Jun 10
Tweetlog: Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch
Posted in: Apple, laptop, macbook pro, Today's Chili
With new features and better battery life, the Apple MacBook Pro 13-inch (http://tinyurl.com/ng4xsr) was a shoe-in for our Editors’ Choice.
Jun 09
Dell has added the Intel “My WiFi” technology to three notebooks: the Studio 15, Studio 17, and the Studio XPS 16, the company said Tuesday.
What is My WiFi? Put simply, it’s the combination of an Intel Centrino 2 platform as well as some associated Intel software that turns your Wi-Fi client into an access point, so that others might share a single Ethernet-based Internet connection.
The technology allows up to eight Wi-Fi devices and to share files
between them on a Centrino 2-based laptop running Windows Vista, according to Lionel Menchaca, who blogged about the addition for Dell.
“So what could do with My WiFi? If you’re at a hotel and logged in for
broadband access, you could share your connection with other Wi-Fi
enabled laptops in a room, or transfer images from a Wi-Fi enabled
smartphone to your laptop,” Menchaca wrote. “In the home networking side, you could use
it to print wirelessly or to share photos from your laptop directly to
a photo frame without having to transfer the images through a cable or
via an SD card. Pretty cool stuff.”
Jun 09
Hands On: The Ultra-Thin Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810T (6415)
Posted in: business, portable, Today's Chili
I took the Acer Aspire Timeline AS3810T (6415), recently reviewed by our laptop expert Cisco Cheng, for a spin and found it to be an affordable, ultra-thin laptop that can handle most tasks the average user could throw at it.
On the outside, the AS3810T is an attractive gray color with an aluminum-and-plastic frame. It may not be as tough as a MacBook Pro (I’ve accidentally dropped mine off of any type of furniture you could imagine, and it still manages to work fine), but for its $900 price tag, the system is built very well.
The only thing really missing from the machine is an optical drive, sacrificed for the sake of portability. For most users, however, this is far from being a deal-breaker, especially considering the built-in multifunction card reader and three USB ports.
Jun 09
Apple Calls It: The SD Format Wins
Posted in: macbook, sd, Today's Chili
Somewhat lost in the many WWDC announcements made Monday was an interesting point: at Apple, at least, the SD card format has won.
Most of the new MacBooks have replaced an ExpessCard slot with an SD card slot, which was designed as a slot to bring in photos from digital cameras. (Given that the iPhone lacks a memory card slot, I think it’s fair to say that the SD slot serves way to bring content in to the MacBook, rather than send it out.)
Why do the new MacBooks have an SD card slot, instread of a five-in-one card reader, like other notebooks and desktops? Because “SD is really ubiquitous,” Todd Benjamin, director of portables for Apple, said during an interview on Monday at Apple’s developer conference in San Francisco.
Consider all of the various small-form-factor card formats there are, or were: CompactFlash, the various Memory Stick flavors, SmartMedia, miniSD, microSD, xD.
It’s not clear whether the new MacBook card slot supports the SDHC format, as well as SD. If it doesn’t, it surely will in the next revision, with a roadmap toward the terabyte SDXC standard. As you can see, there certainly are quite enough different dorm factors within the SD format alone. It’s also unlikely that the smaller SD form factors will go away as the external storage formats for cell phones.
Still, Apple essentially killled off the floppy; it’s probably time that it helped consolidate the industry on a single flash card format for desktops, as well.
Jun 05
Tweetlog: Lenovo IdeaCentre A600
Posted in: lenovo, Today's Chili
With a love-it-or-hate-it design, the Lenovo IdeaCentre A600 (http://tinyurl.com/qhf33o) will blow your everyday nettop out of the water.
Jun 03
Pixel Qi, a startup founded by One Laptop Per Child’s Mary Lou Jepsen, is in Taiwan this week showing off its energy-saving hybrid e-ink screens.
The company received the first screens back from its manufacturing facility on May 24, and have been showing them in Taiwan to ODMs interested in building devices around them. For now, Pixel Qi’s demonstration machine is a retrofitted Acer notebook, seen above. The target audience, not so surprisingly, is laptop manufacturers.
You’re probably familiar with the Kindle, which uses technology developed by E Ink (recently purchased by Kindle maker Prime View). E Ink technology effectively places the display into a static, powered-down state that can hold an image without power, dramatically extending a display’s battery life. However, E Ink is, for now, a grayscale technology, and can not display video.
