Hasta La Gadget!

What, what? Core i5? What’s that? In short, that’s the response we got when prodding for details on this here motherboard at CeBIT, but sure enough, the object you see above just might be the first mainboard shown off designed to play nice with Intel’s forthcoming Core i7 lite[TM]. The Gigabyte GA-IBP will reportedly be available to purchase around July, which — coincidentally enough — is right when we’re expecting the Core i5 chips to make their debut on the market. The on-hand Gigabyte rep wouldn’t talk about specifics, noting that most everything about this board was still under NDA; when we strolled into Intel’s hall, we were flat told that no Core i5 prototypes were available here in Hannover. At any rate, you can count on at least one motherboard to use on your next mid-range gaming rig, and you can peek that very board in the gallery below.

Filed under: Desktops

Gigabyte shows off GA-IBP Core i5 motherboard at CeBIT originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 06 Mar 2009 14:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Not wanting you to miss a second of LOST while you’re making the Wednesday night commute, Intel has created an embeddable Digital TV antenna for picking up that fancy over-the-air HD signal from your laptop without having to use one of those cumbersome external receivers. There isn’t much to say here other than its existence and this handy diagram (the preferred DTV receptor method is on the right, by the way). With details pretty scant and the patent still pending — not to mention the official transition date in perpetual flux — don’t get your hopes up for seeing this hit the market anytime soon.

Filed under: Laptops, Portable Video

Intel develops embeddable DTV antenna for OTA on the go originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 04 Mar 2009 23:32:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, this was sadly predictable. Following filings by Dell and Intel with the USPTO requesting that Psion’s “netbook” trademark be canceled, Psion has filed a $1.2b countersuit against Intel, claiming that the chipmaker knew Psion owned the netbook mark but used it anyway. That’s interesting because Intel’s efforts to push “netbook” on the industry went basically nowhere from March until June of 2008 — when Atom-powered laptops ran amok at Computex — but we’re guessing Psion doesn’t care. As it has in the past, Psion claims that it’s been selling Netbook-branded machines continuously since 1999, along with some interesting sales figures to back it up — as Ars Technica notes, the numbers seem to add up oddly at all the wrong times, with $2m of Netbook accessories sold in 2006, three years after the product went off the market, and just 4100 total Netbooks sold over 10 years. We’ll see how the court decides to pull all this apart — it’s certainly starting to look like a showdown’s brewing, but we’re still convinced that Intel and Dell have money, time and momentum on their side here.

Filed under: Laptops

Psion countersues Intel over netbook trademark, asks for $1.2b in damages originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Mar 2009 15:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, it looks like the dust up between Psion and those using the “netbook” name to describe, um, netbooks, isn’t showing any signs of going away anytime soon, with Psion now responding to Intel and Dell’s latest charges by saying that, contrary to their claims, it does indeed still sell its NetBook Pro. According to jkOnTheRun, while Psion says it “can understand why people might have assumed that sales ceased a while back,” it does in fact still sell the device, with the bulk of its sales being in the “highly specialized supply chain logistics area.” As Psion points out, that continuation of sales is key to its argument to keep the trademark from becoming abandoned, and it says it has “all the invoices to prove multi-million dollar sales in the US in 2006 and sales that continue even to this day,” adding that, “just because we’re not selling tens of thousands through Best Buy doesn’t mean we’re not entitled to our trademark.” That said, we’re still a long ways from folks being forced to pay up or stop using the netbook name, although it’s at least becoming clear that Psion isn’t about to just let this one slide.

Filed under: Laptops

Psion responds to “netbook” challengers, says it does so still sell the NetBook Pro originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 27 Feb 2009 19:36:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s easy to overlook amidst all PowerPoint-fueled fisticuffs but, in addition to slinging rebuttals at Intel and muttering insults under its breath, NVIDIA also appears to have dropped a bit of news about its next-generation Ion platform. While we had already heard that Ion 2 would be supporting VIA’s Nano processor in addition to Intel’s Atom, it looks like it’ll also support Core 2 Duo processors, and even Pentiums and Celerons for good measure. That, of course, is not all that surprising given Ion’s roots in NVIDIA’s current MCP79M/MCP7A chipset platform, and there’s certainly plenty of time for things to shake out further before that promised Q4 rollout date — and, knowing these two companies, things probably will.

[Via Electronista]

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

NVIDIA Ion to begrudgingly support Core 2 Duo by Q4? originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Feb 2009 16:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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