Tech News and Reviews
Archive for December, 2009
BlackBerry Curve 8530 now available on Sprint
0882 days
by Raymond.J
in Cellphones
What’s this we see here? Looks like the Curve 8530 has made it to Sprint after all. When all is said and done, she’ll cost you $50 with a new contract (after mail in rebate). Featuring a 2.5-inch display, OS 5.0, a 3.5mm headphone jack, and glorious, glorious WiFi, this is a solid, sensible device. Besides, if you wanted pizazz, you’d be looking at a Pureness right now. That, or you could always do a number on this guy with some Swarovski crystals and a hot glue gun — but please, don’t.
Zune HD Twitter app updated, dirty words no longer censored
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Microsoft promised us it would remove the silly content censorship from the Zune HD Twitter app ASAP, and here we are a day later with version 1.1, which lets you see all the schoolyard swears you could ever want. High five, assholes. Unfortunately, we’re not seeing a huge performance improvement: it’s a tiny bit snappier, but we’re still seeing unresponsive buttons, laggy scrolling, and random WiFi disconnects. On to version 1.2!
P.S.- Screenshot of the new non-censoring app in action after the break. Be careful, it could damage more delicate constitutions.
ASUS Eee PC 1201N review
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Six months ago netbooks all had 10-inch displays, fairly cramped keyboards, and couldn’t manage to play a 1080p video even if they trained with the best of marathoners. The world’s a lot different now: the King of Pop has passed away, the unemployment rate has dropped, and netbook manufacturers have realized 11- and 12-inch displays provide a more comfortable experience — especially when paired with more powerful hardware that adds multimedia prowess. (more…)
Sony Ericsson XPERIA X10 catches FCC on a good day
0882 days
by Raymond.J
in Cellphones
Oh, to live the life of an FCC certification lab employee: setting up test benches, writing reports, playing with devices that won’t be released for months or years. Instead, we’re stuck enjoying their fun vicariously at an arm’s length through a little portal we know as the FCC Office of Engineering and Technology, where gems like the X10 occasionally pop up complete with pretty in-the-wild pictures, teardowns, and user manuals. What we’re looking at here are test results for EDGE 850 / 1900 plus WCDMA Band IV (that’d be T-Mobile’s and WIND’s spectrum, by the bye), WiFi, and Bluetooth, so even if T-Mobile ultimately chooses not to offer it on contract, you should be able to score it one way or another N900-style. The user’s manual is basically just 40 pages of good stuff plus a bunch of conformity statement mumbo jumbo, but it’s still a good read — so if you think this might be your phone of choice come 2010, have a look.
Blu-ray 3D specifications finalized, your PS3 is ready
0882 days
by Raymond.J
in Peripherals
In case plans by AMD and a slew of other tech vendors planning to showcase 3D Blu-ray compatible products at CES wasn’t a tip-off, the updated specifications are done. The key details? First, that the Blu-ray Disc Association has chosen the Multiview Video Coding (MVC) codec to store 3D, so that even though it is now providing a full 1080p frame for each eye, it will only require about 50% more storage space compared to the 2D version, and all discs will be fully backwards compatible, in 2D, on existing players. Better than backwards compatibility, the PlayStation 3 will be forwards compatible with the new discs — a new HDTV setup (the spec promises to work with plasmas, LCDs or projectors equally well) with IR emitters and glasses will still be necessary. According to the PR (after the break) we can expect Blu-ray 3D-stickered products in 2010, our only advice is to keep those responsible for the Cowboys Stadium abomination far, far away from it.
Mag+ digital magazine concept makes e-readers cower with envy.
0882 days
by Raymond.J
in Peripherals
As the decade comes to a close, we’re seeing a bevy of real and mythical devices bent on saving main stream media through the execution of a variety of proposed content partnerships. Unfortunately, it’s still hard to imagine how all this will play out in reality. That’s where slickly produced concepts can be of benefit. Like this one from the R&D wing of Bonnier, the publisher of Popular Science magazine among others. While the concept still treats electronic magazines as periodic issues, the interaction is entirely new and immersive compared to their printed forms. Interestingly enough, our future is ad free if the video (and not Google) is to be believed. Compelling stuff and a possible glimpse at our not too distant future.
Hot Virtual Keyboard for Windows 7 is hot, virtual, multitouch
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Thought that multitouch support in Windows 7 was only good for putting twice the smudges on your screen in half the time? Here’s the app that makes all those blemishes worthwhile. It’s the 5.0 release of Hot Virtual Keyboard, which provides the ability to do mindblowing things like hold a shift key while pressing another key to make on-screen letters bigger! Crazy, right? It offers a variety of flavors, including thumb-friendly UMPC models and even a pseudo-ergonomic one, complete with comically oversized spacebar, as apparently those with bad wrists have big thumbs. It’s all hugely customizable and could make text entry on that svelte new tablet of yours a little less of a chore — if you don’t mind fronting the $29.95 entry fee.
Acer gets in the Olympic spirit with special edition Aspire Timeline 1810TZ
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Lenovo really went to town with its Olympics-branded gear, but while Acer is a major Winter Olympics partner (and keeping the spot for 2012 as well), it’s taking a bit more of a tame approach at the outset. This Acer Aspire Timeline 1810TZ, for instance, merely slaps some silver rings on the lid and calls it a day. Pretty classy, and the price isn’t bad: $580 for a 11.6-inch CULV laptop with 3GB of RAM and Windows 7. Perfect for the multitasking ski jumper in your life.
Intel Core i3, mobile Core i5 processors coming January 7
0882 days
by Raymond.J
in Peripherals
Intel’s Arrandale chips haven’t been the best-kept secret around, and today Chipzilla made ‘em official: the Core i3 and mobile Core i5 will launch on January 7, and we’d guess a bunch of new machines come along for the ride. Although the desktop Lynnfield Core i5 is a quad-core, both the new Core i3 and mobile Core i5 are dual-core — and in a first for Intel, both of the new chips have an integrated GPU core that’s being branded “Intel HD Graphics.” The new GPU is supposedly good enough for “high-end” HTPC use, but manufacturers can add switchable discrete GPUs, so don’t fret too much. Both Arrandale chips have Intel’s latest hyperthreading tech, and the mobile i5 also has the Turbo Boost core-overclocking feature found in the desktop i5 and i7, which redirects power to a single core to boost performance when needed.
We got to see a few Core i3 and i5 laptops and desktops in action at Intel’s pre-CES briefing today, although we didn’t get to run any tests. The mobile Core i5 systems on display were doing a fine job running Call of Duty 4, while the scaled-down Core i3 rigs were playing Blu-ray movies and World of Warcraft — not a bad demo, but we’ll let you know when we see some real numbers.
Palm loses $85.4 million in latest reported quarter — hey, it’s an improvement
0882 days
by Raymond.J
in Peripherals
We don’t know just how quickly Palm (or Elevation Partners, for that matter) thought it’d become profitable following the release of webOS, but it’s not there quite yet — the company is in the process of outing its earnings for the second quarter of fiscal year 2010 right now, and in a word, they’re still in the red. The good news is that it’s a marked improvement from last quarter — they’ve gone from a $164.5M GAAP net loss to an $85.4M one this time around. On a non-GAAP gross basis, they actually made $5.5M, which is up from $2.8M a quarter earlier. They’ve got $590 million in cash and other “short-term investments” on the book right now, which seems like it should be enough to keep the company going without a profit or additional cash infusion for at least a few additional quarters, but then again, burn rate is going to vary with just how much hardware and software R&D they’re doing and the kinds of carrier deals they’re scoring. We bet they’re looking forward to this Verizon business going down, eh? (more…)