Filed under: Laptops

ASUS certainly got our attention with its ultraportable U6S laptop, and it looks like it piqued the interest of the folks at HotHardware as well, who’ve now turned out a full review of the diminutive, leather-bound system. While they expectedly found a few shortcomings with laptop — namely, lackluster battery life (even for an ultraportable) — they found a lot more to like about it, including “excellent” performance, plenty of features (including HSDPA), low heat and noise, an always-welcome LED display, and “cool leather palm rests,” although that last bit is certainly a matter of taste.Best of all, that all comes at a relatively reasonable $1,650 price tag, which leads HotHardware to declare the U6S “one of the best values in the luxury notebook niche.”

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Filed under: Laptops

Well, would you look at that. The image we’re certain your eyes are fixated on above is indeed the first look at Lenovo’s forthcoming X300 ultraportable, and it’s being provided courtesy of Walt Mossberg. ‘Course, if we were betting souls, we’d guess that nifty office envelope won’t be bundled in, but hey, crazier things have happened. As if a photo wasn’t enough, Walt also clued us in on a few more specs, namely the inclusion of a removable battery, three USB ports, WiFi, an integrated Ethernet jack and optional GPS / WWAN to boot. Heck, users will even be able to order this 3.12-pound critter with Windows XP if they so choose. You getting all this, Apple?

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The Gadget: Cowon’s A3 portable music player, which supports about as many codecs as its bigger, beefier brother, the Q5W. The difference is the A3 can fit much easier into your pants.

The Price: $319 for 30GB, $349 for 60GB on Amazon

The Verdict: Just as great as the Q5W. The A3’s got a 800×480 display which is fantastically watchable, and supports just about every codec anyone would imagine throwing at it: DivX 3.11/4/5/6, XviD, MPEG-4 SP/ASP, WMV 9/8/7, H.264 MP, M-JPEG, MPEG 1/2 for video, MPEG1 Layer 1/2/3, WMA, FLAC, OGG Vorbis, OGG FLAC, APPLELossless, AAC/AAC+, AC3, True Audio, Monkey Audio, MusePack, WavPack, G.726, PCM for audio.

The video player is smooth (load times are a second or two), but navigation is a little wonky with the 4-way stick taking the place of a directional pad. It’s not too bad, but occasional down-clicks for selecting something didn’t get registered, or got registered as an up click instead.

Photo viewing is also sweet on the bright and ample display, and the transition time between photos is negligible. The only problem comes from the navigation stick and trying to cleanly press down on it without moving the stick in another direction as well.

Music support: great. Document (text reader) support: great. What’s even cooler about the A3, that only some of you will use, is its recording feature. You can record Mobile TV (if you’re not in the US), FM radio, microphone audio, or audio/video from an external source, such as your analog TV. These all worked as advertised, but like Archos units with DVR recording, it’s unlikely that most people will be using the A3 for recording and consuming media, but mostly the latter. In the end, we can’t give this full points because of the navigation system and the slightly sluggish UI, but if you’re a rabid consumer of downloaded video, the Cowon A3 is extremely portable and has format support that can’t be beat. [Amazon]

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Filed under: Laptops

Well, would you look at that. The image we’re certain your eyes are fixated on above is indeed the first look at Lenovo’s forthcoming X300 ultraportable, and it’s being provided courtesy of Walt Mossberg. ‘Course, if we were betting souls, we’d guess that nifty office envelope won’t be bundled in, but hey, crazier things have happened. As if a photo wasn’t enough, Walt also clued us in on a few more specs, namely the inclusion of a removable battery, three USB ports, WiFi, an integrated Ethernet jack and optional GPS / WWAN to boot. Heck, users will even be able to order this 3.12-pound critter with Windows XP if they so choose. You getting all this, Apple?

