Personal Computing
USB drive gets new form factor
June 11, 2007 Small, convenient, but often very easy to lose, USB drives have a knack for wedging themselves at the bottom of briefcases or sliding behind car seats. So why not make them the same shape as something we are very used to carrying safely - a credit card. That's the solution offered by this 2GB wallet-sized USB drive from CA, which has used the drive for the release of its latest security software packages. Once the CA software is installed, wallet-size flash cards can be used to transport music, photos and documents - a much better option for the consumer that being left with a useless CD. Read More
Virtual Weather Map gives snapshot of Internet health
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June 9, 2007 Imagine trying to explain the Internet to someone who had been in a cave for the last 30 years - it has no shape, no single clearly defined purpose and no beginning or end. In short, it's hard to visualize. Add "what's going on?" to the question and it becomes almost impossible to answer, hence Internet monitoring has become almost a science in its own right. One impressive attempt to visualize the Web has just been announced by Global service provider Akamai which has created an interactive "Virtual Weather Map" that for the first time provides the public with a picture of what it calls the "real-time well being of the Internet". The map provides a very interesting insight into why Web traffic may be slow or unstable and points out potential trouble spots by measuring a range of Internet conditions including attack traffic and traffic volume. Read More
The 42 inch mobile computer
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June 7, 2007 Presentations are leveraged interpersonal communication and we’re a great believer in having the most effective tools for the job when you have the attention of so many important people at the same time. We love stories about how expertise gained in one industry can be applied to another and the hook with this story is that JACO has been providing point-of-care wireless carts to hospitals worldwide for several decades. The company has now applied its engineering and manufacturing expertise to fill a market void for presentation systems aimed at education, hospitality and professional service firms. The top-of-the-range, 42-inch, height-adjustable Premier System has an integrated computer, high speed WiFi, wireless keyboard/mouse and a battery supply so it offers true mobility without ever requiring the system to be powered down. Moving a complete presentation system from where it is to where it is needed has never been easier. Indeed, it could also be the mobile desktop which you move around the office or home to suit your needs. It could also be adapted to become a mobile DJ system, a mobile home theater system a retail technology merchandising system ... big possibilities with this product. Read More
New MacBook Pro models are finally here - Santa Rosa, LED-backlit displays
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June 5, 2007 Apple have lifted the lid on the new Santa Rosa-based MacBook Pro models, with 2.2GHz or 2.4GHz Core 2 Duo processors, NVIDIA 8600M GT graphics, and 2GB of DDR2 RAM as standard. Only the 15-inch models get the new LED-backlit displays, with the 17-inch model now having an optional display capable of a 1920x1200 resolution - now that's a lot of screen real estate for a mobile machine. Prices remain the same as the previous models. Read More
Panasonic semi-rugged Desktop Replacement Toughbook with embedded 3G wireless
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June 5, 2007 In an important product announcement, Panasonic has extended its Toughbook mobile computer range to include a semi-rugged, wireless-ready desktop replacement notebook, the Toughbook 52. Built on the new Santa Rosa chipset from Intel, the Toughbook 52 offers all the processing power of a desktop replacement notebook in a form factor engineered from the ground up for mobility and making sure your window to the world remains in pristine order thanks to embedded 3G access. The 15.4 inch widescreen laptop can withstand drops of up to 2.5 feet on all six sides, has a spill-resistant keyboard, six hours of battery life and a removable hard drive which can handle a drop of three feet. The MIL-SPEC-certified notebook incorporates magnesium alloy cases, flexible internal connectors and shock-mounted hard drives and LCDs. Read More
SanDisk 64 Gigabyte Solid State Drive for Notebook Pcs
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June 5, 2007 Gartner projects global consumption of Solid State Drives in consumer and business notebooks to leap from about 4 million units in 2007 to 32 million units in 2008 – SSDs are a technology whose time has come. SSDs we’ve seen until now have been a bit small to replace hard drives, but SanDisk, the folks who gave us the technology in the first place, appear to be reaching the “sweet spot” of memory storage for laptop computers, with the introduction of a 64-gigabyte (GB)1 SSD aimed at both enterprise users and early adopter consumers such as gamers and gizmagers. The little wonder will deliver 2 million hours mean time between failures (MTBF) – that’s approximately six times more than notebook hard disks. With no moving parts, SSDs are much less likely to fail when dropped, they start working almost immediately, offer 100 times faster data access speeds than a conventional hard disk drive and use roughly half the power, significantly extending battery life. Sold yet? Read More
