Hasta La Gadget!

We’re aware, the “exclusive” green and orange neon color of Sony’s VAIO CB and CA laptops can make your eyes bleed, but Sony’s pretty excited about the aesthetic and the way it radiates light around the edges of the laptop. Oh, and don’t forget how the touchpad “emits a beautiful glow.” It’s true, the rigs do have an interesting glow stick-like look to them — at least, we thought so when we saw them last month — however, we found their innards and features to be more enlightening. Starting at $800, the 14-inch CA10 and 15.5-inch CB10 will both be available with Intel Sandy Bridge Core i5 processors, AMD Radeon HD 6630 graphics, and Blu-ray drives. Select models will also pack Intel’s WiDi 2.0, which lets you stream 1080p video to your TV. And remember Sony’s Remote Keyboard, which lets you navigate your PS3 or Bravia TV with the laptop? Yep, the CA and CB both have that functionality baked in as well. What’s that? You’d be interested if they didn’t blind you? What if we also told you they will come in black and white? We thought that might change your mind, and according to the official press release below there will indeed be alternative color versions. You’ll be able to pre-order them both on March 13th, but until then you can always see if the neon grows on you with the photos below.

Continue reading Sony VAIO CA and CB pack the latest Core i5 power for those who can look past the neon

Sony VAIO CA and CB pack the latest Core i5 power for those who can look past the neon originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 08:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You don’t need us to tell you what you already know in your gut to be true: Redmond is working hard on its tablet strategy. How embarrassing is it for Microsoft, the company that pioneered tablets and the 7-inch UMPC, to be completely absent from the conversation in 2010 and 2011? That could change in September. Microsoft watcher Mary Jo Foley recently shared the slide above which she believes to be 99.99 percent genuine. The timeline shows the major milestone dates for a Windows 8 (aka, “Windows Next“) release — an OS that M. JoFo believes to be focused on tablets (aka, “Lap PCs” in Microsoft parlance) with its purpose-built touch-centric design. According to the slide, we’re looking at an M2 milestone this month followed by M3 in July or August. Foley says that would put Microsoft on track for a Windows 8 beta release right around Microsoft’s Professional Developers Conference (PDC) event in September followed by a second beta in 2012 before being released to manufacturing around the summer of 2012 — just like we heard early last year and just in time for Dell’s Hancock tablet. There are still many open questions including Microsoft’s ARM vs. Intel priorities and how the company plans to scale across the enterprise and the “workhorse PC” and “Family Hub PC” in the home. Hit the ZDNet link below for a deeper read or better yet, head on over to TechRepublic where Mary Jo Foley put together an excellent webcast outlining Microsoft’s tablet strategy in much more detail.

Windows 8 beta for tablets at September PDC? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 07:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We heard it was coming and now here it is. Amazon has flipped the switch on its “free” video streaming for Prime members, the service we’ve been hearing about for the past month or so. If you’ve already been taking advantage of subscription-based two-day shipping so that your impulse buys get to your door a little quicker you can now enjoy streaming of 5,000 pieces of “prime eligible” content, including some recent movies and a lot of TV shows, much of which will look awfully familiar if you’re also a Netflix subscriber. However, on some foreign films (like The Girl who Kicked the Hornets’ Nest above) you have the choice of subtitles or dubbed, and much of this content is still available to “rent” or “buy” if you want to be able to download it to a mobile device. We’re just checking out the service now and will be back with some impressions a little later.

Update: We’re hearing that this is only for paid Prime subscribers, so if you’re a college student or the like with a free membership you’re sadly out of luck. Also it’s US only at this point. Sorry!

Update 2: Check out our impressions!

[Thanks, Chris]

Continue reading Amazon launches Prime Instant Video, unlimited streaming for Prime subscribers

Amazon launches Prime Instant Video, unlimited streaming for Prime subscribers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 07:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As the first-party Micro Four Thirds makers dilly-dally with their lens lineup, Samsung is pumping out glass for its NX series like a rabbit pumps out, well, more rabbits. Here’s the lineup, containing five new lenses.

16mm ƒ2.4 (July)
60mm ƒ2.8 Macro (August)
85mm ƒ1.4 (October)
16-80mm ƒ3.5-4.5 OIS (December)
18-200mm ƒ3.5-6.3 OIS (May)

All of those focal lengths should be multiplied by 1.5 thanks to the crop factor of the NEx’s APS-C sensor. The zooms use silent motors and internals to keep them quiet for movie-shooting, and all of the lenses work with Samsung’s i-Function feature, which allows you to use a lens-surrounding ring on the body to control things like aperture.

Those zooms look fine, but I would have my eye on the primes. That 16mm “pancake” looks particularly fun, with a fairly good maximum aperture and a 35mm-equivalent focal length of 53mm — a “normal” focal length.

The 60mm is a little pedestrian: A a 35mm equivalent of 90mm, it is the perfect portrait length lens, but a slightly wider maximum aperture would be nice. I assume this will be one of the cheeper lenses in the lineup (Samsung hasn’t yet announced prices). The 85mm ƒ1.4, though, is very interesting. That equates to almost 130mm, with the ridiculous light-gathering abilities of ƒ1.4 wide open. God knows what you’d use it for, but I imagine you’d get some stunning pictures.

The small-body, non-SLR market is getting hot. Samsung and Sony seems committed to bringing their own lenses, and while Panasonic and Olympus are being somewhat tardy with their own glass, the recent announcement that Carl Zeiss and Schneider-Kreuznach are going to make lenses for Micro Four Thirds shows a future there, too. It seems that more and more arguments for big-body SLRs are slipping away.

See Also:

• Cheap Manual Lenses Ported to Samsung NX
• Zero to Hero: Five New NX Lenses Put Samsung in the Game
• Samsung NX11 with Lens-Mounted Controls

In spite of HP’s strong assurances to the contrary, the Palm Pre Plus is actually going to give users the option to ride into webOS 2.x territory. As we speculated yesterday, O2 Germany Pre Plus owners can now download a new firmware package for their slider handsets, which will work its magic and update them to version 2.1 of HP’s magnificent software. The company has been actively discouraging users and programmers from pairing the older hardware with the latest software, so we can’t promise it’ll be a bump-free ride for all upgraders, but having the option is all people have been asking for and now it’s there — and by “there” we mean the source link below.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

webOS 2.1 for the Pre Plus now available to download for O2 Germany users originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Feb 2011 06:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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