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MSI, creators of the oh-so-popular Wind line of netbooks, really likes announcing new laptops as well, and now there is another child joining the rapidly expanding family of their products.  Behold: the GE700 laptop, an enhancement over the recently announced GE600 laptop.  Specs are below, and they are pretty good:

• Intel Core i5
• ATI Radeon HD5730 with 1 GB VRAM
• 17.3” “HD+” LCD
• DDR 3 RAM (2 Slot)
• Up to two 500 GB HDD
• Optical Drive
• 802.11a/b/g/n Wi-Fi
• Bluetooth 2.1
• HDMI Port
• e-Sata Port
• 4 USB 2.0 Ports
• 4-in-1 card reader
• HD (720p) Webcam
• 6 or 9 cell Battery
• 7 lb (3.2 kg)
• A Subwoofer

The GE700 also has MSI’s GPU Boost technology, to enable and disable discrete graphics, and MSI’s ECO Engine Power Saving Technology. Pricing is not out yet, but don’t be surprised if this hits the market pretty soon.  It looks as if MSI plans on giving Alienware a challenge for the gaming notebook market.

Via Engadget, MSI.

Intel turned heads in the hardware world with its release of the Core i7 980x. With a stock 3.33 GHz and a ridiculous hex-core (that’s right, 6 cores) it easily is the number one consumer processor.  Even with the premium price of $999, AnandTech raved as the chip blew out benchmark after benchmark.

If for some peculiar reason you weren’t astounded by the sheer power of that, Origin PC has the solution for you.  On its Genesis desktop, it is offering the Core i7-980x overclocked to an astonishing 4.3 GHz.  Let us restate for added emphasis: 6 cores at 4.3 GHz.

And since the 980X is an Extreme Edition, it has overclocking covered in the warranty.  Have fun trying to max it out, if you can pay the price.  Just the processor option for the OC 980X is $1044.  So if you have over a thousand dollars burning a hole in your pocket, be my guest. I shall envy you.

Via Engadget.

The announcement of Google’s ultimatum to China regarding Internet censorship generated much fanfare across the Web, about the purity of the values that Google fought for and represented.  Now it seems Google is backing its threat, and bidding a final farewell to the world’s most populated country.

The delay so far was due to negotiations between Google and China, to see if any sort of resolution could be developed to keep the controversial Google.cn up and running.  However, the Chinese government has publicly declared it would not revoke its current internet censorship policy simply for Google’s sake. This coupled with the apparent inability of talks to lead towards results has made Google adamant about leaving.

Google now says it is “99.9 percent” certain it will close down its main Chinese operations and Google.cn.  It wishes to maintain other projects it had there, before Google.cn’s conception, but it is now unlikely that Google will have a place in China at all.  Still, much of Google’s base in the Western world will have a sense of newfound pride in its search engine overlords.

Via Financial Times

In the eyes of many, it is a move long overdue: the Federal Communication Commission will be debuting a plan to regulate and expand the internet to meet the need of its highly expanding user base.  Dubbed as FCC’s “National Broadband Plan”, it is to be proposed to Congress this Tuesday.

This is a big deal in the US, where telecommunications are one of the biggest bastions of corporatism and deregulation, and American broadband has remained stagnant for the last decade, as Europe and Asia races ahead.  The goal of it is stated on Broadband.gov, a new site dedicated towards this effort:

“The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Recovery Act) was signed into law on February 17, 2009. The Broadband Initiatives funded in the Act are intended to accelerate broadband deployment across the United States. The Recovery Act authorizes the FCC to create a National Broadband Plan, that ‘shall seek to ensure that all people of the United States have access to broadband capability and shall establish benchmarks for meeting that goal.’”

Broadband.gov also put up a speed test to check the current quality of people’s broadband connections.  However, whether any of this will be to much avail is up to question.  The telecommunications lobby in Washington is enormous, and it is unlikely that telecom titans like AT&T, Verizon, and Comcast will respond favorably to having their industry regulated.

Via Gizmodo

Lenovo has been a long time champion in the field of corporate desktops and laptops, and only recently made inroads into the personal notebook market.  It has put out a few designs for tablets, like the IdeaPad S10-3t, as well as a line of netbooks, but it has seemed to most of us that Lenovo would stay in the business of making traditional sized ThinkPads.

Talking to the AP, Lenovo CEO Yang Yuanqing stated that Lenovo is planning to shift away from traditional computing to “mobile internet products”.  He expects for mobile products to make up 70-80% of the company’s sales “within three to five years.”  This to a large degree goes against the standard image associated with Lenovo.

