Hasta La Gadget!

It’s only been a few months since Gigabyte unveiled the 1028M netbook / tablet hybrid, but its successor is already available to buy in Europe. Announced in Hong Kong last month, the 1028X ups the resolution to 1366 x 768 on the 10.1-inch swivel display and bundles a 6-cell 7650 mAh battery for a purported six and a half hours of juice. There’s also an utterly meaningless 60MHz CPU upgrade from the Atom N270 to the N280, but the most surprising thing of all might be the price: €622 ($877). That’s an awful lot of damage for what is still very much a netbook, but then if you simply must have a touchscreen display in that specific size range, there isn’t much competition going around. At least for now.

[Via Slashgear]

Read — Gigabyte product page
Read — European reseller

Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

Gigabyte T1028X TouchNote brings fresher specs, steeper price originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

For Toshiba, the DVD format war is finally over.

In a statement, the Japanese electronics giant said it had applied for membership in the Blu-ray Disc Association, and said that it planned to ship Blu-ray products throughout the remainder of 2009. The move was expected, after reports leaked word of Toshiba’s plans in July.

Toshiba, of course, was the champion of the HD-DVD format, but ended up losing out to Blu-ray in the marketplace. HD DVD died in February 2008, following decisions by Warner Bros. and Wal-Mart to drop the format.

In light of recent growth in digital devices supporting the Blu-ray format, combined with market demand from consumers and retailers alike, Toshiba has decided to join the BDA,” Toshiba said in a statement.

Well, kids, we don’t know if this is a typo, a Freudian slip, or both (or neither), but according to this handy graphic on Rogers’ website the rumored 8GB iPhone 3GS exists — if not for sale, at least for comparison. Keen readers of charts will note that the price listed for the 3GS still starts with the 16GB model, and if you scroll through to the ordering page there is no 8GB 3GS option listed. So, what do you think? Do we have a promising development here, or a simple case of a misplaced check mark? Feel free to sound off in the comments.

Update: Yeah, that’s right: An email from Rogers has confirmed that it is just a typo after all, and that it’s “being corrected asap.”

Continue reading More evidence mounting of an 8GB iPhone 3GS?

Filed under: Cellphones

More evidence mounting of an 8GB iPhone 3GS? originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 10:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

If you got all excited about the upcoming MIMO 710-S, Nanovision’s slinky refresh of its earlier UM-710, but then felt like someone took the wind out of your proverbial sails when you learned it lacked a touchable screen, we’d advise you to hold fast and ready that metaphorical spinnaker. The company has confirmed there’s another new version coming over the horizon, the 720-S, featuring the same 7-inch, 800 x 480 panel, but now granted touch capabilities. You’ll need to exercise a bit of restraint, as they’re not due to ship for another month or so, and while we don’t know exactly how much it’ll displace from your wallet one UK site has a pre-order up for £130 (about $215). We do plan to be putting a 710-S through its paces shortly, though, which might just help to tide you over.

Filed under: Displays

Nanovision’s MIMO 720-S USB secondary display is slim yet touchable originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 09:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

It’s a given that the GPGPU (or General-Purpose Graphics Processing Unit) has a long, long ways to go before it can make a dent in the mainstream market, but given that ATI was talking up Stream nearly three whole years ago, we’d say a battle royale between it and its biggest rival was definitely in order. As such, the benchmarking gurus over at PC Perspective saw fit to pit ATI’s Stream and NVIDIA’s CUDA technologies against one another in a knock-down-drag-out for the ages, essentially looking to see which system took the most strain away from the CPU during video encoding and which produced more visually appealing results. We won’t bother getting into the nitty-gritty (that’s what the read link is for), but we will say this: in testing, ATI’s contraption managed to relieve the most stress from the CPU, though NVIDIA’s alternative seemed to pump out the highest quality materials. In other words, you can’t win for losin’.

Filed under: Peripherals

ATI Stream goes fisticuffs with NVIDIA’s CUDA in epic GPGPU tussle originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 10 Aug 2009 08:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments