Lenovo Japan started selling their first gaming desktop PC “Erazer X700″ produced by German company Medion that Lenovo acquired in 2011. It is a recommended PC for the PC version of “Bio Hazard 6″ and “Sim City” that are going to be released on March 22. “Erazer X700″ was designed to look like a knight’s armor in medieval times. Blue LED lights represent a connection to the future. It’s a desktop PC and accessories (keyboard, etc.) …
While Xi3’s Piston may only be a Steambox through its software optimization, that still leaves us with a milestone on our hands now that the system is available for pre-orders: it’s the first Valve-blessed PC on sale. If you’re willing to set aside just under $1,000 ($900 during SXSW), you can claim a Big Picture-friendly mini PC with an embedded, 3.2GHz version of AMD’s quad-core A10 in addition to 8GB of RAM and a 128GB solid-state drive. There’s no mention of the conventional spinning storage referenced at CES. Expansion is limited to larger-capacity SSDs, although that’s not surprising when the entire computer is smaller than a GeForce GTX Titan. The real jolt will be the launch timing. Xi3 won’t have Pistons shipping until around the holidays, which could leave some of us hunting for less-than-official (if considerably larger) substitutes for the full Steam experience.
This week the Facebook developer team revealed a series of changes (read: feature additions) to their News Feed that’ll allow you to see a much more simplistic and aesthetically beautiful vision of what your friends, associates, and likeables are sharing. The immediate reaction from many will be that this, like so many Facebook updates before, will once again adversely affect what the easily startled call their “online privacy.” In fact this newest change only changes one thing for those of you that want to remain as “private” as you were before – the location of the Privacy Settings button.
If you clicked that Privacy Settings button a whole lot in the past, you’ll know that it appeared in the upper right-hand corner of your Facebook user interface up until now. After the change-over to the newest update to your News Feed, the same access to said controls will be appearing on the left of your layout. The left of your layout is now similar to what we’ve seen in the past on mobile versions of Facebook, complete with a collection of inside-Facebook apps.
Up top of this list on the right (still inside the left-side panel), you’ll find a tiny padlock icon. This icon links you to your Privacy Settings the same as the link did before today. The new features this week – outlined in our handy guide: SlashGear 101: this week’s Facebook News Feed redesign – does not open up any new doors to terrifying changes the likes of which would rip your eyes out and tear your body asunder. The only thing you should still be watching for is the wider update to Graph Search for all.
If you’d like to see how Graph Search in Facebook is affecting how you are able to be searched in the largest Social Network of all, head back to our Graph Search update guide as well as the Facebook Privacy Guarantee posted immediately after Graph Search was revealed. There you’ll find out why if you’ve liked both “Vegitarianism” and “Cheeseburgers”, you’re going to be coming up as a weird friend to your friends rather soon. Seeya then!
The changes that are coming to your Facebook News Feed are numerous – but they’re not going to interrupt the way you do business on a daily basis. Instead you’re going to find the features added this week by the Facebook crew to be just that – Features: helpful and (hopefully) rather intuitive to use. For those of you working with the mobile app version of Facebook on either iOS or Android, this change-over will be extra simple: it is, at its core, a bridge between the mobile and desktop experience.
Facebook speaks up on the changes
What you’ll want to see first is Facebook’s designers speaking up about the changes they’ve made themselves. They’re always good at making the case for a positive forward movement, and today’s video is no exception. They’ll speak up here about each of the three main points this change is pushing before we go through them one by one.
Rich Stories
Design choices throughout this new iteration of the News Feed on Facebook show the company to be coming to terms with the idea that images are king. If you post a photo, you’ll find that you’ve got the largest preview showing in your News Feed that Facebook has ever shown before – along with Like, Comment, and Share buttons right below in newly smoothed-out sections. If two people become friends, you’ll see one of them in a tiny icon and the other represented by not just their icon, but their header image as well.
When you see a link being shared, you’ll also see a short list of icons associated with the people who have shared it on Facebook as well. Hovering over one of these icons expands the rest – this element is in place to have people finding new friends with similar interest, of course. Along those same lines you’ll find Upcoming Events appearing next to single dates – Fridays, for example, will be of particular interest.
Finally you’ll see newly revamped posts from pages – this will be great for pages such as SlashGear (http://www.facebook.com/SlashGear) for appearing in your News Feed in a newly sleek setup. As with the rest of the feature updates, this redesign is much more simplistic than it’s been in the past.
Choice of Feeds
With a new pull-down menu that reads “News Feed” until you switch it, you’ll be able to select from any of the following to syphon your feed down to just the items you want: Most Recent, All Friends, Photos, Music, Following, Games, or Groups. This filter will be working in both the desktop (web browser) and mobile user interfaces soon – simple and smooth.
