Hasta La Gadget!

Over in Berlin at IFA 2012, the folks at Acer have revealed their next-generation Ultrabook lineup by the name of Aspire M3 touch. This lineup improves on their Ultrabook offerings thus far with a 10-point touch display optimized for Windows 8. The Acer Aspire M3 touch is just 22mm thin and weighs in at 2.3kg, toting with it a frameless 15.6-inch display with full touch capabilities.

Inside you’ll find a next-generation NVIDIA GeForce GT640M GPU, the first in an Acer Ultrabook, and a 3rd Generation Intel Core processor besides. You’ll also get Dolby Home Theater v4 audio enhancements working with what Acer calls “premium” speakers – hard hits and big beats on the way! This unit also has battery power that Acer rates at a full day of productivity and entertainment unplugged.

The Aspire M3 touch has a lovely dark casing made of aluminum alloy and works with a chiclet keyboard including full QWERTY and numeric keypad as well. You’ve got an oversized touchpad for precision control aside from your touchscreen, and the whole device is, again, so thin that you’ll want to bring it everywhere. This unit works with Acer Instant Connect so you can reconnect to access points you’ve got saved up in just 2.5 seconds, and Acer Green Instant-On so you can resume from sleep mode in 1.5 seconds.

This unit is one of several revealed – or presented again – at IFA 2012 in Berlin. Have a peek at our Acer tag portal as well as our portal for IFA and stay tuned as the devices keep popping up left and right! ALSO NOTE: Pricing and availability have not yet been announced, but we’ll have it all up for you soon as we can!

Acer Aspire M3 touch Ultrabook hits Windows 8 arena is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

This week the folks at Lenovo have revealed their IdeaPad Y Series with a brand new interchangeable HDD bay they’ve called the UltraBay. This HDD bay is able to swap out for dual-graphics cards, increased storage space, an an additional fan for cooling. Outside this is either the Y500 with a 15.6-inch display or the Y400 with a 14-inch display – and notebooks in black and red!

This machine is made to be changed around, that’s for certain. You’ve got up to 3rd generation Intel Core i7 processor options and the ability to add up to NVIDIA GeForce GT 650M dedicated graphics with NVIDIA OptimusTM technology. You also have up to 16GB DDR 3 memory, up to 1TB HDD storage, and up to 16GB SSD cache. You can also work with an interchangeable DVD reader/writer or Blu-ray Disc drive!

This beast works with one of Lenovo’s own Intelligent Touchpads optimized for Windows 8 and their next-generation touch- and gesture-friendly interface. The Y Series has an all-ways on USB port for charging of USB-powered (charged) mobile devices even when the notebook is not powered on itself – unplugged, even.

On the sides you’ve got 2x USB 2.0 and 1 USB 3.0 port, a 6 in 1 memory card reader, 1/8 inch Stereo Headphone Output Jack/ SPIDIF, 1/8 inch Input Jack Microphone, and HDMI out. The full beast is either 387x259x15.5-36.0mm (13.77×9.64×0.59-1.29 inches) for the larger model or 350x 245x 15-33mm (13.77×9.64×0.59-1.29 inches) and both have a battery that’s quoted at 3 hours of productive usage without recharge. These notebooks will have specifications that vary by region – and both will be available October 2012 starting at US $649. Stay tuned for more Lenovo action at IFA 2012!

Lenovo IdeaPad Y Series brings UltraBay for interchangeable upgrades is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NVIDIA has once again tied it up with Phosphor Games to bring a gaming title to Android like no other – Horn, optimized for the Tegra 3 quad-core processor environment. This game takes on fabulous cinematics and next-level battle and places it on the mobile platform on a grand scale. With the four cores of the Tegra 3 you’ll be heading off the enemies of the blacksmith’s apprentice, leading you ever closer to the final crown.

Several years ago, such gameplay was relegated to consoles which were made specifically for such gigantic graphic tasks. With the current age of quad-core processors here on mobile devices such as the Nexus 7 (the device we’re having a peek at this game on), we’re able to do this and a whole lot more for a whole lot cheaper. The game Horn takes the Old English tales of King Horn and loosely crafts them into a magical arena of battle and exploration.

This game has you, Horn, moving through a village “overrun by fantastic, and sometimes humorous, monsters”. That said, you’ll have to make it through without giggling yourself to your doom – but you’ll have help! There’s a little beast that you carry around with you that sometimes spits some nastiness as the story moves on.

