Computer Systems - Page 25

Currently on Kickstarter and sitting at 540% of its $31,000 goal with a massive 44 days to go, the PINE A64 is quoted as "the world's first 64-bit expandable Quad Core 1.2Ghz supercomputer, tablet, media center, and more."

Available for only $15, this product is what seems to be the first real Raspberry Pi competitor. While Raspberry Pi released its Zero computer for only $5 recently, PINE offered up its first backers a $5 PINE A0 system, packed with a quad-core 64 bit processor and no Ethernet port.

The PINE A64 board measures in at 3.125" x 5" and features a 64-bit quad-core ARM A53 CPU, claiming to offer between 20 to 30 percent better performance than the Raspberry Pi-2B and Pi-1A+ while being almost half the price. designed to run Android 5.1, this product has been made with desktop PC processing tasks in mind, however, there are almost limitless options available for tech savvy users looking to tinker and create projects.

Designed through not-for-profit organization 'One Education' by CEO Rangan Srikhanta and his staff, this brand new product is called the Infinity and it's a modular laptop (or tablet) designed for educational purposes.

Aimed at school-aged children, you can find Infinity on IndieGoGo, aiming to reach an overall goal of $50,000. Currently sitting at $18,452 funded thanks to 76 backers with 33 days remaining, a donation of $269 will earn one of these products for yourself.

Set up primarily as an educational tool, Srikhanta has allowed people to purchase a "Give One, Get One" pack, charging $499 for users to receive a device themselves while donating the other to a needy child. Running on Linux, Windows or Android, you can pick one up for yourself or a child in need here.

The Raspberry Pi Foundation predicted demand for its new $5 Raspberry Pi Zero computer would "outstrip supply for the next little while", and they were right. Tens of thousands of units were made in preparation for the launch yesterday, and they've already sold out, as have issues of The MagPi (which included one for free).

Liz Upton, Raspberry Pi's head of communications said, "We were amazed at the rush on stores that happened as soon as we announced the release."

Raspberry Pi has done it again, and cheaper this time. First they released the Raspberry Pi Model B and several successors to put programmable computers in the hands of anyone with $20-$35, and now they're releasing the Raspberry Pi Zero, which does the same but just for $5. And for the ethically minded who are concerned about where something so cheap is made, in this case, it's Wales.

Zero runs Raspbian and all kinds of apps, including Scratch, Minecraft, and Sonic Pi. Here are the specs:

Intel is preparing its new wave of NUC units, which will be compatible with the company's new Skylake processors. The new Intel NUCs will be available with both Core i3 and Core i5 processors, with the Core i5 version rocking Iris 520 graphics.

Why is the Core i5 version of the new Skylake-powered NUCs so important? Up until now, Intel has reserved the Iris-powered NUCs to the higher-end Core i7 models, but now the Core i5 model will feature the better integrated graphics power. Both models will include SDXC slots, full-sized HDMI with 4K video and 7.1-channel audio support, two USB 3.0 ports on the front, two more USB 3.0 ports on the back, miniDisplayPort out, Ethernet, 802.11ac Wi-Fi, and Bluetooth 4.1.

We should expect a release date for the new Skylake-powered NUCs soon.

PAX Australia 2015 - We stopped by Australian IT retailer PLE Computers at PAX Australia this year, as they had some great stuff that caught our eye. They were pushing a very comfortable, and slick-looking line of gaming chairs, had custom gaming PCs on show, and so much more.

This custom system looked incredible, and was getting a lot of people stopping in awe and snapping photos of it. The color scheme really works with NZXT's custom lighting really displayed well here.

One of the cool things on display at PLE was this awesome HOTAS system.

PAX Australia 2015 - Alienware was making a big push this year at PAX Australia, where they had countless Steam Machines and even the new Steam Controllers.

Alienware teased the Area 51 system once again, but the cable management was atrocious.

