Hasta La Gadget!

With the holiday buying season descending upon us, fancy new commercials are naturally ramping up in tandem. Microsoft has a new spin on its Windows 7 promotional efforts with its latest ad, which shows a Mac and a PC bonding over a Blu-ray copy of Avatar during a long flight. Naturally, the PC is the only one who can play Blu-ray, which is Microsoft’s semi-subtle pitch, but really this commercial is about the power of Friendship and Sharing Things With Others. We were halfway about to ruin it all by smarmily suggesting the fact that the Mac can play a very similar HD copy of Avatar pulled down from iTunes that won’t put as much of a hurt on his battery, but for whatever reason there’s no Avatar on the US iTunes Store right now (possibly James Cameron’s upcoming extended special collector’s millennium edition release has something to do with it?). Which brings us around to Apple’s real reason for not supporting Blu-ray: they can’t take it away from you.

Microsoft’s adorable new Windows 7 ad touts Blu-ray, shows Macs and PCs really just want to be friends originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 12 Nov 2010 11:17:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Remember Airturn’s Bluetooth foot-pedal, a prototype page-flipper which would allow musicians to turn the “pages” of sheet music displayed on an iPad? Sight-reading musicians rejoice: it’s a prototype no longer, and you’ll be able to buy the wireless controller as of November 16th.

The BT-105, as it is lovingly named, sits on the floor and lets you page back and forth at the tap of a toe. The battery, rechargeable via a USB-port, will last for around 100 hours in standby, and the device should auto-pair with your iPad. Jack sockets let you hook up one or two foot-switches.

You don’t need any proprietary software, either. There are already several third-party apps in the App Store which work with the switch, and any developer can add support with the Airturn Developer Kit. Even better, for those who complain that we have too much iPad coverage here on Gadget Lab, the switch will work with any Mac or PC software that is triggered by the page up/down keys on a regular keyboard. That brings in things like Keynote and PowerPoint as well as most PDF-viewers.

The foot-switch, which quite honestly needs a much catchier name (suggestions in the comments) will cost $69 on launch, which is way cheaper than keeping your drunken aunt topped up with sherry at your next piano recital and hoping she can still turn your music pages for you.

Bluetooth AirTurn BT-105 for iPad Launching November 16, 2010 [AirTurn. Thanks, Hugh!]

See Also:

• Bluetooth Sheet Music Turner Could Help Readers With Disabilities …
• iPad Sheet-Music Foot-Switch is a Real Page-Turner

Look out, Shuttle — CyberPower’s getting all up in your territory with its new LAN Party EVO series. Introduced today, this foursome of minuscule monsters relies on mITX and mATX motherboards and plenty of high-end internals to deliver solid gaming performance in a desktop that’s at least somewhat portable. The Party EVO Mini is wrapped in a Silverstone SG-07B enclosure, while the Xtreme, Commander, and Ultra tout In-Win’s Dragonslayer. Aside from integrating its Max Airflow Package to keep things a couple of notches below “Molten Lava,” the whole crew is equipped with a 64-bit copy of Windows 7, a three-year warranty and free lifetime phone support. As for specs, the Mini ($1,079) gets a Core i7-870 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 memory, a 1GB ATI Radeon HD 5770 GPU and a 1TB HDD, while the Xtreme ($799) steps down (oddly enough) to a Core i5-760 and an HD 5670 on the graphics front. The Commander ($999) includes a Core i7-950, 6GB of DDR3 RAM and NVIDIA’s GeForce GTS 450 (1GB), and finally, the Ultra ($759) branches out with an AMD Phenom II X4 955 CPU, 4GB of DDR3 memory, ATI’s Radeon HD 5670 GPU (1GB) and a full terabyte of hard drive space. So, which is going to be, buster?

Continue reading CyberPower gets diminutive with LAN Party EVO SFF desktop family

CyberPower gets diminutive with LAN Party EVO SFF desktop family originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 15 Oct 2010 21:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Apple might be billing its next big event as “Back to the Mac,” but don’t let that fool you into thinking its computer platform has been waning. Quite to the contrary, according to IDC, which reports the Cupertino team has grabbed third spot in the US PC sales charts with a 10.6 percent market share, bumping the incumbent Acer into fourth. Two million Mac shipments during the period represented an increase of 24.1 percent relative to last year, while the overall PC market turned in a somewhat morose 3.8 percent growth. Gartner’s also unleashed its numbers unto the world today, giving Acer the lead for third by the slimmest of margins, but both stat teams agree that the Taiwanese vendor has suffered a bad year along with Dell, which has also experienced some shrinkage. Toshiba’s the only major Windows machine seller to see its fortunes improve with double-digit growth, while HP seems to be hanging on to the top spot nice and steadily. Hit the source links for worldwide numbers.

IDC: Apple’s now third largest PC vendor in US with 10.6 percent market share originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Oct 2010 18:28:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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That’s right, folks: you’ve been looking around, dying for a Windows 7 slate to throw down your money on… so here you go. The CTL 2goPad SL10 (which we first spotted at Computex) features a capacitive touchscreen, an Intel Atom N450 CPU, a 250GB hard drive, and 2GB of RAM. Of course the tablet also fully supports both HTML 5 and Flash, and has a 1.3 megapixel webcam to boot. The 2goPad SL10 is available to pre-order now at $499, and orders are expected to begin shipping on October 15th.

CTL 2goPad SL10 Windows 7 tablet available to pre-order for $499 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 17 Sep 2010 19:03:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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