Look, we know you’ve spent the last three or so hours toying around on Dell’s build-to-order page, but be honest with yourself — are you really willing to pull the trigger on an Inspiron 13 without taking one tiny peek at a review first? NotebookReview has snagged one of the new 13-inchers and taken it for a ride on the test bench, and overall, things are lookin’ up. Reviewers found the design to be “sleek,” the specifications to be “reasonable” and the price point “attractive.” Beyond that, it also found the battery life to be surprisingly satisfactory, though the “cheap palm rests and noisy slot-loading optical drive” were small (albeit noteworthy) nuisances. In the end, critics summed things up by suggesting that if you’re scouting “a basic mobile companion with good looks and a low price tag, then this is probably the right notebook for you.” Hit up the read link for the full writeup and even a few benchmarks.
If you are impulsive enough to drop over $100,000 on a whim for a nerdy automobile, here is your chance to score one of the five Batmobiles made for the original Michael Keaton movie. Unfortunately, you only have until 5PM PDT today to put in a bid on this baby, so you had better hurry (I know you guys are all frantically searching for your wallets). [eBay via CNet]
Martin Montesano’s giant “Walking Beast” isn’t the first robot spider ever made, but it is the only one I can recall that is this enormous and has the ability to take on passengers. His 12,000-pound, 23-foot-long creation was built over the course of three years at an expense of $50,000—and it can carry up to six passengers in its steel belly and two (including the driver) in the head.
If you are fortunate enough to actually ride in the Walking Beast, don’t expect heart-pounding, edge of your seat thrills. Its Chevy V8 engine only musters up enough power to move the steel behemoth along at around 5 mph—although it does shake the ground up to 500 feet away with each step. Montesano is planning on making some upgrades to the Walking Beast in the near future, including an elevator system to load passengers. Perhaps he should start touring the country offering rides at $10 a pop—sort of like a nerdy adult version of pony rides at a state fair. [Pop Sci]
LG and Quanta have been going at it over patents for eight years now, with LG notably seeking an injunction against the importation of Quanta-built Apple, HP, Dell, and Sony laptops, and the Supreme Court ruling that LG wasn’t entitled to additional royalties, but it looks like the fight’s finally over — both sides say they’ve come to an agreement and will now negotiate royalty rates. No further details, but we’re told BMW sales near the offices of LG and Quanta’s law firms just skyrocketed.
ZPower has made a few promises before that haven’t exactly panned out, but that apparently hasn’t stopped it from making another bold claim at IDF this week, with it boasting that its newfangled Silver-Zinc battery will be rolled out in a “major notebook computer” sometime in 2009. According to ZPower, that battery will provide up to 40% more runtime than traditional lithium-ion batteries and, just as importantly, be far more “chemically stable” than its sometimes explosion-prone lithium-ion counterpart. ZPower also looks to be going the extra mile when it comes to recycling the batteries, with 95% of the battery itself apparently recyclable, and the company offering “financial discounts” to folks when they trade in their old Silver-Zinc batteries.
Like most New Yorkers, my building has no laundry facilities of its own and, in order to get clean clothes, I have to summon the willpower to drag my brimming bag three blocks. Oh, if only I had this automated washing machine basket instead. Designed by Guopeng Liang and one of the finalists in Electrolux’s Design Lab ‘08 contest, the iBasket is a space saving clothes hamper and washing machine in one.
The device sports an all clear body and is programmed to begin the wash cycle once your clothes pile up to a certain weight. After giving your unmentionables a good rinse down, it sends a message to your PC or cellphone via its integrated wi-fi. Other than the annoyingly unimaginative name (trust me, iAm as iSick of iThis and iThat as you guys are), this gadget idea seems pretty golden. [Born Rich]
ASUS took a break from cranking out an endless series of Eee PCs to revamp some of its traditional laptop lines today, here’s what you need to know:
B50A business laptop: 15.4-inch screen, Penryn Core 2 Duos on Intel’s GM45 Express chipset with ASUS’s Expressgate SplashTop implementation and integrated X4500 graphics, max 4GB RAM and 320GB drive, spill-resistant keyboard, Bluetooth, WiFi, dual-layer burner, 1.3 megapixel webcam.
F8 laptops (pictured): 14.1-inch WXGA screen, Penryn Core 2 Duos with 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 graphics with Express Gate, TV tuner with remote control, up to 4GB RAM and a 320GB drive, 1.3 megapixel swivel webcam, five available colors.
F6 “scented” laptops: 13.3-inch screen, lids feature five available graphics and fragrances (really), Penryn Core 2 Duos with 256MB ATI Mobility Radeon HD 3470 graphics with Express Gate, TV tuner with remote control, up to 4GB RAM and a 320GB drive, fingerprint scanner.
G71V and G50V “Republic of Gamers” laptops: 17-inch (G71) and 15-inch (G50) gaming laptops with up to Intel Core 2 Quad QX9300 processors and 512MB NVIDIA GeForce 9700M GT graphics, 4GB of RAM, 2x 500GB hard drives, dual-layer burner, 2.0 megapixel swivel webcam, LED lighting effects, gaming hotkeys.
No pricing or ship dates yet, but we’ll get you those as they come in.
This week in the App Store, we’ve got some great freebie apps. That’s a good thing. Especially when you’re a beleaguered Gulfstream GIV pilot getting hit hard by the soaring price of jet fuel. This week was also great for pilots in several other ways, but there’s some stuff for the rest of us, too. Come along as we see what’s been hitting millions of Springboards over the past seven days.
