Hasta La Gadget!

The announcement wasn’t scheduled for a few more days — four according to the teaser site — but it looks like Alienware’s All Powerful gaming laptop has been set free anyway. So, does it live up to the clues? Pretty much… how does a pair of 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M GPUs strike you? No Core i7 listed, instead we’re looking at a Core 2 Extreme quad-core CPU at the top end with up to 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory, and 1TB of 7200-rpm disk or a 512GB SSD if you prefer. RAID 1 or RAID 0? Sure. Rounding things out is a nine-cell battery of unstated performance, FireWire, 4x USB, eSATA, ExpressCard, 802.11n WiFi, 8-in-1 media card reader, dual-layer Blu-ray, a 1920 x 1200 pixel edge-to-edge LCD, DisplayPort and HDMI-outs all wrapped up in a massive chassis weighing 11.68-pounds with a 15.98 x 12.65 x 2.11-inch footprint. It’s also packing a GeForce 9400M G1 GPU with HybridPower technology that allows you to scale the graphics back to conserve battery power. Prices start at $1,799 for a lot less than we mentioned above.

As a footnote to the details above, PCWorld also says that Alienware will use next week’s E3 show to update us on its 42.8-inch curved monitor we went hands-on with back in January of 2008.

[Thanks, Steve]

Filed under: Gaming, Laptops

Alienware’s M17X gaming laptop with twin GTX 280M GPUs truly is all powerful originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 May 2009 05:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Admit it, you weren’t satisfied by those initial concept images of DJ Hero’s button-laden turntable. Yeah, us neither, but thanks to a screengrab reportedly from a television promo for Spike / GameTrailer’s E3 2009 coverage, we’ve now got a brief glimpse of what Activision’s peripheral looks like in physical form. In addition to getting somewhat of an idea of its size, we’ve also got the first peak at the crossfader attachment. No clue on if that means we’ll be needing a second turntable, but with any luck we’ll get to find out for ourselves early next month.

[Via Joystiq]

Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

DJ Hero’s turntable, crossfader peripheral spotted in E3 preview originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 24 May 2009 20:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s been awhile since we’ve heard from J Allard; the man who assumed responsibility for Microsoft’s Entertainment and Devices Division (think: Zune and Xbox) in mid 2008 in an effort to unify the experience into a centralized package. Now Microsoft’s CTO and CXO (that’s, Chief eXperience Office) has co-signed a patent application for a “Magic Wand” first filed in November of 2007 and made public just a few days ago. The patent application reads very much like a Wiimote, hand-held controller,

“The architecture can utilize one or more sensor from a collection of sensors to determine an orientation or gesture in connection with the wand, and can further issue an instruction to update a state of an environmental component based upon the orientation.”

It’s worth remembering that Microsoft has been rumored to be working on such a controller since at least August 2007. Something they’ve apparently scrapped for a camera-based solution that will allow gamers to control the action with their bodies and hand-gestures without requiring a hand-held controller — you know, if current rumors are true. How many days until Microsoft’s June 1st E3 press conference again?

[Via TechFlash]

Filed under: Gaming

J Allard’s ‘Magic Wand’ patent application for Microsoft puts Nintendo, sorcerers on notice originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 May 2009 03:25:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Rumors of some sort of Sony announcement at E3 have been floating around for a couple weeks now, and it certainly seems like something’s afoot — hot on the heels of that officially non-existent white US DualShock 3 appearing this morning, we’re hearing that a revised PS3 is in the works. It’s not clear exactly what’s going down, but the hot whispers right now say that it’s the long-rumored slimmed-down redesign of the current console, not just a color change or storage bump. That makes a certain amount of sense, given the endless chatter of a price cut and Sir Howard Stringer’s recent comments about the system being too expensive — a trimmed-up redesign is right on schedule with those smaller Cell and RSX chips, and it could still possibly include some of that rumored motion-sensing hardware while driving down costs. On the other hand, after all this speculation and hype it would be a total Sony move to just pump out the same machine in a different color with maybe a new pack-in game, so we’re not holding our breath. Let’s say we’re, oh, “cautiously optimistic.” That work for you?

Update: Sony UK is currently denying the rumor with a curt “We currently don’t have any plans for a redesigned PS3 at this time.” Okay — but what else would you expect them to say?

[Via I4U News; image courtesy of T3]

Filed under: Gaming

Slimmer PS3 in store at E3? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 May 2009 14:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft has a new twitter account in support of its Office 2010 product launch. What’s strange though, is that the people behind the account seem to care more about the future of the Zune than Office. Two tweets (of five) from this account have caught our attention. The first says,

June 2009 will be an important month for Zune lovers.

Then as a followup to the barrage of questions received, @officethemovie adds,

New product launch, that’s all I’m allowed to say. Hold off from buying an iPhone/Pre.

Naturally, we’re expecting the launch of the Zune HD and/or the unveiling of project Pink. Whatever happens, the month of June is going to be historic with Apple’s WWDC scheduled to kick off on June 8th and the Palm Pre rumored for release on June 5th or June 7th.

Update: It’s worth mentioning that the big E3 gaming expo kicks off on June 2nd (press events on the 1st) — could be important if there’s any truth to the new Zune HD supporting some form of Xbox game integration.

[Via Neowin, thanks Anthony S.]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video

Microsoft: ‘June 2009 will be an important month for Zune lovers… hold off from buying an iPhone/Pre’ originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 May 2009 04:27:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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