One of the more impressive things at the Alienware booth were the Steam Controllers, and now that we've had some very brief hands-on with the Steam Controller, I can personally say I have faith. The touch pads were very responsive with our quick testing, but I need some more time with it to provide more thoughts on it.

Up until now, Microsoft has reserved its customized NVIDIA GPU configuration to the more expensive Surface Book models, meaning the budget tier was locked out. But now the catalogue has been updated and Microsoft now offers dGPU options to every Surface Book make and model--for a price.

If you plan to opt in for the dual-GPU solution for the Windows 10-powered laptop, Microsoft tacks on an extra $200 to the retail price. $200 might sound like a lot, but the difference is pretty substantial: default Surface Book models come equipped with Intel's integrated Iris Graphics, and the extra cash will unlock a second graphics solution, a custom Maxwell-based NVIDIA GPU that will enable more graphically-intense workloads.

Equipped with the second dGPU in the keyboard base, the budget Surface Book with a Skylake Intel Core i5 CPU, 8GB RAM and a 128GB HDD now rises to $1,699. We've reported that the Surface Book's custom NVIDIA GPU is actually equal to a GeForce 940M with 1GB of GDDR5 VRAM.

Today Lenovo announced its new line of Windows 10 devices, branded as the Yoga 900 line. The most eye-catching of the new hardware is the massive all-in-one that takes the term "desktop" quite literally, bringing huge size as well as huge potential.

Lenovo's Yoga Home 900 isn't made for on-the-go use; as its name implies, it's optimized more for a home-based experience. Its massive 27-inch full HD 10-point touch display can be set at an angle for traditional browsing on or doing work across Windows 10 apps, or it can be laid flat for some competitive air hockey with the family. It weighs just 16 pounds, so you can easily heft it from room to room without worrying about a cumbersome bulk or the device bending under its own weight.

The tabletop PC has some beefy specs under the hood, with Broadwell class Core i5 and Core i7 CPUs, a dedicated NVIDIA GPU (up to a 2GB VRAM GeForce 940A), up to 8GB of RAM and up to 1TB of onboard SSHD storage. The six-cell battery is lacking, only supporting up to 3-hours of usage per charge, but given the huge 27-inch display, that's to be expected.

It looks like Apple's new 21.5-inch iMacs have been updated with something other than the 4K Retina display: completely unrepairable hardware that makes every DIY tecchie shudder in revulsion.

The folks at iFixit are experts at tearing down the latest tech and putting it all back together in tip-top shape, and as a result their analyses carry some pretty hefty weight. So when iFixit rated the 21.5-inch 4K iMac with a repairability score of a measly 1 out of 10, it means Apple is earnestly pushing toward in-house serviceability.

What exactly makes the new iMac so daunting? Basically, none of the parts in the all-in-one computer are replaceable in any capacity. The RAM is soldered to the logic board (which isn't really surprising). What is surprising is that the logic board doesn't have a Fusion Drive connector, cutting off any plans to add further storage. The Intel CPU is also fastened to the board, and Apple has even melded the iMac's glass cover front with the Retina display, further upping the cost of repair.

Recently, Intel launched a new business unit dedicated to makers. While Intel's Galileo and Edison modules have been around for a while, most makers tend to use lower cost Arduino or Respberry Pi boards. Intel decided to take another route this round, and has teamed up with Arduino to provide their new Curie microcontroller on an Arduino board that looks eerily similar to the Arduino Uno.

The Curie microcontroller is replacing the typical ATmega chips we see on Ardunio boards. Curie was announced earlier this year and has some pretty decent specifications especially considering its size. Many people complain about the low processing power of the Uno, but the Curie is much beefier than what we have seen in the past from Arduino. The Arduino 101 is supposed to be an easy to use board, and it is aimed at education sector.

