ASUS CEO indicates ultrabooks could become ultra attractive by Apr'12

Steve Dougherty | Laptops | Sep 6, 2011 9:25 AM CDT

With the ultrabook market really heating up of late, word of what ASUS has planned for this market segment by the second quarter of 2012 should ensure it's more lively again. We've seen a few pre-release Ultrabooks shown off lately from the likes of Acer, ASUS and Toshiba and they are already gathering quite a bit of attraction, but apparently ASUS will have some particularly aggressively priced Ultrabook models hit the scene in April 2012.

Digitimes reports that following the launch of 5 or 6 ultrabook models (11.6-inch and 13.3-inch variants) this coming October at tentative pricing starting at US$899 and going up, ASUS will then shift its focus onto Ivy Bridge and dish up ultrabooks based on this platform ranging from US$600-$900 for the entry-level segment; that is if ASUS' CEO Jerry Shen has his facts straight.

An Ivy Bridge powered ultra book for US$600? That oughta shake up the entire notebook market somewhat; certainly in the more entry/mid-range sectors where a similar amount of money to chunkier, heavier notebooks gets you a lighter, sleeker design without a performance or battery life trade-off.

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A gathering of reports used to paint a picture of the iPhone 5

While the wraps are still tightly sealed on the iPhone 5's complete official specs, many reports floating about combine to give a fair idea of what's on the cards with Apple's 5th gen smartphone.

There's still quite a bit of umm'ing and ahh'ing going on, but the folks over at Tech-Reviews help and draw a conclusion as to the most probable specs of the phone, basing their thoughts on the many reports and tid bits of info that have leaked in recent months.

As suspected for quite a while now, they believe the phone will use the new A5 dual-core CPU found in the iPad 2, a 3.7-inch display (but are hoping for a 4-inch using the latest Quantum Dot LED Technology), an 8MP camera, possibility (but not a probability) of 4G LTE support and NFC (Near field communication) Payment, a vaguely heard of, super convenient payment technology that simply requires the phone be waved in front of the counter in stores. They also acknolwedge reports that indicate Apple might be partnering with Paypal for NFC.

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Deus Ex: Human Revolution gets a mod by "gibbed", removes splash screens and more

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Sep 6, 2011 1:00 AM CDT

I'm sure all you Deus Ex: Human Revolution players (including me) hate the splash screens before the game loads up... Scaleform, Dolby Digital, AMD, but there's no way of disabling these screens from within the game. A modder who has done mods similar to the DX:HR one is responsible and it lets you mess with a bunch of settings. Here's what it can do:

Instantly spawn any items, like weapons, ammo, weapon mods, and consumables,

Instantly unlock any augmentations,

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Battlefield 3 limited to 30fps on consoles

Anthony Garreffa | Gaming | Sep 5, 2011 8:21 PM CDT

DICE has confirmed that their upcoming COD killer, Battlefield 3, will be limited to 30fps on consoles. There's a mixed reaction to this, console fans are upset that they're not getting 60fps and PC fans are saying "well, if you want 60fps, you buy a PC." Considering that Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was limited to 30fps on consoles and still looked great (for a console), then the next-gen Frostbite 2 engine, with much more advanced graphics, detail and destruction with more FPS than a console-tweaked Frostbite 1.5 engine that powered Bad Company 2 - is not surprising.

DICE's general manager discusses the frame rate, AI, environmental destruction and tips for success in the video below from IGN:

I agree with some of the comments on the source, if you want 60fps - you spend the money on a PC and play the real beast. For an ageing console, 5 - 6 years now, not much can be squeezed out of it from a game of this scale. Console exclusives (for example, on the PS3 with Uncharted) they can really squeeze every drop from the console as there's only a single baseline spec to work with.

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Thermaltake go Massive with new notebook cooler

Steve Dougherty | Cases, Cooling & PSU | Sep 5, 2011 8:34 AM CDT

Often we'll see the release of yet another notebook cooler into the market that does little to stand out and impress us with anything we haven't already seen before. However, Thermaltake have stepped forward in radical fashion and announced today something that does indeed have its eye catching attributes straight off the bat.

Appropriately dubbed the "Massive 23 GT" notebook cooler, it sports a beefy 200mm fan which can operate between 5 and 800RPM, giving up to 24 dBA of sound output. The overall unit measures 352 x 293.1 x 41.4 mm, weighing in at 907 grams and supports notebooks sized anywhere between 10 and 17 inches.

Thermaltake has constructed the eye catching red and black themed Massive 23 GT notebook Cooler out of a mixture of metal and plastic, giving it anti-slip rubber feet, a flip-up valve design with five angled settings and a built in two-port USB 3.0 hub for extra devices.

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LG's "Dual Play" TV allow gamers to share a single screen, different view

Anthony Garreffa | Displays & Projectors | Sep 4, 2011 8:12 PM CDT

LG have introduced a new TV range dubbed "Dual View". The new Dual View televisions allow gamers to use the same television but see different images thanks to a new style of 3D glasses. The new tech was shown off by Microsoft and is set to go on same with a limited number of LG TV's, displays two separate pictures on the same screen, and then uses the power of the new 3D -style glasses to ensure each player can see a different image each.

