There's no mistaking the fact that this understated machine is aimed primarily at those rocking suits more often than pajamas, but just because the all-new Tecra M11's outfit ain't flashy, that doesn't mean there's not a party raging on the inside. In an effort to keep the times, Toshiba has equipped its newest spreadsheet warrior with Intel's Core i3 and Core i5 processors, and just in case your company has yet to evolve its operating system, a copy of WinXP is thrown in alongside Windows 7.
Other specs include up to 3GB of DDR3 RAM, integrated Intel HD graohics (or an NVIDIA NVS 2100M on the $1,299 model), a 320GB hard drive (7,200rpm), dual-layer DVD writer and a 14-inch LED backlit panel (1,366 x 768).
You'll also get a webcam, Bluetooth 2.1+EDR, WiFi, audio in out an ExpressCard slot and a three-year warranty, all for the low, low starting price of $899. Oh, and it's available today, junior!
There may be a chance to get some more face-time with the handset, but we wanted to get these photos to you guys ASAP. Stay tuned, we're working on more details as we type -- for now, enjoy the gallery below!
Is this the iPhone 4G (or iPhone HD)? There's no way to tell for sure, but these photos which made their way into our hands certainly do a convincing job of making us think that's very much the case. Apparently the phone was found on the floor of a San Jose bar inside of an iPhone 3G case. Right now we don't have a ton of info on the device in question, but we can tell you that it apparently has a front facing camera and isn't booting at this point (though it was previously, and running an OS that was decidely new). It's not clear if this is definitely a production model, or just a prototype that found its way into the world, but it's certainly a compelling design, no matter how you look at it.
Update: As a number of observant commenters and tripsters pointed out, this looks almost exactly like a Twitpic posted by TUDream on February 20th, which we're throwing after the break if for whatever reason the source link goes down. It's low-res, shows an indiscriminate bit of the inside, and some mysterious button / possible SIM slow in the middle of the other site. The mic holes on this pic seems to be larger, too.
It looks like Nokia is not too happy that its big N8 / Symbian^3 reveal this morning was tarnished by Eldar Murtazin's harsh preview of the device and OS a few days ago: in a new Conservations blog post, the company says that Eldar's "salacious headlines" masked the fact that he was looking at a "very early, pre-production prototype with dated software that is not yet ready," and that it only ships products that are "refined, tested, re-tested, evaluated, [and] tested again.
Now, Eldar says the devices he examined had the very latest hardware and software, so it's a bit of a he-said-she-said at this point, but there's no denying that Nokia's definitely shipped some not-quite-ready-for-prime-time devices lately -- the N900 and Maemo 5 shipped in pretty roughed-out from, and the company itself has said the N97 was a "tremendous disappointment.
How that recent history reflects on Symbian^3 and the N8 remains to be seen, but it's clear that Nokia's feeling pretty defensive about things; Eldar's been scooping Espoo's gear for years now and the company's never made a peep about it.
Either that, or someone at Nokia is just trying to cash in on all this iPhone 4 drama by saying things like "we want our prototype back" and "we are not the Secret Police, and we want to maintain our culture of openness," but come one -- that would be a pretty crass publicity stunt, right? We want to believe.
The OCZ Vertex 2 is based on the more affordable SandForce SF-1200 controller and it's actually expected to outperform the Vertex LE. This is not a mainstream part, though. OCZ will be targeting performance oriented users with the Vertex 2 while dropping down the price of the original Vertex to service the mainstream segment.
Hard to say if OCZ overestimated demand but it's been almost two months and you can still buy the Limited Edition drives that come in 100GB and 200GB flavors. Yet, we were still left waiting for the true successor of the highly popular Vertex, and here it is, in our lab ready for testing and expected to be hitting shelves pretty soon.
Currently, the original Vertex is selling for around $350 for the 120GB version, which is considered to be an ok value considering that Intel drives have been dropping in price. The Vertex 2 will be priced at $399 for the 100GB model, while the 50GB and 200GB drives will cost $219 and $769, respectively. The question remains what kind of performance improvements we can expect and whether it justifies the price premium. Read on to find out.
Completing OCZ's new SSD line-up is the Agility 2 that will also use the SF-1200 controller and should offer a slightly less agressive and more affordable option to the Vertex 2. The original Agility SSDs will target the lower end of the spectrum, along with the Solid 2 and the upcoming Onyx drives that will be based on a new Indilinx Amigos controller.
That's a $110 cut from the previous model, all while maintaining free 3G wireless access to the Kindle store and no annual contracts or data plan costs. Amazon's Jeff Bezos said in a recent interview he doesn't see the iPad and Kindle competing in the same product category, but the online retailer does seem to be feeling the pressure. Today they have announced an updated version of the Kindle DX e-book reader, with a higher-contrast display and a lower price of $379.
And speaking of books, Amazon's Kindle Store now offers over 620,000 titles, most priced at $9.99. The storefront added more than 200,000 books in the last six months, and also features over 1.8 million free out-of-copyright releases. The new DX model sports a new graphite enclosure, it's about a third of an inch thick and can carry 3,500 books.
The updated Kindle DX model arrives just a week after Amazon slashed the price of its original Kindle unit from $259 to $189. The company believes its devices' non-glossy, paper-like screens are much better suited for reading books. But despite recent moves to price hardware more aggressively, the company is in the business of selling e-books, and is fine with users reading them on whatever's available. So far, they've released apps for the iPhone, iPad, and Android devices.