Pixel Qi, however, says it can operate in at least two modes, one where it can display video, in color, as well as a static e-ink mode. So far, Pixel Qi hasn’t described the technology in detail, so we can’t say for certain how much power the display consumes, how fast it can render video, or the resolution of such.
Jun 02
Nvidia released some of the names and models of its Tegra-based netbooks and notebooks the company talked about on Monday.
In a post earlier today, Gizmodo pooh-poohed the no-names that are showing off the Tegra, an attitude that I think misses the point. Recall that Acer, Dell, HP and others don’t actually build PCs any more; they use a network of Taiwan and Chinese ODMs to build them, and, increasingly, design them. Getting the Taiwan ODMs to back Tegra is a sly way to encourage OEMs to ship them.
But even the ODMs support isn’t critical. Nvidia invited twenty or so
mobile-phone carriers to Taiwan to try and persuade them to commission,
say, a Verizon-branded netbook. that’s where Nvidia sees the volume. Again, it’s these ODMs that will be
building them.
Jun 02
Synaptics, the designer of many of the touchpads used in notebooks and other devices, has used the Computex show in Taiwan to launch ClickPad, a technology that allows the touchpad to also serve as a button that can be clicked.
The idea, according to the company, is that by eliminating the additional buttons, OEMs can create more compact devices, such as ultraportables or netbooks. The standard range of gestures, including three-finger gestures, can be used on the ClickPads.
Synaptics also said that its DualMode TouchPad is now available to support “under plastic” designs , allowing OEMs to build in a plastic overlay. The DualMode allows users to tap to switch the touchpad over to a “multimedia controller,” and the plastic overlay allows those OEMs to highlight multimedia features which can be accessed via the touchpad itself.
The final bit of news? That the company’s entire SGS 9.1-enabled TouchPad family is Microsoft Windows 7 ready. Phew!
Synaptics has shipped 350 million touchpads since 1995.
Jun 01
Dell Retires Inspiron Mini 9
Posted in: Today's Chili
Dell confirmed on Monday that it’s saying farewell to the Inspiron Mini 9, the company’s first foray into the netbook market.
The Inspiron Mini 9 made its debut in September 2008 for $349, the first netbook with built-in mobile broadband from a major wireless carrier, Vodafone.
“Since the launch of the Mini 9, Dell has extended its Mini family with several new products, incorporating industry-led enhancements and customer feedback inspired improvements, and we expanded the palette for personalization options, with more colors and original artwork by Tristan Eaton,” Dell wrote in a blog post.
Dell urged consumers to look to the Del Mini 10v instead, which retails for $299. The device boasts a 10-inch display and a bigger keyboard, as well as more storage space and options, like the choice of a 16GB SSD or traditional hard drive up to 160GB, Dell said.
The Mini 10v launched in early May, three months after the debut of the Inspiron Mini 10 in February
Just bought a Mini 9? You’re out of luck for now. “We appreciate your business, and hope the Dell Mini 9 continues to deliver a great mobile experience,” Dell said.
Jun 01
What technology brands are most admired among women? Apple and Sony take the prize with Microsoft and Dell tying for third place, according to a recent “Women & Digital Life” study conducted by the Solutions Research Group.
About 20 percent of women reported that Apple was the technology brand or company they admire most, followed by Sony at 14 percent, and Microsoft and Dell at 10 percent. Hewlett-Packard came in at 6 percent, followed by Verizon and Google, which each earned 2 percent of the vote.
SRG polled 2,000 women ages 12 and up on six areas: attitudes/use of technology, TV and entertainment, gaming, wireless/mobile, broadband and social media.
When asked about the technology that has had the biggest impact on their lives in the last two years, 26 percent of women said the Internet, followed by computers at 22 percent, and cell phones at 18 percent.
Women polled said they spent an average of 22.9 hours per week online. When asked what they did online in the last month, 61 percent of women said they watched short video clips, 58 percent said they surfed the Web with their kids, and 57 percent said they purchased items online.
About 50 percent used social media Web sites like Facebook and MySpace.
Is the iPhone a top choice in the mobile space? Find out after the jump.
Who's in charge here?
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.