iWishihadthis.com » Computers

Chumby One

Damian — Wed, 07 Dec 2011 21:40:57 +0000

chumby takes your favorite parts of the internet and delivers them to you in a friendly, always-on, always-fresh format.

It’s a window into your internet life that lives outside your desktop, so content like weather, news, celebrity gossip, podcasts, music, and more has a place to play away from your world of documents and spreadsheets. Just plug in your chumby, connect to your network, and use your computer to create a lineup of favorites from over 1,500 apps in more than 30 categories, with new ones arriving all the time. Then let your chumby do its thing — streaming everything you like, from sports scores to stock quotes, from video clips to interactive games, from photos to trivia. How about playing poker on the Chumby?

Get your chumby here.

IntelliTracks Digital Jukebox

Tim Zastrow — Thu, 30 Dec 2010 04:11:05 +0000

Many of our older reader might remember growing up, throwing an endless amount of quarters into the jukebox at the local pub. No need anymore as the IntelliTracks Digital Jukebox ($4,995) brings the jukebox into the 21st century. The Digital Jukebox utilizes an AMD Dual Core 3800+ Processor, 1GB Ram, Wifi and a 320GB Hard Drive for storage up to 50,000 songs and can access any online music service. An 8in LCD displays artist and track information while a second 15in touch screen LCD gives users access to all their entire music collection. The IntelliTracks Digital Jukebox is perfect addition to any room in the house, especially for those lucky readers with home bars.

VAIO Z Series

Adam Gunderson — Wed, 20 Jan 2010 19:02:22 +0000

The Sony VAIO Z Series coming out this year is the most powerful 13 inch laptop we have seen yet. It features an array of quad SSD hard drives in a Raid-0 configuration, which means your data can read/write parallelly, 6.2X faster than standard laptop drives. The Intel Core i7-620M processor and the NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M GPU are another rarity among 13 inchers. This tiny powerhouse is not the lightest 13 inch on the market (at just over 3 lbs) but it could be one of the fastest.

Model	VAIO VPCZ11Z9E	VAIO VPCZ11X9E
Processor	Intel® Core i7-620M 2.66GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology (max. 3.33 GHz)	Intel® Core i7-520M 2.4GHz with Intel® Turbo Boost Technology (max. 2.93 GHz)
OS	Genuine Windows® 7 Professional (64-bit)	Genuine Windows® 7 Professional (64-bit)
Memory	6GB DDR3 SDRAM (1066 MHz)	4GB DDR3 SDRAM (1066 MHz)
SDD	Quad SSD (RAID 0) 256GB	Quad SSD (RAID 0) 128GB
Screen	33.3cm (13.1”) 16:9 VAIO Display Premium (1920×1080) with LED backlight	33.3cm (13.1”) 16:9 VAIO Display Premium (1600×900) with LED backlight
Graphics	NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M GPU + Intel® HD Graphics with 1GBB GDDR3 VRAM	NVIDIA® GeForce® GT 330M GPU + Intel® HD Graphics with 1GBB GDDR3 VRAM
Optical drive	DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM	DVD+-RW/+-R DL/RAM
Weight & size	1.43kg (with supplied battery); 210 x 23.8-32.7 x 314 mm (D x H x W)	1.41kg (with supplied battery); 210 x 23.8-32.7 x 314 mm (D x H x W)
Others	WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n; VAIO Everywair WWAN; Bluetooth 2.1+EDR; keyboard backlight; MOTION EYE camera; HDMI out; VAIO/Assist buttons; fingerprint reader; black finish	WLAN 802.11a/b/g/n; VAIO Everywair WWAN; Bluetooth 2.1+EDR; keyboard backlight; MOTION EYE camera; HDMI out; VAIO/Assist buttons; black finish

MSI Wind Top AE1900

cupcupcup — Tue, 12 May 2009 20:06:19 +0000

MSI’s new Wind Top AE1900 at first glance looks similar to Apple’s old cinema displays. Under the hood though, the AE1900 packs quite a punch for its price. It’s an all in unit featuring an 18.5 inch touch screen display (1366 x 768 resolution), integrated Intel GMA 950 graphics core, 4-in-1 card reader, dual layer DVD rewriter drive, gigabit ethernet, 801.11 b/g/n, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. Two models are available, the cheaper going for $529 with an Intel Atom 230 processor, a 160GB hard drive, and 1GB DDR2-533 RAM. The more expensive model, at $640, has an Atom 330, 250GB hard drive, and 2GB DDR2-533 RAM. While the system is a bit limited graphics-wise (the GMA 950 was used in the first generation Macbooks — in early 2006, ugh), the touchscreen is a pretty unique aspect that could make the AE1900 a suitable kiosk PC.

