Hasta La Gadget!

Netbooks may have had their five minutes of fame, but it looks like Lenovo still thinks life left in the category. Netbook News has spotted specs for the upcoming Lenovo X131e, the successor to the X130e that was running AMD’s Zacate platform. The X131e looks to have the new Brazos 2.0 APU, featuring either a E1-1200 or E2-1800 CPU, plus boosted Radeon HD 73xx graphics. Just like the X130e, there will be an optical ULV Core i3 option too.

In terms of design, not much has changed: the 11.6-inch notebook still has a 1366×768 display, but the specs and port selection have been tweaked. Options will include a dual-core E1-1200 clocked at 1.4Ghz, or a E2-1800 clocked at 1.7Ghz. The GPU on the E1-1200 will be a HD 7310, while the E2-1800 gets a HD 7340 with slightly higher clock speeds and a turbo boost mode. TDP for both options is said to be 18W. There will also be an option for a Sandy Bridge Core i3 ULV CPU which will come with the integrated HD 3000 GPU.

Up to 8GB of RAM can be configured with X131e, although speeds get a bump to 1600Mhz, up from 1333Mhz. The notebook also adds two USB 3.0 ports and HDMI v1.4 in addition to the single USB 2.0 port, Ethernet jack, VGA port, and 4-in-1 card reader. Hard drive options include either a 320/500GB drive at 5400/7200RPM, or a 128GB SSD. The whole thing weighs 3.92lbs, and the 6-cell battery is rated for up to 8.5 hours of runtime.

There’s no word on exact pricing, or even a firm release date, but the current X130e runs around $500, so expect a similar starting price for the X131e. Lenovo’s landing page for the X131e only lists “September 2012” right now, so you’ll have to hold tight if this sounds like the right portable notebook.

Lenovo ThinkPad X131e specs detailed is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

I never really understood all the uproar centering on the ending of Mass Effect 3. Dead, is never really dead in a science fiction video game. I’m sure if the developers wanted to bring Shepherd and crew back for a fourth installment, they could figure out some way to make that inconvenient death go away. Still, there were lots of people that were very angry at the ending of the video game.

EA and BioWare promised a while back that a new ending that expanded on the original ending would be offered. If you play Mass Effect 3 on the Xbox 360, that expanded ending is now available for download. The download content is free and is available right now. Be prepared to wait a while, the download is 1.85 GB.

The teaser page for the new ending offers very little detail of what you’re going to see. It simply says the download is an expanded ending for Mass Effect 3. The ending has additional scenes and an extended epilogue to show the impact of Shepherd’s choices on the future of the galaxy.

New Mass Effect 3 ending available for download on Xbox is written by Shane McGlaun & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Ready to waste the morning away? Google has partnered with Lego Australia to allow users to build objects using the popular plastic blocks right from within their browser. You can choose from a multitude of different building blocks, and build anything that you can think up. Not only that, but your creation isn’t randomly floating around the internet, instead assigned a virtual plot of land in Australia using Google Maps.

Once you fire up Build you’ll be able to see a zoomed out map of Australia. As you search the continent and zoom in to different spots, you’ll see different creations from netizens that you can interact with or simply observe. If you want to go about building your own creation, you can choose your own plot of land or have the map randomly select somewhere in Australia.

After you’re finished, your final build is submitted to Google for approval, just to make sure anything naughty doesn’t slip through. Build has launched in Australia first, with New Zealand next on the list. After that, Google will open it up to even more countries so that you can build on more familiar territories.

[via The Next Web]

Google Build lets you play with Lego in Chrome is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

If you’re a fan of Dell’s XPS 13 but want something a little bigger with extra connectivity, the newly announced XPS 14 and 15 might just be for you. Both laptops have seen a redesign that sees the chassis’ making use of aluminium while giving the models a much needed thinner profile, and you can expect to see the latest internals with Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors and optional discrete NVIDIA graphics.

The base model of the XPS 14 will come with a 400-nit brightness 1600×900 display, an Intel Core i5 processor with HD 4000 GPU, 4GB of RAM, and a 500GB hard drive. Just about everything can be configured, so you can bump the CPU up to a Core i7, the RAM up to 8GB, add in NVIDIA’s GT 630M GPU, and swap out the standard hard drive for a 512GB SSD at the top end. Ports for the laptop includes two USB 3.0, HDMI, DisplayPort, Ethernet, and an SD card slot. Overall thickness isn’t too bad at 0.81-inches, and all in all it weighs around 4.6lbs.

The XPS 15, meanwhile, adds in an optical drive and a few additional ports, but thickness increases to 0.91-inches and weight to 5.79lbs. The base configuration comes with a Core i5 processor, NVIDIA GT 630M GPU, 6GB of RAM, 1920×1080 display and a 500GB hard drive with a DVD optical drive. The maxed out XPS 15 includes a quad-core Core i7 processor, NVIDIA GT 640M graphics, 16GB of RAM, 1TB of storage plus a 128GB mSATA, and a Blu-ray drive.

Both the XPS 14 and 15 are available to order starting from today. The XPS 14 pricing starts from $1,099, while the XPS 15 will start at $1,299. If you spec out both models to their maximum, expect the price to hit a cool $1,999. If you’re in the UK, the XPS 14 starts from £1,049 while the XPS 15 starts at £1,149.

Dell unveils new XPS 14 and XPS 15: Hands-on is written by Ben Kersey & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

Adobe’s Photoshop Lightroom 4 has joined the Adobe Creative Cloud, meaning users of the subscription-based software rental service can now add the tool to their portfolio. Released to the Mac App Store last month as a standalone purchase for $149, Lightroom 4′s addition to Creative Cloud means you could be using it today for as little as $29.99 per month.

That’s if you’re already a CS3, CS4, CS5 or CS5.5 individual customer; for everyone else, membership of Creative Cloud is priced at $49.99 per month based on an annual contract, or $74.99 on a month-to-month basis. Your money also gets you access to all the Creative Suite 6 apps, including Photoshop CS6 Extended and Premiere Pro CS6.

Creative Cloud also works as a cloud backup and sync service, with 20GB of space included in each membership. That can be accessed from the desktop, from mobile devices, and through a browser-based login for offsite work, and there’s the option to host up to five sites too.

If the price doesn’t appeal, then, the synchronization tools might sway you over to the cloud option instead. Adobe promises to continue adding to its subscription service, which already includes Adobe Acrobat and Adobe Muse.

Adobe Lightroom 4 floats into the Creative Cloud is written by Chris Davies & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.