Hasta La Gadget!

Got an itch for a gaming laptop that’s big enough to span the laps of both you and your lover? ASUS has you covered. Here in the desert, the outfit has introduced a potent 18.4-inch gaming rig with a 1080p panel, twin ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4870 X2 GPUs, three RAM slots (a world’s first, mind you) stuffed with 6GB of DDR2 memory, a Core 2 Duo processor, a half dozen (seriously) Altec Lansing speakers and a Turbo Gear function that will enable users to overclock the system and boost performance by as much as 25%. A few more configurations are available, including one with a 17-inch panel, an NVIDIA graphics option, dual HDDs, an optional Blu-ray drive and enough ports to put your average desktop to shame.

Filed under: Laptops

ASUS debuts 18.4-inch W90 gaming laptop at CES 2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 17:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In a surprising turn, boutique PC maker Velocity Micro–known mostly for its premium customizable laptops and powerful multimedia machines–announced two affordable lightweight notebooks at CES yesterday. The NoteMagix M10 is the manufacturer’s entrée into the netbook market, and the NoteMagix M5 is a touchscreen handheld PC. So far Velocity Micro has released only a limited amount of information on specs for these two systems, but here’s what we have so far, after the jump.

This is it! Our first go-round with Palm’s newest entry to the smartphone field — the pre. Watch this page for updates on our first impressions, a live stream of photos after the break, and observations on the company’s rebirth into the marketplace.

1:19PM – First photos are up. They’re running us through a demo of the phone, so we haven’t gotten to touch it just yet — the tension is killing!

1:38PM – They let us play with it a bit — while they held the other end, of course. The keyboard is Centro-esque, with shallow presses and cramped spacing. The actual keys are rubbery and easy enough to find with the fingernails of our massive man hands, other folks might have better luck using the pads of their fingers. The touchscreen isn’t quite as responsive as the iPhone or G1 — or it could be the OS, there seems to be a tiny lag between a tap and an action — but it’s still pretty great. We spent mere seconds toying with the OS, but all the actions seem ultra-intuitive.

Update: You can watch some video after the break!

Continue reading Palm Pre first hands-on with live updates!

Filed under: Cellphones

Palm Pre first hands-on with live updates! originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’re continuing our onslaught of CES hands-ons with the WAVE-HOME from iriver. In a nutshell, it’s a more feature-filled Ojo with much more than just video calling — namely calendar, notes, plus it packs a WiFi phone in the back of the unit (pictured above). The video after the jump doesn’t quite do justice to the smoothness of the interface, but your mileage may vary depending on the fatness of your fingers. iriver reps told us that they estimate the unit to be priced at less than $400 to make affordable enough for people to buy more than one. Feel free to peep our original post for all the juicy tech specs, and don’t forget to point your friends in this direction if you don’t wanna feel like a loser if you drop four bills.

Continue reading Video: iriver WAVE-HOME hands-on

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Wireless

Video: iriver WAVE-HOME hands-on originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not entirely clear what the purpose of AMD‘s newest supercomputer is, but it’s pretty safe to say that the company is making it out to be something better than it is. All harshness aside, the so-called Fusion Render Cloud will reportedly be the planet’s fastest graphics supercomputer. It sounds like the machine will be good for farming out tasks, and more specifically, for “real-time rendering of film and visual effects graphics on an unprecedented scale.” Evidently AMD’s hoping that gaming firms tap into the beast in order to develop and deploy next-generation game content, so that probably means it’s worthless for you. But hey, it sounds awesome, right?

Filed under: Desktops

AMD talks up mildly ambiguous graphics supercomputer originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 08 Jan 2009 16:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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