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

In the oddball acquisition of the day, Dell just swept up email services provider MessageOne in a $155 million cash deal. How odd? Get this, MessageOne was co-founded by Michael Dell’s brother Adam who now manages investment funds — the very funds with partial ownership of MessageOne which Michael and his genetic crew are investors in. As such, Michael, his wife, and kids will receive $12M from the deal, Adam about $970k, and their parents about $450k. For Michael’s part, Dell says that he will donate his family’s proceeds direct to charity and was excluded from negotiating the acquisition. Still, we can’t help but question the merits of such an acquisition when the only comparison that comes readily to mind is Apple’s dot Mac service — a service Apple is rumored to be shifting to Google in order to focus on core business. Don’t get us wrong, we get Dell’s whole Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business strategy, but do they really expect to compete directly with Google and MicroHoo while staying true to their PC roots?

[Via New York Times]

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Two Illinois congressmen are introducing legislation with the goal of upgrading that flimsy paper piece of crap we call a social security card to include a photo, fingerprint and computer ID chip. Recent data shows that nearly $45 billion is lost each year due to identity theft, which makes it increasingly necessary to safeguard our important documents from fraud. The only drawback is that the new cards will cost around $8 to make as opposed to the current 50 cent price tag. Damn…we’ve been paying 50 cents for those things? [Chicago Tribune]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

In the oddball acquisition of the day, Dell just swept up email services provider MessageOne in a $155 million cash deal. How odd? Get this, MessageOne was co-founded by Michael Dell’s brother Adam who now manages investment funds — the very funds with partial ownership of MessageOne which Michael and his genetic crew are investors in. As such, Michael, his wife, and kids will receive $12M from the deal, Adam about $970k, and their parents about $450k. For Michael’s part, Dell says that he will donate his family’s proceeds direct to charity and was excluded from negotiating the acquisition. Still, we can’t help but question the merits of such an acquisition when the only comparison that comes readily to mind is Apple’s dot Mac service — a service Apple is rumored to be shifting to Google in order to focus on core business. Don’t get us wrong, we get Dell’s whole Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) business strategy, but do they really expect to compete directly with Google and MicroHoo while staying true to their PC roots?

[Via New York Times]

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Filed under: Laptops

For those out there (yes, we know you’re out there) who’ve been refreshing Fujitsu’s online webstore like mad just waiting for its cute-as-a-button LifeBook P8010 to become available — well, we’re probably telling you something you’re already quite aware of. Nevertheless, we’re sure everyone else not totally infatuated with the aforementioned machine (but still keenly interested in it) would love to know that it has indeed escaped from the FCC’s lair and is now ready to be shipped to your door. Thankfully, Fujitsu will let you customize it to the hilt, but those looking to get in and out can snap up a low-end configuration for $1,699.

[Thanks, Jack]

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Here’s two visions of our future home. One has wall-sized TVs, lots of plastic wares and all-electric grooming tools. The other, touchscreens everywhere, smart kitchen counters and auto-thermostats.

The first is Disney’s vision of now back in 1957, the second, its re-vision of the House of the Future with Lifeware, HP and Microsoft, which is debuting this May in Tomorrowland. We’ve more or less seen it every year at CES , and it’s not really all that fantastical or jaw-dropping. I didn’t feel teleported to some technological paradise that I couldn’t wait to blast through years of icky time to get to, anyway.

Give me wall-sized super HDTVs, plastic toilet paper and genuinely exciting, if tacky and the over the top, futuretastic baubles over intelligent lights and DRM’d furniture from Microsoft any day. (Now, or in the future.) [AP]

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Filed under: Robots, Wearables

While battlefield robots are certainly plenty capable with their current control systems, the folks at Chatten Associates seem to think they can do things one better, and they’re now touting their so-called HARV (Head-Aimed Remote Viewer) system as a potential alternative. That consists of a gimbal-mounted video system on the robot itself, which gets paired with some gyro-equipped goggles that let the robot to look around wherever the solider moves his head. Of course, they didn’t stop things there, with the setup also offering a 36x optical zoom, night vision, and other advantages that Chatten says can improve mission performance by 300% to 400%. As if that wasn’t enough, the firm’s also now apparently hard at work on an updated system set for delivery to the military next year that’ll add a thermal imager, a higher resolution, and a laser rangefinder, among other things they’re probably not willing to tell us. Head on over after the break for a video of the system in action.

Continue reading HARV gives soldiers a robot’s-eye view

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