Kingston 40GB SSDNow review

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/02/kingston-40gb-ssdnow-review/

From the moment that we heard of the the new 40GB Kingston SSD, we couldn't help but get our hopes up. Who knows if (or more likely, when) SSD drives will ever completely replace spinning platters with all the digital media people collect today, so rather than stretching your budget and compressing your media in order to stuff everything onto a 256GB solid state drive, we dug the idea of snagging a small (and affordable) SSD for boot / application operations and utilizing a spacious HDD for archival. Not to mention -- regardless of how fast a disk is -- two are almost always better than one. If you're interested in rigging up a similar setup, hop on past the break to have a look at our impressions.

Gallery: Kingston 40GB SSDNow Review

Continue reading Kingston 40GB SSDNow review

Kingston 40GB SSDNow review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:31:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |   | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

Motorola Sholes Tablet detailed, sounds as tasty as we'd hoped

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/02/motorola-sholes-tablet-detailed-sounds-as-tasty-as-wed-hoped/

Knowing what we now know of the Droid -- codename Sholes -- the mere mental image of that "Sholes Tablet" that we've been hearing about for a while brings us to our geeky knees. Taiwanese forum Mobile01 seems to have details on just what the Sholes Tablet is all about, and while we'd normally be skeptical to the point of dismissal, the presence of a few believable-looking images has us on the bandwagon. The biggies on the rumored spec sheet include HDMI out, 720p video recording paired to an 8 megapixel cam (which is hopefully of much, much higher quality than the Droid's miserable 5) with xenon flash, and Motorola's own CrystalTalk tech for background noise reduction on calls. It'll apparently be running Android 2.0 -- the presence of BLUR is unknown -- and the screen is a predictably awesome 3.7 inches at WVGA resolution with multitouch support; missing, as the name suggests, is the original's sliding QWERTY keyboard. All signs point to use seeing this in the next few months, so enjoy those Droids and Milestones while you can, yeah?

Motorola Sholes Tablet detailed, sounds as tasty as we'd hoped originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 12:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink BGR  |  Mobile01  | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

Intel crams 48 cores onto stamp-sized processor, wants to do what Cell did

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/02/intel-crams-48-cores-onto-stamp-sized-processor-wants-to-do-wha/

Just when we thought Intel's yet-to-release six-core Core i9 would be the future, the silicon giant drops the bomb yet again with more multi-core madness -- the experimental 48-core Single-chip Cloud Computer (SCC), a.k.a. Rock Creek. While it looks like Intel still has a long way from their 80-core target in 2011, this bad boy packs an impressive 1.3 billion transistors on a 45nm fabrication, but sucks up just 125 watts which is a far cry from Core i9's 130 watts. Intel's stated that their main goal is to use SCC's parallel computation -- a field where high clock speed isn't necessary -- to enhance gesture control. Sounds familiar? Yes, it was Toshiba's SpursEngine, but there's no harm in having a new contender for the challenge. You go, girl!

Intel crams 48 cores onto stamp-sized processor, wants to do what Cell did originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 17:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink ZDNet  |  Intel  | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

Time Inc. shows off magazine tablet demo, plans future anger about 70/30 profit split

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/02/time-inc-shows-off-magazine-tablet-demo-plans-future-anger-abo/

You know that Condé Nast tablet / digital magazine demo we saw recently (non-ironically paging through a copy of Wired)? Well now Time Inc. has gotten in on the same game, showing off its version of a digimag running a touch-friendly issue of Sports Illustrated. The company not only buzzed everyone with the charming walkthough video -- a floating hand paging through SI on a sleek, black tablet (embedded after the break) -- but also had a live, functioning variation of the product up and running on a touchscreen HP laptop. The gist of the project seems to be that the publisher will be able to offer this digitized version of its magazines in some sort of agnostic format, one that would be accessible to PCs and phantom Apple tablets alike. Peter Kafka over at All Things D says that he had a chance to play with the demo and it was, "quite a bit of fun." While it's clear that both Time and Condé Nast are taking parallel routes to online publishing (the former is purely in concept mode, the latter is working with Adobe on digital versions of its titles as we speak), one thing is painfully clear: both companies have shockingly similar ideas about what the future of magazine publishing looks like. We hope Apple has been informed.

Continue reading Time Inc. shows off magazine tablet demo, plans future anger about 70/30 profit split

Time Inc. shows off magazine tablet demo, plans future anger about 70/30 profit split originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  AllThingsD, The Wonder Factory (YouTube)  | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...

Microsoft giving Bing Maps a 3D overhaul, tacking on apps for good measure

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/02/microsoft-giving-bing-maps-a-3d-overhaul-tacking-on-apps-for-go/

Google's not the only one in the game when it comes to wild mapping tech, and while Microsoft's excellent collection of bird's eye photos has never gotten it quite the attention of Google's Street View, the hope is that lasers and its much-lauded Photosynth tool can do the trick. Microsoft has done up a Street View-style canvassing of 56 US cities with cars that not only snap photos but include range-finding lasers to map out the architecture in 3D. The Silverlight-based viewer for this view (dubbed Streetside) is similar in interface to Google Maps, a tad slower, and rather visually impressive. In addition, Microsoft is leaning on its Photosynth technology to collect navigable panoramas of scenery and even building interiors. Finally, Microsoft has tacked on "apps" of sorts, little overlays that include traffic cameras, restaurants, a Twitter API and so forth. All of this coupled with an improved version of the bird's eye view is quite a visual treat, but the Silverlight requirement and non-Google-ness of it all might might keep away the Bing-averse among us. But really, with all this tit-for-tat going on between Microsoft and Google, we have to wonder what sort of stone age we'd be stuck in if we didn't have these two behemoths going at each other like this. The "Beta" is live now at the source link.

[Thanks Aimee]

Microsoft giving Bing Maps a 3D overhaul, tacking on apps for good measure originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 02 Dec 2009 18:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

Permalink   |  Bing Maps Beta  | Email this | Comments

Read More...

Summary only...