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Vaio Z series – new ultraportable laptop models from SONY

admin — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 20:29:04 +0000

Sony has unveiled its new Vaio Z series of ultra-portable laptops, which will be available in the early 2010. Currently it is known that new Z series will consist of two models: VAIO VPCZ11Z9E and VAIO VPCZ11X9E. They come with either the Core i7-620M 2.66GHz or Core i7-520M 2.4GHz processor. Both models also differ in the amount of hard disk and RAM memory (6GB DDR3 1066 MHz for VPCZ11Z9E and 4GB DDR3 1066 MHz for VPCZ11X9E).

The most interesting innovation here is the so-called Quad SSD. Actually, these are four extremely fast SSD drives on which information is recorded simultaneously. For this purpose drives are connected in RAID 0 and according to SONY their speed will be up to 6.2 times higher than standard mechanical hard disk. Users can choose between either 128GB or 256GB capacities in total.

The Z series features a 13.1-inch backlight LCD display with resolution 1920×1080 and an integrated nVidia GeForce GT330M graphics. Sony’s new models are equipped also with hybrid graphics, which in this case means that the computer will have integrated both Intel HD, and with NVIDIA GeForce GT 330M 1GB. The notebook can operate in two modes, and switching between them can be automatic or manual.

Moreover, the laptop weighs less than 1.4kg and uses Windows 7 64-bit operating system. It has a DVD-burner, three USB-ports, Gigabit-Ethernet, WLAN (802.11a/b/g/n), bluetooth, VGA and HDMI-connection.

External USB 3.0 HDD from Buffalo

admin — Thu, 26 Nov 2009 17:25:41 +0000

Buffalo Technology, the worldwide leader in the design, development and manufacturing of wired and wireless networking has launched its first SuperSpeed USB 3.0 external storage solution. The new device called DriveStation HD-HXU3 is the next generation of high speed external storage solution offering SuperSpeed transfer speeds of up to 130MB/s, 3 times faster than USB 2.0. According to the company DriveStation gives users the ability to quickly back up important data and share office work, digital audio/video, large multimedia files and photos from one central location.

The DriveStation USB 3.0 storage solution is backward-compatible and works with all USB 2.0 enabled computers and notebooks, as well as forthcoming USB 3.0 models. It is also compatible with Windows 7, Vista, XP and Mac OS X 10.4 or later. For people having computers without USB 3.0 ports Buffalo has released a two-port USB 3.0 PCI Express Interface Card IFC-PCIE2U3, which allows users to upgrade their PC or Mac to utilize SuperSpeed USB for faster data transfer speeds.

Each DriveStation package comes with Memeo AutoBackup software that offers the power to securely and automatically manage and backup files in real-time without the need of manual or scheduled backups. The new Buffalo DriveStation USB 3.0 HD-HXU3 external hard drive is available in 1, 1.5 and 2 TB capacities at suggested retail prices of $199.99, $249.99, and $399.99, respectively.

Super Talent introduces world’s first USB 3.0 flash drive

admin — Thu, 05 Nov 2009 20:09:17 +0000

Usb is already a fact and it will become increasingly popular among the hardware manufacturers worldwide. After the announcement of the new Asus’s motherboards with integrated USB 3.0 controllers a few weeks ago, yesterday Super Talent introduced the World’s First USB 3.0 flash drive. It delivers transfer speeds up to 200MB/s using USB 3.0 ports, but the company says it can reach up to 320MB/s transfer speeds using a separate UAS Protocol driver.

“The USB 3.0 RAIDDrive uses patented multiple pairs of differential serial data lines technology for optimal NAND flash performance. This product underscores Super Talent’s continued leadership in USB drives. We have developed the world’s first mobile USB 3.0 flash drive. It delivers phenomenal performance and it incorporates our own patented technology,” said C.H. Lee, chief operating officer of Super Talent.

The portable flash drives will be available in 32GB, 64GB and 128GB capacities and are fully backward compatible with USB 2.0 ports. Of course in this case they will operate at traditional speed of up to 480 megabits (60MB) per second.

Super Talent’s USB 3.0 flash drives can be expected in December from Super Talent resellers worldwide but there’s still no word on pricing.

Technical Details:
- Dimensions: 95mm x 37mm x 13.5mm
- Full compatibility with USB 3.0, 2.0 and 1.1
- Transfer speeds up to 200MB/sec in USB 3.0 port
- Transfer speeds up to 320MB/sec in USB 3.0 port with UAS Protocol driver
- Hot plug and play; Functions like another hard drive
- Slim and sleek casing style
- Windows® 7 compatible
- LED indicates power, busy
- More than 10 years data retention
- Limited lifetime warranty

Sony Ericsson officially anounced its XPERIA X10

admin — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 20:08:02 +0000

Sony Ericsson officially anounced its new Android based mobile phone on Tuesday. The new flagship called XPERIA X10 is the first Android phone made by Sony Ericsson. According to the current plans of the company the new X10 which is part of a family of phones will be available on the market during the first half of 2010. It will be equipped with a 1GHz Snapdragon chip from Qualcomm, 4-inch capacitive touch display, and 8.1 megapixel camera with LED flash. Other hardware specifications include UMTS 3G HSDPA/HSUPA, Bluetooth 2.1, WiFi b/g, and GPS. There’s also a microSD slot with an 8GB card in the box as standard option.