It is important to note that Yang didn’t go in depth about what is encapsulated by “mobile internet products”, but we can probably assume that it does not include the traditional notebook form factor.  It should be safe to say that netbooks and tablets are included, as it is unlikely for Lenovo to go MID exclusive.

Via Engadget

ComScore, a market research firm, recently reported share holdings from September to January in the smartphone industry.  The results are mostly positive for Android, which has posted significant gains, and has finally overtaken Palm. Android now holds roughly 10% of the market, while Palm continues to steadily dip.  WinMo’s prospects don’t look much better either; after capping at 20% in October, it has also begun a major plummet.

Meanwhile, the iPhone has remained strong throughout Q4 ‘09, keeping its number 2 spot.  It now commands a strong 25.1% of the market, and seems to be going up.  The possibility of an iPhone OS 4.0 could bring new converts to the House of Apple, but they will have much to do before they can eclipse the Covenant of RIM.  Blackberry stands still as the premier smartphone, at a massive 43%, and has survived despite the lack of hype or interest tech blogs have had on RIM products.

Via Ars Technica

So the JooJoo, still proof that tablet makers need to think of better names, hit the FCC today, and we finally learned what exactly it is packing.  And if I dare say so – as a guy who has had little faith in the whole CrunchPad endeavor – it isn’t half bad, if a bit dated.  It carries an Intel Atom 270 with a first-generation Nvidia ION, explaining its 1080p and HD Flash playback.  3G support will be coming later this year, but details are still a little sketchy.

The news of an Nvidia ION means performance will likely not be an issue for an internet tablet, but battery life could easily be a problem.  This does after all have a massive 12.1” touchscreen with a fairly inefficient  processor.  Still, things have become interesting for a tablet that I had mostly written off as non-extraordinary and the $499 price-tag seems somewhat justified now.

Two more things: yes, that is indeed the JooJoo running Windows Vista in a test device, and the video format support list is very impressive compared to many other tablets.  It includes AVI, MPEG-4, MOV, WMV and WMA, FLV (Flash Video), VOB, OGG, OGM and OGV, MKV (Mastroska), DiVX and XViD.  We’ll see how well it actually fares once it starts shipping in a few weeks.

I promise our readers, I am not some sort of Windows PR employee, being paid to tell you to upgrade to Windows 7.   At this point, I really don’t care what you switch to, but yet another reason has come up to switch away from the elderly and frail XP.  The BBC has reported that by 2011, modern hard drives will be incompatible with the sectoring scheme in Windows XP.

The issue is that until recently, all hard drives worked on the premise of 512 byte sectors, which are the smallest readable unit on a HDD.  Now part of these sectors would be dedicated to overhead and simply wasted spaced.  The 512 byte scheme was nice for a while, but due to a combination of factors including 64-bit computing and the fact it causes a maximum partition size of 2 TB, it is obvious we need to change them.  So the International Disk Drive Equipment and Materials Association decided to use 4096 byte sectors as the new standard.

Now this won’t be a problem for many (but sadly not most) of us, as Windows 7, Vista, Mac OS X Tiger or newer, and modern Linux kernels (post-September 2009) already have support for the 4K drives.  However, Windows XP uses the 512 byte pattern hard coded in certain places, so using the new hard drives with it could result in drastic write speed reduction.  Solution: stop using a ten year old OS, because it is time to move on.  Or just don’t ever change your hard drive.  I’m sure it won’t ever fill up.

Via Gizmodo

It was announced last month that Nokia and Intel were going on a joint venture to create an open-source Linux based mobile platform.  This effort, dubbed “MeeGo”, would be a combination of Intel’s Moblin OS, shipped on various netbooks, and Nokia’s Maemo platform, at the heart of the N900 Phone.  It is to be used on all sorts of products with both ARM and x86 architectures. By the end of this month, the companies hope to be able to release the source code to the public.

MeeGo is arguably the first truly open developed mobile OS.  Intel and Nokia are asking the Linux Foundation to watch over the development process, in order to dispel worries of corporatism and encourage 3rd-party involvement.  The first step will be to reconcile the differences between Moblin and Maemo.  Fortunately, they both have the same technical core, but ideological differences on direction and methodology will need to be addressed before MeeGo has a shot of becoming a coherent platform.

Nokia plans on supporting N900 users to MeeGo, at least initially.  This will allow a bounty of Linux enthusiasts to jump into the development cycle at the early stage. MeeGo will also stay in line with the fundamental Linux kernel build cycle, meaning it will eventually stand in stark contrast to Google’s Android platform.  Android uses a heavily modified Linux kernel, and is showing signs of diverging from the development tree entirely.

