Onkyo‘s just added the DP312 nettop to its lineup. This Ion-based box boasts a 1.6GHz Atom N270 CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 320GB HDD, and a DVD player to boot. So far, it looks like you’ll only be able to get this one in Japan, and sold without any peripherals, it runs ¥64,800 (that’s nearly $700), and can be upgraded for an additional ¥20,000 to include 4GB of RAM and a 500GB HDD.
If you’ve been patiently waiting on a low-cost NVIDIA Ion 2 system it looks like today is your lucky day since it looks like Lenovo has scored an early lead in unleashing the wrath of the new Atom / GeForce combo. Available sometime this month, the 18.5-inch C200 all-in-one isn’t going to replace that Core i7 rig for ripping through Command & Conquer 4, but its Intel dual-core Atom D510 CPU can handle the light productivity while its GeForce G210 GPU will automatically turn on — thanks to Optimus — to deal with some Spore or 1080p video. Unfortunately the C200 only has a single touch, 1366×768-resolution display and a standard integrated DVD drive rather than Blu-ray, but we guess we can’t expect much more for its appealing $499 price tag. Lenovo will also offer a sans Ion and touch version of the C200 for $399. We told you today was going to be your lucky day! PR and press pics for your viewing pleasure below.
Ed Roberts, the maker of the world’s first personal computer, died yesterday at the age of 68.
Roberts created the Altair 8800, the first computer normal people could a) afford and b) use in their homes, without it taking up an entire room. Altair 8800 was also the platform Paul Allen and Bill Gates used to make their first programs and launch Microsoft.
In the wake of nearly-obsessive anticipation of the iPad and its revolutionary potential, it’s worth remembering how people like Roberts got this whole personal computer thing started.
Roberts founded Micro Instrumentation and Telemetry System (MITS) in 1970 to sell model rocket kits. By 1971, MITS moved beyond model rockets and started making electronic calculator kits. Roberts’ next project was making a low-cost computer kit that a broad array of customers could afford and use. MITS finished building the Altair 8800 in late 1974.
The Popular Electronics 1975 cover with Altair 8800
By today’s standards, Altair wasn’t sexy. The $439 build-it-yourself computer had no display and was operated by switches. Nonetheless, it was a radical departure from massive mainframe computers, mostly owned by universities, and proved to be a commercial hit. By August 1975, MITS shipped more than 5,000 Altairs.
Bill Gates, a Harvard sophomore at the time, and Paul Allen, working in Boston, saw the Altair 8800 in the January 1975 issue of Popular Electronics. The duo immediately decided to be the first to write programs for the machine, in BASIC programming language.
The only problem? They did not have access to an actual Altair 8800. Instead, they created a BASIC emulator that worked on a PDP-10 mainframe computer at Harvard.
According to Stephen Mantes’ 1994 book on Gates, the team was soon calling Roberts and claiming they have BASIC programs ready to roll on an Altair computer. They went to MITS’ headquarters in Albuquerque, New Mexico to present their products.
This was the first time they saw the Altair. To their utmost surprise, the BASIC code that they developed in a simulator worked almost perfectly in its first run on an actual Altair. A month later, Microsoft was founded.
Roberts didn’t stick around for the computer revolution that followed. He sold MITS, moved to Georgia in late 1977, enrolled in a medical school, and in 1988 started his own medical practice in Cochran, Georgia.
Robert’ Altair was the first mass-appeal, low-cost, feature-stingy personal computer. It was smaller and less powerful than most computers available at the time, but was far better suited to the needs of ordinary users. Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?
Google Europe boss John Herlihy says that desktop computers will be “irrelevant” in three years. Instead, mobile devices will be the main way people interact with the internet.
Speaking at the Digital Landscapes conference in Ireland, Herlihy said that “In three years time, desktops will be irrelevant. In Japan, most research is done today on smart phones, not PCs.”
Of course, being a Googler, Herlihy is all about the search, and wants to concentrate on that. But his point is a good one. While desktop computers will still be used for work (video production, for example), it’s hard to see them continuing as an entertainment device. Laptops will likely be next, used only for work, and replaced by purpose-made entertainment devices like the iPad and, as Herlihy says, the smart-phone.
