookie, or you can visit the Snap website and do it from there as well. Remember, if you clear your cookies, you’ll have to go back  and download the cookie again.

As I was reading through the comments on the same topic over at Lifehacker, I noticed that a commenter “barron” says that you can now set CCleaner (free system optimization and privacy tool) to keep specific cookies so that you won’t ever have to worry about losing a cookie that you use regularly. This would prevent you from having to download the snap cookie every time your cookies get cleared. I haven’t tried this for myself, but it sounds pretty useful.

So, good-riddance to Snap previews. I’ve disabled it, and now I’ll be a happy camper. Any opinions regarding this? Is it more useful, or more of an annoyance?

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Holy smokes! A ton of unannounced HP laptops and desktops just came across our desk, in addition to those Envy models we saw just a few days back. Ahead of what we presume will be their formal announcement next week right around CES, we’ve got some details on 14 new models — some more interesting than others. Now, before you get too excited, we don’t have full specs on any of these, but we do have pricing information, and here are some highlights: the 14-inch HP Pavilion dv4i, a Windows 7 laptop with a flush display and fingerprint reader that should run about $785. Up next is the 10-inch Mini 210 HD Edition, which will come in red, black, silver and blue, boast Intel’s brand new Pine Trail platform (a 1.66GHz N450 CPU), plus GMA 3150 graphics. Another goodie here is that this one is expected to ship with Broadcom’s Crystal HD video playback chip. The Mini 210 HD is expected to cost around $330. Logic Buy (the point of origin for all this info) is reporting that these models should ship on or around January 7th, though keep in mind that all of this information is extremely unofficial, so don’t blame us if it all changes. If you simply can’t get enough, hit the gallery for a look at a few of the systems, and check the rest of the story after the break.

Read – HP Pavilion dv4i
Read – Mini 210 HD
Read – Mini 210
Read – Compaq Mini CQ10
Read – HP Pavilion Elite HPE-110t
Read – HP Pavilion Elite HPE-150t
Read – HP Pavilion Elite HPE-170t
Read – HP Pavilion Elite HPE-180t

Continue reading Plethora of new HP laptops, desktops leak ahead of CES

Plethora of new HP laptops, desktops leak ahead of CES originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 02 Jan 2010 02:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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