Hasta La Gadget!

On April 3rd, 1981 — thirty years ago today — Adam Osborne unveiled the Osborne 1 at the West Coast Computer Faire in San Francisco. It had a 4 MHz Zilog Z80 CPU, two single-sided floppy drives, 64K of RAM, and a five-inch monochrome CRT display. Nothing particularly special there, even back in the day. No, what made the Osborne 1 extraordinary was the fact that the 24-pound plastic machine had a carrying handle on the back — and at the bargain price of $1,795 with software included, it became one of the first mass-produced portable computers to succeed. Which, of course, spurred competitors to create an army of even more luggable, loveable machines. Shortly after helping to change the course of history, Osborne and his computer fell into a spiral of pain, but the next time you admire the way your ultralight slides into a manila envelope, you’ll know who to thank. Find a short but sweet chronicle of the Osborne 1 at our Technologizer link.

Osborne 1 celebrates its 30th birthday, and that of the portable computing revolution originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 03 Apr 2011 13:13:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We all drool over the hi-res video shot by cameras like the RED EPIC, but for indie-film types, processing the massive files produced takes a lot of time (and therefore money) and not everyone has an ARRI ALEXA to do native recording compression. Enter the Atomos Ninja and Samurai HD recorder / monitor / playback devices that take your 10-bit video and compress it in Apple’s 1080p ProRes QuickTime format to make your post-production life a little easier. The Ninja pulls video through HDMI and deposits it on your choice of 2.5-inch HDD or SDD storage, does playback via a 4.3-inch 480 x 270 touchscreen, and has continuous power thanks to dual hot-swappable batteries (available in 2600, 5200, and 7800 mAh varieties). Meanwhile, the Samurai matches the Ninja’s specs, but swaps out the HDMI connection for HD-SDI ports and adds SDI Loop-Through to connect an external monitor, a larger 5-inch 800 x 400 display, and 3D support (if you get two Samurais genlocked together). Both units have FireWire 800 and USB 2.0 and 3.0 connections for offloading your vids. Those with Spielbergian aspirations can pony up $995 for the Ninja right now, or pay $1,495 for the Samurai upon its release this summer.

Atomos Ninja and Samurai HD video recorder / monitors bring compression jutsu to pro filmmaking originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 26 Mar 2011 11:02:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Panasonic has decided to discontinue development of its audacious Jungle portable gaming console, citing “changes in the market and in our own strategic direction” as the reasons. If we had to guess, we’d say those market changes mostly relate to Sony announcing the utterly spectacular NGP, whose release probably coincided too closely with what Panasonic had on its Jungle roadmap, and so the latter company decided to cut its losses and run home. Panasonic also engaged in some early testing with US consumers late last year, which now seems likely to have born unsatisfactory results. It’s a shame, we were sincerely looking forward to another competitor in the portable gaming arena, but we suppose it’s better for a bad product to never see the light of day than to depress us all with its woefulness.

Panasonic abandons Jungle portable gaming project, probably scared off by the NGP originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Mar 2011 06:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We still have only an official non-denial from Microsoft about the continued livelihood of the name “Zune” as a brand, but now we have Zune Insider saying “Zune is not dead.” Indeed we already knew that, but the question is what’s coming in the future with Windows Phone seemingly getting all the company’s attention of late. The future we still don’t know about, but we do have some news about the present for Canadians: the Zune HD! Yes, our friendly neighbors to the north need no longer look south to purchase Microsoft’s latest entry to the Zune series — though “latest” is a somewhat sad designation for hardware that was released in 2009. However, there’s still no Marketplace available: it’ll strictly be a BYO tunage affair for now.

Zune Insider reminds that Zune isn’t dead, announces Zune HD launch in Canada originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Feb 2011 18:54:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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The last rendition we saw of the GAEMS console-carrying case looked more like a giant lunch box than a solution to your portable gaming needs. If you’re still interested in bringing your Xbox 360 on the road, the company has redesigned the case and it now supports the fat and slim versions of the 360 and even the PS3-skinny. What’s new in this compact carrying case is the fact there’s actually room to store the console, controllers and power brick. It comes bundled with a remote, HDMI cable and power supply to power the speakers and LED screen. If you’re road trippin’ any time soon and want this beast, you can save yourself 20 bones by pre-ordering before April 20th and you’ll receive the $300 case come June.

GAEMS Xbox 360 traveling case gets sleek redesign, still won’t help you spell correctly originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 19 Feb 2011 12:34:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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