Hasta La Gadget!

After much excitement, the Force has not been found. But don’t be sad, my fellow nerds. Scientists may have not found evidence of the Higgs boson yet, but they have discovered “tantalizing hints” that may indicate its presence. More »

Verizon’s Galaxy Nexus hitting Costco on December 15? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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There are some cameras that we absolutely love, some we find downright disappointing and others that get the job done, albeit with mediocre results. Samsung’s digital imaging devices typically fall within that last category — they’re moderately innovative, generally affordable and often well-designed, but when it comes to image quality and performance, we’re left… underwhelmed. So, when we first had a chance to try out the CE giant’s new NX200 at IFA in Berlin, we weren’t expecting a mind-blowing imaging device.

The NX200 is Samsung’s latest entrant into the interchangeable lens (ILC) category — it’s a mirrorless model, to be more precise, and a fairly impressive one at that — at least when you glance at the spec sheet. It’s the company’s latest ILC to use an APS-C size sensor, which is the largest we’ve seen in a mirrorless cam. This sensor type implies that the NX200 may have a chance at competing with Sony’s NEX-C3, which has been our top pick in the category, and its 20.3 megapixel rating suggests that Samsung wants to be taken seriously here, with a true contender on its hands. But has Samsung delivered a winner? Jump past the break for our take.

Continue reading Samsung NX200 interchangeable lens camera review

Samsung NX200 interchangeable lens camera review originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 11:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Dell has just taken the wraps off a brand new addition to the Alienware family, hailing it, rather poetically, as “a serenade to raw gaming power.” It’s called the Alienware Aurora, and it’s staring at you with a Cylon-like grin in the image above. Beneath its menacing veneer lurks Intel’s six-core, 3000 series Core i7 CPU, an X79 Express chipset and quad-channel DDR3 memory, all of which are kept in check by Dell’s liquid cooling and active venting technologies. The gaming rig also supports both multi-display and 3D configurations, with GDDR5 memory-laced graphics cards. In case you’re not satisfied, you can always get under the hood and tinker with it yourself, without even busting out your tool belt. The Alienware Aurora is available now for prices starting at $2,200, so hit up the source link for more details.

Dell unveils Alienware Aurora gaming rig, will serenade you for $2,200 originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Dec 2011 10:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Comic Reader’s schtick is that it looks like a comic book itself

Boom! Thwack! Comic Reader is yet another, well, comic reader for the iPad and, despite the almost catatonic lack of effort in giving it a name, it is very polished for an early release. It also has one neat–and possibly unique–feature: RSS.

Like every other reader, Comic Reader (henceforth known as CR to avoid confusion) allows you to import CBR, CBZ, ZIP and RAR files of your comic books, and catalog and view them on the iPad.

The catalog view is configurable three ways. There are small and large list views, along with a Series view (which groups series together and shows them with lovely large cover thumbnails), and a customizable “Reading List” view, which lets you gather issues together in arbitrary groups. These work fine, and adding comics is as easy as tapping their titles in a list.

Reading is competent. The page turns can be triggered by swiping or by tapping at the very sides of the screen. These side zones can’t be resized (I’d prefer them a touch bigger) and in order to have the right margin take you to the next page, you’ll need to (oddly) check “Swap Side Buttons” in the preferences. And no, I don’t have the page-reversing Manga Mode enabled.

There is a rather nice thumbnail view for navigating between pages, and the page turn animations are way better than those of the category leader Comic Zeal. But you also miss some CZ features, like the auto-tracking which will scroll a page a section at a time when you tap the “next” button.

Finally, there’s the RSS reader, which lets you add any feed you like. There are a few comic books news sites pre-loaded, but you can add in more by typing in the feed address. The reader shows summaries, and you can click through to a web view. This could be used to read web-comics, although it’s not really suited for that.

You should probably take a look at the instructions and videos on the developer’s site to see if you like it, but CR is a competent reader with a good amount of polish. It cost just $4.

Comic Reader product page [iTunes]

Comic Reader for iPad [Obsidian]