Rooms: Until this week, IRC fans had to jailbreak to get chatting, but Rooms developed this week brings the same Colloquy-based engine to the App Store. The interface could use a bit of pretty-ing in future releases, but all of your basic IRC client functions are there, now without jailbreak. $1
WiFinder: This app pings all of the Wi-Fi networks in range and tries to load a sample web page once connected—saving you the task of checking each network individually to see if you can get a working IP. It could use an interface to then connect to the network in question (currently you have to go back to Settings) but this is handy if you often find yourself squatting, especially in major cities where there are tons of networks in any given location. $3
DianHua Chinese Dictionary: Just about all of the dictionaries in the App Store, be they English or other languages, cost money. Hopefully this excellent Chinese character dictionary, which lets you search for words in English, Pinyin, and traditional or simplified characters, starts the trend of these things being free.
Newton’s Cradle: It could use a touch of MotionX’s realistic physics, but Newton’s Cradle is a fun diversion—bringing the ol’ swinging balls rig to your phone. Responds to touch and tilt alike for hypnotizing effects. Wouldn’t be cool if it wasn’t free, so thankfully, it is.
Photohunt: My favorite bar game (aside from, you know, the normal ones like pool and darts) come to the iPhone, in a version that doesn’t look nearly erotic enough, sadly. $5
This Week’s App Coverage on Giz:
Copy and paste framework OpenClip surfaced using an ingenious backdoor trick to bring system-wide copy and paste to all apps without jailbreaking, but it looks like the 2.1 firmware will close the door on the exploit. Frown.
Snapture adds multi-touch zoom, instant-delete, color filters and more much needed improvements to the iPhone’s camera. It’s Jailbreak-only at the moment
iPhone Myst is coming. I can almost smell my old Packard Bell’s CD-ROM drive chewing on those Quicktime movies!
From the novelty/ridiculous bin:
Two bucks gives you Roshambo, taking the great game us normal people know as Rock Paper Scissors and turning it into two douches shaking their iPhones at each other.
Tie-a-Tie, your guide to being a man, comes in both Lite ($1) and Deluxe ($2) versions. Sigh.
Lolcats lets you haz that cheezborger on the go. Free
And this week’s trend: Apps for Pilots
FAA Wait: Unlike a few of the other aviation apps this week, FAA Wait is actually very useful for non-pilots as well. It pings FAA’s live database for air traffic control delays at airports around the country. Great for getting news of your 3-hour wait on the jetway straight from the source. $1
FltPlan Airport Guide: Comes loaded with the full official listing of our country’s airports large and small, and all the relevant info you need like radio frequencies, approach information, and nearby alternates to plan your Cessna jaunt out to them. Free.
Gulfstream Tanker: And on the opposite end of the niche spectrum is this app for owners of Gulfstream GIV or GV jets—rappers and Fortune 500 execs only, basically—which calculates how much money you might save by loading up with fuel for your return trip before you depart, factoring in cruising speed, trip distance, and the price of fuel at your two stops. Hov, your app is finally here. $20
This list is in no way definitive. If you’ve spotted a great app that hit the store this week, give us a heads up or, better yet, your firsthand impressions in the comments. And for even more apps: see what you missed last week and check our original iPhone App Review Marathon. Have a good weekend everybody.
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the last of the space agency’s Great Observatories satellites to launch, celebrated its fifth birthday recently… giving me the opportunity to post this amazing multigenerational picture of star-forming region in the constellation Cassiopeia, 6,500 light-years from Earth. The photo takes in an area equivalent to four full moons and puts on show how one generation of massive stars can give birth to the next.
The $800 million telescope, which was named after the first man to propose putting telescopes in space, Dr. Lyman Spitzer Jr., launched on August 25 2003 from Florida’s Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. Its mission will conclude when its onboard helium supply is exhausted—estimates from 2007 put that date at April 2009. So happy birthday, Spitzer Space Telescope! May you continue to provide us with awesome pictures for the last leg of your journey! [Cosmiclog]
Lenovo’s X301 and HP’s 2530p already use the new chips. The SL9400 and SL9300 running at 1.8Ghz and 1.6GHz, respectively, both have a 1066MHz FSB and appear to be the Core 2 Duo Low Voltage (LV) chips with a TDP of 17W, while the SU9400 and SU9300 are the ULV variants, clocked at 1.4GHz and 1.2GHz with a 10W TDP.
While the clock speeds of the LV chips are the same as the MBA’s, the switch to the 45nm process and faster front-side bus should yield both performance gains and power savings. More importantly, their ready availability for all-comers could make the ultra-thin market a lot more interesting, though we’re kind of afraid at this point of what Asus will do with them. [Ars Technica]
If you are impulsive enough to drop over $100,000 on a whim for a nerdy automobile, here is your chance to score one of the five Batmobiles made for the original Michael Keaton movie. Unfortunately, you only have until 5PM PDT today to put in a bid on this baby, so you had better hurry (I know you guys are all frantically searching for your wallets). [
Martin Montesano’s giant “Walking Beast” isn’t the first robot spider ever made, but it is the only one I can recall that is this enormous and has the ability to take on passengers. His 12,000-pound, 23-foot-long creation was built over the course of three years at an expense of $50,000—and it can carry up to six passengers in its steel belly and two (including the driver) in the head.
Like most New Yorkers, my building has no laundry facilities of its own and, in order to get clean clothes, I have to summon the willpower to drag my brimming bag three blocks. Oh, if only I had this automated washing machine basket instead. Designed by Guopeng Liang and one of the finalists in Electrolux’s Design Lab ‘08 contest, the iBasket is a space saving clothes hamper and washing machine in one.
This week in the App Store, we’ve got some great freebie apps. That’s a good thing. Especially when you’re a beleaguered Gulfstream GIV pilot getting hit hard by the soaring price of jet fuel. This week was also great for pilots in several other ways, but there’s some stuff for the rest of us, too. Come along as we see what’s been hitting 
NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope, the last of the space agency’s 
Muffled by the cacophony of like 
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