Hasta La Gadget!

This article was written on July 09, 2007 by CyberNet.

Modern laptops continue to get more powerful and smaller in size, but we can’t forget about the predecessors that led to the notebooks that we have today. PCWorld put together an article outlining the top-10 most important laptops of all time where they outline the significance of each one. So what laptops made the list?

1. First True Laptop: Epson’s HX-20 (1981)
   This shipped with a flattering 50-hour battery, 614 Hz dual processors, 16K of RAM, and only weighed 3.5lbs! The LCD only showed four-lines of text at a time, which probably made gaming a little difficult.
   
2. First Popular Laptop: Tandy’s TRS-80 Model 100 (1983)
   Used four AA batteries to stretch out 18-hours of battery life, which wasn’t bad for a cost of just $800! There has been no confirmation, but this is supposedly the last system that shipped using code actually written by Bill Gates.
   
3. First Portable PC Running a 386 Processor: Compaq’s Portable 386 (1987)
   If you had the $12,000 to drop on this sucker you would walk away with a 20MHz chick magnet that had the 386 processor in it. Of course you better be in shape to lug this 20lbs machine around.
   
4. First Convertible Tablet: GRiD Systems’ 2260 (1992)
   Looks like Tablet PC’s have been around a little longer than you thought!
   
5. First Thin-and-Light Notebook: DEC’s HiNote Ultra (1994)
   A whopping 4MB of RAM, 340MB hard drive, trackball mouse, Windows 3.11, and just a mere 3.5lbs standing in at an inch thick.
   
6. First Notebook With a Touchpad: Apple’s PowerBook 520 (1994)
   Relief from the trackball mouse initially came from an Apple! I remember getting my hands on a touchpad when they were first developed (it was a Gateway laptop with trackball and touchpad), and my initial thought was how that would be successful. It seemed to be so inconvenient to use until you really started to get used to it.
   
7. First Laptop to Use a Lithium Ion Battery: Toshiba’s Portege T3400 (1995)
   Out with the Nickel-Metal Hydride and in with the Lithium Ion! You no longer had to worry about completely draining the battery because of the "memory effects" that plagued so many people. The introduction of the Lithium Ion battery 12-years ago brought a 4-hour battery life…which isn’t all that different than what we get today.
   
8. First Wireless-Enabled Laptop: Apple’s iBook (1999)
   External wireless cards are virtually non-existent these days since it is built-in to nearly every electronic device we use. I can hardly count all of the times I almost snapped my wireless card off of my laptop since it protruded so much out the side.
   
9. First Gaming Notebook: WidowPC’s Sting 917X2 (2005)
   This dual-core AMD X2 laptop might not be the battery lover you would like, but it sure makes going to LAN parties a little easier. Of course there still isn’t really a laptop that can match the gaming performance of a nice desktop.
   
10. First Serious PC Killer: Apple’s MacBook Pro (2006)
    Now that this can run both Windows and the Mac OS (using Boot Camp), it is quickly becoming the notebook choice for many users.
    

So there you have it…the top 10 most important laptops that have ever been released. For the most part I would say that I agree with them, but what I’m really looking forward to is hearing what you have to say about your experience with the older-generation notebook computers.

Drop a comment below and let us know what your first laptop computer was and what you thought about it!

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on September 06, 2007 by CyberNet.

As you can imagine, there are many people who feel enraged and insulted that Apple would have the audacity to lower the price of the iPhone by $200 so soon after launch. It’s been one of the hot topics in the news today, and some people were suggesting that Apple should offer a $200 refund to all those early-adopters who feel they were ripped-off. Some have called it shady saying that Apple just wanted to make some quick cash.  While there’s the crowd of people upset, there’s another crowd that’s nearly as equal in number saying that’s what you get for being an early adopter of a product that was so highly anticipated.

USA Today sat down with Steve Jobs to talk to him about the price drop of the iPhone.  One of the first things that he was asked was, "What do you say to customers who just bought a new iPhone for $599? Sorry?" His response was "That’s technology.  If they bought it this morning, they should go back to where they bought it and talk to them.  If they bought it a month ago, well that’s what happens in technology." So all those hoping Jobs would give in and offer a refund have their confirmation that it’s not going to happen.

–How to handle the situation–

Over at The Unofficial Apple Weblog, they posted an article titled "Apple Screwed you: So now what?" which offers suggestions on how to handle the situation. Among the suggestions are:

1. Returns – if you bought it within 14 days, you can either return the item or you can request a credit for the difference.
2. Call AT&T – you may get lucky with a rep who’ll offer you some amount of credit on your line.
3. Complain – I’m pretty sure most people have this one under control.  They are complaining like crazy, and if you really wanted, you could write a letter to Apple with your complaints.
4. Call the store – ask if they’ll issue a refund for the difference – even if it was bought beyond the 14 days. Chances are, they’ll say no, but you never know.

–Fake Steve Jobs Says…–

I knew Fake Steve would have something enlightening to say about this whole price drop situation, which he did. You can read the entire thing here, I’ll just point out the highlights of his post:

"Dear early iPhone adopters: Yeah, we fu%*ed you. Sorry, but it’s true. We baited you in with a high price (the one thing no Apple fanboy can resist) and sure enough you fell for it just like we knew you would. But hey, you iTards were the ones lining up and camping out for a week to get a phone even though there was no shortage of them. You were the ones raving about what a bargain the phone was at $600 and how you’d gladly have paid more. Who can blame us for taking advantage of you?"

