Alienware’s M17X gaming laptop with twin GTX 280M GPUs truly is all powerful

The announcement wasn’t scheduled for a few more days — four according to the teaser site — but it looks like Alienware’s All Powerful gaming laptop has been set free anyway. So, does it live up to the clues? Pretty much… how does a pair of 1GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX 280M GPUs strike you? No Core i7 listed, instead we’re looking at a Core 2 Extreme quad-core CPU at the top end with up to 8GB of 1333MHz DDR3 memory, and 1TB of 7200-rpm disk or a 512GB SSD if you prefer. RAID 1 or RAID 0? Sure. Rounding things out is a nine-cell battery of unstated performance, FireWire, 4x USB, eSATA, ExpressCard, 802.11n WiFi, 8-in-1 media card reader, dual-layer Blu-ray, a 1920 x 1200 pixel edge-to-edge LCD, DisplayPort and HDMI-outs all wrapped up in a massive chassis weighing 11.68-pounds with a 15.98 x 12.65 x 2.11-inch footprint. It’s also packing a GeForce 9400M G1 GPU with HybridPower technology that allows you to scale the graphics back to conserve battery power. Prices start at $1,799 for a lot less than we mentioned above.

As a footnote to the details above, PCWorld also says that Alienware will use next week’s E3 show to update us on its 42.8-inch curved monitor we went hands-on with back in January of 2008.

[Thanks, Steve]

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Alienware’s M17X gaming laptop with twin GTX 280M GPUs truly is all powerful originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 29 May 2009 05:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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mCubed’s RipNAS Statement now available in Europe

mCubed’s RipNAS Statement may be unique, but it isn’t apt to be widely adopted — at least not with price points like this. Hailed as the first SSD-based CD ripping NAS device, the product is also available in a traditional HDD form, though both handle automatic ripping, NAS duties and media streaming. Within, you’ll find a dual-core Atom CPU, gigabit Ethernet, a TEAC DVD drive, four USB 2.0 sockets and a fanless design. The pain? €1,795 ($2,500) for the 3TB HDD version, or €3,295 ($4,590) for the 500GB SSD model. If you’re unfazed by sticker shock, you can pick yours up right now over in Europe.

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mCubed’s RipNAS Statement now available in Europe originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 27 May 2009 14:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Onkyo’s new Sotec DC204A3 netbook has 32GB SSD, no love for VGA or wired Ethernet

Onkyo's new Sotec DC204A3 netbook has 32GB SSD, no love for VGA or wired Ethernet

We like a good netbook that’s so small it doesn’t have room for any pesky, legacy inputs keeping you tethered to the wall (and thus The Man) — but we’re not sure we’d consign VGA and Ethernet to the Closet of Obsoletion just yet. Onkyo seems to be opening the door, moving the two ports to a USB break-out box on its latest Sotec, the DC204A3. That wouldn’t really be a problem if the adapter didn’t look to be about a third as big as the netbook itself (see for yourself after the break). Otherwise we have a slender but standard Atom N270 netbook, with 945GSE graphics, 1GB of ram, and a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 display. Notable is the 32GB SSD, which sounds quite nice, but with a ¥49,800 ($529) asking price, you’re certainly paying for it. Available to forward-looking Japanese starting at the end of the month.

[Via Akihabara News]

Continue reading Onkyo’s new Sotec DC204A3 netbook has 32GB SSD, no love for VGA or wired Ethernet

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Onkyo’s new Sotec DC204A3 netbook has 32GB SSD, no love for VGA or wired Ethernet originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 22 May 2009 10:07:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OCZ’s Z-Drive priced at Amazon: $1,561 and way up

The kind folks at OCZ Technology’s CeBIT booth told us that they expected the forthcoming Z-Drive to be priced between $1,500 and $2,000, and unfortunately for consumers, they were obviously just talking about the starting tag. Today, the much-hyped PCI-Express SSD card — which strings a few blocks of flash memory together on a wicked fast PCI-E pipeline — has been listed at Amazon, and the asking prices are downright eye-popping. The drive is slated to ship in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB flavors, with Amazon demanding $1,561.30, $2,450.50 and $3,368.99 for each in order of mention. We know read rates up to 500MB/sec and write rates of up to 470MB/sec are appealing and all, but damn.

[Thanks, Gary]

Read – 250GB Z-Drive listing
Read – 500GB Z-Drive listing
Read – 1TB Z-Drive listing

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OCZ’s Z-Drive priced at Amazon: $1,561 and way up originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 May 2009 09:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Prototype OCZ Z-Drive PCI-Express SSD splayed, scoped out

Mmm, PCI-Express-based SSD storage. Be honest, is there anything more delicious? The camera-wielding cats over at Hot Hardware managed to climb behind the scenes at OCZ Technology and snap a bevy of shots of the outfit’s highly anticipated Z-Drive in prototype form, and while the device doesn’t look all that different than the press shots we peeked last month, there seems to be some ways yet to go before this bad boy’s available for purchase. At any rate, the innards look about as you’d expect ’em to, with loads of green PCB littered about with oodles of ultra-speedy flash storage. The drive pictured above is actually a 512GB version with a single 4-pin molex power connector and an X4 PCI-e slot, and it benched at upwards of 500MB/sec during read tests and 400MB/sec on write tests. Check the read link for a closer look — just don’t forget to prep the drool rag before heading over.