I really think this is the point many people are missing when they moan about the “lack” of something in the iPad (and before you complain, this applies to any other non-desktop OS device that may come after). The iPad isn’t meant to be a computer. It is an appliance for entertainment. Apple gets this, and Google gets this. That’s why Google is pushing so hard with Android, and why it has made the Chrome OS.
Yo Intel, when your 2008 fourth quarter was one of the worst you ever recorded, it’s slightly, just slightly, facetious to go trumpeting an 875 percent improvement in your 2009 fortunes. The self-appointed chipmaking rock star has clocked up $10.6 billion in revenues for the last quarter, which filters down to $2.3 billion in pure, unadulterated, mother-loving profit. That’s good and indeed technically nearly nine times what the company achieved in the same period the previous year — we’d just appreciate this to be represented as the recovery it is, rather than some major leap forward in the face of a global financial meltdown. Either way, the Santa Clara checkbook is now well and truly balanced, even if it would’ve looked fatter still but for the small matter of a $1.25 billion settlement reflected in last quarter’s results.
An IDC Quarterly PC Tracker report released yesterdays found that PC shipments overall for 2009 were up about 2.8 percent over 2008 — not exactly a game changing stat or anything, but we’re sure the manufacturers will take what they can get. The upswing was apparently largely due to the strong fourth quarter (and the positive debut of Windows 7), which made up for the abysmal first quarter, second quarter, and semi-abysmal third quarter. In that last quarter of the year, PC sales showed a 15.2 percent growth over 2008 worldwide, while in the US, sales were up 24 percent over the last year, with 20.7 million units shipped. Another trend noted in the report, is, unsurprisingly, the fact that people continue to purchase cheaper PCs — mostly in the form of laptops and netbooks. All this means that retailers and manufacturers profit margins are thinning out, but hey, we’ll leave the worrying to the economists — where’s that circular for the fifteen dollar netbook?
Good news, everybody! If you’re looking into one of Asus’s Eee Box 1501 nettops but weren’t exactly into the built-in DVD burner, well, better days may be ahead. It looks like a new version of the 1501 is on its way, this time packing Blu-ray. In case you’ve forgotten the specs, the Eee Box 1501 packs NVIDIA’s Ion chipset, an Intel Atom 330 dual-core CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and an HDMI port for good measure. There’s no official word on this yet, but the release of the Blu-ray boasting updated nettop looks likely for Switzerland in the near future, so we’ll keep our eyes peeled for more information.
HP’s just unleashed four new Pavilion Elite HPE desktops — the 110f, 120f, 130f, and 170f. Terrifically creative naming scheme aside, the HPE series offers a choice of processors, including AMD Phenom II Quad-Core or Intel CPUs, and ATI Radeon or NVIDIA GeForce graphics. The desktops are also configurable for an up to 2TB hard drive, and up to 24GB of DDR3 RAM. Other features of these bad boys include front panel 15-in-1 card readers, DVD burner, wireless LAN 802.11a/b/g/n, an optional tv tuner, pocket media drive, and Blu-ray. We don’t have pricing or availability yet, but we’ll update you when we do. Full press release and specs are after the break.
New Year’s Eve is upon us, ring it in with some New Year’s-themed wallpaper. Judging by the wallpapers we found, 2010 is going to be all the neon and sparkles the futurists of yesteryear promised us.
Note: The “Full Size” link directly under the picture only shows you the sample image we uploaded for this gallery. You need to click on the name of the particular wallpaper in the right hand column to access the full range of sizes at the source site.
Not keen on the gallery layout? See all the larger images on one page here.
Glowing 2010 by ~ritamd Click on the link above to visit the author’s page and access the full size image.
Nobody likes staring at a boring desktop when they fire up their computer every morning. Keep your wallpaper fresh with the five most popular sites Lifehacker readers use to satisfy their wallpaper needs.
Photo by goincase. Wallpaper on monitor available here.
Earlier this week we asked you to share your favorite wallpaper site. We quickly learned that—while not everyone has a strong opinion about Linux distributions or encryption software—everyone has a favorite wallpaper site; readers logged nearly 500 votes for their favorite wallpaper sites. Now we’re back to share the five most popular sites used by Lifehacker readers to dress up their monitors with fresh wallpaper.