There are other major differences between Android and MeeGo.  Google, while making Android’s source code public, had a tightly closed development cycle, dumping onto developers massive amount of code with every release.  Intel and Nokia seem to be taking the more traditional route of Linux development; like Canonical’s methodology with Ubuntu, they will try to get 3rd party involvement from Linux and MeeGo users to help direct efforts.  Google now has real competition for the open source community’s blessing.

Via Ars Technica

The iPhone and Apple may currently be sitting as the king of mobile phone gaming, but it has some major competition coming up.  What many gamers and developers had been hoping for seems to have come true: cross-platform gaming is a reality across all of the Microsoft platforms.

At TechEd Middle East, Microsoft’s Eric Rudder showed off a quick Indiana Jones styled platformer demo to the crowd.  The game itself wasn’t all that impressive, a typical 2d walk and jump combination platformer.  What is impressive is the fact that he showed the game first on Windows, then on Xbox, and finally on a Windows Phone 7 device.  Even more impressive, he could access where he saved on one device in another device.  Cross platform coding and gaming will the modus operandi of Xbox Live on WinPho 7.

More recently, Microsoft has showed off XNA 4.0 for WinPho 7, and it evidently is impressive.  It shows off the 1 GHz Snapdragon at task, with full 3D rendering.  While Microsoft hasn’t released video to the public, they did post a few screenshots.  And for a phone, they look nice.  Zune HD users will be sad to know that they will not be making the upgrade from XNA 3.1 to XNA 4.0, probably due to the hardware gap.  Expect the Zune HD2 to be in the same class as the WinPho 7.

Via Engadget

It has oft been said that Steve Ballmer, CEO of Microsoft, is the antithesis of Steve Jobs.  While Jobs is viewed commonly as the artistic designer and creative genius of the computing world, Ballmer is the brick and mortar business man, known for constantly playing catch-up on new ideas.  However, it appears Ballmer wants to dispel the belief that Microsoft can’t be creative.

To prove it, Ballmer explained Microsoft’s deep interest in the cloud to a crowd at University of Washington. Stevie is planning to get heavily invested in what he is valuing as a $3.3 trillion industry. That’s absolutely massive, and there is no wonder why he and the rest of Redmond are taking it seriously.  He broke up his talk into five major points:

1. “The Cloud Creates Opportunities and Responsibilities”
2. “The Cloud Learns and Helps You Learn, Decide and Take Action”
3. “Cloud Enhances Social and Professional Interactions”
4. “The Cloud Wants Smarter Devices”
5. “The Cloud Drives Servers Advances  That Drive the Cloud”

One surprising aspect of Ballmer’s approach was his emphasis on the quality of consumer devices and hardware.  Much of cloud theory has been based on the idea processing should happen server-side and minimize the amount of work the client needs to do.  In layman’s terms: complicated stuff happens in the cloud, and you just get the product.  Ballmer appears to be arguing instead that if processing on the client end delivers better content at a lower cost than bandwidth enhancement, then we should be making better products to work with the cloud.  His example of choice was the Windows Phone 7 Series.

Still, the most important things to take away from this are twofold.  Firstly, the cloud is here to stay.  Learn to love it.  Secondly, all members of the computing triumvirate have now tossed their hats into the next great war of the information age: Apple with the iPhone/iPad App Store and MobileMe, Google with Google Apps, and Microsoft with Windows/Xbox Live.  Let’s see who has what it will take to become this decade’s premier content provider.

Via Gizmodo.

It should come as a surprise to no one that I have a very low opinion of Windows XP; I still maintain that any other modern OS is better.  It seems like Microsoft’s security bulletins are only looking to further my point.

Latest in the XP Bug Saga: F1, the universally known help key, has fallen victim to malicious hackers on the internet.  Evidently pressing F1 on certain websites in Internet Explorer exposes the user to any code a person seeks to run on their PC.  The detailed security bulletin from Microsoft is as follows:

“The vulnerability exists in the way that VBScript interacts with Windows Help files when using Internet Explorer.  If a malicious Web site displayed a specially crafted dialog box and a user  pressed the F1 key, arbitrary code could be executed in the security context of the currently logged-on user.”

Microsoft’s current advice? Don’t press F1 if a website tells you to.  My advice? Ditch IE and Windows XP. The Internet and web developers around the world will thank you.

Via Gizmodo, image via Wikipedia.

