Hasta La Gadget!

Tried booting your corporate PC lately? Dollars to donuts it takes longer than three minutes to complete. The point? You need Sandy Bridge, and you need it now. Dell’s hoping your IT department will agree, with the introduction of the Vostro 460 mini tower bringing along Intel’s second generation Core processors (Core i5 and Core i7 options are available), Turbo Boost 2.0 and an understated design. Customers can also load it up with as much as 3TB of storage, a Blu-ray drive, 1GB NVIDIA or AMD discrete graphics card and a USB 3.0 expansion card. You’ll also get a tool-less chassis, eight USB 2.0 ports, inbuilt security services from Trend Micro and a starting price of $599. Surely that fits into the Q1 budget somewhere, right?

Dell implants Sandy Bridge CPUs within biz-minded Vostro 460 mini tower originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 12 Jan 2011 12:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not exactly November, but those who pre-ordered early may still end up with a Lumix GH2 beneath their tree. The highly-anticipated GH1 followup — which was introduced back at Photokina — has officially begun to ship to end users in the US of A. The official order page shows a one to two week wait, but we’ve confirmed with Panny itself (as well as tipster Nate, the proud owner of the one above) that units are indeed trickling out as we speak. For those in need of a refresher, this Micro Four Thirds shooter packs a 16 megapixel sensor, 1080p movie mode, SDXC support and an ISO range from 160 to 12,800. Feel free to take a peek back at our hands-on from Germany, and make sure you cancel those holiday plans STAT — wouldn’t want this sitting on your doorstep for a solid week, now would you?

[Thanks, Nate]

Panasonic’s Lumix GH2 now shipping in America originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 22 Dec 2010 13:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s like a Cruz Tablet, but with a T301 thrown into the mix. All jesting aside, we’d wager that the vast majority of simpletons wouldn’t spot the differences between the existing Cruz Tablet and the T301 at a glance, and honestly, we wish Velocity Micro would’ve done a little work to remedy that. For whatever reason, the 7-inch slate is shipping with Android 2.0, and while the 800 x 600 capacitive touchpanel sounds lovely indeed, it’s hard to get riled up for such a stale operating system. For those unconcerned with the luxuries present in Eclair and Froyo, there’s an 802.11n WiFi radio, built-in Kindle app and a user replaceable Li-Ion battery that could last up to ten hours on a good day… or so the company says. Without question, the highlight here is the price — at just $249.99, it’s definitely creeping down into LCD e-reader territory, with a lot of bells and whistles to boot. She’s shipping today if you’re so inclined.

Velocity Micro’s 7-inch Cruz T301 Android 2.0 tablet surfaces on Amazon, shipping now for $250 originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 18 Dec 2010 15:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Worried that your holiday celebrations just wouldn’t be able to take place without an autonomous robotic dinosaur roaming the halls and frightening the grandparents? Fret no more. With under a fortnight to go, Innvo Labs has managed to put the revitalized Pleo RB (Pleo Reborn, if you must know) on sale, with a stiff $469 getting you a newborn dinosaur with a Li-Polymer battery, a charging cradle and a training leaf. Yeah, a training leaf. Unfortunately, the MSRP here is a fair bit higher than the $350 that Ugobe charged for the original, but at least the price premium does include a tougher hide, a newfangled RFID sensing system and a stronger, longer-lasting battery. And really, who could say no to a smile like that?

Continue reading Pleo RB robosaur now on sale for $469, Christmas now cleared to take place

Pleo RB robosaur now on sale for $469, Christmas now cleared to take place originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Augmented reality and optical character recognition have just come into their own, beautifully intertwined into an instant translation app for the iPhone. Download Word Lens, pay $4.99 for a language pack, then point it at a sign and watch as it replaces every word with one in your native tongue. It’s a little bit like Pleco, but without the whole language learning stuff. We just gave it a spin, and while it’s not quite as accurate as this video claims, it’s still breathtaking to behold — especially as it doesn’t require an internet connection to do any lookup. Sadly, it only translates to and from English and Spanish for now. Still, Babelfish, eat your heart out.

Update: Looks like it only works on iPhone 3GS, iPhone 4 and the latest iPod touch for now.

Word Lens augmented reality app instantly translates whatever you point it at originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Dec 2010 00:09:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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