This filter will not be the first time you’ll be seeing a page that only shows photos and videos, but it is the first time we’re seeing Facebook push the “Following” aspect in a completely separate way. You can follow people on Facebook without friending them – this is good for “famous” users and the like – with this filter you’ll be able to see things that they share with the public and nothing else. This is much closer to what we see on Twitter on the daily – not so much the personal friendliness of Facebook.
Mobile Consistency
Both the desktop and the mobile editions of this change-over are going to be pushed almost at the same time. The desktop version will be coming first – with a limited roll-out starting today, the day of the update’s announcement. The mobile version – for iOS and Android at once, mind you – will be out in coming weeks.
The “Mobile Consistency” title refers also to the idea that the design for both user interfaces are now much more close to one another than they’ve ever been before. The biggest addition to the desktop end of things is the left-hand sidebar – get anywhere you need to from any Facebook nook or cranny, no more need to go all the way back to the News Feed every time!
Seagate has had some skin in the hybrid hard drive game for some time, but always in 2.5-inch wide versions — great for your laptop, not so much the cavernous spaces of a gaming tower. Its just-shipping Desktop SSHD fills that gap in a nearly literal sense. Along with slotting neatly into a 3.5-inch bay, the larger SSHD carries both 2TB of spinning storage and 8GB of flash to speed up disk-intensive tasks without throwing away capacity (or money) on a pure solid-state drive. It should be as much as four times faster than conventional desktop drives, Seagate claims. Whether or not that’s true, the firm isn’t neglecting its portable-owning friends: it’s shipping a new 1TB, regular-height Laptop SSHD and a 500GB, 7mm (0.28-inch) Laptop Thin SSHD, either of which is up to 40 percent faster than its predecessor. Seagate hasn’t mentioned pricing for any of the drives at this stage, although it’s safe to presume they’ll undercut SSDs with equivalent space.
The temptation to draw parallels between Michael Dell and Apple’s Steve Jobs is a compelling one. Both founded technology companies that went on to great success; both left their position at the helm for some time, and then returned with great fanfare. However, Dell is not Jobs, and while the Apple CEO died leaving a vastly successful, hugely grown, and even fashionable company, Dell has struggled to do the same. Now, with Dell – along with a little financial help from some friends – wrenching back control of his eponymous company, the question remains: how much is righting the Dell ship with good business strategy, and how much is preserving the legacy of the business he gave his name.
That Dell and Apple’s paths – and Michael Dell and Steve Jobs – paths have diverged is arguably not surprising. Apple’s position in the market is very different to that of Dell, with the Mac and iOS ecosystems both paragons of control and self-determination; in contrast, Dell’s business is far more reliant on other pieces of the computing puzzle – Microsoft and its Windows OS being a significant component of that – and buffeted by other big names in the PC industry, like HP.
It’s easy to say that Dell’s strategy fell between the cracks between shifting with the marketplace and short-term investor demand. Certainly, the company’s lackluster attempts at the smartphone and tablet segments would seem to show signs of that; it takes time, effort, and investment, and even then you’re not guaranteed of success (look at HP’s webOS attempts for evidence of that). That’s not a juggling act that works well when you have shareholders watching over your shoulders, baying for profit, but it’s also something that’s incredibly necessary if you want to be successful in today’s market.
Dell’s original disruptive strategy in the PC business – back when we all had towers on our desktops, not laptops on our laps – was to make the computer ordering process a smorgasbord. Now, with spec flexibility less fashionable, and simplicity of range more prized by consumers and manufacturers alike, the time is ripe for another disruption in Dell’s business.
That disruption may not be so publicly visible, but it’s no less important. Wresting back control and taking Dell private means Michael Dell and his new business partners can play the long game that the consumer tech industry has become. There’s plenty to be said for a supply-chain that can shave margins to a minimum, and – as Windows Phone, Surface RT, and Surface Pro have begun to demonstrate – there are areas in which Microsoft’s platforms have potential as part of a joined-up ecosystem.
For Michael Dell, though, there’s much to be said for casting off the shackles of the peanut gallery. Steve Jobs had shareholders, but their demands were met with stoney resolution in the face of his unflinching vision for Apple. If Dell has a similarly sweeping vision for the company that bears his name, it’s been mired in board squabbles and the demand to answer the call for “more money now!” and to swiftly scythe away at anything that looks remotely like bad business.
That may well go hand in hand with a refreshed legacy: ending his tenure on a high point would be a fitting way to close out Dell’s position at the helm, something – despite the extra financial involvement – every party involved must at least be considering now. Still, raising capital is the easy part. Dell, both man and company, has a limited window for recreation, lest it go out with a whimper not a bang.