Adobe Flash has lead the internet in terms of content delivery.  We have enjoyed streaming our videos and  little games to play during class when we should be paying attention to a lecture.  But sometime around the release of Firefox 3.5, we all remembered another up and coming technology, HTML 5. HTML 5 was supposed to provide native video support into the browser, resolving the need for a proprietary plug-in to watch your favorite Rick Astley song.

Sadly, this has taken longer than we hoped and doesn’t look like it will be on the fast track anytime soon. The issue keeping us back with FLV is we haven’t determined what codec should become the web’s standard.  It boils down to a debate between the open source community’s Ogg Theora versus the industry standard of H.264.  The argument is one between the importance of a true open internet and the practicality of refusing a perfectly capable and widely used codec.

H.264 gained public acceptance, because it’s shown to be very effective in preserving most quality while being in compressed forms and decompression preserves this.  In fact, Vimeo and YouTube both accepted H.264 as their format of choice for the HTML 5 versions of their sites.  However, H.264 is not an open codec, and is subject to royalty pricing.

While both Safari and Chrome have accepted this and intend to use it for HTML 5 video, Firefox and Opera have raised concerns regarding this issue.  The fact of the matter is, both Firefox and Opera are essentially free browsers, not backed by major  companies.  Companies that tend to use those browsers would likely not be able to afford the royalties for H.264 codec support.  Instead, they have chosen the less efficient (but 100% open) Ogg Theora format over the alternative.  While Ogg does result in a decrease of quality, many GPLers are arguing that having H.264 as the norm, doesn’t change the internet at all from using Flash video instead.  Both are proprietary formats and allow for certain components of the Internet to be controlled by a single company.

Still, this is a major issue for multiple parties.  What route will deliver videos in place of Flash? For manufacturers and users of operating systems, not having Flash may have already taken a hit to their reputation. We will see who is crowned victor in this battle.

Via Ars Technica

Remember the TabletPCs at the beginning of the millennium?  Yeah, we’re not sure we want to either.  You would think that with rise of new slate tablets (the stereotypical suspect being the iPad) the convertible form factor would be on the retreat. Well, Panasonic obviously didn’t get the memo, as the Toughbook C1 is keeping it real, 2003 style.

Like the rest of Panasonic’s bricks with buttons – that is, the Toughbook line – the C1 is not supposed to be a stunning statement of style.  It is a rigid box of functionality.  Here is the spec listing:

• Intel Core i5-520 @ 2.4 GHz
• Up to 8 GB DDR3
• Shock-Mounted, Flex-Connect 250 GB HDD
• 12.1” LED-backlit screen with multitouch
• WXGA 1280×800 Resolution
• 10 Hour Claimed Battery Life
• 802.11a/b/g/n WiFi
• Optional Gobi 2000 mobile broadband card
• Triple hinge design designed to survive a 30-inch drop (they are called Toughbooks for a reason)

Still interested?  It comes at a $2499 starting price, so if you are lucky enough to have plenty of money to burn at the bank, feel free to pick one up.

Via Engadget.

March 2, 2010 – This day marks the dawn of the coming generation of hardware platforms.  Both AMD and NVIDIA unveiled their new platforms today, meaning some exciting GPU integration for future products.

First off is AMD’s 890GX chipset.  This platform is for general motherboard usage across a variety of products.  However, it is poised towards the HTPC market, providing high-quality HD viewing with a not so expensive price.  The 890GX delivers this using the HD 4920 GPU for integrated graphic, which is DirectX 10.1 compliant and rendering 1080p video through MPEG2, VC-1, and H.264. Also look for USB 3.0 on certain motherboards.

On NVIDIA’s side comes the long awaited Next-Generation ION with Optimus technology, formerly known as the ION 2.  The next-gen ION is boasting major gains over the original ION, and NVIDIA claims it will be 10x as powerful as the integrated GPUs supplied by Intel.  It will be able to provide 1080p and 3D gaming to your tiny 10.1” screen.

The ION architecture will vary between 10.1” netbooks and larger 12-inch models, with each respectively getting 8 and 16 CUDA cores.  There are already 30 products lined up for release with the next-gen ION, with the first being the Acer Aspire One 532G.  Look forward to summer where these products should enter the market.

Via DailyTech

Ubuntu Linux has strived for years to become everyman’s Linux distro, and with 10.04 it stands one step closer to winning the hearts and minds of the archetypal Web 2.0 resident: the social networker.

Facebook, Twitter, and even the fiasco known as Google Buzz, all are permanent residents of the internet’s lexicon, but for the most part operating systems have taken little notice.  There were little nudges, however, but only one has shown much integration between OS and the social realm.