Linksys Media Hub

Adam Gunderson — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 12:08:52 +0000

The Linksys Media Hub is a streamlined Network Attached Storage. It has a unique and simple user interface, allowing anyone to use and share it. The NAS comes in 500GB ($350, $300 w/ No LCD) and 1TB ($430) sizes; all with and extra bay for another drive, as well as usb port for external drives. All models but the no LCD model come with multi-memory card readers.

Plustek V100 BookReader

Adam Gunderson — Thu, 05 Mar 2009 11:34:57 +0000

The Plustek V100 BookReader is a text-to-speech engine that uses; an optical scanner to scan text, character recognition to covert the scanned text to digital text, and an audio output engine that reads the scanned text. The scanning-to-audio process is triggered by the press of a button, the audio playbacks can be stored as MP3 files to listen to later on any MP3 player. The BookReader is available now for $700.

CineMassive OmegaPlex

Adam Gunderson — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 15:12:04 +0000

The OmegaPlex Ultra High Definition Multi Monitor is truly a marvel of modern technology. Optimized for ultra high definition viewing capabilities with an incredible 27.6 million pixels, this setup is something the world has never seen before. Uses for this product are only limited to your imagination, whether it be high definition, gaming or watching movies, your eyes will never be disappointed to look at this beautiful collage of screens. Cinemassive boasts its new low price of $12,999 for the 12 screen setup, including a 3 year warranty to cover anything that could possible go wrong. The OmegaPlex is also fully customizable, easily changing from a family room pleasure experience into a professional workstation. Regardless of the steep price, it is safe to say that this product is the most sophisticated of its kind.

Brothers Quattro 6000D Sewing Machine

Adam Gunderson — Sun, 01 Mar 2009 12:23:50 +0000

The Brothers Quattro 6000D ($7,500) is an over-the-top, glamorous, sewing machine for the Ultra Rich. This unit features USB ports for advanced embroidery, and a 4.5 inch display for previewing your design! It seems like a computer, but is shaped like a regular sewing machine.

Logitech G19 Keyboard with Color LCD Display

Adam Gunderson — Thu, 26 Feb 2009 11:26:03 +0000

This sleek Logitech G19 keyboard has a color LCD display with a 320 x 240 resolution. Black and cool looking, the keyboard is the ultimate in high-tech, earning its $200 price tag with a mini Linux computer inside. With this computer you can do anything from placing widgets to watching internet video on the mini screen, which can tilt for ease of use. It also allows you to select the color of its LED back lights, record macros anywhere, and it even has 12 programmable keys. Available for pre-order now.

Pandora’s Box Opens Soon…

iRRVi — Mon, 12 Jan 2009 21:19:22 +0000

And that’s not such a bad thing. The Pandora (official site – Written about previously here) is an open source gaming beast. The ship date has been moved back several times, most recently because LCD’s have taken too long to be produced and bank problems with the orders. Things are slowly coming together.

As the dev team works hard. the release date nears as software is produced and perfected. The dev team is an individual team of normal guys, with an exceptional intelligence. They all have experience with things, but nothing with this magnitude. The original plan was to produce 3000, although this was upped to 4000, and you could only get one by preorder. They expect to have 200-300 extra so you MIGHT be able to snag one without a preorder.

Selling 2000 Pandora’s in the first 6 hours, so much traffic on the sites that were selling them they were slowing due to load. Second batch of Pandora’s is expected to be run in 2009, although they have yet to get the first batch shipped. When the Pandora finally gets here we will have a special hands on review, so check back often. This will not happen until the device gets here, but in the mean time feel free to watch the attached video demonstrating Pandora’s custom OS.

The tale of this machine is a long one, first the preorder date got moved back a few times, the preorders finally opened. August 14th, 2008 the “final” design had its pictures posted here. On October 30th the developers decided, due to the bank problems they would make it up to us, and with the decrease in the price of the RAM and NAND, they decided to double both. Now it has 256 MB of RAM and 512 MB of NAND — DOUBLE that of the previous design. for comparison the PSP-1000 had 32 MB main memory, and the PSP-3000 with 64 MB still gets no where near the 256 MB found in the Pandora, that’s four times as much as the PSP-3000, and not only does that beat the PSP with RAM, but it has dedicated 3D hardware.

