Hasta La Gadget!

So rumors of Dell doing a smartphone have been around forever, but they’ve started heating up again today — word on the street is that the company is planning a handset launch as early as next month at 3GSM or Mobile World Congress. That’s just chatter we’d ordinarily dismiss as nonsense, but we couldn’t help but notice most of the Dell people at the Adamo event were carrying G1s — and Dell’s director of consumer products was super-quick to pull out a Nokia E71 and gush over how well-built it was compared to other devices when we asked him where the Adamo line would be positioned. That jibes with long-standing rumors that Dell’s working on Android and/or S60 devices — rumors that Michael Dell himself refused to put to bed back in July. What does it all mean? Well, we have no idea, but we’d say that Dell’s new focus on consumer-oriented design suggests that WinMo isn’t really in the running if it is in fact planning a handset. We’ll see how it plays out over the next few months — we could be right, we could be wrong, but either way it should be interesting.

Filed under: Cellphones

Dell smartphone rumors flare up — Android or S60 phone in the works? originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 13 Jan 2009 20:23:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ve got less than 48 hours until Apple’s last Macworld keynote, and the rumor mill keeps hinting that Phil’s gonna announce new Mac minis, which so far are purported to have the Macbook’s NVIDIA chipset, aluminum casing, and an SATA optical drive that can be swapped out for a second HDD. Go ahead and add dual display support to that list, which is what Apple Insider is speculating based on their sources saying the new minis will sport both a mini DisplayPort and a mini DVI connector. Additionally, the site has managed to snap some shots from the Moscone Center of the expo being set up. There’s a picture of a monitor showing what’s presumed to be a live feed of the keynote rehearsal with a blurred figure that kind of looks like Al Gore, and inside the south hall there are several mysterious banners concealed in white cloth. So pretty much status quo, though is it just us or do the banners seem to look a little tired and thin this year?

[Via Boy Genius Report]

Read – Apple’s next-gen Mac mini to get dual display support
Read – Macworld site rife with concealed banners

Filed under: Desktops

Mac mini update with dual display support, banner unfurling rumored for Macworld festivities originally appeared on Engadget on Sun, 04 Jan 2009 20:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’d already gotten a solid word from Acer Taiwan president Scott Lin that there would indeed be a 10-inch Aspire One in early 2009, and now we’ve got some purported pictures and informations to chew on. According to the Aspire One fan-blog macles*, the upcoming revision will come in white, black and red flavors, with a 10.1-inch screen (at the same 1024 x 600 resolution of the existing model) and options for 3G and Bluetooth 2.0+EDR. Perhaps most exciting — to us non-mutants, anyways — is the removal of those pesky trackpad-flanking mouse buttons, with a regular-looking button below the trackpad instead doing the honors. Less exciting, however, is the purported lack of Linux and SSD SKUs. The laptop also dropped its Storage Expansion slot in lieu of a good old-fashioned multi-card reader. All-in-all, it sounds like some very mainstream tweaks to an already ultra-popular netbook, and we can’t fault Acer for that. Word is the new Aspire One will be landing in February, no mention of price just yet.

[Via jkkmobile]

Filed under: Laptops

More 10-inch Acer Aspire One rumors trickle out originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 03 Jan 2009 16:01:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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A new report from Fudzilla claims that Microsoft is getting ready to lay off 15,000 employees, or about 17% of its worldwide staff. The axe will apparently fall on January 15th, exactly one week before its second quarter earnings report, and they expect MSN division to be hit hardest, while the successful Xbox crew will probably make it out relatively unscathed. Meanwhile, an anonymous blogger who goes by the name Mini-Microsoft and claims to be an employee well-versed in the goings-on inside the company has been fielding questions from other purported Microsoft workers on recent cutback concerns. This past Monday he posted a handful of anonymous comments saying that the rumored layoffs aren’t happening — at least not in January — although a re-organization might be in the cards. Both reports should be taken with a grain of salt, but one thing’s for certain — Windows 7 is gonna rule.

[Via Joystiq]

Read – Fudzilla report
Read – Mini-Microsoft

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Microsoft preparing for new layoffs? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 21:03:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Listen, you know the drill by now: Macworld is less than a week away, and that causes a Cupertino-sized rumor mill to fill up with hints of new / refreshed hardware of all shapes and sizes. The crew at TUAW claim they’ve heard from sources that a new Mac mini will be unveiled with an aluminum finish, a Time Capsule-esque “lip,” and a SATA optical drive that can be customized as a second HDD instead. Additionally, TechCrunch says it has three independent sources that confirm there’s a large iPod touch is coming next Fall with a 7 or 9-inch screen. There’s no indication if they expect a Macworld announcement here, but if true, we expect the cargo pants industry to react accordingly. Finally, and possibly related to the TechCrunch rumor, a Taiwan news site claims Quanta Computers is expecting to add Apple and Sony (is that you, Vaio P?) as clients for manufacturing netbooks in 2009. For those playing along at home, at some point next year we should expect a bigger iPod touch, a netbook, a smaller iPhone, a revised iMac, a revised Mac mini, and absolutely no love at all for the Mac Pro.

Read – Large form iPod touch to launch Fall ’09
Read – Rumor watch: new Mac mini go for launch
Read – Quanta expects zero YoY NB shipment growth in Q4, 2008

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Apple rumor roundup: aluminum Mac minis and supersized iPod touches originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 31 Dec 2008 12:42:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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