Hasta La Gadget!

Alienware’s laptops first hopped on the Sandy Bridge bandwagon when the company’s top-of-the-line M17x got Intel’s second-gen Core processors, and now it appears the more budget-conscious M11x may get some Sandy Bridge love too. According to Dell News and more — who correctly foretold the 3D screen on the M17x R3 before its January debut, among other things — the littlest alien laptop is getting your choice of Core i5-2537M, Core i7-2617M, and Core i7-2657M chips ranging in speeds from 1.4GHz to 2.7GHz. Accompanying the new silicon is an optional 750GB HDD (up from 640GB) and an upgrade from 800MHz to speedy 1333MHz RAM. And, to keep you gaming wherever you please, the company will offer optional 3g, LTE, and WiMAX radios as well. Unfortunately, one minor detail didn’t make it out — how much will the extra goodies cost?

Alienware M11x R3 specs leaked, brings Sandy Bridge to your next LAN party? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Mar 2011 09:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We told you it was coming, and now it’s here: the 11.6-inch little brother to Samsung’s ultrathin 9 Series laptop. As we expected, the 900X1A sports a Core i3-380UM processor, 2GB of RAM, and 1366 x 768 resolution, but instead of the anticipated 64GB of memory, it’s rocking the same 128GB SSD as its older sibling. We’ve yet to hear when the new 9 Series will make it across the pond, but it should be available in Europe starting April 1st for €1,200 — and, if you like ’em small and skinny, you can check out a video of the 900X1A after the break.

[Thanks, Marco]

Continue reading Samsung’s ultrathin 11.6-inch 9 Series laptop appears in Italy, gets hands-on treatment (video)

Samsung’s ultrathin 11.6-inch 9 Series laptop appears in Italy, gets hands-on treatment (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Mar 2011 06:15:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve yet to get more than a whiff of Intel’s Oak Trail chips, but the Cedar Trail CPUs are nearly here — in fact, it’s looking like Chipzilla intends to introduce its latest Atom processor at IDF Bejing this year. UMPC Portal noticed that Intel’s got a session titled “Designing a New Generation of Netbooks with the Intel Atom Processor Based Platform” at the April event, which promises to give attendees a glimpse at the “next generation Intel Atom processor based platform.” Details are scarce, but there are a couple of bullet points that might grab your attention. First, Intel will be talking about “WiFi solutions that deliver new netbook usage models,” which sounds kind of like WiDi, and second, the company will be talking up “fanless netbook designs.” Our overactive imaginations are already at work — we’re on a comfy couch, surfing the internet on a big-screen TV, without a hot, bulky laptop to weight us down and nary a tether to worry about. Or, maybe a boat.

Intel promises next-gen Atom chips at IDF Beijing originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 20 Mar 2011 14:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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At CES, LucidLogix’s Virtu software solution promised to get discrete and Sandy Bridge GPUs together in graphical harmony — giving you both Sandy Bridge’s greased-lightning video transcoding and the horsepower of an NVIDIA or ATI rig. The code also lets you watch content from Intel’s forthcoming Insider movie service while running a discrete GPU. Now that Chipzilla’s 2nd-gen Core i5 and i7 CPUs are getting to market en masse, the gang at Hot Hardware put an RC of Virtu through its paces to see what it can do. As expected, the software waxes chumps and smokes fools when encoding HD video, but gaming performance suffered slightly (in FPS and 3DMark 11 tests) with the technology enabled. The other nit to pick was that Virtu renders the control panel of your discrete card unavailable, so any graphics adjustments must be made in-game whenever the software is running. Time will tell if the final release has similar shortcomings. Hit up the source link for the full rundown.

LucidLogix Virtu in action, discrete graphics and Sandy Bridge together at last originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 21:53:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Whether or not you agree with their tactics, lots of companies are finding it quite lucrative business to spend more time in the courts than in the research labs. CSIRO got some tasty settlements back in 2009, while just a few months ago Wi-LAN received “a significant amount” in a settlement from Intel. Now it’s Mosaid’s turn, a Kanata, Ontario-based company that bills itself as “one of the world’s leading intellectual property (IP) companies, focused on the licensing and development of semiconductor and communications technologies.” Indeed it just licensed some of those properties to LG on the 15th, but the very next day it filed suit against a 17 defendants for infringing on six of the company’s patents, relating to network discovery, multiplexing, and other wireless techniques. Among those companies is RIM; which has its Torch, Style, Curve, Pearl, Bold, Storm handsets called out; and Asus, which has a long line of motherboards, routers, and other products said to be in jeopardy. As ever it’s hard to draw the line between the patent trolls and the legitimately infringed, but that the lawsuit was filed in litigation-friendly Marshall, Texas doesn’t leave us with a particularly good feeling.

Continue reading Mosaid gets into WiFi patent game, sues 17 companies including Dell, Canon, Asus, and RIM

Mosaid gets into WiFi patent game, sues 17 companies including Dell, Canon, Asus, and RIM originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Mar 2011 13:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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