Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

We’ve all seen it happen time and time again. What was hot and happening even six months ago, is suddenly a dinosaur. It’s the nature of the ever-evolving technology game. Which is why industry giant Intel may just be well served by sitting up and taking note that the maker of cell-phone chips Qualcomm, just may be a major force to be reckoned with these days. 

With a latest innovation, the Snapdragon, Qualcomm packs a rather mighty punch in a tiny package. An engineer for the company demonstrated a palm-sized circuit board capable of displaying high-definition video. While a fairly high quality video image is nothing new to write home about, what did make it pretty special was it’s microprocessor chip, the Snapdragon. This micro-chip drives the display with less than half the power of a similar chip recently introduced by Intel. Qualcomm designers further sweeten the deal by saying that it will also cost less.

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Chip giant Intel Corp. recently announced the company is birthing a new company that will focus on manufacturing photovoltaic cells—the main component in panels that utilizes solar energy.

An internal team from Intel working on solar technology will form SpectraWatt Inc.  Intel will invest $50 million, with Cogentrix Energy LLC, PCG Clean Energy & Technology Fund, and Solon AG.  The company is expected to begin shipments by mid-2009.

The move reflects the recognition of big companies on the growing importance of alternative energy sources in view of skyrocketing costs of hydrocarbon-based energy.  Intel Capital’s President, Arvind Sodhani, quipped, “This is an important investment for Intel Capital in the growing clean-tech sector and we look forward to working with the company to support its expansion.”

Among other companies, IBM has also dabbled in the development of technology to harness solar energy. 

Via [WallStreetJournal]

HP revisited its Pavillion line and came out with guns blazing – now, the entire series boasts of HD tuners, Blu-ray drives, webcams, fingerprint readers and even built-in 3G internet.

Aesthetically, the series also received a makeover with a smooth, liquid-metallic ‘magic chrome’ controls that light up upon touching. An optional BrightView Infinity Widescreen and color-matched keyboards and touchpads also contribute to the elegant design.

But the real story is in the range of choices the Pavillion line offers. First, users can choose between AMD and Intel to power their notebooks. Then, it’s a matter of balancing price and power. From the lightweight dv4 ($800 for AMD or $1000 for Intel) to the flagship dv7 ($950 for AMD or $1230 for Intel), the Pavillion lineup offers user choices starting from processors, high-speed eSATA interfaces, video cards and various other accessories. 

The whole notebook line features the HP ProtectSmart Hard Drive Protection technology, which automatically stops the hard drive from spinning after it detects sudden movement (such as falling) to help prevent data loss. 

Via [Gizmodo]

Whether you are into the recent popularity of the ultra-portable notebooks that have been swamping the market lately, or just sitting back and waiting for it to finish, its hard to deny that some of the pre-loaded operating systems are less than desirable. While the pre-installed OS on the Eee PC from Asus is limited and seems slightly child-like, its very functional, especially when compared the the gOS that comes loaded on the Everex Cloudbook that is slightly painful to use.

Given the options available lots of people have been choosing to install an older, albeit still very functional OS, Windows XP. However in some good news coming from the Linux front, Mark Shuttleworth, the CEO if Canonical has given up some excellent information in a recent interview with The Guardian. Its news that should make any ultra-portable and Ubuntu fan very happy, they are planning on launching a new flavor of Ubuntu, dubbed the “Netbook Remix.” The OS, which is being worked on closely with Intel is expected to be announced during Computex, which takes place during the first week of June. Luckily this is just a short time away, hopefully the Netbook Remix OS will be available shortly after the announcement with drivers to support the wide variety of ultra-portables currently on the market.

Read [The Guardian] Via [Gizmodo]

Care to see what lies under the hood of your preferred WiMAX-running mobile Internet device? Well, look no further, as we have this very interesting 5350 Intel WiMAX / Wi-Fi card up and available for onlookers on the FCC web site. It also comes with its own user manual, as well as a WiMAX manual (for n00bs, I assume). This is the exact same critter that a lot of WiMAX hopefuls have been, er, hoping about, and now that it’s out, I guess it’s time to speculate what kind of device will really carry this first. Will it be a Nokia Internet tablet, a UMPC, or another obscure-brand MID? For now, we can’t say for sure, but feel free to get close and comfortable with the card via the Read link to the FCC web site.

