Filed under: GPS, Laptops

While it seemed touch and go for a few months there as to whether the the Everex Cloudbook would ever hit store shelves, what’s never been in doubt is the fact that hackers are going to have a field day with the thing. The first major hack is courtesy of Azazel from the Cloudbooker forums. His “Dreambook” mod incorporates an internal four-port USB hub to add all sorts of fun stuff like GPS, Bluetooth and 4GB of flash storage. He removed the webcam for the time being, and is having some trouble getting his replacement WiFi card to work, but it’s certainly a promising hack. Next on the agenda is another small hub to support 802.11n WiFi and some 3G connectivity — we like where this is headed.

[Thanks, David]

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Filed under: Laptops, Tablet PCs

Just in case Dell’s Latitude XFR D630 was too mainstream for you, DRS Tactical Systems has a pair of equally tough rigs for you to chew on. Up first is the ARMOR C12 convertible (shown above), which packs a 12.1-inch outdoor readable touchscreen, 1.2GHz ULV U1400 CPU, 512MB of DDR2 RAM, a 60GB shock-mounted HDD, full-sized keyboard, integrated WiFi, Ethernet, PCMCIA, a biometric scanner and a die-cast magnesium case built to pass MIL-STD-810F / IP54 standards. As for the ARMOR X10 tablet (pictured after the jump), you’ll find a 1.2GHz U2500 Core Duo processor, an optional 16GB SSD, 10.4-inch sunlight readable display, Bluetooth and many of the same highlights seen on the aforementioned C12. No word on a price for either at the moment, but trust us, you’ll pay a pretty penny for a machine that just begs for pain. [Warning: PDF read link]

Continue reading DRS intros rugged ARMOR C12 convertible, X10 tablet PC

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Filed under: Laptops

While not radically different than the Satellite A300 and P300 we peeked late last month, Toshiba is rolling out yet another pair in the L300 (pictured) and U400. As for the former, you can expect a 15.4-inch 1,280 x 800 resolution panel, a 1.3-megapixel camera, integrated WiFi and the usual complement of ports. Moving onto the U400, you’ll find a smaller 13.3-inch display, ATI Mobility Radeon graphics, built-in Harman Kardon speakers, integrated webcam / microphone, Bluetooth and WiFi to boot. Unfortunately, we’re not told whether or not the L300 will be available with a Penryn chip, but word on the street has the April-bound U400 checking in with one of Intel’s prior processors or a CPU from its arch rival AMD.

Read - Satellite L300
Read - Satellite U400

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Filed under: Laptops

Really, it’s ok, you can stop tipping us on the Golden Age / Bling My Thing MacBook Air. We know it’s all 24k gold and has 12,000 Swarovski crystals and crap, but we’ll be honest, this stuff kind of freaks us out. We don’t know, it’s just offensive in that way that only a triggered gag reflex can properly describe. Supposedly only twenty are being produced, and you know the story about price, and these things being out of your league if you even have to ask.

[Via Pocket-lint, thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

It’s been in development for nearly half a decade, but this year at Microsoft’s R&D extravaganza TechFest, the company finally lifted the curtain on its research-oriented Singularity OS. Let’s just be clear from the get-go, though: while it’s is available for immediate use, Singularity is nowhere near anything you’d replace your desktop OS with. The sole intention here is to test out futuristic new concepts in application interaction, microkernel architecture, and so on, so don’t expect to hear that Microsoft is hanging up the Vista apron or anything. But for the turbo-geeks in the crowd, the Singularity Research Development Kit (RDK) 1.1 is now available for download for academic non-commercial use. And for the rest of us, well, we’ll just see what the year 2011 holds in store.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Read - Brush up on your Singularity theory
Read - Download that biz

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

They’ve finally, really done it. Your good friends in the hacking community have apparently come up with a solution to get you Vista — should you want it — activation free. According to a report, there’s now a cracked, full version of Vista floating around that totally circumvents that cumbersome and costly activation process. The crack supposedly stems from OEMs (and end users) that were fed up with that process, and somehow persuaded Microsoft to pull an up-up-down-down maneuver and make the OS work, sans activation. The software utilizes System-Locked Pre-Installation 2.0, embeds OEMs BIOS files (signed by Microsoft), and passes all of the company’s Windows Genuine Advantage checks. Of course, maybe it’s possible that the folks in Redmond care more about users adopting Vista than they care about them paying for it. Nah, probably not.

Update: According to our suave, stylish, and clearly informed readers, this hack has been floating around for some time. So for those who know, feel free to move on, otherwise; check it out, Vista activation bypassed!

[Via Techdirt]

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Filed under: Laptops

You already knew those lucky souls over at PC Perspective had a U2E of their very own, but now that you’re done gawking at the unboxing shots, how’s about a bona fide review? Thankfully, ASUS’ 11-inch ultraportable is indeed the latest lappie to be put through the proverbial paces, and as expected, it performed like a champ — considering it’s wee size, of course. The machine didn’t blow by any benchmarking sessions or anything, but again, it was never meant to be your primary gaming rig when heading off to a LAN party. All in all, reviewers found very (and we stress very) little to complain about, and even went so far as to call it “one of the best notebooks to hit the ultra-mobile market, ever.” Not at all enthused about the MacBook Air or Lenovo X300? Then by all means, give that read link some love — chances are the U2E is just what the doctor ordered.

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Filed under: Laptops

If you were already curious as to where AMD would be using its newly announced 780 Series motherboard GPU, lookie here. During a CeBIT press event held today in Germany, AMD solidified details of its looming Puma mobile platform, which will be based on the outfit’s Griffin CPU and RS780M chipset. In order for laptops to sport the Puma branding, it must house a Griffin CPU (officially named Turion Ultra), RS780M chipset and a WiFi adapter. According to AMD, Puma-fied lappies will begin shipping at the close of Q2 2008 and will range from $699 to $2,500 (at least initially), but we’ve no idea which manufacturers will be on board.

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

All of the sudden we’re starting to see more and more attacks take advantage of what’s stored on your computer’s RAM — the latest, from New Zealand’s Adam Boileau, allows an attacker to unlock Windows passwords in a just a few seconds using a Linux machine connected over Firewire. Unlike those disk encryption attacks we saw that required a reboot, Boileu’s attack works while the target computer is running, tricking Windows into allowing full write access to RAM and then corrupting the password protection code. That’s a little scary — but other researchers say that it’s not a traditional vulnerability, since direct memory access is a feature of Firewire. Still, we’re sealing up all of our ports with Silly Putty starting today, that ought to stop ‘em.

Update: Apparently this has been demonstrated on OS X as well — it looks like Firewire’s direct memory access is the common vector here.

[Thanks, Drew]

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This Japanese mechanical urinal in Osaka is an all-laughing, all-singing clown with a huge mouth. Yes, you read that well: it sings and moves up and down as you pee in it. And it has teeth. I know. After seeing it in action, I found it so wrong at so many levels that I had to put the video after the jump for other sensitive souls like me.

I don’t know about you, but I think this beats our previous Wrongmodo entries, the Jesuswitch and the Musical SpongeBob Digital Thermometer, by a wide margin. [LiveLeak]

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