Many might be wondering what the Arduino 101 brings to the table compared to the Uno, and according to our sources, "[Arduino 101] is an evolution of the popular Arduino Uno board, adding a Bluetooth Smart (Low Energy) radio, an accelerometer and gyroscope to allow students and makers in general to create the types of connected and motion sensitive projects they have come to expect in today's world". It is compatible with the current Arduino IDE (software interface) so current Arduino users who might want a little more kick than an Uno might want to check out this new board.

It's been long known that the Android platform isn't nearly as secure as it should be, but we haven't really had a concrete answer as to how vulnerable the OS actually is. A recent study from the University of Cambridge delivers the answer, and it's pretty surprising.

"We find that on average 87.7% of Android devices are exposed to at least one of 11 known critical vulnerabilities," the university writes in the study's conclusion. "In our data, Nexus devices do considerably better than average with a score of 5.17; LG is the best manufacturer with a score of 3.97."

The study also lays the blame on device manufacturers, citing that most modern smartphones receive few security updates thereby leaving them open to a number of vulnerabilities like the TowelRoot, Gingerbreak, and FakeID exploits. "We showed that the bottleneck for the delivery of updates in the Android ecosystem rests with the manufacturers, who fail to provide updates to fix critical vulnerabilities."

HP has just announced its new Envy Curved All-in-One PC, slapping an entire PC into a 34-inch curved UltraWide monitor. The 21:9 aspect ratio looks beautiful on the new PC, with HP claiming it's the world's widest curved AIO and the first to receive Technicolor certification.

HP's new UltraWide AIO PC also has 99% of the sRGB color gamut for professionals, with six speakers being crammed into the AIO courtesy of Bang & Olufsen. HP will let consumers configure the Envy Curved All-in-One PC with Intel's new Skylake-based Core i5 or Core i7 processors, up to an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 960, up to 16GB of RAM, and various storage configurations.

Windows 10 will come pre-installed, which shouldn't be a surprise now that Microsoft's latest desktop operating system is here. HP's new AIO PC looks to be aimed at professionals and non-gamers, but gamers can get in some decent gaming at 3440x1440 with a GTX 960 if they set their in-game visual settings to Medium.

On the heels of iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus sales, reports indicate that Apple is ready to bring 4K resolution to its 21.5-inch iMacs.

Sources at 9to5Mac say that Apple will start selling the new 4K iMacs as early as October 13, making it a surprise announcement to bolster its product line and fill in the gap between September's iPhone sales and November's upcoming iPad Pro release.

Although the 4K-ready iMacs will sport 4,096x2,304 resolution, the new models will reportedly match the current 1080p iMacs in terms of aesthetics. Significant changes are coming under the hood, however, with refreshed hardware across the board including a beefier video card to power the display. It's assumed Apple's El Capitan OS will be pre-loaded, and speculation hints that Apple's new Force-Touch Magic Mouse 2 and a new enhanced Bluetooth keyboard combo could come inside the box.

For those who just want to have it all, Digital Storm has announced its AVENTUM 3 Gaming Desktop, complete with a custom made liquid cooling setup comprised of EK Water Block parts and plenty of love.

As explained by Harji Chana, Chief Operating Officer of Digital Storm, this model "is our declaration that a PC does not have to be just the sum of its parts. We designed the AVENTUM 3 from the ground up with a focus on unmatched accessibility and modularity that can't be found anywhere else." That alone is a big claim for sure, but the AVENTUM 3 does bring some big guns to the table.

Featuring a separated chamber design (think similar to the Thermaltake Level 10), this build houses the components within a special sealed chamber, completely separate from the chamber which houses the liquid cooling setup - meaning heat will not interfere across all your internals.

If you're looking for something tiny yet mighty, ASUS' Republic of Gamers (ROG) division has just released a beastly compact desktop, naming it the G20CB. This "Mayan-inspired" small form factor system features 8 million color LED options for the exterior plus ASUS ROG's own Aegis II app in order to help you control everything within.