Llano will be a dual or quad-core part with support for DDR3 1600MHz memory, and it'll have a DirectX 11 graphics chip built-in. Fudzilla believes the GPU will be from the Radeon HD 5000 generation, and should be on par with the HD 5350 – basically toward the lower end of discrete graphics performance. That said, it should be quicker than AMD's 880G IGP.
According to a report by Fudzilla, socket AM3's days are numbered. The year and a half old desktop platform will supposedly be replaced by a new socket called FM1 by the time early 2011 rolls around. Socket FM1 will launch alongside AMD's upcoming Lynx-based Llano APU – the 32nm CPU + GPU Fusion project we've heard about for the last few years. Socket FM1 will be paired with the "Hudson" series of chipsets, some of which will support USB 3.0 as well as SATA 6Gb/s, but most will only support USB 2.0 outright.
Llano is expected to enter mass production toward the end of this year, so a CES 2011 launch seems plausible. At the very least, you can expect some major hype.
As for the US, Microsoft says it will continue to work with Verizon to sell existing phones. We're not sure whether that means production will continue for a while, or if they're just trying to move what's already in warehouses.
For what it's worth, Verizon says the Kin "remains an important part" of its portfolio. That said, the carrier slashed prices by as much as 50% over the weekend, and that sure screams fire sale to us. After an underwhelming launch response, Microsoft has essentially pulled the plug on its Kin phone project. The handsets began shipping only a few short weeks ago, and rumors last week suggested that only 500 devices were sold – yes, that's five hundred. According new reports, the folks who designed the Kin have been assimilated into the Windows Phone 7 team. Additionally, plans for a European release have been axed.
Even with the lower hardware prices, the Kin probably won't fly off shelves. Besides missing features, the biggest complaint we've heard is that the monthly fee is as high as more capable devices, such as the iPhone and Android-based smartphones, which also happen to be more appealing to the Kin's target demographic of teens and twenty-somethings.
MSI has launched two new motherboards, the P55A Fuzion and 870A Fuzion, which come with the Lucid Hydra 200 chip. The new Fuzion boards should be available soon and are priced at a surprisingly reasonable $190 (Intel) and $160 (AMD), considering the Big Bang Fuzion's hefty $350 fee.
The Hydra technology is similar to CrossFire or SLI, except graphics cards from two different companies (i.e. Nvidia and ATI) can be linked together in a hybrid configuration. In other words, just about any two cards from either camp can be paired up to boost performance. As indicated by their names, one is for Intel's LGA1156 processors and the other supports Socket AM3 chips. Both have two PCIe x16 2.0 (full bandwidth) and PCIe x1 slots, four DIMM slots, six SATA 3Gb/s ports, two SATA 6Gb/s ports, six USB 2.0 ports.
one USB 3.0 port, 7.1 channel audio, gigabit Ethernet, as well as MSI's "Military Class components" and OC Genie overclocking tool. It's worth noting that the 870A Fuzion can also unlock "unused" cores in AMD processors.
It also drops the numeric keypad on the right, but when every key features a customizable LED display on top I guess that's less of a problem -- and it saves a lot of money. After three years in development and many, many delays to the point of actually being labeled as "vaporware," the Optimus Maximus keyboard finally began shipping in 2008 with an obscene price tag of around $1,500.
Needless to say, not too many were sold. Now the company is back with another concept keyboard -- one that is smaller, sleeker and promises to be less expensive compared to the original Optimus Maximus. The Optimus Popularis uses a "chicklet" style layout and thinner profile than its predecessor. Art Lebedev Studio garnered a lot of attention when their Optimus Maximus keyboard concept surfaced in 2005. The peripheral touted a full set of OLED keys that were 100% user-customizable and looked downright amazing.
The new Popularis keyboard will supposedly feature OLED screens that encompass the individual keys' entire physical real estate with a 64x64 pixels resolution, up from 48x48 on the Maximus. There's also a long widget display mounted between the function and number keys. Art Lebedev says it expect to ship the peripheral "at the end of this year/beginning of next year" for less than $1000.
Apparently, a bug in the BIOS software is to blame. The extensive recall affects both F- and C-Series Vaio laptops sold since January 2010, including 259,000 laptops sold in the U.S., 103,000 in Europe, 120,000 in Asia, and 52,000 in Japan. Sony has announced it is voluntarily recalling some 535,000 Vaio laptops worldwide due to a temperature-control defect that may cause excessive buildup of heat and in some cases distort the shape of the laptop.
Affected users can fix the problem by downloading a program through their Vaio's update system or the company's website. Alternatively, Sony is also offering to pick up the laptop and handle the repair work for you. The company claims it has recorded 39 cases of overheating and noted the possibility that the faulty laptops could cause skin burns, even though no such cases have been reported so far. To identify whether your Vaio is part of the affected series, head over to Sony's diagnostic page and enter the serial number found on the bar-coded sticker on the bottom of your machine.
This isn't the first time Sony has issued a recall for overheating issues. The electronics company recalled 9.6 million laptop batteries in 2006 because overheating cells were a fire risk. This was one of the biggest recalls in consumer electronics history, and drained around 51.2 billion yen ($577 million) from the company's earnings.