Looking for a slimmed-down Raspberry Pi with a single USB port, 256MB of RAM, no Ethernet and one-third the power consumption of a Model B board? You’re probably in the market for Model A — a $25 alternative designed for use in battery or solar-powered devices like remote sensors, WiFi repeaters, robots and so on. Europeans currently have exclusive access to the cheaper Raspberry Pi flavor, which according to an Adafruit test consumes only 100 mAh of juice (compared to about 300 mAh for the Model B, due to Ethernet power requirements). Beginning today, hobbyists can get their fix directly from RS Components and Element 14, with pricing fixed around £19, including VAT. According to the manufacturer’s blog post, Model A exclusivity will be short-lived, with the device coming to the rest of the world “very soon.” If you’re based across the pond, however, you can hit up our source links to place your order now.
Apple has hinted that it will give Mac Pro aficionados some love with a professional Mac follow-up sometime this year. For Europeans, though, it might not come soon enough: the company has confirmed that it’s officially stopping sales of the current Mac Pro in European Union-affiliated countries as of March 1st. Why? Soon-to-be-implemented tougher standards require that companies shield their fans and electrical ports more thoroughly than we see in the existing system, Apple says. While there’s no immediate sign of a replacement, prospective customers who want the tower for projects won’t be completely left out — resellers will be free to sell what stock they have after the cutoff date. That might still be small consolation to European pros who need heavier iron for their tasks than an iMac.
Sony just revealed its new models for spring for VAIO’s 5 series with a total of 18 models. All are due to be released in Japan on February 9th. Laptop and desktop computers include 3 touch panel compatible models. All of these new models have Windows 8 “Office Home and Business 2013″ pre-installed. I previously wrote about the convertible laptop/tablet “VAIO Duo11″ with Windows 8 64 bit on Intel Core i5, 11.6 inch display, 4GB RAM and SSD 128GB hard drive, but …
Orange Amps trotted out a few updates to its PC / amplifier hybrid over a year ago, but the music outfit has announced some more quite noteworthy tweaks at NAMM 2013. The orange clad units will now sport third-gen Intel i7 processors, a maximum capacity of 16GB of RAM (doubled from the previous 8GB limit) and users will have their choice of either NVIDIA’s GeForce GTX 650 Ti or AMD’s HD 7750 to power graphics matters. Of course, the OPC will still feature the same array of inputs for tracking in addition to its built-in speaker for keeping an ear on how things are progressing and an attractive software suite. A fully loaded model will hit the ol’ wallet for £1,197 ($1,896), but individual component upgrades are available should you be looking to save a little coin.
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New 3rd Generation Orange OPC Upgraded And on Demonstration at Winter NAMM 2013
Orange Amplification has upgraded the multi-award winning state-of-the-art Orange Personal Computer to the 3rd Gen Intel i7 processor and doubled the maximum 8GB of RAM to a massive 16GB.
The 3rd Gen Intel i7 processor has up to twice the HD Media and 3-D graphics performance and delivers stunning visual experiences from mainstream gaming to HD video editing. Creating and editing videos and photos, surfing the Web, watching HD movies or playing mainstream games are now quicker, crisper and more life-like. The additional 16 GB RAM will further help the speed of the OPC and enable users to multi-task with no noticeable slow down in performance.
Users can now also purchase the OPC with the latest generation Nvidia 650 ti or AMD HD 7750 Graphics Card for even more advanced graphical performance.
Already described as an ‘affordable guitarists dream’ by Guitar World Magazine and a computer ‘[packed] full of high-performance components’ by CNET, the OPC now has a huge speed boost with the upgraded 3rd gen Ivy Bridge Intel CPUs with the added benefits of built-in studio quality speakers, ultra-low latency (1ms), ¼ jack inputs/outputs and an incredible £500 of recording software already installed and configured. The latest upgrade means the OPC now has more power and speed for a wider range of creative needs from recording, video editing, gaming, music playback and 3D modeling to provide unbeatable value.
The latest upgrade on the OPC follows a succession on world class reviews in 2012 which saw Expert Reviews.com give it a 5 star review, Guitar World awarding the OPC their coveted Gold Award, CNET.com presenting it their editors choice and Stuff magazine describing the OPC as an ace-sounding all-in-one studio crammed into a ’70s rock icon’!
To take a look at the OPC and all the other Orange Amps and products go to Orange Music Booth 4890 Hall C. You can find out more about the OPC software and hardware and also buy direct from our website www.orangeopc.com
This is site is run by Sascha Endlicher, M.A., during ungodly late night hours. Wanna know more about him? Connect via Social Media by jumping to about.me/sascha.endlicher.