Alongside the new device, the company also unveiled its UX (User eXperience) open platform which is developed not only for the X10, but for the whole family of new upcoming Android handsets. Ux includes two signature apps Timescape and Mediascape:

Sony Ericsson Timescape™ manages all your communication with one person in one place. Browse through your conversations the bright way to check out your Facebook™, Twitter™, photos, emails, and texts all in one go.

Sony Ericsson Mediascape is the smart way to get all the music, photos and videos you want from your favourite friends and artists. It accesses content from everywhere – your phone, YouTube™, PlayNow™ – and presents everything for you.

Here are some of the most important X10 specs:

* Quad-band GSM/EDGE connectivity – 850/900/1800/1900 MHz, plus tri/quad-band HSPA 900/1700/2100 (T-Mobile (NYSE: DT) USA?) or 800/850/1900/2100 MHz

* 4-inch WVGA (480×854 pixels) capacitive touchscreen

* 8.1-megapixel auto-focus camera with an array of camera technologies including touch focus, face recognition, smile detection, image and video stabilizer, geo-tagging. Where’s flash???

* 1GHz Qualcomm (NSDQ: QCOM) Snapdragon QSD8250 CPU!

* GPS, WiFi, Bluetooth, 3.5mm audio jack

* 1GB of internal memory, plus a microSD memory card slot (8GB card should come in box)

* Google (NSDQ: GOOG) apps pre-loaded

* Android 1.6 Donut – I’m guessing it will be upgradable to 2.0 Eclair

* Size: 119×63×13 mm, weight: 135 grams

* Colors: Sensuous Black and Luster White

Firefox 3.6 beta 1 available for download

admin — Tue, 03 Nov 2009 23:08:11 +0000

Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 is now available for download. The new version of Firefox called Namoroka was released last week. It’s based on the Gecko 1.9.2 web rendering engine, that contains many improvements for users and web developers. For most of the users Firefox 3.6 will look a lot like version 3.5, but developers promise faster performance including better session restore, less time taken for startup, improved page rendering and faster javascript handling. Mozilla have also added the ability to create, save and restore tabs as well as searching for an existing tab by typing in the name of that tab in order to switch to it. Here is the time to mention the new tab-switching feature, which allows you to see preview of each page into the browser. A very interesting feature in the new firefox is support of accelerometers. It allows the people with such hardware in ther mobile devices to change the orientation of the page according the orientation of their device.

Here are some of the new enhancements:

Users can now change their browser’s appearance with a single click, with built in support for Personas.

Firefox 3.6 will alert users about out of date plugins to keep them safe.
Open, native video can now be displayed full screen, and supports poster frames.
Support for the WOFF font format.
Improved JavaScript performance, overall browser responsiveness and startup time.
Support for new CSS, DOM and HTML5 web technologies.

You can grab a copy of the new Firefox 3.6 Beta 1 for the PC, MAC or Linux on the Mozilla Web site.

Wireless HDTV Link from Philips

admin — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 21:17:21 +0000

Philips announced its new Wireless HDTV Link device,which wirelessly connects high-definition components to an HDTV display.The new device,coded as SWW1800/27 is currently available for purchase at amazon.com and dell.com for $799. The Wireless HDTV Link replaces the cables that connect HD devices ( such as cable set-top box, HD satellite receiver, Blu-ray player or gaming console ) to a HDTV by sending wireless signal in up to 1080p high-definition resolution.The operational range of the Philips Wireless HDTV Link is 75 feet from your TV without any signal loss or degradation.The system allows the connection of up to four AV devices to your TV, icluding two HDMI source devices and/or two component video devices.

SWW1800/27 consists of a transmitter, which is designed to resemble a source component, such as a Blu-ray Disc player and and a compact wireless receiver, which is specially designed to fit behind standard TV wall mounts so that it is out of sight and won’t ruin the aesthetics of the room.

According to the Phillips’ expectations, the most popular devices, which will be used together with the new system are BD players and video game consoles such as Xbox 360.

AMD announced several new Athlon II processors

admin — Tue, 20 Oct 2009 17:24:52 +0000

AMD today announced several new AMD Athlon™ II processors that offer outstanding performance, low power consumption and attractive price. They are made using the new 45-nanometer manufacturing process which makes them smaller and offer better performance than chips made using the older 65-nm process.

The company releases eight new processors in its Athlon II line, including two, three or four-core CPUs and clock frequencies between 2.2GHz and 2.9GHz. Six of the processors are defined by AMD as Energy Efficient with only 45W TDP.

AMD says its new chips have been specially designed to go into desktops and new PC form factors including all-in-one machines and small desktops. As part of the new Athlon II series AMD launched four Athlon II X3 triple-core processors intended to fill the price and performance gap between dual- and quad-core processors.

