TechPortal

There are a few Ion machines available like the Japanese DosPara machine. Well this week, we get one more Ion-wielding netbook to check out from a company named Point of View. That brand isn’t exactly a household name, but the rig has the right stuff crammed inside and some bright colors on the outside.

The machine is called the Mobii Ion 230 and inside its bright exterior hides an Intel Atom 230 CPU with the Ion platform handling the HD video capabilities. The little machine has a 10.2-inch screen with a 1024 x 600 resolution and LED backlighting. The Ion platform supports 1080p video and offers NVIDIA tech like CUDA and PurevideoHD.

The little rig has an HDMI out as well so you can enjoy that 1080p goodness on your big screen in the living room. Other features include 1GB of RAM and a 160GB HDD. The risk no optical drive considering the rig is a netbook, but it does offer a memory card reader and a standard 6-cell battery. The battery has enough oomph to run the netbook for up to four hours per charge.

The netbook will come in shockingly bright colors including black, red, and lime and should ship within the next few weeks. The big downside is that the standard OS will be Linux, hopefully a Windows option will be available as well. Availability is expected in the next few weeks at about €349 ($AUD606).

Source : APCMag.com

Tech blogger Michael Arrington’s CrunchPad nears completion and launch with an event late this month or in early August.

One technology blog in the U.S. is moving from the world of telling readers about new gadgets into the world of telling the users about gadgets to actually making and selling gadgets to users. Michael Arrington form TechCrunch has been talking for a while now about the CrunchPad that he has been working to bring to market.

The New York Times reports that Arrington is set to bring the CrunchPad from the realm of vaporware to reality. Arrington has reportedly now incorporated a new company called CrunchPad and has said that the company will hold an event at the end of July or in early August where the device will presumably be launched.

The most recent photos of the nearly finalized design are very slick. The device looks much like a larger iPhone. The CrunchPad is said to be a mere 16mm thick, and have a screen that is at least 12-inches in size and flush with the aluminum case. The CrunchPad will also come in different colors and run an Intel Atom processor.

Strangely, the device will reportedly have no storage built-in and there is no word on if the device will offer a memory card slot for storing digital content. No keyboard will be offered with the device, which will instead use an onscreen keyboard like the iPhone. Unlike the iPhone, the CrunchPad will support Flash says Arrington. The price for the finished device is promised to be under $US300 ($AUD381).

Source : APCMag.com

Sony announces Vaio W and isn’t afraid to call it a netbook.

Sony has more Vaio models that you can shake a stick at, but no “official” netbooks on its books until now. Most of us would consider the Vaio P a netbook, but Sony refuses to see the reality of what the Vaio P actually is.

Today Sony has announced its first official netbook model called the Vaio W. If you were hoping for a snazzy design and some interesting features to set the upscale priced Vaio W apart from its peers, you will be disappointed. The only feature that is any different from the other masses of 10.1-inch netbooks on the market is the dubya’s 1366 x 768 screen resolution.

I’m not sure exactly what good a 720p HD resolution will do you on a netbook that judging from the hardware specs probably won’t stream HD content well. Other than the screen resolution, the remainder of the specifications for the netbook are common.

The Vaio W gets a 1.6GHz Atom processor, Windows XP Home, 1GB of RAM, a 160GB HDD, Wi-Fi, and a media streaming software pack called Vaio Media Plus. According to reports, the price tag for the netbook is going to be about $US629 ($AUD799 — but expect it to cost much more when it officially hits Australia). That is at least twice what the machine is worth in my opinion. Sony has another big bag of fail on its hands to go along with the Vaio P me thinks.

Source : APCMag.com

The Atom-powered four-drive system looks set to be the second major WHS system that we can’t get here. Surprise, surprise…

Microsoft has taken a bit of sledging for the lack of success of its Windows Home Server platform.

Despite being quite a solid product that’s enjoyed two decent ‘Power Pack’ updates and is now closing on its second birthday, WHS has failed to gain anywhere near the mainstream penetration which Microsoft expected.

But it doesn’t help when Microsoft’s hardware partners build appealing WHS systems for the US and European markets but don’t bring them to our shores and stock them on our shelves.

It could be a pricing issue, or the reality of our smaller market size (even though Aussies have proved to be fervent adopters of technology).

None the less, we’ve already seen HP release its second-gen WHS system in the MediaSmart LX195, and HP’s local spokesman still tells us “There no plans of releasing this product locally”.

It’s the same tune with Acer, which last week launched its first WHS box. The Acer Aspire EasyStore Home Server is a compact black box with four 2.5 inch drive bays, the first of which is filled with a 1TB disk, and like HP’s LX195 is powered by Intel’s desktop-class Atom 230 with 2GB of RAM.

In addition to the five USB 2.0 ports which support an automatic ‘quick copy’ of files from a flash drive or hard drive onto the server, there’s an eSATA port and Gigabit Ethernet (of course). All this comes in at a pretty sweet US$399.

But an Acer spokeswoman told APCmag that “at the current moment Acer Australia has no plans to introduce the new EasyStore into the Australian market.”

