Hasta La Gadget!

If you’ve been waiting for Sandy Bridge to land on Acer’s Timeline X laptops, then today’s your day. Well, it depends, as these new machines are only available in Taiwan for the time being. Just a few hours ago, the lucky folks over at Engadget Chinese managed to get up close and personal with these bad boys: we have a couple of 13.3-inch 3830TGs (pictured after the break), a 14-inch 4830TG, and a 15.6-inch 5830TG (pictured above). With the exception of Core i3-2310M on one of the 3830TGs, these laptops all come with Core i5-2410M, NVIDIA GT540M (with 2GB DDR3 RAM), 640GB hard drive, 2GB DDR3 RAM, and USB 3.0 ports. As for multimedia, sitting below the 1,366 x 768 LED-backlit LCDs are Dolby Home Theater speakers by Kenwood, and additionally, the two larger models also pack a DVD Super Multi DL drive.

Compared to the previous-gen Timeline X range, the most notable difference here is the new chiclet keyboard brought over from the Ethos range, which should trap a lot less dirt thanks to the tighter gaps. You’ll see that the new Timeline X ID has gone for a more tranquil look — the touchpad no longer has a silver trim around it, and likewise, the edges around the body are no longer tapered. Also gone is the removable battery underneath, but given the impressive portability (4.12 pounds, 4.67 pounds, and 5.49 pounds, respectively), we won’t miss this feature too much. On the contrary, there’s now an extra mouse button, presumably for offering better left and right-clicking. So far so good, and if you’re digging these laptops as well, then they can be yours for between NT$32,900 (US$1,133) and NT39,900 (US$1,374). Head over to Engadget Chinese for the whole stash of hands-on photos.

Continue reading Acer releases third-gen Aspire Timeline X laptops with Sandy Bridge, but only in Taiwan for now

Acer releases third-gen Aspire Timeline X laptops with Sandy Bridge, but only in Taiwan for now originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 Apr 2011 12:32:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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While the US government hasn’t issued an outright ban against the use of ‘conflict minerals’ coming from the Congo, it has passed a law that will require companies who use them to tell all of us when our gadgets have been paid for (in part) with blood. Looks like Apple and Intel weren’t too keen on the bad PR that would come from such disclosures, and joined the Electronic Industry Citizenship Coalition and its Conflict-Free Smelter program. The program requires mineral processing plants either prove that they don’t fund the ongoing hostilities in central Africa or peddle their war-supporting wares elsewhere. For now, that means that the folks in Cupertino and Santa Clara will have to find other sources for the three Ts (tungsten, tin, and tantalum) needed to sate our technological appetites.

Just say no: Apple and Intel stop using conflict minerals originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 Apr 2011 05:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This article was written on February 12, 2007 by CyberNet.

According to John Markoff of The New York Times, today Intel will be demonstrating an experimental computer chip with 80 separate cores. This is going on at the Solid States Circuits Conferences in San Francisco today, and it’s stirring quite the buzz.  Before you get all excited, this is just a prototype, and currently it’s not compatible with the most recent Intel processors.  It can’t interact to external memory yet, but the plans are in the works to develop a commercial version.

The commercial version as expected, would be used in your desktops, laptops, servers, etc. Unfortunately, it will be at least five years before consumers will be able to get their hands on one. With 80 separate cores, what would you do with all that processing power? The possibilities would be endless, developers would have a lot of room to groove, and computer games would become more and more realistic.

It’s amazing to think that the Dual Core processors are just starting to get around, and yet the Teraflop chip is already in the works. And according to Gizmodo, at 1 trillion calculations per second, the 80-core chip would be able to do the same amount of calculations as 2,000 square feet of machinery could do 10 years ago.

One question that needs to be asked is whether or not increasing the cores will increase the performance. Markoff says, “In a white paper published last December, the scientists said that without a software breakthrough to take advantage of hundreds of cores, the industry, which is now pursuing a more incremental approach of increasing the number of cores on a computer chip, is likely to hit a wall of diminishing returns — where adding more cores does not offer a significant increase in performance.”

This chip would be air-cooled, and definitely raises the bar for the industry. While an 80 core processor may seem like a lot, with the way ‘some’ of the current operating systems are going, it wouldn’t be. The processors tend to evolve right along side the operating systems, and as more processing power becomes available, bloated operating systems take full advantage of the resources.

Source: The New York Times

Copyright © 2011 CyberNetNews.com

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Finally all’s well in the Sandy Bridge camp, Intel exorcizing the demons and getting its current generation of hardware flowing smoothly. You know what that means: it’s time for the next, a revision called X79 that will supersede the current X58 chipset sometime toward the beginning of 2012. According to the leaked slide above, X79 motherboards will feature 2011-pin LGA sockets for E-series CPUs, where ‘E’ stands for “Enthusiast” not “Elephant.” 14 SATA connections are available, 10 of which will manage 6Gb/s, and another 14 USB 2.0 ports means you can have just about every USB-powered member of the Crapgadget Hall of Fame connected simultaneously. That said, there’s no mention of a single USB 3.0 port, something of a bummer for those hoping that standard would be, well, standard by 2012. Of course Intel’s thrown its weight behind Light Peak Thunderbolt, but curiously there’s no integrated support for that, either.

Intels of Intel’s X79 chipset exposed: 14 USB 2.0 ports but not a one with 3.0? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 31 Mar 2011 12:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Intel has had a busy year, but it’s not slowing down any time soon. Next month the company will release info about the next generation of the Atom processor.

The new line is called Cedarview. It’ll be released sometime this year. Intel is slowly upgrading the current CPU lines, including the Atom line for netbooks. According to the company, the new Cedarview CPUs will support Blu-Ray playback, DDR 3 improvements, and high clock-speeds.

The new update will be the biggest that Intel has made for the Atom line. The showcase will take place on April 12th to the 13th.

Via Xbit Labs