CPU Model	Clock Speed	TDP	Price
Athlon II X4 605e	2.3 GHz	45 watts	$143
Athlon II X4 600e	2.3 GHz	45 watts	$133
Athlon II X3 435	2.9 GHz	95 watts	$87
Athlon II X3 425	2.7 GHz	95 watts	$76
Athlon II X3 405e	2.3 GHz	45 watts	$102
Athlon II X3 400e	2.2 GHz	45 watts	$97
Athlon II X2 240e	2.8 GHz	45 watts	$77
Athlon II X2 235e	2.7 GHz	45 watts	$69

Aser A1 – coming soon

admin — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 17:19:18 +0000

As you’ve probably heard the new Aser A1 will soon be available on the market. It has impressive features like Qualcomm 8250 768 MHz processor, 3.5 inch touch screen WVGA display with resolution of 800 x 400, Wi-Fi and GPS. The A1 is powered by Android and it’s also the first smartphone from Aser, running Google’s mobile operating system.

There is no official information when we can expect to see this phone but it has appeared for pre-order on Expansys’ German web site for 390 Euro (about $571). Acording to Expansys it will be available from 28 November.

Processor: Qualcomm 8250 768 MHz Qualcomm 8250 768 MHz
Operating System: Android 2.0 (Donut)
Memory: ROM: 512 MB / RAM: 256 MB ROM
Display: 3.5-inch touch-sensitive screen with WVGA resolution
Network: HSPA/WCDMA: 850, 1900, 2100 MHz – Up to 2 Mbps up-link and 7.2 Mbps down-link speeds
Quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz Quad-band GSM / GPRS / EDGE: 850/900/1800/1900 MHz
(Band frequency and data speed are operator dependent)
GPS: Internal GPS antenna
Connectivity: Bluetooth® 2.0 with Enhanced Data Rate and A2DP for wireless stereo headsets. Wi-Fi®: IEEE 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi ®: IEEE 802.11 b / g, 3.5 mm audio jack 3.5 mm audio jack
Camera: 5.0 megapixel color camera with auto focus
Battery: Rechargeable Lithium-ion battery. Capacity: 1350 mAh, Talk time: Up to 300 minutes Talk time: Up to 300 minutes, Standby time: Up to 400 hours. (The above are subject to network and phone usage)
Expansion slot: microSD ™ memory card (SD 2.0 compatible)
Dimensions (LxWxT): 115 x 62.5 x 12.5 mm 115 x 62.5 x 12.5 mm
Weight: 135 grams with battery 135 grams with battery

Sky TV appears on Xbox 360

admin — Fri, 16 Oct 2009 19:03:03 +0000

Microsoft has announced that the expected addition of Sky TV television program to the Xbox 360 will start on October 27 in the UK and Ireland. This new option will let Xbox 360 customers subscribe to Sky’s online TV service and watch programmes through their games consoles.

The service will be similar to Sky Player, which currently offers live TV and a selection of pay-per-view content over the Internet. That would mean you’d get access to blockbuster movies, Premier League football, watch documentaries and the very best of music, the arts and entertainment shows. All this content is delivered direct to your Xbox 360 without the need for a satellite dish or any other kind of separate plug-in device. The only requirement is to have a broadband connection. The Xbox Live Sky Player will also offer interactive options such as match stats, fixture lists, news updates and so on.

For a new customer joining Sky through their Xbox, Sky Player offer a pay per view type service, where the user can subscribe to a monthly rolling contract or just pay for programmes they want to watch. Unfortunately, specifics like prices and channel line-up have not been announced, but they can be expected next week at the official launch.

More info here: http://www.xbox.com/en-GB/skyplayer/

AMD officially introduced its new HD 5700 series of graphics video cards

admin — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 19:00:39 +0000

AMD officially introduced its new HD 5700 series of graphics video cards. The models Radeon HD 5770 and Radeon HD 5750 will be the first company representatives in this series and will be oriented in the market segment with prices below $ 200. Radeon HD 5700 series will offer to their customers support of DirectX 11, OpenGL 3.2, hardware-accelerated HD video decoding and post-processing, ATI Eyefinity technology and so on. Both 5750 and 5770 chips are based on the code-named Juniper graphics processor that is made using 40nm process technology. The total number of transistors in the GPU, according to ATI is about a 1.04 billion.

ATI Radeon HD 5770 operates at 850MHz and features 128-bit memory bus, 800 stream processors, 40 texture units and 16 ROPs. The memory type will be GDDR5 with capacity of 1GB. ATI Radeon HD 5750 functions at 700MHz and features 720 stream processors, 36 texture units, 16 render back ends and GDDR5 memory. Both models support the technology AMD Eyefinity, allowing connection of up to three displays each with resolution of 2560×1600 pixels. In both models the energy consumption will be extremely low. According to ATI the maximum power consumption will be in the range of 86-108W in working mode and just 16-18 Watts while idling.

At the moment the new models are offered by almost all partners of AMD including companies like Asus, Sapphire, HIS, PowerColor, Gigabyte, MSI, XFX and others. The manufacturers will sell ATI Radeon HD 5770 for about $160 , compared with 5750 which will cost about $120.