Jeff Alexander, one of Microsoft Australia’s ‘IT Pro Evangelists’, told APCmag that the lack of brand-name systems with a strong retail presence definitely hampered Windows Home Server getting cut-through with consumers.

“In Australia, it’s probably because we haven’t had a big hardware partner to launch a box so you can go to a shop and see it on the shelf and buy it. We just haven’t got the big manufacturers like HP doing Home Server here in Australia.”

But there could be light on the Home Server horizon, with Alexander admitting that “we’re working with multinationals like HP for a possible launch.”

Source : APCMag.com

Work has started on a new technical specification that will allow external SATA storage devices (eSATA) to receive power via their single external cable, removing the need for a separate power cord.

Although the standard is designed for connection of external hard drives, it could potentially be used inside PCs too, allowing bare metal hard drives to be installed with a single cable rather than the two that are currently required.

The nobly named Serial ATA International Organisation (SATA-IO), a consortium of companies with vested interests in the SATA standard, says the new Oower-over eSATA specification should be completed by the second half of this year. Equipment based on it should quickly follow. SATA-IO members include Dell, HP, Intel, Hitachi and Seagate.One of the key challenges to be addressed by the new standard is to ensure that the new power-enabled connectors are backwardly compatible with existing eSATA gear. The standard will also need to maintain a data transfer rate of 3 gigabits per second.

Takeup of the eSATA standard has been slow to date, despite the fact that it allows drives to be run externally at the same speed as they would if installed internally in a PC.

The SATA-IO believes moving to a powered version of eSATA will make storage equipment based on the standard more appealing to end users. It comes at a time when external storage growing in popularity in both small office and home applications.

Doing away with power cables will also make the prospect of using an eSATA-based device on the road much easier. Rather than hunting for a power point, users will simply be able to connect a hard drive or optical storage device directly to their computer.

Source  : APCMag.com 

Massive price drops have marked the beginning of the end for HD-DVD, with Toshiba slashing prices by 50% today.

But Sony, maker of the competing Blu-ray format, is making a concerted effort to ensure the swift death of HD-DVD by offering free Blu-ray-playing PlayStation 3s with certain models of Bravia TV.

Toshiba’s HD-DVD pricing is now as follows:

• HD-E1: was $599, now $299 with four free movies
• HD-EP10: was $799, now $399 with six free movies
• HD-XE1: was $1299, now $599 with 11 free movies.

Sharp-eyed readers will notice that the XE1’s 11 free movies are worth about $400 alone, so you could theoretically snag a top-of-the-line HD-DVD player for about $200 under Toshiba’s new pricing.

Toshiba’s HD-DVD players will also upscale your standard DVDs to “near high-definition”quality when you play them back via an HDMI connection, which is a bonus for people who already have HDTVs.

Unfortunately, with most movie studios having announced they will produce movies exclusively for Blu-ray in the future, it seems unlikely that Toshiba’s price cuts will win many customers.

One exception, perhaps is people who happen to need a new DVD player anyway and figure they may as well replace it with a cheap HD-DVD player and enjoy a few free movies, even if they can’t buy many high-def movies in the future.

Currently, the only studios that are still committed to producing HD-DVD movies are Universal and Paramount, but the largest producer of home videos, Warner, switched its allegiance to Blu-ray on the eve of the international tech tradeshow, CES Las Vegas. The other studios lined up behind Blu-ray are a formidable barrier for the HD-DVD camp to overcome, including Sony, Fox, MGM, Disney and Lions Gate.

Sony is obviously keen to keep the momentum going to the finish line, offering free PlayStation 3s with Bravia XBR, X and W TVs.

However, even Blu-ray is not yet a clear choice for consumers, as initially produced players may not be able to access special features of Blu-ray movies yet to be released.

Early Blu-ray players were only capable of playing the Blu-ray 1.0 specification, however, the newer 1.1 profile requires secondary audio and video hardware decoders as well as 256MB of storage in the player for content. The future 2.0 profile needs an additional set of hardware decoders (bringing the total up to two video and two audio decoders) for picture-in-picture functionality, along with 1GB of storage for content.

The PS3 is widely regarded as the best Blu-ray player available because of the ease of upgrading its firmware to cope with new Blu-ray movie features, but consumers may still hold off on buying other home theatre Blu-ray players until they are fully Blu-ray 2.0 compliant.

Source : APCMag.com 

AMD has unveiled its first complete desktop platform, codenamed “Spider”.

The concept is similar to what we’ve seen in the past from Intel (eg: Centrino), where a single vendor brings together its own CPU, chipset and graphics technology to create a unified hardware base. In AMD’s case, this only became possible with the acquisition of major graphics vendor ATI in July 2006, a move which some analysts suggested was necessary for AMD to survive at all in the ever-competitive chipset and CPU market, especially given Intel’s comprehensive support for both ATI and NVIDIA graphics technologies for the enthusiast and gaming markets.