What's better than our RSS feed? The Gizmag toolbar for Firefox and IE
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June 5, 2007 Regular readers of Gizmag will have noticed the design improvements we've made this year. In our continued efforts to improve the Gizmag experience, we've created the Gizmag toolbar. Available for Firefox and Internet Explorer, it's the best way there is to keep up or catch up with the site, and explore the near six thousand articles in our archives. Read More
Blazing-fast HyperDrive4 solid state disk
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June 4, 2007 Got a computing task so brutal that even a roaring Seagate Savvio 15K hard drive won't cut it? The HyperDrive4 is a 5.25" storage device which uses volatile DDR memory instead of a conventional mechanical hard drive. This might sound crazy, but with a variety of supported methods to seamlessly backup and restore the data, you'd be crazy to pass on performance boosts of up to 20,000% (depending on the application of course). Forget about buying additional hardware too - the HyperDrive4 plugs-and-plays with any machine that supports IDE or SATA (that's just about all of them). The catch? A limit of 16GB per HyperDrive4, and a hefty price tag. Read More
The ASUS Lamborghini VX2 Laptop
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June 1, 2007 The ASUS Lamborghini VX2 was first seen in January at the launch of Lamborghini’s high-performance Gallardo Superleggera and the parallels between this exclusive brethren don’t end there. Both are significant redesigns of existing products crafted to appeal to the extreme luxury market. Similar to Ferrari’s ACER relationship, this co-creation of ASUS and Lamborghini Automobili reflects the values of the other. On first glance, it’s the stunning yellow paintwork that attracts, and it’s exactly the same metallic Midas Yellow paint from the Superleggera. For those that want a ‘quieter level of sophistication’ the VX2 also comes in another of the Gallardo’s optional colours - Noctis Black. At US$2700, the VX2 is not cheap, but like the Superleggera, it offers ultra high performance and can be ogled for hours at a time thanks to its finish and craftsmanship and it’ll leave no doubt about your brand values even when people don’t notice your distinctive car keys. Read More
Surface Computing: Microsoft takes touch screens to the next level
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May 31, 2007 More than four decades since the conception of the mouse, computer input devices are only just beginning to tap the promise of truly interactive technology which facilitates a two-way conversation between machine and user rather than simply reacting to a limited set of command parameters. This search for a more intuitive and efficient mode of input is now well underway with Microsoft’s ground-breaking foray into the new category of Surface Computing. The Surface is a 30-inch “coffee table” display that not only enables direct interaction with digital content, but also responds to natural gestures and physical objects. Read More
Yoggie Pico: corporate-level security away from the corporate network
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May 31, 2007 Here's an interesting concept: Yoggie's new Pico is a mini Linux computer on a tiny USB dongle that plugs into a laptop and acts as a physical separation between the host PC and the internet. All Internet traffic is cleaned via 13 inbuilt security applications before it even makes it to the host PC's operating system. The net effect is that a portable computer can have the same level of internet security as it has when plugged into the corporate network. Because there's now a standalone processor handling all security applications, the Yoggie actually enhances the performance of the host PC too. Read More
The world’s thinnest notebook - a new trend?
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May 25, 2007 Businessweek is reporting on a new laptop from Intel which is less than 0.7 inches thick – that’s just a quarter of an inch thicker than the Motorola Razr mobile phone (pictured alongside it in profile) and as such, easily qualifies as the world’s thinnest mobile phone. The radical laptop weighs just 2.25 pounds, and always-on Internet connectivity via various wireless technologies. Intel hasn't announced an official release date but people familiar with the matter say a PC maker will announce plans to start manufacturing the machine later this year. Read More
The world’s most expensive (and sought after) keyboard
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May 22, 2007 We have some good news and some bad news for all those people who have been hanging out for the arrival of the Optimus keyboard from Russian designer Artemy Lebedev. The keyboard uses OLED technology so that each of the 113 keys is a stand-alone display showing exactly what it is controlling at that moment. Accordingly, you can switch from language to language, or program to program and the functionality of the key will be reflected in the 48 x 48 pixel image it shows. The good news is that after several years of legal and production delays, the first keyboards will be available on November 31, 2007. The bad news is that only 200 keyboards will be available on that date, with a further 200 in December and another 400 keyboards in January – hardly enough for a world market. But wait, there’s more bad news. The price is US$1564 (UER 1256), though when volume production starts, which it surely must for such a sought-after productivity tool, the price can be expected to drop significantly. Pre-orders are now being taken.
