Hasta La Gadget!

Charlie Miller and Kim Jong-Il could pwn the Internet with two years, $100 million originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Aug 2010 11:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AFP, Venture Beat  | Email this | Comments

Nobody uses the iMac for real work, right? After all, the huge 27-inch screen, the fast Core i3-i7 processors and the discrete graphics cards across the entire lineup render the machine hopelessly underpowered for video and photo editing. No wonder Apple hasn’t included an eSATA port. Who would need fast external storage?

Wait. Everyone would, especially as the standard disk is a single Terabyte in size. OWC feels your pain, computer buyer, and will take drastic, deep-cutting measures to help you. The accessory company will literally chop a hole in your iMac and add a speedy eSATA port to the machine. USB2 and FireWire are fine for shifting a few files around, but eSATA-connected drives run at the same speed as the hard-drive inside the computer.

The mod will cost you just $170. If you run a video facility, you’re probably already arranging shipping right now (tip: arrange it with OWC and they’ll pick your iMac up for just $30). If that still looks expensive to you, think about the alternative: buying a Mac Pro instead, which start at $2,500 without a monitor. While your machine is in OWC’s shop for surgery, you can also add more memory and upgrade the existing hard drive.

The service is available now. Rumors that OWC will add a USB-port to the iPad are unfounded.

OWC iMac eSATA upgrade program [OWC. Thanks, Grant!]

See Also:

• New iMacs Add IPS Displays, Core 'i' Processors Across the Range …

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

We knew Android phones were selling like gangbusters — Google has been none too shy in telling us as much — but numbers were slightly less clear in a larger context. Well, if a new report by Canalys is to be believed, those numbers are just fine in a larger context. Canalys claims that in Q2 Android was up a whopping 886 percent over last year’s sales during this time period (remember, the original Droid didn’t come out until November), and those wild sales put it at 34 percent of the US market, compared to RIM’s 32 percent and Apple’s 21.7 share. Of course, RIM has a big launch on the way, and we’re not sure how much of the iPhone 4’s heady run this report captures, so things could naturally look different for Q3. Also, it’s worth noting that the breakdown of phones actually in use is of course dramatically different. Still, nobody is doing that bad: the smartphone market is up 64 percent year-over-year, and Apple and RIM grew 61 percent and 41 percent, respectively. Oh, and remember Nokia? Yeah, they’re still beating the world with a 38 percent market share and 41 percent growth. Check out the press release after the break for all the percentages your heart could ever desire.

Continue reading Canalys: Android takes Q2 smartphone market share lead in US with 886 percent year-over-year growth

Canalys: Android takes Q2 smartphone market share lead in US with 886 percent year-over-year growth originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Aug 2010 10:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink SlashGear  |   | Email this | Comments

Roboscooper: a cute little toy or an exercise in excruciating frustration? You decide. The six-wheeled robot is like a cross between Wall-E and the 1980s “favorite” Big Trak. In fact, the product page even bills it as “WowWee’s answer to Wall-E” (WowWee is the manufacturer). Unlike Wall-E, this ‘bot looks like it would have trouble lifting anything weighing more than an empty potato-chip packet. Which brings us to the frustration.

You can control Roboscooper by remote or leave it in “autonomous” mode, whereupon it will scoop up anything it encounters, dumping it into the tiny flatbed at back. If the Roboscooper actually had a scoop, it would probably manage this ok. But those hands look to be as slippery and grip-free as the claw in an arcade toy-grabbing machine, and as pathetic as my sleep-weakened fingers as I reach from the bed and try to lift the bourbon bottle to my lips for my first “helper” of the day. In short, the Roboscooper looks like it will scoop precisely nothing. Or at least, nothing heavier than one ounce, the weight limit for those little arms.

It does have one feature that Wall-E doesn’t. It can talk, offering such trite and annoying phrases as “Let’s get to work!” and “One step closer to a cleaner world.” Ugh.

So, it might not replace your Roomba, but then it comes at a decidedly un-Roomba price: $70, and ready for pre-order now, should there be a kid in your life that you hate enough to give them this as a gift.

Roboscooper [Robots Rule. Thanks, Robert!]

See Also:

• Bigtrak is Back! 80s Robo-Toy Resurrected
• Urban Roverbot Goes Where the Roomba Can't
• iRobot Roomba Pet Series 562
• Paging Wall-E: Air Force Wants Robo-Cargo to Load Itself
• Hobbyists Rebuild Wall-E, One PVC Pipe at a Time

Follow us for real-time tech news: Charlie Sorrel and Gadget Lab on Twitter.

Say what you like about Apple, as a company it’s not exactly on the forefront when it comes to offering standard connectors for peripherals. Case in point: the latest iMac revisions lack eSATA, something of a bother for companies that make external storage devices. Companies like OWC. So, that particular organization is introducing a service to add that to 27-inch iMacs, cutting a small hole into the bottom-right of the display and sticking an eSATA port behind it. It’s a nice idea, the results look flush enough, and 48-hour turn-around time is great — but $169 is hardly small change. You can, however, take that time to get a 480GB Mercury Extreme Pro SSD stuffed in there as well for a mere $1,649 more.

OWC will cut a hole in your new 27-inch iMac, put an eSATA port behind it originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Aug 2010 09:36:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink Macworld  |  OWC Blog  | Email this | Comments