Update: It was pointed out in the comments below that Jobs is now willing to give a $100 Apple Store credit.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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This article was written on August 15, 2006 by CyberNet.

We have heard about and seen pictures of a Dell laptops starting on fire…now comes the battery recall. This effects 4.1 million Dell laptops of the 22 million that were shipped between April 2004 and July 18, 2006. If you own a Dell laptop that was purchased during that time you have a 19% chance that the battery is defective.

The Dell Battery Program site is where you can check to see if your battery needs to be replaced. The following are the models of computers that have been sold with the defective battery:

• Latitude: D410, D500, D505, D510, D520, D600, D610, D620, D800, D810
• Inspiron: 500M, 510M, 600M, 700M, 710M, 6000, 6400, 8500, 8600, 9100, 9200, 9300, 9400, E1505, E1705
• Precision: M20, M60, M70, M90
• XPS: XPS, XPS Gen2, XPS M170, XPS M1710

If you have one of those computers you will need to compare the identification number located on the battery to the one in the image above. If the portion of the ID that is circled in red matches any of these then your battery is subject to a recall:

• 1K055
• 3K590
• 59474
• 6P922
• C2603, C5339, C5340, C5446, C6269, C6270
• D2961, D5555, D6024, D6025
• F2100, F5132
• GD785
• H3191
• JD616, JD617
• KD494
• M3006
• RD857
• TD349
• U5867, U5882
• W5915
• X5308, X5329, X5332, X5333, X5875, X5877
• Y1333, Y4500, Y5466

I tried to alphabetize the list that they provided because it is in some kind of unorganized table. You could also enter in the entire ID number into the Battery Replacement Ordering page and it will inform you whether you are eligible for a battery replacement.

The New York Times is reporting that the cost of the recall could exceed $300 million. The accuracy of that number depends on how many people are still using a bad battery. You would have to imagine that the people who purchased a Dell laptop back in 2004 would have probably replaced the battery by this point.

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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So it turns out that NVIDIA roadmap we saw last month was as true and pure as driven snow. The barely conceivable quad-core Tegra chip that it listed has now been made official by none other than NVIDIA itself, with the company also informing us that the new silicon is already sampling out to prospective clients. Known as Kal-El internally, this will most likely turn into NVIDIA’s Tegra 3 as and when it’s ready to enter the consumer market. Tonight NVIDIA whetted our appetite for what’s to come with a demo that can most fittingly be described as an exhibition of unadulterated computational muscle. A 2560 x 1440 stream was being decoded on a developmental device, scaled down to that slate’s native 1366 x 768 resolution, and additionally displayed on a connected 30-inch, 2560 x 1600 monitor. That entire voluminous workload was being handled in real time by Kal-El and we saw no signs of it struggling.

By NVIDIA’s own estimation, the quad-core newbie provides roughly double the processing power of Tegra 2 and triple the graphics-crunching prowess. In the second demonstration of the evening, we saw an instance of Great Battles Medieval — ran at 720p with 650 enemy soldiers on the field — on both a Tegra 2 and a Kal-El platform, which showed the baby superhero handily dusting its still very new brethren. This was in large part down to the full dozen GPU cores contained within Kal-El, though before you freak out about battery-draining insanity, NVIDIA claims things are much, much more efficient as well — up to 12 hours of HD video playback are promised under the right circumstances.

It’s a big fat wedge of awesome boasts we’ve heard from the GeForce maker today, however the company’s given us a schedule to hold it to as well. The “August timeframe” is when the quad-core Kal-El is expected to land in tablets, while smartphones will have to wait until the holiday season to benefit from what’s likely to be a slightly downgraded variant. Skip past the break to eye the future Tegra roadmap for the next few years plus video of the wildly impressive demos we were witness to.

Continue reading NVIDIA announces quad-core Kal-El SOC, promises it in tablets by August (video)

NVIDIA announces quad-core Kal-El SOC, promises it in tablets by August (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Feb 2011 19:00:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on January 16, 2007 by CyberNet.

The options are getting larger and improving when it comes to rugged notebook computers.  Dell is joining in with their version, the Rugged Latitude ATG D620 notebook.  And according to them, a rugged notebook has been the most common request from their customers.  The durability is what sets the rugged version apart from your ordinary notebook, allowing you to travel to all extremes. Recently we wrote about some of the best rugged notebooks available from, the Panasonic Toughbook- 18 to the Rough Rider III.  The Rugged Dell Latitude fits into the group nicely with a lot of great features.

Even if you’re not traveling to extreme locations,  there’s a demand for a reinforced notebook with a screen suitable for the outdoors.  The Latitude ATG D620 Notebook features a 14.1 inch display with an ambient light sensor.  It has a glass overlay and a non-reflective coating.  On top of that, the screen is a 500-nit LCD (quite a bit brighter than the standard notebook) which makes it easier to view in the sun (one of my biggest complaints with my current notebook).

Of course, it also has the typical rugged features like:

• Reinforced hard drive and LCD display
• High durability textured paint (won’t chip)
• Lighted, dust and spill resistant keyboard
• Rear port cover to protect notebook from moisture or dust

All of these features allow it to withstand things that other notebooks can’t which is why it meets the military’s standards.  The military sets guidelines for vibration, humidity, and altitude, all of which this Latitude ATG D620 Notebook meet.

For now, it’s only available in the United States but will become available in other regions soon.  Of course it’s built for a demanding work environment, but you could also fit into that “demanding home environment” where there is a good  chance that liquids might spill onto it, or that it may be dropped It looks like the Latitude ATG D620 Notebook prices start around $3,000.

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