The people who need their litle gadgets, internet over your phone – even a USB mouse – it is only limited by the Linux driver availability for the device, which is actually very good despite what everyone thinks. An abundance of storage, 64 GB max, because of the dual SDHC card slots. That would be basically two 32 GB SSD’s. Although depending on how strictly it adheres to the SDHC specifications, in time it could support up to 2048 GB on each card. ( source ) 2 TB in a card. Two cards means an abundance of storage, in the future of course. And don’t forget the good thing about open source, you can change it. If the Pandora comes with explicit support for the SDHC standard, someone is bound to change that.

More will be written about this when more news surfaces.

Mean while check out this video (youtube, H.264 and XviD) demonstrating Pandora’s OS

Recently they posted the expected shipping dates and such, these now seem much more reasonable. (Which is unlike the first – which was very hopeful. Although the most recent before this one seemed doable, but then some stuff happened. We’ll see how it goes.) So here is their plan:

Case Design: January 15th
Case Prototyping: approx. 1-2 weeks later
Final production and delivery: approx. 2 – 4 weeks later

That places it late February. You can expect more from us, and hopefully more from the dev team.

I can’t wait to open my box, and write a review. It will be a great upgrade to my gp2x F-200, which broke so i had to take out the touch screen and take out many pieces of the case. Let alone the specs! In case you don’t want to find them for yourself, here they are:

ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
Around 10+ Hours battery life

I could not go on to mention the people behind this wondrous beast, and not feel bad about it. So major thanks to the following for all your hard work, and dedication to the community around this project.

Dev team, in no specific order:

Craigix
EvilDragon
mfk
MWeston

Lenovo ThinkPad W700ds

iRRVi — Mon, 22 Dec 2008 03:36:07 +0000

The ThinkPad W700ds is the successor of the ThinkPad W700, only with another screen. The notebook itself features a WACOM digitizer built-in but more importantly it incorporates a secondary 10.6in LCD which works out really well for a tools and pallets.
You have a choice of Intel Core 2 Quad processors and NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M GPU. With a max of 8 GB of RAM and 960 GB of SSD/HDD. The primary 17-inch screen is supposedly the brightest on the market. The W700ds starts at $3,600, and weighs 11 pounds. Start saving for this now because it will ship in January. (Unless the date shifts, as that is known to happen.)

Meraki Solar-Powered Wi-Fi Repeater

Adam Gunderson — Thu, 11 Dec 2008 17:02:17 +0000

The Meraki Solar is a completely self-sustained outdoor Wi-Fi repeater. The base model starts at $850 if you provide your own solar panels, and can get as expensive as $1,500 for their higher density panels. This is the ideal solution for city planners, or people with huge acreage.

Wacom Cintiq 21UX Graphics Tablet

Adam Gunderson — Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:20:14 +0000

Are you sick of using your mouse and MS Paint to draw on your computer? Be like the pros and get a top of the line graphics tablet from Wacom. The Cintiq 21UX is a 21.3 inch TFT display graphics tablet (@ 1600 x 1200 resolution) which has 1,024 levels of pressure sensitivity to ensure the tablet picks up every detail of your drafting. You can use it as your primary monitor, or use it with multiple displays. The pen of the Wacom Cintiq 21UX has an easily replaceable felt tip (to insure proper friction), and programmable side switches that allow you to program your most common actions into the pen itself. In addition the tablet features 2-finger-sensitive touch strips that serves as a natural way to zoom, scroll, or change brush size. For more features see the video after on the next page.

Minoru 3D Webcam

Adam Gunderson — Tue, 21 Oct 2008 17:39:54 +0000

The Minoru 3D Webcam is the first of its kind. It works with any webcam software and requires the use of blue/red 3D glasses. I wonder if any adult webcam sites will be picking these up. Minoru will be available in December for $100.

OLO Turns your iPhone into a Laptop

Adam Gunderson — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 12:25:59 +0000

This genius idea from OLO turns your iPhone into a laptop. Simple place it in the spot where the trackpad usually goes, and your set! You have a webcam, full keyboard, and ability to use the iPhone as the mouse. No word on price or availability. [via]

GUESS WHAT! THIS IS THE 500TH POST!