AMD Spider targets that particular section of the PC market and consists of three distinct components, each supported by a particular AMD product range:

• Graphics – ATI Radeon HD 3800 Series
• CPU – AMD Phenom Processors
• Chipset – AMD 7-series chipsets

Graphics

The graphics component of AMD Spider is handled by the new ATI Radeon HD 3800 series of GPUs, of which there are two variants – the 3870 and the 3850. The last two digits in each are ATI’s new product variant classification, with “50” the equivalent of “Pro” and “70” the equivalent of “XT”

The 3800 series supports a number of emergent graphics technologies – DirectX 10.1 (which will ship with Windows Vista SP1), PCIe Generation 2.0, optimisations for HD playback – particularly in the areas of Blu-ray and HD DVD – and 55nm manufacturing process (versus the 80nm process used in the 2900XT GPU). It also features ATI CrossFireX, which is the rebranded CrossFire product and now capable of supporting up to four GPUs in a single configuration.

As part of the Spider press kit, AMD released benchmark information for both the 3870 and the 3850, which demonstrate a distinct performance increase over both the 2900XT and 8800GTS in certain conditions. Of course, the benchmarks are designed to put the 3800 series in the best light, but they still make for interesting reading. Especially that Windows Vista x64 was used as the benchmarking OS.

Radeon 3870 Benchmarks

Radeon 3850 Benchmarks

CPU

The CPU backbone of the Spider platform is AMD’s new range of Phenom 65nm processors. They come in three variations – the triple-core Phenom 8000 series (codename Toliman), the quad-core Phenom 9000 series (codename Agena) and the Phenom-FX series (codename Agena FX) for high-end enthusiasts. The triple-core 8000 series represents a more accessible price point, but the quad-core 9000 series is the main CPU for the Spider platform.

AMD is marketing the 9000 series the first true quad-core processor, as all the cores are situated on the same silicon, as opposed to Intel’s Core 2 Quad CPUs which use a multicore module design. The Phenom range features the HyperTransport 3.0 specification, offering a bandwidth increase over HyperTransport 2.0 of around 86% and raw bandwidth f up to 20.8 GB/sec. The CPUs also feature 2MB dedicated L2 cache as well as a shared 2MB L3 cache, and an integrated 128-bit dual-channel memory controller supporting up to DDR2 1066. All the cores, memory controller and I/O interface communicate using a crossbar switch rather than the front side bus (FSB).

The CPUs maintain “Direct Connect Architecture”, which means that they offer flexibility across various AMD platforms – specifically AM2, AM2+ and AM3. This means that there is a migration path and compatibility between processors from the Athlon X2 5000+ all the way through to the next-generation 45nm CPUs (codenamed Deneb).

Chipset

Bringing everything together is the AMD 7-series chipset. At present there are three variations:

• AMD 770 for mainstream users, supporting a single processor and a single PCIe 2.0 slot
• AMD 790X for gamers and HD enthusiasts, supporting a single CPU and dual PCIe 2.0 slots for CrossFireX
• AMD 790FX for hardcore users, supporting both single and dual CPU configurations and quad PCIe 2.0 slots

All chipsets support HyperTransport 3.0.

AMD OverDrive is available on all 7 series-based systems, allowing users to overclock their systems as much or as little as desired. All the chipsets also feature AMD AutoXpress, a BIOS-level system which automatically tunes the system to increase performance. It’s similar to NVIDIA’s LinkBoost technology on its nForce 500 and 600 chipsets

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AMD will be releasing a 7-series integrated mobile chipset later this year (AMD 780M), so it will be interesting to see how it competes against Intel’s dominance of the mobile market. We can also expect to see the competition crank up again when 45nm CPUs and supporting chipsets are released – again, later in 2008.What is certainly impressive with AMD Spider is that it allows users to access all the new technologies at each price point, making it a compelling option for everyone from casual computer users to high-end enthusiasts. However, the success of the platform will depend on its ability to compete with Intel in the cut-throat integrated systems market, and to compete with NVIDIA in the ever-fickle high-end gaming market. These two markets represent the two extremes of the PC market – at one end where bang for buck is everything and profit margins are shaved to just a few dollars, all the way to the opposite end of the spectrum where performance is everything and users are willing to shell out vast sums to maintain a competitive edge.

Source : APCMag.com 

With an eye firmly on the rapidly growing market for mobile devices, chip giant Intel has announced a new SSD device that can store up to 16GB in a space the size of a small coin.

The Z-P140 comes in 2, 4, 8 and 16GB models and weighs just 0.6 grams – about the same as a drop of water. Samples are in the maket already and full production is expected to begin early next year.
The new drives are part of Intel’s Menlow chipset which has been designed from the ground up for use in mobile internet devices. Such devices have traditionally been limited by factors such as power consumption and storage capacities. Switching to SSDs addresses both these challenges.

The Z-P140 uses an industry-standard PATA interface and is significantly smaller than a hard drive with similar storage capacity. With no moving parts it is well suited to applications where devices can expect to receive their fair share of bumps and jolts during use.

Intel quotes read times of 40 megabytes per second and write times of 30 MB/s for the drives. Power consumption is rated at a miserly 1.1 miliwatts when idle and 300 mW when operating.

No pricing has yet been announced for the drives.

Source : APCMag.com