Hasta La Gadget!

Art Lebedev stacks Optimus Popularis keys up against Maximus: smaller, higher res originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 24 Jun 2010 15:51:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We know, that’s a pretty loaded headline, but that’s exactly what Toshiba’s new laptops are… loaded. Let’s start with that beauty pictured above — the now fairly familiar and often leaked 15.6-inch Satellite A665. Starting at $1,599, the 3D bad boy boasts pretty much everything you’d want in a mobile gaming rig under two grand, including an Intel Core i7-740QM CPU, NVIDIA GeForce GTS 350M graphics with 1GB of VRAM, a 640GB hard drive, 4GB of RAM, and a Blu-ray drive that supports 3D playback. It comes with NVIDIA’s 3D Vision kit, which includes the usual active shutter glasses and emitter. But it’s not all about the specs on the A665 — both it and the M645 have been redesigned with chiclet keyboards and a new Fusion X2 finish that combines a glossy and matte coating. Those taken with the A665 but aren’t into the 3D stuff can configure a 16-inch version, which starts at $799, with a choice of Intel Core 2010 processors.

The 14-inch M645 is the smaller version of the A665 and features Core i3, i5 and i7 CPU options as well as AMD’s Phenom II Quad Core processors. On the graphics front, we’re extremely happy to see the line use NVIDIA’s Optimus technology to automatically switch between the GeForce 310M or GeForce GT330M GPU and the IGP. To boot, the systems can be configured with Blu-ray and 7,200rpm hard drives. We should also mention that both the A665 and M645 have Toshiba’s new Sleep + Music capability, which allows you plug a music player into the mic jack and blast out your tunes through the laptop’s Harmon Kardon speakers even when it’s powered down. We told you these machines were loaded. We’ll be bringing you full reviews soon, but in the meantime enjoy the pics and full PR below.

Continue reading Toshiba Satellite M645 boasts NVIDIA Optimus and improved aesthetics, Satellite A665 makes its 3D arrival

Toshiba Satellite M645 boasts NVIDIA Optimus and improved aesthetics, Satellite A665 makes its 3D arrival originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 15 Jun 2010 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s no secret that we’ve been big fans of NVIDIA’s automatic graphics switching Optimus technology, but we’ve had one major complaint — there’s just not enough systems with it on the market. While ASUS has been employing the technology in most of its new systems, others, like Lenovo and HP, have been quite tight-lipped on the GPU tech. But apparently that’s about to change. When we crossed paths with NVIDIA’s Vice President of Worldwide Sales Rene Haas at the Netbook Summit, he revealed that at least four more major manufacturers will be using Optimus by the end of the summer. He wouldn’t share any details on brands, but he did say that there should be a total of 50 Optimus lappies on the market by the fall. Of course, we don’t know how many of those will be made by ASUS or will be Ion 2 netbooks, but it surely looks like the momentum is growing, and we’re hoping to learn more at Computex next week. Fingers crossed that we can count the Alienware M11x among them.

Four more major laptop manufacturers will use NVIDIA Optimus by the fall originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 May 2010 17:23:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s Kin One and Kin Two might not turn out to be the most auspicious devices for Tegra’s debut in the smartphone arena, but NVIDIA seems to be learning from its mistakes. Admitting that the company committed too strongly to Microsoft with the first-gen iteration, Jen-Hsun Huang has now said that the second generation of Tegra will look to Android devices first and foremost. This newfound focus will materialize with both smartphones and tablets in the third and fourth quarter of this year, and will, according to Jen-Hsun, offer device makers a viable competitor to Apple’s A4 SOC. In other news, NVIDIA has now shipped “a few hundred thousand” Fermi cards, and has also achieved 70 design wins with its Optimus graphics switching technology. Eleven of those are now out in the wild, but the vast majority are still to come, mostly as part of the seasonal “back to school” refresh at the end of the summer. These revelations came during the company’s earnings call for the first quarter of its 2011 fiscal year, and you can find the full transcript at the source below.

[Thanks, TareG]

NVIDIA puts its Tegra 2 eggs in Android’s basket, aims to topple Apple’s A4 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 17 May 2010 04:20:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Well, this is sad. While we told you earlier this week that the Ion 2-powered ASUS Eee PC 1201PN wouldn’t be arriving until late May, a number of European sites have gotten early review samples of the 12-inch “netbook” — if you choose to call it that — and have discovered that it doesn’t use NVIDIA’s Optimus automatic graphics switching technology. That’s right, instead we’re told by NVIDIA that the discrete GeForce 201M GPU runs continuously and Intel’s integrated chip is never used — a configuration which sounds like it’ll absolutely kill the battery life on this machine. According to Hardware Zone, ASUS made this choice aiming to be the first to market with the next generation of Ion, but an Optimus version of the ASUS Eee PC 1201PN will be ready later this quarter. It also appears that an Eee PC 1215N with both Ion 2 and Optimus is floating around, but we haven’t confirmed what’s going on with that. We’re sorry if we confused you even more, but we’ll be keeping our eyes out for the early reviews of the 1201PN to see if our predicted two hours of battery life is on the mark.

Update: The 1201PN cannot be updated with firmware to enable Optimus — the hardware isn’t there for the automatic switching.

First wave of Ion 2 ASUS Eee PC 1201PNs lack NVIDIA Optimus originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 23 Apr 2010 14:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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