Updates across all Toshiba laptops offer up a vast number of configurations, but highlights include a new 3D laptop and a unique way to use your notebook’s speakers.
Peripherals maker introduces home energy management gear aimed at cutting stand-by power from electronics and providing more info on home energy use. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-11128_3-20007624-54.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Green Tech/a/p
We’re no strangers to Toshiba’s new T200 Series ultrathin laptops — heck, we even spotted the slim portables lounging around at Computex a few weeks ago — but Tosh is finally giving up the full specs, pricing and availability. The 11.6-inch T215 may look and feel like a netbook at 3.3 pounds, but it’s got grown-up specs, including AMD Athlon II Neo single or dual-core processors, ATI integrated graphics, up to 320GB of storage space and 2GB of DDR3 RAM. The larger 13-inch T235 has similar AMD options, including Athon II Neo and Turion II Neo processors, but also works in Intel’s Pentium dual-core CPUs. Though rather oddly, the 3.9-pound laptop won’t be available with those new Core ULV processors like it is in the UK. Oh, and just to refresh your memory, the new laptops are available in black, red and white and have the same, sturdy chiclet keyboards as the Mini NB305. Both models will be available on June 20 and will start at $469.99. That price sounds mighty good to us, but we will reserve judgment until we get these in for a full review. Hit the break for the full PR and the gallery below for some hands-on shots.
Gallery: Toshiba Satellite T200 Series
Continue reading Toshiba Satellite T200 Series makes its U.S. debut, starts at $470
Toshiba Satellite T200 Series makes its U.S. debut, starts at $470 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Stock of Sony’s premier new compact system camera is still pretty scarce on the ground, but British photography retailer Jessops has managed to round up a batch and is ready to ship you one right this minute. Provided, that is, that you’re equipped with £589 ($867) and a lusting for the silver variety of the NEX-5. The swarthy variant and the kit that includes a 16mm pancake lens are not yet ready for their time in the spotlight, but you can pre-order them now as well. Or, should your needs not stretch to quite such stratospheric heights, peek out the NEX-3, which can already be had from US e-tailers at far saner price tags. See the mini shooter in-store after the break.
[Thanks, David]
Continue reading Sony NEX-5 pops up in UK for £589, no waiting required
Sony NEX-5 pops up in UK for £589, no waiting required originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 07:37:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Canon isn’t the only game in town when it comes to hacking camera firmware. The famous CHDK firmware hacks now have a rival, at least if you are shooting with a Panasonic GH1, and especially if you are using the Micro Four Thirds camera to shoot video.
The hack, called PTool, doesn’t add nearly as many features as the Canon hacks, but what it does is startling. With PTool, you can up the video bitrate of the GH1 from a pedestrian 20Mbit to 32MBit in AVCHD. If you opt for Motion JPEG (MJPEG), you can shoot at an astonishing 50 Mbit/sec at a full 1080p. This, according to testers, offers better quality footage than you get from the EOS 5D MkII. Above you can see an example. To view it in its full HD glory, click through to the Vimeo page
There’s more. You can choose to encode at a frame-rate of 24p (24 fps) for footage that looks like film. This works without “pulldown”, which is a way of finagling the amount of frames you have by doubling some of them to convert to different frame rates.
You can also, if you are feeling brave, enable short shots to encode at a crazy 100Mbit/sec, which further decreases compression from the raw sensor data. And you will need to be brave. These hacks are still experimental and choosing settings is a balance between quality and stability.
There are other tweaks to be made. The 30-minute limit on video shots has been removed (although this is probably moot as no movie has shots of more than a few minutes anyway), you can change the language of the camera interface and you can use third party batteries: the Panasonics actually perform a check to see if you have an official battery, forcing you into paying high prices (I paid €80, or almost $100, for a spare battery for my GF1).
How do you perform this magic? Following the instructions on the GH1 hackers wiki, you download the Windows PTool software (which works on the Mac under emulation). Then you download the latest official firmware from Panasonic and load it into PTool.
This gives a simple list of possible tweaks, and you just check the boxes next to the ones you want and then save the new firmware to an SD card. Next, the scary part begins.
This is where PTool hack differs greatly from the Canon CHDK. With the CHDK, the custom firmware remains on the SD card ind is loaded in every time the camera starts up. If you decide you want to revert, you just format the card, or swap in another, and you’re back to normal. It is completely risk-free.
With the Panasonic, you actually have to flash the firmware onto the camera, completely replacing the official firmware. You cannot revert to a clean, factory-fresh status, although you can re-apply the PTool firmware with all of the tweaks switched off. This has the side effect of giving you a non-standard firmware version number, a tell-tale sign that you have been up to no good. This may or may not invalidate your warranty.
Good news for owners of the Panasonic GF1, too, the awesome little mirrorless compact that you and I both love. This hack will work on our camera, too, although with one difference. The GF1’s sensor is physically incapable of shooting at full 1080p resolution. Everything else should work, though.