IBM unleashes World's Fastest Chip
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May 22, 2007 IBM today simultaneously launched the fastest microprocessor ever built and an ultra-powerful new computer server that leverages the chip’s many breakthroughs in energy conservation and virtualization technology. The new server is the first ever to hold all four major benchmark speed records for business and technical performance. At 4.7 GHz, the dual-core POWER6 processor doubles the speed of the previous generation POWER5 while using nearly the same amount of electricity to run and cool it. This means customers can use the new processor to either increase their performance by 100 percent or cut their power consumption virtually in half. Read More
Kingston to debut DDR3 1500MHz HyperX memory modules at Computex
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May 22, 2007 Kingston Technology will be announcing important news concerning its HyperX high performance memory division during the world’s second-largest trade show, Computex Taipei, to be held in Taiwan from June 5-9, 2007. Travelers who visit the Kingston booth will witness live demonstrations of new DDR3 1500MHz HyperX and DDR2 800MHz ultra low latency HyperX memory modules. Kingston 512MB and 1GB DDR3 1066MHz HyperX memory modules recently passed Intel Platform (PMO) Validation, paving the way for the next generation of high-performance computing. DDR3 technology offers significant memory performance gains, at lower voltage and less power consumption. Read More
The 3D air-mouse you wear as a ring
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May 21, 2007 The computer mouse and flat "desktop" themed operating systems have hardly evolved since their inception. But the recent creation of a genuine, working 3D mouse system that you wear as a ring on one finger could open the door to a new model of GUI display that lets the user explore an interface in intuitive 3D. Could we be moving towards a revolution in interface interactivity? Straight out of "Minority Report," meet the MagicMouse! Read More
Plug-and-play RAID mirrored backup system - easy and affordable data protection
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May 18, 2007 Data backup and uninterrupted data access becomes quicker, easier and more convenient every day. Now, RAID 1 level backup has become affordable and simple enough to attract the home or small business user. Newertech's latest release, the Guardian MAXimus, is a consumer-priced plug-and-play RAID 1 level backup system that can ensure uninterruped full data accessibility in the event of hard drive failures. Simple to use, it plugs into a FireWire 400, FireWire 800 or USB2 connection and "mirrors" vital data - updates are written simultaneously to the Guardian at the same time as they're written to the primary hard disk. Read More
Belkin Network USB Hub makes your USB devices wireless
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May 18, 2007 Belkin have announced their Network USB Hub, which works in conjunction with an existing wireless router to provide wireless connectivity to five USB devices. While certain high-bandwidth devices like HD webcams are out of the question, the more common applications like printers, scanners and external hard drives are all compatible. Read More
Clip-on converter turns any laptop into a tablet PC
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May 15, 2007 Adding a cheap, simple and portable new dimension to your laptop, clever Korean company Navisis is preparing to launch its "Laptop Tablet" unit, which clips onto the side of your laptop's LCD screen and gives you the ability to write directly onto your screen with a stylus. Read More
The Eikon Digital Privacy Manager Fingerprint Reader
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May 11, 2007 This new offering is targeted directly at solving one of today’s most time and patience-taxing PC user experiences – managing the growing complexity and quantity of passwords. Fingerprint authentication security solutions provider UPEK has a new US$50 product dubbed the Eikon Digital Privacy Manager which combines its Eikon USB peripheral fingerprint reader with its Protector Suite QL softwar, enabling biometric authentication to be retrofitted to an existing PC. The device significantly simplifies many aspects of PC usage with the swipe of a finger – things like instant access to password-protected online accounts, a simple response to Windows Vista User Account Control (UAC) requests to enter an administrator password for tasks such as software installations or configuration changes, logging on to Windows, locking and unlocking a PC, switching Windows user accounts, protecting sensitive files by encrypting them and launching different applications by assigning specific fingers for each one. Read More
First Impressions: Lenovo's new 14 inch T61 and R61 Thinkpads
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May 9, 2007 Several days ago Dave Weinstein had the chance to sit down with several members of Lenovo's product marketing team and take a look at two of the company’s new laptops – the new 14" T61 and R61 Thinkpads. Both units are based upon the newest Intel Santa Rosa technology that's being launched today. While we did get to see a sneak peak of some of what's coming up over the next few months, we did promise to focus on the two devices that are being released today. Dave’s first impressions … Read More
Lenovo's new ThinkPad Lineup
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May 9, 2007 Lenovo today announced two new ThinkPad notebooks PCs - the ThinkPad T61 14.1-inch widescreen notebook and the ThinkPad R61 14.1-inch widescreen notebook. The new ThinkPads include a new top cover roll cage designed to increase durability, an improved cooling system, enhanced wireless connectivity with Ultra Connect II and a longer battery life through its Battery Stretch control option. The ThinkPad T61 uses the Intel Centrino Pro processor while the R61 14.1-inch widescreen uses the Intel Centrino Duo processor. Lenovo also introduced the Lenovo 3000 N200 15.4-inch widescreen notebook offering top connectivity and graphics capabilities with the latest Intel Centrino Duo processor. Read More
Hitachi's One Terabyte Hard Drive