Vlad Studio features the work of Russian wallpaper artist Vlad Gerasimov. He cranks out hundreds of great wallpapers, ranging from holiday themes to abstract art. Vlad Studio has wallpaper in a wide range of sizes suited for everything from your mobile phone to a multi-monitor setup. Mobile wallpaper and desktop resolutions at 1600×1200 and below are available for free. Images larger than that are available only to registered users. If you want access to the larger resolutions, now is a great time to pick up a subscription. Vlad is running a Christmas-special where the $30 lifetime membership is available for $20.
4Chan is an image-based forum where anyone can anonymously post and share images and comments. It’s divided into sub-boards devoted to all sorts of topics like Anime, video games, etc., but has gained notoriety for some of its more unsavory sub-boards. The /Wallpaper/ board, nonetheless, is bustling and updated nearly 24/7 with images from around the web. Since the 4Chan boards are a bit kludgy to use if you’re not trying to comment and just looking for images, a variety of scrapers have sprung up to help you pick through all the images in /Wallpaper/. You can visit 4Chan directly at the link above or you can use services like Nik.Bot and 4Walled to browse through the wallpapers available through 4Chan. Be strongly forewarned, however: although the /Wallpaper/ forum is much tamer than other areas of 4Chan, you’ll still find a large number of Maxim-level NSFW wallpaper images and the occasional Playboy-level NSFW images when you’re browsing. If you’re not prepared to explain some really awkward internet memes to your boss, you’d better save 4Chan /Wallpaper/ for home.
Social Wallpapering borrows the vote up/down model used by many social aggregators (Reddit, Digg, etc.) and applies it to desktop wallpaper. Users vote up their favorite, vote down their least favorites, and upload their own images to be ranked by other users. You can browse by rank, category, view random images, and sort by screen size to help you drill down through the huge collection to find the wallpaper you want. Prefer to grab everything and sort it out later? Social Wallpaper makes their entire wallpaper collection available for download via BitTorrent. If you’re looking for a site where you can not only find fresh wallpaper but participate in helping your fellow wallpaper lovers find the best images, Social Wallpapering is a solid choice.
Interfacelift is an enormous repository of wallpaper images. Thanks to the button-based layout at the top of the screen, you can easily drill down through wallpapers using factors like rating, number of comments, screen type, and so on. Once you select your screen type—widescreen, full screen, dual monitors, etc.—you can pick from available resolutions so you never end up clicking on an image and finding out it’s not available in the resolution you want. Every search result gives you information about the image plus a drop down menu for size selection and a quick download. Interfacelift has recently added a feature called “The Loupe” which allows users to vote on incoming submissions to accelerate the process of new materials being added to the database.
If you’ve visited your fair share of wallpaper sites and gotten tired of the endless stream of glowing line-art and video-game wallpapers, then you’ll enjoy browsing the wallpaper archives of DeviantART—a subdivision of the artist-centric site. You’ll find everything at DeviantART from the more common glow-lines variety of abstract wallpaper to quirky paintings, photographs, and computer-rendered images. Most of the users at DeviantART are prolific contributors, so if you find a wallpaper you really like, make sure to check out the user’s gallery to see if they have any other gems to share. DeviantART doesn’t have the advanced wallpaper-oriented search features that many of the other wallpaper sites have, but you can still search by image size and sort by popularity.
Now that you’ve had a chance to look over Lifehacker readers’ favorite wallpaper sites, it’s time to cast a vote for your favorite:
We have two honorary mentions to hand out this week to extremely deserving sites that have contributed a multitude of awesome wallpapers over the years: Digital Blasphemy and Mandolux. Got more to say about your favorite (or a favorite that didn’t make the list)? Let’s hear it in the comments.
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.
Google Europe boss John Herlihy says that desktop computers will be “irrelevant” in three years. Instead, mobile devices will be the main way people interact with the internet.
Nobody likes staring at a boring desktop when they fire up their computer every morning. Keep your wallpaper fresh with the five most popular sites Lifehacker readers use to satisfy their wallpaper needs.