Read [FCC] Via [Engadget]

Planning on building that new gaming rig? Here’s some good news. Putting pressure on rival chip-maker Advanced Micro Devices (AMD), Intel has surprisingly halved the prices on its Core 2 Quad Q6700 (from $530 to $266) and Quad-Core Xeon X3230 (from $530 to $266). Overall, fourteen processors experienced a price cut, ranging from 12% to 50% off. Other CPUs with slashed prices include the Core 2 Quad Q6600 (from $266 to $244), Core 2 Duo E6850 (from $266 to $183), Dual-Core Xeon 3085 (from $366 to $188), Celeron 560 (from $134 to $107) and more. All prices reflect 1,000 unit shipments. The reason for the discounted prices is Intel’s transition from their 65nm to 45nm process. All of the chips on sale are based off of the old 65nm technology. AMD announced its plans to begin shipping their 45nm chips in fourth quarter 2008, which puts them one year behind Intel, who began selling their 45nm CPUs back in November 2007.

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Forget quad-core, AMD is preparing a dodeca-core chip. If you didn’t stay in boarding school if you need refreshing with your greek vocabulary, dodeca means 12, and that’s 12 cores for you right there. Imagine, a dozen times faster than a normal chip. But how fast does one’s computer ever really need to be? AMD doesn’t seem to care if there’s an answer to that question or not (just as its closest competitor Intel doesn’t), and moves on with their plan to produce a 12-core processor to be released by late 2008. It will reportedly be called the Shanghai, and will be a 45nm successor to their not-so-successful Barcelona chip.

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For our German friends, Cizmo is already popular with its production of high-end notebooks. It’s no wonder they were able to come up with a powerful laptop such as the recently released Cizmo CX15. Just don’t mind the hefty price that you have to pay for this computing machine, which is roughly around $2,400, as it may be well worth all its nifty features.

These features include an Intel Core 2 Duo processor which can either be the 2.26GHz P8400, 2.4GHz P8600 or the 2.53GHz P9400. The CX15 is also loaded with an NVIDIA GeForce 8800M GTX graphics card, DDR3 RAM, optional Blu-ray drive, eSATA port and 32 or 64GB SSD drive. The CX15 laptop will hit the European market sometime in June, no word yet on whether it will see the light of day in the US market.

Product [Cizmo] Via [Engadget]

Sharp and Willcom have delivered a tiny yet powerful device with the D4 UMPC. Boasting of being the first UMPC with Intel’s Atom Centrino processor inside, the D4 runs at 1.3 GHz, has a 5-inch LED back-lit touchscreen display with a 1024 x 600 resolution, 1GB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, 2-megapixel camera, Wi-Fi, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and a full QWERTY keyboard.

With a high-powered processor and memory, it’s no wonder that D4 comes preloaded with Windows Vista Home Edition. The D4 UMPC weighs just under one pound and measures 3.3 x 7.4 x 1.0-inches. Other goodies include a built-in one seg TV tuner and a memory expansion slot for microSD.

The D4 UMPC will be release to the Japanese market sometime in June for around $1,280 equivalent in Japanese Yen. It is configured with Japan’s PHS system for phone calls so it might take some time before it gets released internationally.

Via [Gizmodo] Via [AV Watch]

Samsung is set to launch an update of its Aura series laptops with new models that will be offered at even more affordable prices than its predecessor. For starters, Samsung will be releasing the R410, which is a direct update of the original R20 laptop.

The Samsung R410 will sport a 14.1-inch display and will weigh 5.29-pounds. It will have a glossy black finish to maintain Samsung’s tradition of bringing sleek and stylish computing machines. The Samsung R410 will come packed with Intel’s 45nm Penryn processor, an ATI Radeon Xpress 1250M graphics chipset, an integrated DVD writer, gigabit Ethernet, Bluetooth 2.0+EDR and Super G Wi-Fi. In addition the R410 will also feature an integrated 1.3 webcam, memory card reader, three USB ports and a full size ExpressCard slot.

Expected to be available sometime in May, the R410 will have an SRP of around $945. Certainly not bad a price to pay for a laptop with such high-powered features.

Via [Trusted Reviews]