Optimus Aux

Adam Gunderson — Sat, 20 Sep 2008 20:32:24 +0000

From Art Lebedev Design Studios comes the Optimus Aux, which is a sequel to their Optimus Maximus keyboard. It is a number pad that has tiny OLED displays on each of the keys. The keys can be programmed to do whatever you want (such as color swatches and program tools). Price and availability are unknown.

Lenovo ThinkPad W700

Adam Gunderson — Thu, 11 Sep 2008 17:11:51 +0000

Don’t get me wrong… You can put together some awesome laptop system, they will run games smoothly, and your programs will fire up very fast. But if you are like me and spent the past week doing some serious graphic designing, you may be interested in a laptop that has more than power to offer. Lenovo’s ThinkPad W700 notebook notebook intended for graphic design, photography, and CAD professionals. It features: a built-in Wacom digitizer, WUXGA screen with 400 nit brightness, auto color-calibration sensor, 3.0 GHz Core 2 Extreme quad core processor, up to 8GB DDR3 RAM, 1GB NVIDIA Quadro FX 3700M graphics and dual HDD Bays configurable in RAID 0 or RAID 1. The whole package starts at $3,000, but with options like BD-ROM and SSD you can expect to pay a lot more. [via]

Lenovo Unleashes PC Beast on Mobile Workstation Market with ThinkPad W700
Delivers Industry’s First Built-in Digitizer and Color Calibrator Along with Ultimate Power, Multimedia and Display Technologies

RESEARCH TRIANGLE PARK, NC – August 12, 2008: Lenovo today introduced the ThinkPad W700, a 17-inch widescreen mobile workstation engineered with game-changing technologies and innovations to exceed the demands of the most data and graphics-intensive users. Lenovo brings the industry’s first built-in digitizer and color calibrator to a mobile workstation and combines these innovations with first-in-market technologies such as new NVIDIA® Quadro FX mobile graphics and supporting the upcoming Intel® mobile quad core processor. Other features such as optional dual hard drives with RAID configurations, up to 8 GB of high speed DDR3 memory, a range of wireless connectivity options and excellent multimedia capabilities including an optional Blu-ray™ DVD burner/player make the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation the standard-bearer for power and performance in a mobile workstation.

“Lenovo has engineered a new breed of mobile workstation with the ThinkPad W700,” said Peter Hortensius, senior vice president, Notebook Business Unit, Lenovo. “No other PC manufacturer has a mobile workstation that delivers the sheer power, performance and cutting-edge innovation that Lenovo has packed into the ThinkPad W700. The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation flat out delivers the command performance our customers demand at the desk as well as in the field.”

According to IDC, the compound annual growth rate for the worldwide mobile workstation market has been more than 60 percent per year since 2002.1The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation extends Lenovo’s commitment to workstation users, complementing Lenovo’s W500 mobile workstation and ThinkStation S10 and D10 workstations. As workers in fields such as digital content creation, computer-aided design and manufacturing, digital photography and science fields including the oil and gas industries become increasingly mobile, they are demanding the full-featured performance of a desktop workstation in a mobile workstation.

First-in-Industry Engineered Innovation
The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation takes customer driven innovation to a new level with an optional built-in palm rest digitizer and color calibrator. Lenovo and Intel collaborated to integrate the color calibrator and digitizer into the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation. Designed for digital content creators and users, the mobile workstation’s digitizer helps them easily configure an image, either mapping it to the entire screen or to an area defined by the user. High performance users, especially digital photographers, will benefit from models with the built-in color calibrator as color continues to play an important role in their work. The calibrator automatically adjusts the display’s color in up to half the time of many external calibrators and with higher accuracy, resulting in the most accurate, true-to-life images in an integrated package. Together with the upcoming Intel® mobile quad core processor, multimedia designers and animators now have outstanding quad-core processor performance and true color replication that is critical for realistic digital creations and workflow efficiencies.

Super-Charged Performance Unleashed
Supporting the latest Intel processor technologies including the upcoming mobile quad core processor, the mobile workstation can be configured with up to 8 GB of memory with an additional 2 GB of Intel Turbo Memory. Lenovo also offers models with Intel® vPro™ technology for complete manageability. The mobile workstation can be equipped with dual internal hard drives, including solid state drive storage. The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation offers both the NVIDIA® Quadro® FX 2700M and 3700M Open GL graphics processors with up to 1 GB of dedicated video memory for exceptional graphics performance in a 17-inch mobile workstation. The hard drives can be configured for RAID 0 to help users access and save their data faster than traditional disk-writing methods, or users can choose RAID 1 for mirrored data redundancy.