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May 7, 2007 Hitachi’s Deskstar 7K1000, announced at CES 2007 as the world’s first one-terabyte hard drive has now been shipping for a month and inventories have reached critical mass. With a suggested retail price of US$400, the drive offers colossal storage capacity and is well-suited for high-performance, gaming and media center PCs and external storage devices. The drive uses perpendicular magnetic recording technology, allowing Hitachi to extend capacity beyond that available in current products. The hard drive features a 3.0Gb/s Serial-ATA (SATA) interface and large 32 MB data buffer to provide the performance required for high-end PC applications. Along with the Deskstar 7K1000 for the retail market, Hitachi has launched the CinemaStar version of the 1TB hard drive, which provides optimised capabilities specifically designed for digital video recording (DVR) applications. Read More
The extremely rugged Flash Survivor
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May 2, 2007 Meet the Flash Survivor – no, it’s not another reality TV show, but one of the most rugged USB drives we’ve ever seen. The US$130 8GB Survivor is water-resistant to 200 metres (650 ft), encased in a CNC (Computer Numerical Control) milled aluminum (as found in aircraft part production) case, and being solid-state, it’s incredibly shock-proof anyway. Additional protection from shock and vibration is achieved through the use of rubber moulded collar shielding which absorbs the impact force to prevent damage to the inner drive and the USB connector, making it ideal to safely store information in the most demanding environments.
LaCie FireWire speakers for PC or Mac
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April 26, 2007 Gorgeous looks by award-winning industrial designer Neil Poulton, clear, warm, crisp sound, and a FireWire connection that eliminates the need for a power adaptor. Smart work from LaCie. Read More
New Print Technology delivers high-speed, quality color at breakthrough Price/Performance
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March 23, 2007 A new color printing technology known as Memjet looks set to impact the industry at potentially disruptive levels based on the public demonstrations so far. It is the first printing technology to combine high speed and quality color at a leading price/performance level, and was unveiled earlier this week in Kia Silverbrook’s keynote address at the Global Ink Jet Printing Conference in Prague. The new technology prints full-color images at 60 pages per minute (ppm), (videos here), many times the inkjet industry standard. The technology, which will be a fraction of the price of high-speed color laser devices, will soon be available for OEMs targeting the home/office, photo-kiosk and label markets. Printing costs for the basic desktop printer are expected to be less than US$0.02 for a mono page, and US$0.06 for a color page with 20 percent coverage. There’s more to come – read on to understand why the technology is scalable from 20mm to more than 2 meters (6 feet), and could hence be incorporated into mobile phones and digital cameras while at the other end of the scale, it could lead to large-format commercial printing applications with the ability to print a personalised newspaper. Read More
Research project could help create computers that run on light
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March 15, 2007 Physicists at the University of Bath will soon begin a research project which could be an important step towards the development of photonic computers – devices run using light rather than electronics – onto the desktop. The project involves research into attosecond technology – the ability to send out light in a continuous series of pulses that last only an attosecond, one billion-billionth of a second. The research could not only develop the important technology of photonics, but could give physicists that chance to look at the world of atomic structure very closely for the first time. Read More
TrekStor’s 3-in-1 hard disk
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March 13, 2007 TrekStor will be presenting an interesting new external hard disk at CeBIT 2007 in Hanover later this week. Best known as a manufacturer hard disks, USB sticks and the world’s most expensive MP3 player, it’s latest creation is a 3.5 inch hard disk with integrated 9 format card reader compatible with anything from SD to compact flash memory cards plus dual USB 2.0 hub. Indeed, the DataStation maxi t.uch can automatically back up of its own data. Read More
Report shows how a 30 inch screen offers measurable productivity and efficiency gains
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March 11, 2007 Adding a high-quality, high-resolution display to your computer can make you more efficient. With the price of flat-panel displays dropping, high-resolution 30-inch displays such as Apple’s Cinema HD Display (or 30 inchers from Dell and HP), are now available for US$2000 - a viable price at the consumer level and a bargain for video production or professional image editing. As we have discussed many times before, the additional “screen real estate” is a very good way to boost overall productivity, even in very common tasks that have little or nothing to do with highly specialized professional applications. Now there’s another study that concludes that using a large screen translates into measurable productivity and efficiency gains. The ROI calculations are interesting indeed – if you charge US$100 an hour, based on average productivity gains, you’ll pay for your monitor inside four months. Then you could always link together two, three or more big monitors. Read More
World’s First Programmable Processor to deliver Teraflops performance with energy efficiency
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March 4, 2007 Just how much computing power are we going to have at our fingertips a decade? Given the inevitable continuation of Moore’s Law, on the surface, quite clearly we’ll have almost supercomputer power available, and the latest news from Intel suggests the path forward. Intel has developed the world’s first programmable processor that delivers supercomputer-like performance from a single, 80-core chip not much larger than the size of a finger nail while using less electricity than most of today’s home appliances. This is the result of the company’s “Tera-scale computing” research aimed at delivering Teraflops -- or trillions of calculations per second -- performance for future PCs and servers. Technical details of the Teraflops research chip were presented at the annual Integrated Solid State Circuits Conference (ISSCC) in San Francisco. Be sure to catch the flash demo of the Architectural vision on the bottom right hand side of this page.
