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Panasonic has upgraded their well known Toughbook. The new rugged PC has embedded EV-DO (Verizon or Sprint), an Intel Core Duo chip, longer battery life and expanded security features. Built with a magnesium alloy case, integrated handle, spill-resistant keyboard, daylight-readable screen and battery life of approximately seven hours, the Toughbook-74 is designed to let work happen wherever it needs to. New security features, including an optional finger print scanner and a Trusted Platform Module (TPM v.1.2) security chip, help protect sensitive information.

It has an 80GB shock-mounted HDD and a standard 512MB SDRAM (DDR2), which is expandable to 4,096MB. The laptop has a 13.3” 1024 x 768 (XGA) transmissive, 460 Nit daylight-readable TFT Active Matrix Color LCD with touchscreen, is 5.95 pounds with nice dimensions: 1.7"-2.4"(H) x 12"(W) x 11.6"(D) (with handle). The Panasonic Toughbook CF-74 will be generally available in April, 2006 starting at an estimated street price of $2,999.00.

[Press Release]

I was in Europe last spring and came back completely broke. My losses did have something to do with the less than optimal exchange rates but I have been consistently blaming my cell phone (that rate are astronomical).

EU officials are finally turning up the heat on European carriers. A new proposal would make it free to receive a call when abroad in addition to being charged at “home rates” when making an in-country call. Government figures show that currently, a 4-minute call received from the UK while in Italy results in a steep £3.80 ($6.65) tariff from O2 or £3.04 ($5.32) with Vodafone. The proposal has the support of 25 nations with EU commissioner, Viviane Reding, stating that the new pricing could be in effect by summer of 2007 if the European Parliament and national governments moved quickly.

Read [Engadget Mobile]

Delivering business demands for increased computing power on the go, the Dell Latitude D620 and Latitude D820 feature Intel Core Duo processors and optional wireless broadband technology.

With a starting weight of 4.4 pounds, the Latitude D620 includes an Intel Core Duo T2300 processor and a 14.1-inch wide aspect XGA display. The $1,149 base configuration includes 512MB shared DDR2 memory, 40GB SATA hard drive and 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi capability.

A base configuration for the Latitude D820 (starting weight 5.6 pounds) is $1,289 and includes an Intel Core Duo T2300 processor with a 15.4-inch wide aspect XGA display, 512MB DDR2 shared memory, 40GB SATA hard drive and 802.11 b/g Wi-Fi capability. Advanced upgrade options for the D820 include the NVIDIA Quadro NVS 120M business graphics solution with 512MB, a high-resolution WUXGA display and 120GB hard drive.

These Dell models also include:

• A choice of wireless broadband connection options, with carrier choices of Cingular Wireless or Verizon Wireless (in U.S.) and Vodafone (in Europe).


• Pre-configured for 802.11n scalability


• Integrated new optional biometric fingerprint reader, smart card, and trusted platform module (TPM1.2).


• Sealed, spill-resistant keyboards, full-time hard drive protection with StrikeZone, metal-reinforced security slots are included standard.
• Wi-Fi Catcher(TM) helps find wireless connections without turning on or booting up, and Location Profiler makes it easy to configure settings for a variety of networks or locations.

[Press Release]

Product: http://tomtom.com/products/product.php?ID=76&Language=4">TomTom Go 300

Price: $599.99
Rating: Average – 6.8/10.0
Pros: Voice directions, quickly calculates routes, stores US maps and POI on an SD card, Bluetooth phone support.
Cons: Hard to read during daylight, takes time to locate when powered on, limited signal in cities, at times hard to follow directions, smalls screen, limited battery.
Overall: This is a great device that helps you get where you are going fast and is packed full of options.

This past week I have been traveling with a few good friends on a Blues Road Trip down south and brought the TomTom GO 300 GPS system along for the ride. The unit came with a suction cup arm to connect it to the windshield in front of the driver (and the ability to rotate the screen 180 degrees if your dashboard setup requires you to mount the unit upside down). Our trip started at night, driving from Bloomington, IN to New Orleans, LA. TomTom immediately determined our location and prompted us to the menu screen where I entered our destination. I was surprised that when I typed in New Orleans it began to suggest matching cities and then matching streets. The unit then calculated the 836-mile route very quickly and we were on our way.

Driving down the 800 somewhat miles the unit offered the needed directions to the highways. I cannot testify if this was the best route since we only brought TomTom and no maps or alternative directions, but we eventually arrived in our destination. As one can imagine after a few hours of conversation, lots of good music, but no computer or gadgets in an arms reach I took TomTom down and began to shuffle through the menus. The 300 has an option to hookup your phone via Bluetooth for traffic and weather updates. The setup menu has an option to toggle between night and day colors (I found the night colors very easy to read but during the day the glare from the windshield made the screen hard to read). The most amusing feature was the various languages you can set the 300 to offers directions. We choose ‘Jane’ from the U.K. to offer our voice directions along the route.

The 300 comes with an SD card of US roads and POI (points of interests). Viewing options include a map of your location, navigate to a location, a list of point of interest (restaurants, hotels, attractions, churches..), find alternative routes, traffic, advanced planning, map browsing, advanced planning, itinerary planning, weather, downloadable extras, and more.

