Hasta La Gadget!

You’ve been hearing the hype about 3D TVs for months, and now you can get a look at one. The nation’s 42 Sony Style stores are offering demonstrations of the sets in mock living room environments. Put your feet up as if you were home and take a look at Sony Pictures’ Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs in 3D. Why, those meatballs are coming right at you! You’ll either be scared or hungry (if it’s lunchtime).

“Our Sony Style stores are often used as a test ground for new products and technology before they become available through our authorized retail network,” said Linda Turner, senior vice president of Sony Style retail stores.

Besides demoing the sets, Sony is also taking pre-orders. The Bravia XBR-52LX900, which is on display, offers integrated 3D with Sony’s 3D active shutter glasses and built-in 3D transmitter. The sets offer built-in Wi-Fi for access to Bravia Internet video. The complete line includes 38 models ranging in size from 22- to 60-inches. The earliest ones will be available this spring.

We’ve been itching to get our hands on the Alienware M11x ever since we first saw it at CES — it’s one of the most interesting riffs on the thin-and-light we’ve seen in a long time. Sure, it’s compact, but inside it’s got a ULV Core 2 Duo paired with a switchable NVIDIA GT335M GPU, making it one of the most powerful small laptops on the market. But power never comes cheap: the M11x starts at $799, and our tester model equipped with an upgraded 1.3GHz SU7300 Core 2 Duo and 4GB of RAM clocks in at $949. That’s pricey, but potentially worth it if you’re a serious gamer on the go. You know we had to test one and find out — let’s see if the M11x can back up those looks with performance.

Special thanks to our new favorite reader Joe Kelly, who loaned us his M11x for this review!

Continue reading Alienware M11x review

Alienware M11x review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 11:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sales of cell phones dipped slightly in 2009 overall, but not so smartphones, which surged for the year and exploded at year’s end, according to research firm Gartner.

BMW‘s first all-electric regular series production vehicle, the Megacity EV, has now been set in stone and inserted into the company’s roadmap for a commercial launch in 2012 or 2013. The Bavarian automaker has gone official with word that it plans to use its Leipzig assembly plant to produce the car and further notes that it’ll feature a similar setup to the ActiveE concept (pictured above), which is set for field testing in 2011. Essentially a 1 series that feeds off the electric grid rather than the nearest diesel pump, the ActiveE runs off an array of lithium-ion batteries á la the well liked but recently troubled Tesla Roadster, and will serve as a test mule for refining the underlying technology. Generating up to 170bhp might not sound all that impressive, but it should be more than sufficient for the urban commuters these vehicles will be aimed at. Now we just need Mercedes and Audi to match that release schedule and the electric car should finally have its day in the mainstream sun.

BMW commits to Megacity EV by 2013, will start by testing ActiveE all-electric 1 series next year originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What’s better than paying £400 ($615) for a laptop from a place that won’t tell you isn’t very forthcoming about what’s inside it? Paying that much for a laptop that then comes with a £9.99 ($15) monthly fee just to use the thing. It’s the Alex from BCC, the Broadband Computer Company (not to be confused by the Alex from Spring Design, or Alex Bushill from the BBC), a somewhat chunky looking laptop loaded with some custom layer over Linux promising an always updated, always ready, and incredibly easy to use experience. It also has a round mousepad that says “Alex” on it. The machine should be secure, shipping with a USB thumb drive that must be plugged in for it to work — something we’re guessing most people will never bother to unplug. There’s online file storage and a UI full of pretty colors, but we’re having a bit of a hard time with that cost. That said, if you’re the perpetually on-call tech support person in your family it might be a small price to pay for some peace and quiet.

Update: TheLostSwede dug through the Alex site and found a spec sheet. We’re talking 1.6GHz worth of Intel T1600 Celeron power, 1GB of memory, a 15.4-inch display driven by integrated graphics, 120GB of storage, and a DVD/RW drive. Hot stuff, readers. Hot stuff.

Continue reading BCC launches Alex, the laptop free of hassles but not monthly surcharges (video)

BCC launches Alex, the laptop free of hassles but not monthly surcharges (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 23 Feb 2010 09:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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