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11 03 2008

Dell’s XPS M1530 gets Penryn treatment at long last

Posted by: in Laptops

Filed under: Laptops

Sweet heavens, Dell hasn’t forgotten that there’s a 15-incher in between the Penryn-stocked M1330 and M1730! As we suspected it would, Dell really, truly went ahead and added options for a Core 2 Duo T8300, T9300 and T9500 to its XPS M1530 in short order after a mysterious message popped up hinting at as much on Friday. The 2.4GHz, 2.5GHz and 2.6GHz chips come at an upgrade cost of $75, $200 and $475 (respectively) and can actually be ordered right now. No, celebrating wildly in your cubicle wouldn’t be overreacting.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

11 03 2008

IOGEAR’s PCPortal remote desktop KVM is a little less virtual

Posted by: in Laptops

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops, Networking

Remote desktop clients are great for those one-in-a-million scenarios when your computer is working well enough to connect to the internet and run a remote desktop app, but still requires technical assistance. In contrast, IOGEAR gives IT types full control from boot with the spendy-but-useful PCPortal GCN1000. The internet-connected KVM switch is completely hardware-based, meaning the computer you’re controlling needs no working operating system to be taken control of, and IT people have about as much control over the remote PC as they would if sitting directly in front of it. You can also plug the GCN1000 into regular KVM switches to manage multiple computers remotely, as well as use the Virtual Media port to give remote users data straight from whatever’s plugged into the USB port. Unfortunately, all this hotness comes at a cost: the GCN1000 is available now for $500.

[Via Blast]

11 03 2008

Negroponte says role at OLPC not changing, Windows coming soon

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Filed under: Laptops

It’s just been a few short days since Nicholas Negroponte seemed to make it clear that his role at OLPC would soon be changing, but it now seems like that may not be the case, with Nick Neg telling Laptop Magazine that his role will “not be changing drastically” once a new CEO is put in place. He also went on to say that “replacement” is not the right word, and that he had never held the CEO title nor used it, adding that he’ll now go under the title of “Chairman and Foreign Minister.” With that out of the way, Negroponte also dropped word that “a Windows operating system is in the process of being fine-tuned on the XO as we speak,” and that it “should be available on the XO in less than 60 days,” which is about the firmest word of a release date we’ve heard so far.

11 03 2008

ASUS gets bamboo happy at CeBIT 2008

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Filed under: Laptops

In case you weren’t aware, ASUS has a little bit of thing for bamboo, and its passionate displays of affection were unapologetic at CeBIT this year in Germany. The company was showing off a number product concepts on the show, as seen above, and while little info was given on specs or releases, they certainly seem to be a sign of things to come. We’re actually a bit more excited about that Essentio 5110 bamboo desktop than the various laptops, but, as demonstrated by the EcoBook, ASUS is probably going to be pushing this mostly in a laptop direction.

[Via Crave]

10 03 2008

TSA can’t believe MacBook Air is a real laptop, causes owner to miss flight

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Filed under: Laptops

The TSA has been known to take issue with products designed in Cupertino before, but for one particular traveler, it was Apple’s thinnest laptop ever that caused the latest holdup. Upon tossing his ultra-sleek slab of aluminum underneath the scanner, security managed to find enough peculiarities to remove it from the flow, pull it aside and wrangle up the owner for some questions. Apparently, the TSA employee manning the line was flabbergasted by the “lack of a drive” and the complete absence of “ports on the back,” and while hordes of co-workers swarmed to investigate, the user’s flight took off on schedule. Thankfully, said owner was finally allowed to pass through after some more in-the-know colleagues explained in painfully simple terms what an SSD was, but the poor jet-setter most definitely paid the price for trying to slip some of the latest and greatest under the sharp eyes of the TSA (and cutting it close on time, of course).

[Image courtesy of ABC]

10 03 2008

MSI shows off bevy of new laptops at CeBIT

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Filed under: Laptops

We already knew the GX600 would be showing itself at CeBIT this year, but apparently, quite a few siblings made the trek to Germany as well — including the aforementioned unit’s 14.1-inch sister, the GX400. Moving on, we’ve got the 15.4-inch GX620 and 17-inch GX720, and while the former looks to arrive in a wood, leather or carbon fiber finish, the latter supposedly arrives with a black lacquer coat and a built-in subwoofer (among other goodies). The GT-730 gaming lappie was also mentioned, but unfortunately, all we know is that it gets its graphics prowess from some form of ATI Mobility Radeon. The AMD-powered EX610 (15.4-inches) also turned heads with its integrated Blu-ray player and HDMI output, while the 17-inch EX700 sported the same along with a GeForce 8400M GPU. Hit up the links below for a couple more snapshots, won’tcha?

Read - MSI laptops at CeBIT
Read - More MSI laptops at CeBIT

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10 03 2008

MSI intros the Eee-ish Wind PC

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Filed under: Laptops

Apparently MSI is gearing up to release its own Eee competitor, tentatively called the Wind PC. There’s not a lot known about the system (which was shown at CeBIT), though it’s slated to feature an 8- or 10-inch, 1024 x 768 display, utilize Intel’s Atom CPU, will make 2.5-inch hard drive and SSD options available for storage, and will come with 1GB of RAM standard. The mini-laptops are set to range in price from £299 to £699 depending on configuration, feature 1GHz or 1.6GHz CPUs, and should first be available with a Linux build installed — though the company claims a Windows version will be made as well. Based on photos we’ve seen, the laptops will come in a variety of colors, though it appears that these are still in prototype territory, so anything could change.

[Thanks, Jarrett]

Read - MSI Wind, details of the new low-cost laptop MSI
Read - MSI Wind PC

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10 03 2008

Asus spills more details on the 9-inch Eee

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Filed under: Laptops

In a recent interview, Asus CEO Jerry Shen talked up the company’s newest edition to the Eee family, and also dropped a few more details on the forthcoming laptop. Apparently, the new set of miniature PCs will up the SSD capacity, with sizes ranging from 8GB in the XP-equipped model, up to 12GB or 20GB in the Linux versions — though it’s hard to say why the smaller-footprint Linux would need more drive space. Shen also revealed that there are tentative plans to release WiMAX and HSDPA-enabled models sometime in Q3 of 2008, and he confirmed that come May the company will trade up to Intel’s Diamondville (er, Atom) chips. In addition, more colors are on the way, and the base price in the US will be $499 at launch — though that figure is expected to drop in the following months.

[Via Eee Site]

08 03 2008

Eurocom’s M860TU Montebello 15.4-inch laptop rocks the Centrino 2

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Filed under: Laptops

In case you missed it, it was Eurocom’s Phantom-X that managed to swipe that “fastest tested laptop” mark from the MacBook Pro last year — and totally ruin a perfectly good commercial. Now the company is back for more with the M860TU Montebello 15.4-incher. We’ll have to wait for the benchmarks to see how this one stacks up against the recent crop of Penryn laptops, but what’s new here is that the Centrino 2 “Montevina” chipset is under the hood, which should support faster Penryn processors, lower power consumption and some new fancy security features. Other specs on the M860TU include a 15.4-inch 1920 x 1200 LCD, 512MB NVIDIA 8800M GTX graphics (with a future option for 9xxxM GTX chips once they’re announced), 4GB of RAM, HSDPA and external eSATA and HDMI plugs. Yeah, pretty hot. No word on price, but the laptop is slated to ship May 1st.