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Prototype OCZ Z-Drive PCI-Express SSD splayed, scoped out originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 18 May 2009 08:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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ASUS Eee Keyboard to launch by end of June

The dream of owning a keyboard embedded with a full-blown PC running XP on an Atom N270 processor and 5-inch, 800 x 480 pixel touchscreen display/trackpad is nearly upon us. A dream, quite honestly, nobody had prior to seeing the reveal of the 2-pound Eee Keyboard prototype at CES in January. Engadget Chinese has it on authority that this oddball all-in-one will ship in June with specs that should include a 32GB SSD, 802.11n, Bluetooth, HDMI-out, stereo speakers and mic as we saw during our hands-on with the Eee Keyboard back in March. With any luck, ASUS will also be embedding some form of ultra-wideband HDMI as promised in January alongside one of those UWB monitor prototypes they had on display at CeBIT. One thing’s for sure: all will be revealed at Computex in Taipei in just a few weeks. Can you wait?

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ASUS Eee Keyboard to launch by end of June originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 May 2009 04:21:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Toshiba’s Dynabook SS RX2 with world’s first 512GB SSD

With 512GB SSDs already announced it was just a matter of time until OEMs slapped that slim slab of solid state silicon into a laptop. Now our patience has paid off with Toshiba’s 12.1-inch Dynabook SS RX2/WAJ; a world’s first laptop to feature Toshiba’s own 512GB SSD. Oh sure, ASUS announced its S121 with 512GB SSD back at CES but Toshiba’s laptop is the first to actually ship. Remember, the Core 2 Duo SU9400-based SS RX2 is already the mother of ultra-portable badassery with a 12-hour battery stuffed into a slim 19.5 ~ 25.5mm sled weighing just 1.1-kg (less than 2.5-pounds). But with the SSD alone priced at about $1,500, well, you can guess how much the SS RX2 will cost configured (hint: over $4,000).

Update: As noted by tipster Grovester, the US version of this RX2 — the Portege R600-ST4203 — with the same 512GB SSD lists for just $2999. Not bad.

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Toshiba’s Dynabook SS RX2 with world’s first 512GB SSD originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 14 May 2009 01:10:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Corsair’s speedy P256 256GB solid state drive now shipping

Remember that then-named S256 we saw sneak out right around a month ago? Yeah, that bad boy’s finally on sale, and it’s shipping as we speak from a number of trustworthy e-tailers. Said SSD — which now goes formally by P256 — packs specially selected Samsung MLC flash memory and a sophisticated Samsung Controller IC, coupled with 128MB of cache memory and Native Command Queuing (NCQ) support for stutter-free performance. By the books, this one can reach speeds of up to 220MB/sec (read) and 200MB/sec (write), though you can bet you’ll be paying for the haste. We’re seeing it on sale for around $658 online, though Dell’s listing shows a wicked steep $851.99. Either way, ouch. Full release is after the break.

Continue reading Corsair’s speedy P256 256GB solid state drive now shipping

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Corsair’s speedy P256 256GB solid state drive now shipping originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 12 May 2009 06:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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PhotoFast G-Monster-Promise PCIe SSD does 1000MB/s read and writes

Just a month after dropping the 750MB/s G-Monster PCIe SSD RAID card on us, PhotoFast is back with the G-Monster Promise, which jacks read / write speeds to 1000MB/s. Not the fastest we’ve ever seen, but we’ll take it. It’ll be available sometime this month in Japan in sizes from 128GB to 1TB — just make sure you’ve save a lot of pennies, cause it ain’t gonna be cheap.

Update: Our friends at Engadget Japan have chimed in to tell us they’re on sale in the Akihabara district to the tune of USD $1,600 for 128GB, $2,000 for 512GB, and a whopping $4,500 for the 1TB model.

[Via PCLaunches]

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PhotoFast G-Monster-Promise PCIe SSD does 1000MB/s read and writes originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 May 2009 16:02:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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DDRdrive’s RAM-based SSD is snappy, costly

In the race for ever faster storage, manufacturers have increasingly been looking towards the PCIe bus. And while we’ve seen lots of interesting things out of companies like Fusion-io, it will probably be a few long moments before anything comes around that’s feasible, or reasonable, for the consumer. That said, PC Perspective has put in some quality time with the DDRdrive X1, which places 4GB DRAM and 4GB NAND in parallel on a full height PCIe card, keeping that volatile memory of yours safely backed up on a static disk, just in case. According to the reviewer, this device offers the user nothing less than “pure unadulterated random IO” that is “unmatched by any other device available.” Other pluses include its cost (I / O operations per second are calculated at about a fifth of the ioDrive) and snappy custom drivers for both 32 and 64-bit members of the Windows family (Linux drivers are promised for the near future). The Cons? This bad boy is currently limited to 4GB, and it’ll run you a cool $1495. Not exactly the stuff dreams are made of for 99% of our readers, but if you should happen to find yourself the admin for an enterprise server of some type (as many of us do, from time to time) this might be something worth looking into.

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DDRdrive’s RAM-based SSD is snappy, costly originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 05 May 2009 12:52:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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