Hasta La Gadget!

We’ve made a conscious decision to stop talking about the Acer Aspire Predator’s unique design, because every time we stare deep into those orange ridges, we feel a bit of our psyche writhing. If you’re made of sterner stuff, however, you should know that Acer’s got a couple of new models coming down the pike. Remember that Predator AG7750 with the liquid-cooled 2.8GHz Core i7-930 processor, 12GB of DDR3 memory, NVIDIA GTX 470 graphics, and room for 3-way SLI? Having successfully weeded the population of Canada, it’s ready to feast upon the US today at $1,999. If that’s more beast than you can handle, there’s also the infinitesimally-less-creepy $1,350 AG5900 you see above, which brings a Core i7-870 CPU, 8GB of memory and a ATI Radeon HD 5850, plus a pair of hot-swappable drive bays, 1.5 terabytes of storage and the usual array of ports. Find them slicing through online retailers any minute now. PR after the break.

Continue reading Acer releases Predator AG7750 and AG5900 gaming desktops into unsuspecting US homes

Acer releases Predator AG7750 and AG5900 gaming desktops into unsuspecting US homes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 28 Sep 2010 00:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This sounds like madness to us, but take it for what you will: TechCrunch is reporting via some tipsters that Amazon is preparing to launch its own Android app store, of all things. Revenue split is rumored to be “the greater of 70 percent of the purchase price or 20 percent of the List Price as of the purchase date,” which is pretty strange wording — this “List Price” concept is apparently designed to prevent you from undercutting pricing with other services — and there’ll be a $99 fee to gain entry, which is pretty standard. Apps will be required to use Amazon DRM and could be featured on Amazon’s site, which is potentially a pretty big upside considering the kind of traffic that bad boy gets. As TechCrunch notes, a particularly interesting blurb in the alleged terms states that “[Amazon has] sole discretion to determine all features and operations of [programs] and to set the retail price and other terms on which [they] sell Apps,” implying that pricing is their call — not yours — and they’ve got some say in how your app’s going to work and what it’s going to do.

Clearly we’re missing something here, since they’re starting with zero market share, the Android Market is the obvious choice for consumers, and there are some really odd terms — and Bezos isn’t a dummy — so we’ll hold out and see where this goes. After all, with Google apparently actively reigning in devices by lording Market access over manufacturers’ heads, there might actually be some room for third parties to get some traction here over the long term.

Update: TechCrunch is now throwing in a rumored Amazon tablet at no extra charge. Could launch beside the app store if its source is correct. If.

Amazon launching its own Android app store? (update: tablet too?) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 22:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The company smartly tries to court its core audience of BlackBerry users as well as expand its reach with its new Playbook tablet. pOriginally posted at a href=”http://news.cnet.com/8301-31021_3-20017807-260.html” class=”origPostedBlog”Circuit Breaker/a/p

Those of you waiting for a hands-on evaluation of the Lumiotec OLED lighting development kit before cranking up the Bieber, throwing on some acid-washed overalls, and converting your bathroom into Club 54 can now rest easy. That’s because the folks at OLED-info.com have thrown some light on the situation via a video review of the device, and even managed to cobble together a battle royal with other disco-worthy OLED options including the Philips Lumiblade and Osram Orbeos panel. Key points made in the review include that the 15 x 15 cm Lumiotec panel, “feels good to touch” and “is much brighter, [than the competitors] but you know it’s a lot bigger”. With such decisive words like those, there shouldn’t be anything stopping you from snagging a few $934 kits in anticipation of your homebrew Mo’ Money Mo’ Problems video reenactment. If you’re still not convinced by our paraphrasing however, feel free to illuminate yourself by watching the entire review after the break.

Continue reading Lumiotec’s OLED lighting panel gets video reviewed, throws down versus a bright group of competitors

Lumiotec’s OLED lighting panel gets video reviewed, throws down versus a bright group of competitors originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 20:45:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The iPad’s finally got some competition; in the past few weeks, the HP Slate made a brief appearance, the Samsung Galaxy Tab debuted, and just BlackBerry unveiled its business-minded PlayBook today. Here’s how they all measure up: More »