Hasta La Gadget!

Hoo boy, our tipster was spot on with this one, Apple’s adding an 11.6-inch sibling to its newly redesigned 13.3-inch MacBook Air. It’ll have a dual-core 1.4GHz Intel Core 2 Duo CPU (upgradeable to 1.6GHz on the more expensive model), 1366 x 768 resolution, and a $999 starting price for the 64GB SSD model, with the 128GB version setting you back $1,199. It carries over the aluminum unibody construction from the 13-incher, along with the same 2GB or 4GB DDR3 RAM options and NVIDIA GeForce 320M graphics, but has to settle for a briefer 5-hour battery life. Full PR and Apple’s first ad for this new hotness both await after the break.

Update: We’ve got our very first hands-on pictures with the new machine. Enjoy!

Continue reading Apple introduces 11.6-inch MacBook Air, available today for $999

Apple introduces 11.6-inch MacBook Air, available today for $999 originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 20 Oct 2010 14:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’d say Intel is delivering its new chips like clockwork, but then our favorite timepieces don’t usually leak anywhere near as often as Chipzilla’s roadmaps. The now well known 2.66GHz Core i5-580M has finally been made official, costing $266, alongside an identically clocked family mate in the Core i5-560M, which will set bulk buyers back $225 a piece. From what we know of those two, the major difference is that the 580M can Turbo Boost its way to 3.33GHz whereas the 560M maxes out at a humbler 3.2GHz. Both are overshadowed, however, by the new i7-640M colossus, which runs at 2.8GHz by default and will reach 3.4GHz when called upon — yours for only $346. Of course, should the 35W TDPs of those chips seem too gaudy for you, Intel’s wisely dropping a pair of 18W parts as well: the Core i5-560UM slinks along at 1.33GHz and asks for $250, while the Core i7-680UM raises those numbers to 1.46GHz and $317, respectively. Finally, for the perfect balance of power and efficiency, the i7-660LM couples 2.26GHz (or 3.06GHz in Turbo mode) to a 25W thermal envelope. It matches the 640M with a $346 unit price. All these CPUs sport a pair of 32nm cores alongside a 45nm integrated graphics unit and there are absolutely no Performance Upgrade Card anywhere in sight!

Intel prices fresh Core i5 and i7 mobile parts originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Sep 2010 04:46:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS has just introduced the Eee PC 1015PEM, its first 10-inch netbook with a 1.5GHz dual-core Intel Atom N550 CPU. Specwise, it boasts an up to 350GB hard drive, 1GB of RAM, USB 3.0, Bluetooth 3.0, and 802.11b/g/n WiFi. It comes pre-loaded with Windows 7 Starter Edition, with prices starting at $349. The ASUS Eee PC 1015PEM is available today, in red, blue, pink, black, or white.

ASUS busts out dual-core Eee PC 1015PEM netbook originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 14 Sep 2010 09:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ARM Cortex A-15 MPCore image via ARM

Almost all high-profile mobile devices use a version of ARM’s microprocessor. Samsung, Texas Instruments, and Qualcomm compete to get their chips on different devices, and Apple now makes their own, but all of them license their tech from ARM. Now ARM has announced their next-generation Cortex chip, the A-15, and it’s a doozy.

The new chip was announced at a press conference last night in San Francisco. Eric Schorn, ARM’s vice president of marketing, said, “Today is the biggest thing that has happened to ARM, period.” The chips, which will support up to four processing cores, should appear in consumer devices sometime in 2012.

The big breakthrough for the Cortex A-15 is virtualization. For instance, Samsung’s new Orion chip, which is based on ARM’s Cortex A-9, can send different video images to multiple screens. The A-15 can actually support different operating systems or virtual appliances on those screens. So when VMWare Fusion finally hits your iPad, it might really have something to work with.

Hardware virtualization has traditionally been the hallmark of chips designed to power servers, which frequently have to support different environments; with this chip, ARM is bringing a little bit of the server’s versatility to the smartphone, and (it hopes), some of the power-conserving elements of smartphone chips to servers.

Finally, there’s the markets everywhere in between: tablets, laptops, and home media servers, among others. Om Malik calls the A-15 “a tiny chip with superpowers.” That might not be far off.

See Also:

• Why You Should Get Excited About New Mobile Processors
• Texas Instruments Embraces Next-Gen Mobile Processor
• IBM and Intel Getting a Makeover for Mobile
• Rumor: Apple to Consider Acquisition of ARM
• Development of Apple's iPad Chip Estimated at $1B
• Rumor: iPad's A4 Chip Was Outsourced

Ah, hello again! It seems like just yesterday that we were talking up Acer‘s latest Aspire Revo — a ‘3600‘ model equipped with a dual-core Atom 330 and NVIDIA’s Ion graphics system. Nearly a year to the day, we’re now faced with the company’s latest and greatest subcompact, the Aspire Revo 3700. As far as evolutionary advancements go, this one’s fairly predictable — within the one-liter box is a 1.8GHz Atom D525 dual-core processor, NVIDIA’s next-generation Ion platform, support for 1080p video playback, a 500GB hard drive, four USB 2.0 ports, 4GB of DDR3 memory, VGA / HDMI outputs, 802.11b/g/n WiFi, gigabit Ethernet and a mini PCIe slot. It’s expected to ship later this year with a $580 price tag, but it’s still a TV tuner shy of being exactly what our living room asked for.

Continue reading Acer introduces Atom D525-equipped Aspire Revo 3700, your den swoons

Acer introduces Atom D525-equipped Aspire Revo 3700, your den swoons originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 08 Sep 2010 11:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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