Adtron introduces 160 GB Solid State Flash Disk
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February 23, 2007 It was just a month ago that we were reporting on the sudden jump in Solid State Disk (SSD) capacity with a 32 GB disk appearing nine months ago, then a 64 GB and a 128 GB drive being shown at CES behind closed doors. With the price of NAND flash dropping quickly, SSDs are continuing their rise with the news that Adtron is offering immediate availability of its latest and most advanced generation of the Adtron Flashpak Family of products, including the IDE and Serial ATA (SATA) flash disk models, the I25FB and A25FB, respectively. The products include the industry’s highest capacity 2.5” SLC NAND flash disk drives at 160 GBytes. Read More
LG DVB-T PC W1PRO EXPRESS DUAL 17inch widescreen Notebook
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February 20, 2007: LG Electronics has unveiled its next generation of notebook computers, incorporating a Digital Terrestrial Broadcasting TV Tuner (DVB-T) with a view to providing a mobile, fully-integrated, multi-media hub for the home and office. The 17inch widescreen DVB-T Notebook PC W1PRO EXPRESS DUAL enables high-quality picture broadcasts on a 17inch widescreen LCD when connected to a home or office antenna. It also offers maximum convenience with Windows Vista Home Premium, allowing users to watch, pause, rewind and record live TV on their PC. The W1 uses the powerful Core 2 Duo processor, offering improvement on the performance of the existing Dual Core Processor, without compromising battery life. With built-in wireless LAN supporting up to 54 Mbps broadband wireless internet connection and Bluetooth 2.0, consumers are ensured seamless mobile internet access. Read More
The LaCie Ora-Ito Hub – seriously useful desktop conversation starter
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February 11, 2007 We’re not sure whether the LaCie hub by Ora-Ito should be primarily seen as a desktop conversation starter, a piece of modern art or an incredibly useful connectivity tool, but it gets our vote as one of the best hub designs we’ve ever seen. It is a USB & FireWire Hub, works on PC or MAC or Linux and the eight flexible cables give it a distinctive, modern look, particularly if paired with a suitably coloured Mac, thanks to the hub’s round shape, glossy white polycarbonate finish. It connects up to six devices simultaneously and includes four USB 2.0 and two FireWire 400 ports, a USB light, a USB fan, a USB extension cable and a FireWire 400 extension cable to instantly connect external storage devices, printers, media readers, keyboards, mice and more. Eight glowing LEDs (on the cables and on the round support!) indicate when a device is plugged in, with a different color for each port! And if that’s not enough, an additional hub can be daisy-chained via FireWire or USB for extra connectivity options.
Seagate Savvio - the world's fastest hard drive spins at 15,000 rpm
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January 18, 2007 Yesterday we wrote about the coming of the Solid State Drive and today we’re reporting that Seagate has further pushed the limits of current drive technology with the introduction of the world's fastest hard drive - the Savvio 15K drive is a new addition to the Savvio family of 2.5-inch Serial Attached SCSI (SAS) enterprise drives and it’s aptly named because it spins at 15,000 rpm. The drive's unique combination of features include its 70 percent smaller size, lower power consumption, industry's fastest seek time and the industry's highest reliability.
Solid State Disks gather momentum - 32 GB, 64 GB and now 128GB
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January 17, 2007 With flash storage technology catching up to traditional disc platter storage devices and the price of NAND flash dropping quickly, Solid State Disks (SSD) look set to finally make their mark in 2007. It’s only eight months since we reported on Samsung’s World first PC with NAND flash-based solid state disk – a 32 GB affair. Then, at CES last week, Sandisk announced a 32GB 1.8-inch SSD and now Taiwanese manufacturer PQI has announced a 64GB 2.5-inch SSD which will be available before the end of 2007. A-DATA showed a 128GB 2.5-inch SSD behind closed doors at CES according to the Enquirer. Read More