With plenty of different component choices available depending on your budget, ASUS ROG allows users to spec their mini-machine up to an Intel Skylake i7 processor, NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 video card, 32GB of dual-channel DDR4 RAM at 2133 MHz and a 256GB SATA 6Gbit/s SSD.

Complete with Microsoft Windows 10, ASUS' poster-child small form factor system received a CES 2015 Best Innnovation Award, a 2015 iF design award plus the 2015 Taiwan Excellence Gold Award. Designed to support up to three HD displays through the power the the GTX 980, this 9.5-liter desktop doesn't currently have a price tag attached.

Renown custom PC maker DG Lee has created a custom mini-ITX build centered around AMD's new Radeon R9 Nano that hits an amazing 10TFlops of performance.

With AMD's Radeon R9 Nano small form-factor GPU releasing this week, the company has launched a promotional #MakeItNano campaign where enthusiasts compete by making their own custom chassis builds, with the winner snagging an R9 Nano. To inspire competitors and wow PC owners across the globe, AMD conscripted DG Lee to create a striking mini-ITX build to house AMD's mini powerhouse GPU. The results are nothing short of amazing.

The SFF PC is called the "Unprecedented High-Density Teraflops Machine", and packs a serious performance punch in a beautiful stylish design. The compact chassis measures 166mm x 244mm x 188mm size and houses a single 4GB R9 Nano GPU at 8.9 TFlops, which is combined with the monstrous 1.4 TFlops generated by Intel's 18-core Xeon E5-2699 V3 processor to hit a grand total of 10 TFlops in performance speeds. The team actually wanted to pack in two Radeon R9 Nanos and initially targeted a blistering 20 TFlops... but technical problems held them back and AMD only wanted to showcase a single-card build.

Pre-built computer systems are certainly gaining traction in this day and age, seeing companies like iBUYPOWER, CyberPower PC, Alienware, Origin PC and ASUS alike push some high-end products direct to customers, whether they are straight from the factory or out of a building workshop.

Adding to the plethora of recent releases is the ASUS ROG G11, offering up a powerful Intel Core i7-6700 processor, up to 32GB or DDR4 RAM and an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 980 video card coming complete with Windows 10.

With storage space options that include a 3TB hard drive and 256GB PCIe SSD, these releases are certainly catered towards those with a little cash to spare and no time or knowledge about building a system for themselves. Saying that, buying pre-built certainly isn't a totally negative thing, just the same way people spend money on workshops to modify cars - it all depends what you want as a computer enthusiast!

Acer has gone all out by bringing enthusiast-grade gaming across the entire spectrum of devices, including a new decacore smartphone and beefy 8-inch tablet.

At IFA 2015, Acer announced its new Predator 6 performance smartphone that will reportedly "dominate any game you throw at it".

The Predator 6 runs Android (possibly 5.1), sports 4GB of RAM, a 10-core MediaTek processor (most likely the Helio X20 mobile SoC), and a 6-inch full HD display with haptic feedback that Acer says will "perform just like a controller". It also has a 21-megapixel back-facing camera and features a slim, lightweight feel modeled after the stylized metallic flair of Predator line. No pricing has been revealed so far.

Corsair announced the production version of its Bulldog DIY 4K gaming PC, with the first prototype shown off during Computex. The barebones system is designed to be a full PC that can be used in the living room, and leaves plenty of options for consumers to build a system as they see fit.

The Bulldog chassis is a "highly ventilated, stylish, compact console design" able to keep PC components cool, along with a 600-watt SFX power supply, and Hydro Series H5SF small form factor liquid CPU cooler. It's powered by a motherboard capable of supporting the Intel Z170 chipset, with a PCI Express 3.0 16x slot, two memory slots able to support 32GB of DD4 RAM, USB 3.0 and SATA ports, and Gigabit Ethernet, Wi-Fi, and 7.1 channel audio.

Consumers must add their own Intel CUP, RAM, GPU, and storage - and can either run Microsoft Windows or SteamOS - to finalize the unit.