Screen cheating be gone! This new tech is only available on the Xbox platform and works with LG's Cinema 3D range, inclusive of the new flagship LW980T. Gamers will have to slap down more dinero for additional pairs of special glasses. Usually gamers play with split screen, but this new tech would allow both gamers a full-screen gaming experience, with each of them looking at completely different images.

Cool, huh?

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Samsung covers new turf with 2-in-1 ODD and wireless access point

Steve Dougherty | Storage | Sep 3, 2011 3:12 AM CDT

It's been a busy week for Samsung with several announcements coming out, and in closing they have introduced quite an interesting device like no other.

While at first it looks to be your run of the mill slim, external optical drive, the SE-208BW has some other features lurking that you'd never normally associate with such a device. It doubles up as a wireless access point or repeater.

In efforts to highlight these exclusive features, Samsung actually refers to this device as a "Smart Media Hub" as opposed to an optical drive. As well as being able to connec to a PC via WiFi, it also has the ability to work with tablets and smartphones. It has DLNA compatibility allowing for easy streaming to other electronic devices (phones, TVs, tablets etc.) and gives support for Dynamic DNS which helps turn it into a private server. The residing USB port can be used to plug a flash drive in which can then have its contents shared across the network.

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NVIDIA says external graphics solutions are on the agenda

Steve Dougherty | Video Cards & GPUs | Sep 3, 2011 1:54 AM CDT

External graphics solutions for the mobile platform has been a talked about subject for several years now, and while we've seen a few forms of these on display at various trade shows and in prototype form around the web, the big players are yet to really make a firm jump into this area.

However, it's still definitely on the cards according to NVIDIA. Fuad of Fudzilla was recently at NV headquarters where he got to have a chat with general manager of NVIDIA's notebook division, Rene Haas and while the finer details of what's planned were retained, he did say that external graphics is something they are working on and the word 'Thunderbolt' was also mentioned, possibly meaning it'll be the connection of choice to ensure enough bandwidth is provided.

Fuad goes on to say that the conversation gave him the impression that external graphics may well surface sometime in 2012, using 28nm NVIDIA mobile parts (initially at least).

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Say goodbye to X-Fi as Creative rolls in its new series - Sound Core3D

Steve Dougherty | Audio, Sound & Speakers | Sep 2, 2011 3:38 PM CDT

Creative are back in the limelight once again today after previously announcing both the ZEN X-Fi3 Bluetooth Touch MP3 player and Sound Blaster Recon3D. The company has also rolled out a new line of PCI-Express sound cards that, while impressive by design, may bring on a bit of a sad panda face for some due to the obvious end of the X-Fi generation for good after its over half decade presence since August 2005.

The new line-up is called Sound Core3D and it has one major difference to the X-Fi family of cards. Where X-Fi used high-performance native audio processing (through hardware) by making use of the processors on the card such as the CA20K series, the focus is now on the set of DSPs (digital signal processors) resident on the Core3D; there being four of these that give it a "quad-core" moniker, but this is not in the sense of there being four actual processing cores. These four DSPs are also not necessarily hardware-accelerated, but due to the presence of four of them, they work together in order to produce the best overall audio output.

So far there are three models making up the new lineup; the base model Sound Blaster Sound Core3D, the Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Professional and the Sound Blaster Recon3D Fatal1ty Champion. The base model is easy to spot without the inclusion of a fancy EMI shield. It sticks to a simple PCI-E audio processor that is void of most of the RISC processor components of the CA20K series audio processors. It gives common HDA front-panel output connectivity, Fatal1ty Champion front-panel IO capability and a regular batch of 7.1 channel analog jacks that reside next to a pair of TOSLINK digital input and output connectors.

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Toshiba outs three new compact Camileo series camcorders

Steve Dougherty | Cameras, Printers & Scanners | Sep 2, 2011 2:52 PM CDT

Three new models have entered Toshiba's long time running Camileo range of palm-sized camcorders this week, the Clip, X200 and X400. Focusing on the Clip to begin with, this is perhaps the more interesting of the refreshed Camileo trio with the clip on the back of the camcorder (hence, the name) allowing it to be clipped onto various objects for hands free shooting. The Clip runs measurements of just 46.5 x 80 x 16 mm, weighing about 85 grams. It sports a ruggedized, splash-proof casing and 1.5-inch LCD.

Getting a bit deeper into the specs, it does Full HD (1920 x 1080) video recording (at 30 fps in H.264 HD format), has a 5-megapixel CMOS sensor with BSI (back side illumination) technology, an electronic image stabiliser, 10x digital zoom, SD/SDHC/SDXC compatible memory slot and gives connectivity via both mini-HDMI and mini-USB 2.0 ports. The camcorder is capable of taking up to 16MP still shots and comes in four color choices - dark blue, hot red, bright yellow and snow white.

As for the X200 and X400 models, these also pack the aforementioned 5MP CMOS sensor with BSI tech, image stabiliser, mini USB and HDMI ports, SD/SDHC/SDXC memory slot, but both offer a double sized 3-inch LCD. What separates the models is the 12x optical zoom capability on the X200 versus the whopping 23x on the X400.

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