This unit got us through the smallest gravel roads and to some very obscure locations in the Mississippi Delta but had lots of trouble in the congested highway landscape of Memphis and contraction ridden roads of Nashville. The hardest part was determining which exact exit to take when the road splits or exits offer multiple highways. It would be nicer if more street names popped up as we drove along as well as our current location. The battery, after being fully charged, died after 3 hours so we left it plugged in for the remainder of the trip. Finally, the most annoying feature of the unit is the lack of a “pit-stop” option to pause the voice directions when purposely turning off the planned route.

Overall, while we could have navigated the trip with a plain old paper map TomTom was much easier and more fun than a paper map. My co-pilot would highly recommend using Jane while the two-backseat passengers believe he has a personal attraction to her. I highly recommend investing in a GPS system; you do not know what you are missing until you have one.

Sprint users will be the first wireless customers in the U.S. to experience Broadway on demand via the most off-off-Broadway medium imaginable: the wireless phone. The Emmy-Award winning Sprint TV soon will feature The Broadway Channel, displaying Broadway’s hottest shows, national tours, interviews with its brightest stars and exclusive red-carpet events including the upcoming 2006 Tony Awards.

The Broadway Channel will be available to Sprint TV subscribers on Channel 57 in the entertainment category. Daily programming will include a “clip of the week” from one of Broadway’s top shows; interviews with actors, directors and other theater insiders; special features from shows on tour; exclusive on-location segments from opening nights; star-studded red-carpet events and more.

I guess Sprint is the network for thespians.

[Press Release]

Dell unveiled 4 new laptops this week two under the Precision name and two Latitudes. The Dell Precision M90 and Dell Precision M65 ae designed for the industry professional in mind.

With up to 512MB high-performance NVIDIA Quadro FX OpenGL graphics, Intel Core Duo processors, up to 17 inch wide-aspect displays, Wi-Fi, mobile broadband, and Bluetooth graphic artists, animators and high-end CAD users can confidently power up the most demanding applications, virtually anytime, anywhere and remain productive. Both models have a 2MB L2 cache, a 667MHz front side bus, up to 4GB of high speed DDR2 memory, 667MHz memory interface, IEEE 1394, three-button touch pad, DVI and SVGA video outputs.

The Dell Precision M90 and Dell Precision M65 are available today worldwide. Prices for the Dell Precision M90 start at $2,239. The Dell precision M65 is priced from $1,849.

[Press Release]

Boingo Wireless announced that seven North American airports have been added to the Boingo Roaming Network as a result of network expansion by roaming partners. This increases Boingo’s Wi-Fi coverage to 125 North American airports and 225 airports worldwide.

“Airports are by far the highest utilized locations in our roaming system because the benefits are so strongly recognized by business travelers,” said Colby Goff, Boingo’s senior vice president of network strategy and business development. “Our goal is ubiquitous airport coverage, and we continue to work with our valued roaming partners to add airports of all sizes to the network.”

New airport locations include Chicago’s O’Hare International Airport and Midway International Airport, and the Montreal-Trudeau International Airport. Boingo also added service at Philadelphia International Airport, Raleigh-Durham, NC, International Airport and Indianapolis International Airport.

Read [Unstrung]

Exactly a year after it was launched in the U.S., the Sony PlayStation Portable’s days as a hand-held movie-viewing device might be numbered. Many major retailers and movie studios have begun to eliminate UMDs (Sony’s non Universal Media Disk).

A Paramount Pictures Home Entertainment high-ranking executive was blunt: “We are on hiatus with UMD,” he said. “Releasing titles on UMD is the exception rather than the rule. No one’s even breaking even on them.” Next week, Sony Computer Entertainment executives will begin making the rounds of the Hollywood studios to discuss plans for making the PSP able to connect to TV sets.

In the end, a Sony PSP upgrade with internal memory or larger Memory Sticks can finally get rid of these non-universal disks and allow users greater flexibility with their content.

Read [Hollywood Reporter]

Plextor has introduced a hard drive that comes protected. The PX-SP portable drives are covered by the silicon, to add some protection from the inevitable bumps, drops, and knocks. The drives, available as 80GB and 120GB models and weighing just 170g, feature high speed USB 2.0 bus-powered connectivity, password protection (via PlexTools Professional HDD software) and a black carrying pouch.

Read [Tech Digest]

IGN is reporting that Nintendo’s next generation gaming consol may not be as fast as previously expected. The new information is supposedly from official Nintendo documentation and claim to have run benchmarks on the IBM-supplied Broadway CPU and ATI’s Hollywood GPU in dev kits that are similar in design to final production units.

The specs have changed as follows:

• The rumored 1.8GHz processor (possibly as high as 2.5GHz) has been decreased to 729MHz (compared to 485MHz on the GameCube, 733MHz for the original Xbox, three cores running at 3.2GHz on the 360, and the Cell processor in the PS3).


• The supposed 600MHz ATI chip is now only 243MHz (with 3MB of texture memory).


• Total RAM is down to 88MB

These numbers really do make sense since Nintendo has been talking revolution up as a true next generation gaming machine (which the gyro controller certainly is), and faster/larger does not necessary mean better, for gaming at least.

Read [Engadget]
Read [ING]