You’ll be working on enemies weak points, hitting heavy armor in all the wrong places, and working your way through waves of bosses, sub bosses, and “Golden Enemies” – cut them down for rare item drops! You’ll be collecting items, too – make sure you’re aware of what your carrying so you can be all you can be in the kill zone. There’s also an in-game store, a forge where you can upgrade your gear, weapons, amulets, and all sort of other items to rummage through.

There’s even a massive guide online you’ll want to find your way through if you want to survive your first few adventures – you might need it! This game is out (or will be very soon) on the NVIDIA TegraZone as well as the Google Play app store today – and it’s out for the iPad and iPhone as well starting earlier this month – grab it!

Horn bursts forth for Tegra devices and hands-on is written by Chris Burns & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

It’s IFA week, which means that we had a lot of news flooding out of Germany. Let’s get to it, shall we? Samsung and Sony both had a ton of big reveals today, and all of the coverage you could ever hope for is collected in our Samsung IFA 2012 Wrap-Up and our Sony IFA 2012 Wrap-Up. In those posts, you’ll find links to all of the major reveals and announcements both companies made today, as well links to our hands-on posts with the day’s major devices. Be sure to check those out if you’re looking for a recap of the news from Samsung and Sony’s events.

The was still some news coming out of IFA that didn’t concern Samsung or Sony, however. ASUS, for instance, revealed the Vivo Tab and the Vivo Tab RT alongside its new MX279H and MX239H monitors. Toshiba also had a reveal of its own, pulling the veil off the slide-out Satellite U925t Ultrabook, and later in the day, Epic Games and NVIDIA teamed up to announce that they’re bringing Unreal Engine 3 to Windows RT and Windows 8.

TiVo’s new Stream transcoder is arriving next week, and Logitech UE announced a new line of products aimed at those who like to listen to music on the go. Today we got yet another image of the Motorola Droid RAZR M 4G LTE, while Google is now offering a Jelly Bean update for the Verizon Galaxy Nexus. Speaking of Google, it appears that the company wants to sell off Motorola’s Home Business division, and today it rolled out a handful of new Google+ features for businesses to take advantage of. Today President Barack Obama took to Reddit to answer questions from citizens, managing to bring the website down in the process, and Apple’s requested ban on Samsung devices has been pushed back to December.

YouTube has updated its app for Xbox 360, ARCHOS announced its new GamePad today, and Netgear announced the new N750 wireless router and gaming Wi-Fi adapter today as well. Current whispers are telling us that Windows Phone 8 will be launching on October 29, while Vimeo announced a new team up with Dropbox. Bethesda says that the PS3 delay of Dawnguard wasn’t caused by its development on Hearthfire, and the Curisoity rover’s transmission of will.i.am’s “Reach for the Stars” from the surface of Mars went off without a hitch. SkyDive is now available on Android, and finally tonight, Joss Whedon is apparently working on a ABC pilot called S.H.I.E.L.D. – we don’t need to tell you Marvel fans why that’s exciting.

Enjoy the rest of your evening folks, and be sure to keep an ear to SlashGear for more from IFA 2012!

SlashGear Evening Wrap-Up: August 29, 2012 is written by Eric Abent & originally posted on SlashGear.
© 2005 – 2012, SlashGear. All right reserved.

NVIDIA has announced that it has worked with Epic Games to port the Unreal Engine 3 to Windows 8 and Windows 8 RT (the version running on ARM architecture). This means that game developers using it will be able to target Windows 8 RT without too much trouble, if they account for the overall decrease in system and performance resources. Fortunately, that is very much manageable, so you can expect many Unreal game to show up soon.

If you are not a Windows person, you may have seen the Unreal Engine in action in iPad games like Infinity Blade (1 & 2). At the moment, the Unreal Engine 3 for Windows 8 RT will only run DirectX 9 rendering as it is the RT hardware platform limitation for now, but we’ve been told by several hardware manufacturers that 2013 would be the year of DirectX 11 for Windows 8 RT. At that point, we may see Unreal Engine 4 show up on Windows 8 RT.

The availability of Unreal Engine 3 to Windows 8 RT isn’t so surprising because this is an engine that was developed on Windows to begin with, and Windows 8 RT development is very close to regular Windows 8 development. Which Unreal-powered game would you like to see first on Windows 8 RT?

By Ubergizmo. Related articles: Unreal Engine runs in Flash, Unreal Development Kit will eventually arrive on Android,