Hasta La Gadget!

We told you NVIDIA’s all-new superpowered mobile GPU would only fit inside jumbo-sized cases and here’s your proof. The Clevo Style Note D900 is neither stylish nor much of a note taker, but boy it’s a big, bad gaming machine. That trifecta of fans you see above is cooling the GTX 480M chip as well as a 2.93GHz Core i7-940 — a CPU that’s designed for desktop duty from what we can gather. You won’t be shocked to discover this 17-inch desktop replacement rather burned the feathers off some similarly juiced up high fliers, but the difference is of course that laptops like the ASUS G73JH are actually available to buy, as opposed to a pipe dream demo machine like the Clevo. All the same, you might wanna check out this sneak peak before HH does a full review.

Update: Turns out Sager is already offering to furnish you with a GTX 480M-equipped rig that looks very much like this one, including a selection of desktop-class Core i7s. [Thanks, Barry]

NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480M breaks cover, frags competition in 3DMark originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Jun 2010 17:43:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Hot Hardware  | Email this | Comments

No patience left to wait for Google TV? Tough luck, bubs — ’cause Bonux’s Android set-top box ain’t shipping till the year’s end, either. Tucked away in a small corner of Computex was the gem you see above: an Android 2.1-based set-top box designed to bring… well, Android to your television. The white mockup box was strictly in place to demonstrate the software, and the inability to find a live internet connection on the floor crushed their desires to demonstrate connected extras. Essentially, this STB would scale a mobile OS up to TV size, which isn’t exactly the most elegant of solutions. That said, it does “work,” and the idea of using Android to pull in local media and web content may tempt those who aren’t willing to deal with the expense and complications of snagging a full-blown HTPC. We were told that the box could play back nearly every major file format known to man, and the HDMI output ensures broad compatibility with practically every HDTV ever sold.

When speaking with company representatives at its booth, they asserted that their goal was to shrink the white box down to the size of the black unit sitting beside it, or something barely larger than a deck of cards. If all goes to plan, they should be shipping worldwide by the end of this year, but they stated that it would be awhile before Froyo (Android 2.2) was supported given the intrinsic need for more potent hardware. Speaking of which, they’ve yet to actually nail down a final processor, and they’re still debating whether they’ll have WiFi as an option. In the end, consumers should expect “between one and three” variants (including one with an integrated TV tuner, possibly), and a retail starting price of around “$120 to $130.” So, found that patience you were looking for yet? Per usual, a video demonstration awaits you after the break.

Continue reading Bonux’s Android set-top box is pretty much Google TV lite… really lite (video)

Bonux’s Android set-top box is pretty much Google TV lite… really lite (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 04 Jun 2010 16:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Sprint’s Samsung Restore has a midlevel features set and is made from recycled parts. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://www.cnet.com/8301-17918_1-20006869-85.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Dialed In/a/p

Students at Drexel University have found a way to turn tweets into 36×62-foot animations projected onto the surface of a campus building.

SHANGHAI, China — Billed as bigger than the Beijing Olympics, the latest and largest world’s fair doesn’t disappoint when it comes to scale, in every mind-boggling respect.

The Shanghai World Expo 2010, which opened May 1, cost an estimated $55 billion (some sources say up to $95 billion) to get off the ground. It sits on 2 square miles of prime Shanghai real estate, straddling the Huangpu River, making it the biggest world’s fair in the 159-year history of such events.

More than 18,000 families and 270 factories were moved to make room for the expo, the construction of which stretched over seven years — all for an event lasting six months.

Organizers estimate that it will be visited by 70 to 100 million people before it closes Oct. 31, with daily crowds of 400,000 or more.

That’s an enormous number of people, and you notice it instantly, from the queues to get into the expo to the crowds on the concourses and pavilions inside. Getting inside the popular European and American pavilions means waiting for an hour or longer outside in 80- to 90-degree heat and high humidity. The dominating $220 million Chinese pavilion is already fully booked for the months of May and June, so unless you’re a VIP with special reservation, you can’t get in at all.

In the past, there would’ve been no question as to whether queuing up for hours was worth it. That’s because what was there would change the future: Fax machines, microscopes, industrial processes, and even the superhighway system all made their first public appearances at world’s fairs.

The Shanghai World Expo 2010 comes up short in that respect. Apart from stunning architectural spaces, there’s nothing new, exciting, or controversial on display — a far cry from say, the 1939 world’s fair.

This expo isn’t so much a world’s fair as a China one, with other countries and global corporations exhibiting as curiosities for the people of a rapidly developing country to see. Only an estimated 5 percent of visitors will be from overseas. For millions of Chinese visitors, the event is a first real contact with the outside world.
For them, the expo is meant to be picture of their future.

If so, it’s an ambitious one.

Above:

Haibao

No Pavilion of the Future worth its salt would be complete without sci-fi space imagery. Here’s the official expo mascot, Haibao, clad in a space suit and breathing apparatus. The pavilion exhibits ideas about future cities, including one in space for Haibao to suit up in.

Photo: Juha Saarinen/Wired.com