Behold, Gwibber, GNOME’s microblogging client for your favorite social network.  It provides easy to your desktop updates of all the miniscule details about what your friends are up to, and allows you to change your status across multiple platforms.  Ubuntu approved of the idea, and with their blessing added Gwibber as standard on all Ubuntu ISOs, following 9.04.

Now, there appears to be a greater goal than simply providing their users a convenient program for posting tweets and status updates.  Ubuntu has added a Me Menu in the 10.04 alpha, allowing users to input their current status directly from the OS taskbar.  And their application of choice for handling all this work is tethered to a new and improved Gwibber client.

Still, how serious of a shift is Canonical making in terms of OS-Internet balance?  Given Ubuntu’s market share, probably not that much.  Still, this is a step forward, and it will be interesting to see what will follow.

Via Ars Technica.

HP isn’t pulling any punches with EliteBook 2740p.  Targeted at wealthy businessmen and high-end loving executives, it is designed to meet the highest workspace standards.

Those whose hearts are weak to gadget envy, stop reading.  The specs are outlined as follows:

• Intel Core i5/i7 CPU
• Up to 8 GB DDR3
• Intel HD Onboard IGP
• 320 GB HDD or 160 GB SSD
• 12.1” Screen w/ 1280×800 Resolution
• Multitouch capacitive and pen input
• 802.11 a/b/g/n
• Bluetooth 2.1
• 3 USB 2.0 Ports
• 2 MP Webcam
• 5 Hour Claimed Battery Life
• Windows 7

It is indeed a very nice convertible tablet/ultrathin.  And to make up for that, it comes at a $1599 starting price.  It is worth a look, and surely if you can afford it I must imagine it will serve you quite well.  The rest of us will have to survive without it.

Via Slashgear.

Android’s beauty as an open-source operating system is that it allows any random manufacturer to develop a product and slap Android on top of it.  This does, however, allow for some issues in terms of legitimacy of manufacturers.  Case and point: The Haleron iLet Mini HAL.

If you want a tablet with groundbreaking features or earthshaking specifications, look elsewhere.  If you want a quaint little tablet that does its job, stick around but don’t buy this.  Why? I’ll tell you in a bit.  Here come the somewhat interesting specs:

• VIA ARM Processor 600 MHz
• 7” TFT LCD Touch Screen w/ 800×480 Resolution
• 128 MB RAM
• 2 GB Flash Memory
• Up to 32 GB SDHC
• 16 Hour Active Battery
• Android 1.6, Upgradable to “Windows CE 6.0”

Amazing? Far from it.  But still it’s not a bad tablet per se. And it is a pretty sweet deal given the $200 price tag and March 1st shipping date.  So why did I warn against buying this?  Quite simple. It’s a scam.

Indeed, since the news hit the internet there was some wariness in trusting this random French company named Haleron. One commenter over at Pocketables did some research and couldn’t find much to back up their image as some sort of legitimate tablet maker.  The only picture of the iLet Mini HAL is a render found at some other French forum, and they clearly stated they did not license the design to Haleron.  Other attempts to find copyright information and company registration have ended up dry.  Unless we get any reports stating otherwise, then we will have to assume it is fake.  So  stay safe, and do your research when purchasing.

Via Gizmodo.

I posted an article a week ago stating how the Windows Phone 7 Series would be the end of WinMo 6.5, to the point that I was verbally dancing on its gravesite.  Well, looks like WinMo just got some major life support, and will continue on as Windows Phone Starter.

There were hints of this before WinPho 7’s launch, with rumors of a “Windows Phone Classic”.  Whether or not this is the same as Windows Phone Starter we still don’t know.

What we do know isn’t all that groundbreaking either.  At the new OS’s core is the WinMo 6.5 we love and hate, just stripped down a bit. It is designed to be a cheaper alternative to the WinPho 7 line, targeting emerging markets in developing countries. The name and concept naturally follows Microsoft’s idea for Windows 7 Starter Edition.

However, don’t plan on ever actually getting to use a WinPho Starter phone if you live in the US or the developed world.  Microsoft posted a list of radio spectra that it is planning to support for Starter, and HSDPA 3G stands noticeably absent.  Looks like Microsoft is going to strong-arm carriers and manufacturers into using WinPho 7 in markets they can.

Another missing feature for some versions will be Office Mobile.  If you have a strong hankering for Sense UI WinMo phones, look to your favorite developing nation to buy a WinPho Starter phone.  The rest of us will just have to struggle living in a world where WinMo is being phased out.

Via Engadget.