Hasta La Gadget!

These days we all love computers, but when they first arrived on the scene they had a few… glitches. So, instead of people punching their computer, they could take their stresses out on the technological equivalent of a stress ball: a Smack-a-Mac.

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Portable gaming computers are nothing new. Micro-ATX and Mini-ITX motherboards let you create relatively light and compact rigs, though often at the expense of hardware specs. In an attempt to come up with a perfect compromise between power and portability, CyberPowerPC decided to emulate a briefcase for its upcoming LAN-ready rig, the Fang Battle Box.

The Fang Battle Box uses a Mini-ITX Z87 motherboard but is roomy enough to accommodate components that you’d normally reserve on your main computer, including powerful but bulky graphics cards. Like a briefcase, you can gawk at the Battle Box’s internals by unlocking its latch, although I’m not sure if you can easily swap its components as well.

CyberPowerPC will let you customize the specs of the Battle Box when you place your order, that much is certain.

Other neat touches on the Battle Box include two USB 3.0 ports placed near its handle  –beside its power and reset switches – and large rubber feet on its underside.

I bet Ben Heck would love to put a screen on this and make the world’s fattest laptop. There’s no word on the base price for the Fang Battle Box, but it will be available for order from CyberPowerPC within the year’s first quarter.

[via eTeknix & MaximumPC via Mikeshouts]

Now I know what you’re thinking. Most personal computers available today are already modular. That’s true, but what Razer wants to do is to make swapping computer components as easy as replacing the batteries on your remote control.

Project Christine has a base station with a number of slots with proprietary connectors. To build your PC, you just plug in the components to the base. But instead of dealing with fragile chips and odd-looking doodads, Project Christine’s CPU, RAM, GPU, storage drives and other parts will each have its own container.

Each container will be labeled and it will be able to connect to any slot or slots on the base station. No cables, no fragile connectors and no need to figure out which part goes where. In other words, the modules work like USB devices. Project Christine will also have an LED touchscreen that shows the status of its modules.

This means even non-techies can assemble, maintain and customize their own rigs. If you want more storage, then fill the slots with storage drives. Project Christine can have up to five storage drives, one SSD and four HDDs, with the latter configurable to a RAID 5 setup. If you want multiple GPUs, by all means slot them in. The computer can have up to a quad-SLI setup for its graphics cards. Same goes for repairs. Busted power supply? Swap it out. No need to open a dusty case.

The tradeoff here is probably going to be the price of the components, especially if Razer monopolizes the distribution of the modules. But even though it has not released any estimates, the company has a proposal to make upgrading Project Christine easy on the wallet: a subscription service. Razer CEO Min-Liang Tan mentioned this idea in his interview with Gamespot. Skip to 4:00 in the video below to him talk about it.

Subscription-based hardware? I can’t decide if that’s brilliant or stupid. Will it also cover repairs? How fast will Razer release module versions of computer parts? Do upgrades to computer parts even come at a steady pace? What if you subscribe and nothing awesome comes out in a year?

I do however love the idea of a foolproof yet infinitely upgradeable computer, and I get what Razer is doing here. It’s taking a page from Apple’s books: make beautiful and easy to use hardware, then charge a premium for it and control the upgrade path.

Upgrade your browser and head to Razer for more on Project Christine.

[via Gamespot]

With Chromebooks gobbling up more and more of the market, it isn’t any wonder we are seeing more and more companies joining the party. The latest, and the first from … Continue reading

[CES 2014] Android is going everywhere, we are seeing more and more Android integration in all kinds of devices from cameras, to TVs, watches and computers. last year at CES we awarded an Ubergizmo Best of Show to the View Sonic VSD 240, an Android powered smart display.

HP is jumping in the band wagon with its new HP Slate pro All-in-One computer powered by Android 4.3. The 21.5-inch full HD (1920 x 1080) IPS touchscreen equipped with a Nvidia Tegra 4 Quad-Core T40S Processor and 2GB DDR3.

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HP Slate Pro All-in-One with Android and NVidia Tegra 4 original content from Ubergizmo.