3 Oct, 2008
Filed under: Storage
It’s prom night, and Fujitsu wants to give it all up to Western Digital. And we’re talking everything: if the sordid deal goes through, by the end of the year Fujitsu will have sold its entire hard disk division to WD, giving the maker of the exquisitely named Caviar almost thirty percent of the market, second only to Seagate’s thirty-five percent. So look out, Seagate! But who will the real winners be? That’s right: the consumer. Because the rampant monopolization of every aspect of the computer industry can only be a good thing. Just ask those fat cats in Washington.Read
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3 Oct, 2008
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Wireless
If you’re still in disbelief that wireless HD is finally catching on, here’s yet another demonstration that just may sway you into being a believer. Hitachi demonstrated a wireless HD camcorder setup at CEATEC in Japan, which saw a hacked up handycam get fitted with a protruding wireless card and stream high-def content to a nearby TV via DLNA (got all that?). Obviously, there’s no telling when or if the company will clean the application up and bring it to retail, but in all seriousness, we have our doubts about the value proposition here.Read
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3 Oct, 2008
Filed under: Displays
It’s been almost a full year since Samsung first announced its plans for a 3-inch WVGA OLED panel, but it’s now finally delivered, and found a partner in the form of KDDI, which was showing off the panel at CEATEC. As Tech-On notes, the panel is quite the upgrade over Samsung’s current top-end 3-inch QVGA panel and, best of all, KDDI says that it’ll be showing up in actual products “shortly,” though it’s not about to get any more specific than that. As if that wasn’t enough, KDDI also had a new “3D LCD” panel built by an unnamed “Japanese panel manufacturer” on hand at the show. It boasts the same WVGA resolution as the OLED and employs a “parallax barrier method” to magically “convert 2D images into 3D in real time — check that out after the break, and look for the panels to be productized by the end of 2009.
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3 Oct, 2008
Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
In what can only be described as the fastest and most exhilarating one minute, twenty-two seconds of our lives, RIM and Vodafone have thrown together a promotional video for the upcoming Storm that touches on most of the handset’s high points: mobile music, GPS, desktop-grade browsing, streaming video, expandable memory, and — get this — voice and data (”it can do two things at once,” we’re triumphantly told). Now, bear in mind this is a Vodafone video, not Verizon, so that “two things at once” claim probably isn’t going to hold water when you’re hooked up to Big Red’s EV-DO Rev. A — but the remainder of the factoids in the flashy, seizure-inducing commercial should apply. Follow the break for the covertly-shot material, if your sensitive eyes can take the kind of sensory punishment that only this much primary color and enterprise compatibility can deliver.
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3 Oct, 2008
Filed under: Wireless
Now that Sprint’s XOHM service is officially live in downtown Baltimore (and working in cars, phew!), how’s about taking a look at the card that’s handling the magic? Samsung’s SWC-E100 ExpressCard, which was conveniently leaked by Sprint early last month, is a “simple, inexpensive” card that does a more-than-adequate job at placing you on the mobile broadband superhighway. Reviewers at PC Mag dubbed it a “solid first effort from Samsung for getting laptops onto Sprint’s fast XOHM WiMAX network,” and while the card “worked as advertised,” the inability to work with EV-DO or any non-WiMAX protocol was sort of a downer. Furthermore, the card won’t play nice with OS X and there’s no external antenna port, but they do bundle a potentially important extra: a PC Card slot adapter for users with aging laptops. Bottom line? Not too shabby for $59.99 sans contract.Read
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3 Oct, 2008
Filed under: Laptops
While that touchscreen trackpad MBP might’ve been a bit too much to swallow, the rumorists certainly won’t be giving up that easily, and have returned with more intriguing shots of what may be (but probably isn’t) the next MacBook Pro. Submitted by “Techno Minds” to modmyi.com, the pictures were purportedly gotten off an Apple employee on an Apple design team. The dock-in-the-touchpad has been done away with, but the trackpad is still black, as is the keyboard and the display bezel. What’s new here is the black back to the display and a lack of those Air-inspired curves that looked so janky on that other picture. The thing that amazingly makes this all even less plausible is the done-up promo shot (after the break) with rendering and photoshop artifacts unobscured by cameraphone fuzziness. Oh, and there’s no power button to be found on any of these shots. Still, we want.
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3 Oct, 2008
Filed under: Cellphones
If you’ve been enjoying those still pictures of Nokia’s 5800 XpressMusic touchscreen phone, but feel you’re lacking an in-depth experience, we think we can help. A slew of demo and instruction videos have just been slapped up on the Ovi Share site, allowing you to get a better idea of just how the device works, and what it looks like when it’s doing it. Luckily for you, we’ve taken the trouble of including all of the videos after the break for your viewing pleasure, saving you the painful and laborious experience of hitting a read link. Enjoy.
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3 Oct, 2008
Filed under: Laptops
Someone over at Gadget Review has finally got their hot hands on the James Bond Quantum of Solacelaptop — and contrary to reports, it hasn’t exploded, shot poison darts or been used to defuse a bomb… yet. Believe it or not, this machine isn’t actually a piece of high-tech spy gear — it’s a garden variety Sony Z series with the usual kit: Intel Core 2 Duo processor, 128GB SSD or 320GB hard drive, 3G connectivity, 4GB RAM, 13.3-inch LED backlit LCD, fingerprint reader, Motion Eye camera and Blu-ray drive. This piece of cinematic history will be limited to 700 units, and it’s expected to set you back a cool $4,000 — but hey, check out that 007 logo! If that doesn’t get you some action, nothing will. This babe / danger magnet ships at the end of October, we suggest employing Odd Job to help you nab one.Read
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