Hasta La Gadget!

It won’t win any beauty contests, and you’ll probably never get your hands on one, but you’ve got to admire the ruggedness of the just-announced Juniper Systems TK6000 handheld computer. Made for demanding field work, this toughie can withstand multiple 5-foot drops on concrete, is waterproof and dustproof, and works in extreme temperatures. My delicate little iPhone is a wimp compared to this one.

The TK6000 runs Windows Mobile 6.1, and works with off-the-shelf apps as well as custom applications. It’s got a 624-MHz Marvel PXA270 processor, 128MB of RAM, 1GB of storage, and a microSD/SDHC slot. And it runs for 32 hours on a set of batteries. For connectivity to the home office, it’s got Wi-Fi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth, and an optional 2.5G GSM cellular data modem expansion pack. To learn about customizing it for your industry, check out Juniper’s site.

Hot on the heels of its first quarterly profit in three years (thanks to Intel, strangely enough), AMD is launching a new pair of desktop processors today that hit for under a buck twenty (amongst a few others). The $99 Phenom II X2 555 Black Edition is the company’s quickest dual-core desktop CPU to date at 3.2GHz, while the Athlon II X4 635 is expected to be one of the least expensive quad-core chips around. Both slabs of silicon hit the test bench over the weekend, and as you may expect, no one was particularly blown away. Of course, AMD never set out to shock and awe with this duo, but the performance-per-dollar ratio was downright beautiful. We’ll spare you the nitty-gritty details (all the bar charts you can handle are just below), but suffice it to say, these two are certainly worth a look if you’re fixing to build a low-end, low-cost tower for… um, your mother. Yeah, her.

Read – Hot Hardware
Read – AnandTech
Read – Computer Shopper
Read – Tom’s Hardware
Read – Overclocker’s Club
Read – ExtremeTech

AMD launches new Phenom II and Athlon II CPUs right onto the test bench originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Michael Dell may not be a fan of netbooks, but you wouldn’t know that from the newest Mini 10. Joining the current Mini 10v, Dell’s completely overhauled the chassis and added Intel’s new Pine Trail processor. But that’s not all: come February the little laptop will be available with Broadcom’s Crystal HD accelerator, which promises full HD playback on a high-res 1366 x 768 display. But does the $425 package rid us of our tireless complaints that Atom can’t handle HD, and does it rival netbooks based on NVIDIA’s Ion platform? And perhaps more importantly, can we count on the Mini 10 to be a valuable member of the growing Pine Trail netbook fraternity when it comes to battery life and ergonomics? Read on to find out!

Continue reading Dell Mini 10 with Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator review

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Dell Mini 10 with Broadcom Crystal HD Accelerator review originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 25 Jan 2010 11:05:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on August 11, 2008 by CyberNet.

Windows only
A few months ago we tried out Digsby, and our verdict was that it’s one of the best cross-network messenger clients available. The only downside was that when it came to the performance of Digsby things weren’t so pleasant. Some of the commenters on our article noticed RAM usage spiking to 70MB and above as they were using the program, and this disappointed a lot of people since they liked the appearance and functionality of the messenger.

I’ve been closely following the Digsby blog, and they posted some great news last Friday night. Right now they are preparing for a major new release that has both performance and RAM optimizations that should solve the remaining qualms. This all comes due to a reworking of the application’s architecture, which I’m very grateful for!

My first-hand experience is that the new version cut my memory usage by over 50% as seen in the screenshot above. I use Google Talk, Windows Live, and Twitter services with Digsby, and overall it only used about 27MB of my memory. That’s not bad considering the previous release ate up over 50MB with the same accounts.

Before we tell you how you can get this pre-release version checkout what the developers had to say about this big milestone:

• RAM Optimization: Many people have reported that Digsby is taking 70MB – 110MB during normal use. If you leave Digsby running for a while, the memory leaks caused RAM usage to climb to 150MB+ on some systems. We completely reworked the architecture to use less memory and also improved the memory management by releasing objects when they are no longer needed. We also hunted down and eliminated numerous memory leaks. All in all, these changes lower Digsby’s RAM usage by over 50%. It should now hover in the 20MB – 50MB range depending on how many accounts you have and what you are doing at the moment. There is still more we can do and our goal is to get RAM utilization down even further!
• Performance: The changes in architecture improved the performance of simple user interface elements like buttons and menus; they now draw 2x – 3x faster! Digsby should be much more responsive now than ever before. However, while this build focused on RAM optimization, the next 1-2 builds will have a strong focus on improving “perceived performance” even more, including things like GUI response time, CPU utilization, etc.
• Firewalls and Proxy Servers: Those who have not been able to use MSN or other IM protocols due to firewall/proxy restrictions should now be able to connect without any issues.
• Crash Reporter: The new release includes a crash reporter that will ask you whether you want to send a crash log to us if Digsby should crash.
• Bug Fixes + Enhancements: Over the past two months we have added a large number of bug fixes and enhancements. There are too many to list here but we will include a full Change Log when the release is pushed to everyone.

You can grab a “testers only” version of the new Digsby from their forum, but be aware that it might not be stable (I didn’t have any problems with it though). They plan to have a full public release soon, but I’m sure some of you won’t want to wait.

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Touchgrind, the iPhone skateboarding game I briefly loved last February, could be coming to the Mac. Normally Mac games are cause for disappointment, but this one has a new angle: multi touch.

The oversized MacBook trackpad can recognize up to eleven fingers at once (we’ll leave the precise positioning of those fingers to your imagination). So far we have seem little more than fancy swipes and pinch-to-zoom, but gaming seems an obvious use for all that detection power, especially as we’re far more willing to learn new input methods for games than we are for word processors.

The Touchgrind demo, like the iPhone game, lets you ollie and kickflip your way around a course using some very intuitive finger movements. The big advantage of the MacBook is that it has a much larger screen: the lack of warning of upcoming obstacles is what made the iPhone game get frustrating very quickly. Here’s the video, with the exact same music as the iPhone demo video of the game.

To be clear, this is just a tech demo at the moment, but we’d love to see it as a cheap pick-up-and-play title for the Mac. And you know where else this game would be welcome? The Apple Tablet.

Multi-Touch Trackpad Gaming Demonstrated on MacBook [Mac Rumors]

Touchgrind for iPhone [Touchgrind/Illusion Labs]