Beginners GH1 Custom Firmware Guide [EOS HD Wiki]
PTool FAQ, including feature list [DVX User forum. Thanks to Paul Weber]
The PTool Manual [DVX User forum]
Why the (hacked) Panasonic GH1 is a better video camera than the Canon5DMk2 [Jay Shaffer]
3rd Party firmware transforms wimpy GH1 into Optimus Prime [Philip Bloom]
Video [Andrew Reid/Vimeo]
We’ve already gone a bit more in-depth with the likes of Kinect Adventures, Dance Galaxy, and Your Shape, but we also had a couple brief thoughts on Microsoft’s motion-centric sports pack and cartoon racer. With Joy Ride, you’d think holding your arms out pantomiming steering would be burdensome, but in our time with Joy Ride, it really never became an issue. In fact, the one control aspect we were hesitant about going into the race — power sliding — turned out to be quite effortless. It made perfect sense tilting our bodies around sharp corners. It’s during the windows where stunts were allowed that we discovered the full-bodied parallel to button mashing. Seriously, people were instinctively ducking jumping, twisting, and flailing hoping for some bonus points.
As for Kinect Sports, Microsoft wasn’t showing much of its track-and-field centered Kinect Sports title, but what we saw didn’t fill us with confidence. The bowling game was particularly troubling, with numerous very random throws (that ended up in the gutter a lane over) and a very finicky depth-perception that wouldn’t let us really wind up or step forward very effectively. Meanwhile, the 200 meter hurdles worked just fine, but it was also a pretty simplistic running-in-place experience that was possible a couple decades ago with the NES’s Power Pad — although Kinect makes it a lot harder to cheat. Miller vs. Miller video after the break.
Gallery: E3 2010 – Kinect Sports preview
Gallery: E3 2010 – Joy Ride preview
Continue reading Kinect Sports and Joy Ride previewed, in brief (video)
Kinect Sports and Joy Ride previewed, in brief (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 07:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Behold a huge chess board with pieces made entirely out of Lego Mindstorm parts–more than 100,000 of them. It’s called Monster Chess, and it’s awesome.
Ah, here we go, Samsung’s other cellphone with an integrated projector just got an official launch date. The Galaxy Beam (codename: Halo) with its 3.7-inch Super AMOLED display is now slated to hit Singapore in July. That means that the European and broader launch across Asia should be just around the corner if Samsung’s claims from Feburary hold true. At launch, the world’s first Android phone with a built-in DLP pico projector will be served version 2.1 of Google’s confectionary delight. Specwise, we’re talking 7.2Mbps HSPA data on 900/1900/2100MHz and quad-band GSM/EDGE, Bluetooth 3.0, 802.11n WiFi, an 8 megapixel autofocus camera with flash (front-facing VGA) and HD video recording, A-GPS, FM Radio, and an 1,800mAH battery. Memory is confusingly listed as “4Gb + 2Gb + 1Gb + 16Gb MoviNAND” made worse by no mention of microSD though it was definitely there when we went hands-on with Beam at Mobile World Congress. Specs after the break.
Continue reading Samsung Galaxy Beam: world’s first Android projector phone on sale in July
Samsung Galaxy Beam: world’s first Android projector phone on sale in July originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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Along with the brand new Mac Mini, Apple has made another, less surprising change to the Apple Store. You can now pre-order the iPhone 4 for delivery or in-store pick-up on June 24th, Stores will open at 7AM, presumably to let people build up big queues and sleep outside the stores on Thursday night, but still get to work on time the next morning. Curiously, the white iPhone 4 doesn’t appear to be available at launch.
For those of us outside the first-tier countries that get the new hardware on launch day, take comfort in the fact that we can download the iOS 4 update on June 21st (next Monday) and get many of the new features free. Sure, we won’t be able to run iMovie, or get some Face Time with other iPhone 4 owners, nor even experience the magical, revolutionary new rubber technology of iPhone Bumpers, but we will get multitasking, folders, iBooks and, erm, spell-checking. Rejoice.
iPhone 4 pre-order [Apple]
iOS4 [Apple]
See Also:
Even as the Kinect-exclusive Dance Central got certain Engadget editors into the groove, it didn’t resonate with all of us, so we headed downstairs for a peek at Your Shape, to get in touch with our inner Zen — and beat things up, of course. We had a blast punching blocks, though the system only recognized strikes that crossed our own body, and some editors were tripped up by the mirrored virtual doubles the game generates. Actual yoga poses were far better done, with Kinect accurately tracking our moves with little perceptible delay. Unlike in Wii Fit, which merely measures center of balance, a joint gauge of sorts (you can see the angle of your bones) let us readily tell when we were slouching or off-kilter, and adjust our posture respectively. We broke a sweat, looked like doofuses and had fun doing it — what more could you want? Video after the break.
Your Shape for Kinect preview: the path to enlightenment, one virtual step at a time (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 06:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
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