The mobile workstation includes WiFi wireless connectivity. Additionally, users can connect to other devices wirelessly using mobile workstation models featuring Bluetooth and ultra wideband technology. Models supporting WiMAX will be available later this year.

New Heights in Display Technology and Multimedia Excellence
As the company’s first product with a 17-inch display, the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation delivers an unparalleled viewing experience with a combination of leading technologies. Its optional 400-nit WUXGA display provides up to twice the brightness of earlier ThinkPad mobile workstation models, and the 72 percent wide color gamut provides more than 50 percent greater color intensity. The high resolution, extreme brightness and wide color gamut coupled with the NVIDIA Quadro FX MXM graphics solution results in a user experience unequalled in a mobile workstation today. For external connectivity, the ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation provides support for Dual Link DVI, Display Port and VGA. A 7-in-1 multicard reader, and five USB ports give users flexibility in transferring and accessing digital content. Additionally, the workstation comes with an optional compact flash reader and Blu-ray™ DVD burner/player. An optional mini-dock extends the mobile workstation’s capabilities with eSATA and digital audio ports as well as convenient cabling for power, external monitors and peripherals.

Packed for extreme performance, the mobile workstation also features BIOS/port disablement and an optional fingerprint reader, a smartcard reader and hard drives with full-disk encryption. It will carry more than 20 certifications from independent software vendors.

“Our engineers use Lenovo ThinkStation workstations to help them design the next-generation Williams – Toyota FW31 race cars, aiming to make them faster and more agile, with greater performance than the competition,” said Chris Taylor, IT manager, AT&T Williams. “We’re
thrilled to see Lenovo deliver the workstation performance we’ve come to rely on – now in a mobile, portable solution.”

Pricing and Availability2
The ThinkPad W700 mobile workstation will be available beginning in September with models starting at $2,978. It is available through Lenovo Business Partners and www.lenovo.com.

Kensington Wireless USB Docking Station

Adam Gunderson — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 14:32:24 +0000

Are you sick of always having to plug-in and un-plug all your USB devices, monitor, and speakers every time you take your laptop somewhere? Now with Kensington’s Wireless USB Docking Station you wont have to. The Docking Station features; Five USB ports, Audio out, and DVI! All of this is connected via Wireless USB, as long as you are within the 15 foot range. Wireless USB adapters now readily available so expect to see more devices like this pop up.

Pandora: Avenging the Death of the GP2x

iRRVi — Wed, 16 Jul 2008 14:47:53 +0000

The Pandora (not to be confused with Pandora) is a handheld that is following along the path of the GP2x, open source and runs Linux. It was designed as an ultraportable open source computer with gaming controls. Apparently they were attempting “to make to make the ultimate open source handheld device.” And it seems they have,

GamePark Holdings has stopped selling GP2x units. Coming to replace it is this unit, Pandora (not made by GPH). Supposedly going to be released to the public in August for $330 US dollars. (and in other countries, for varying price.) Already there are dev units available, but you have to be able to produce something that they would want you to make. The specs are A LOT better than the GP2x was, even when it was overclocked, also better than the PSP.

The specs are:

ARM® Cortex™-A8 600Mhz+ CPU running Linux
430-MHz TMS320C64x+™ DSP Core
PowerVR SGX OpenGL 2.0 ES compliant 3D hardware
800×480 4.3″ 16.7 million colours touchscreen LCD
Wifi 802.11b/g, Bluetooth & High Speed USB 2.0 Host
Dual SDHC card slots & SVideo TV output
Dual Analogue and Digital gaming controls
43 button QWERTY and numeric keypad
Around 10+ Hours battery life

икони

OCZ Solid State Drives

Adam Gunderson — Wed, 09 Jul 2008 14:42:40 +0000

We have been reporting on SSDs for a while now. Its about time we get to let loose some good news for us consumers. OCZ has announced its new line of 2.5in Solid State Hard Drives which are the most affordable yet. They come in 32GB, 64GB, and 128GB and retail for $169, $259 and $479 respectively. We can now get ten times the speed of traditional hard drives with a fraction of the power consumption.