Dr. Augustine Fou's Online Scrapbook

Wednesday, December 23, 2009

NVIDIA Ion 2 coming in early 2010, compatible with Pine Trail

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/22/nvidia-ion-2-coming-in-early-2010-compatible-with-pine-trail/

Well, here we go: NVIDIA just gave us the heads-up that the next generation of Ion chips (which we'll be calling Ion 2 until it gets a proper name) will be compatible with Intel's new Pine Trail platform and arriving in Q1 of 2010. That's good news, seeing as the Pine Trail-based Eee PC 1005PE we just reviewed didn't offer much of a performance benefit over the older Diamondville chips and definitely couldn't bust through the first few seconds of a YouTube HD clip. Though we got NVIDIA to confirm that it'll improve some of the battery life concerns we've had, we couldn't get much out of them in terms of how Ion 2 will play with the Intel GMA 3150 GPU that's now integrated into the Atom N450 die. NVIDIA also didn't hold back when it came to Intel's reliance on third-party HD accelerator chips for video duties -- they think customers want richer gaming and multimedia experiences on netbooks than Atom alone can offer, and they don't seem to care that Intel keeps calling Ion "overkill." All drama aside we're looking forward to just getting some YouTube and Hulu HD playback on our netbooks -- we'll see what NVIDIA has to show off at CES.

NVIDIA Ion 2 coming in early 2010, compatible with Pine Trail originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 20:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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OLPC shows off absurdly thin XO-3 concept tablet for 2012 (update: XO-1.5 and XO-1.75 coming first)

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/22/olpc-shows-off-absurdly-thin-xo-3-concept-tablet-for-2012/

Still have a bit of faith left for the OLPC project? Good, you're gonna need it: designer Yves Behar has unveiled his latest concept design for the now-aiming-for-$75 vision, and it's all screen. Keeping with the newfound trend toward tablets, the XO-3 is an 8.5 x 11 touchscreen, coupled with a little folding ring in the corner for grip and a camera in the back. To keep things minimal the plan is to use Palm Pre-style induction charging, and less than a watt of power to keep an "8 gigaherz [sic]" (800MHz?) processor and a Pixel Qi screen powered. At half the thickness of an iPhone, this vision is obviously banking heavily on presumed technology advances by 2012 (the projected release date), but it's not too hard to see somebody making this form factor happen by then-ish. Nick Neg isn't all hubris, however: "Sure, if I were a commercial entity coming to you for investment, and I'd made the projections I had in the past, you wouldn't invest again, but we're not a commercial operation. If we only achieve half of what we're setting out to do, it could have very big consequences."

Update: According to our man Nicholas Negroponte, who took time out of his busy schedule to email us with the info, there are two other variations of the XO headed our way before we see the XO-3. Nick says we'll see the XO-1.5 appear in January for around $200 -- an update to the current version. As we'd heard before, the 1.5 iteration will swap a VIA CPU for the current AMD one, and will double the speed as well as quadruple both the DRAM and Flash memory of the current version. Furthermore, he says that in early 2011 the XO-1.75 (replacing that psychotically awesome 2.0 dual screen model) will make its appearance, and will sport rubber bumpers on the outer casing, an 8.9-inch touchscreen display inside, and will run atop a Marvell ARM processor which will enable two times the speed at a quarter of the power usage. That version will sell for somewhere in the $175 range. Then, no 2.0... straight on to the XO-3.0!

Gallery: OLPC XO3 Gallery

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

OLPC shows off absurdly thin XO-3 concept tablet for 2012 (update: XO-1.5 and XO-1.75 coming first) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 22 Dec 2009 23:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Firefox 4 Windows mockup provides 5 UI hints of things to come

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/23/firefox-4-windows-mockup-provides-5-ui-hints-of-things-to-come/

Want a hint as to where Firefox will go next? As a product visual designer at Mozilla, Stephen Horlander is the kind of guy who can make things happen -- so when he shares updates and mockups on Firefox 4's user interface, we tend to pay attention. He outlines five portions of a screenshot teaser that'll get a much cleaner, more streamlined facelift. Our favorite takeaway is the singular app button for menu navigation. Several variations are shown, but if you ask us, we're currently fond of the setup above. As Horlander notes, the design's in constant flux, but what we're seeing is certainly promising.

Firefox 4 Windows mockup provides 5 UI hints of things to come originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 01:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Motorola Droid and Dell Adamo latest to get Gorilla glass

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/23/motorola-droid-and-dell-adamo-latest-to-get-gorilla-glass/

Corning's darn-near-impenetrable Gorilla glass certainly isn't new -- in fact, we spied it in a few of Motion Computing's tablets just a few months ago -- but it's still not commonplace on mainstream gizmos. Yet. SmartPlanet sat down with Dr. Donnell Walton, senior applications engineer at Corning, in order to discuss the merits of the display technology as well as its importance in the gadget space. The discussion also mentioned that both Motorola's Droid and Dell's Adamo (not to mention Cowon's S9 PMP) are sporting the glass, which acts to make displays "damage-resistant." Not surprisingly, the company is seeing huge demand in the smartphone arena, where touchscreen-centric phones are being shoved into pockets at random and then costing manufacturers big bucks as return rates creep up. It's a pretty interesting read if you're into that type of thing, and yes, we did just give you permission to try and split your Droid display wide open in a moment of frustration. Just don't count on Motorola to accept that as a valid excuse for your RMA.

[Thanks, Jeff]

Motorola Droid and Dell Adamo latest to get Gorilla glass originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 03:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Acer's Aspire 1820PTZ convertible tablet hits the wilds of Singapore

Source: http://www.engadget.com/2009/12/23/acers-aspire-1820ptz-convertible-tablet-hits-the-wilds-of-singa/

Acer's Aspire 1820PTZ convertible tablet may not be making its London debut until next month, but evidently said machine is alive and well (and shipping, to boot) over in Singapore. One particular enthusiast managed to procure one of the twistable rigs, and as a favor to anyone who appreciates freedom, Kris Kringle and In-N-Out double-doubles, he decided to unbox it, snap a few shots, throw up a video and even toss out a respectable list of impressions. We're told that Acer crammed just about every piece of bloatware known to mankind onto this thing, and the owner didn't seem particularly thrilled with the keyboard nor the overall multitouch experience. That said, performance was found to be "snappy enough for general use," and the casing itself was satisfactorily solid. Hit that read link for the full rundown, and hop on past the break for a look at the boot sequence.

Continue reading Acer's Aspire 1820PTZ convertible tablet hits the wilds of Singapore

Acer's Aspire 1820PTZ convertible tablet hits the wilds of Singapore originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Dec 2009 07:33:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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