Acer introduces the Ferrari One Notebook

Dec. 14, 2009 (10:56 am) By: Brian Osborne

Acer is giving consumers an affordable way to purchase a Ferrari for the holidays. Though you can’t drive this Ferrari on the road you can definitely take it for a ride on the information superhighway. That’s because Acer is offering a notebook which has been inspired by racing legend Scudetto Ferrari.
The Ferrari One Notebook was originally announced as a launch machine with Windows 7 in October, but seems to be appearing now with a modified spec. It includes a 11.6in HD widescreen display while under the hood it is powered by an AMD Athlon 64 X2 dual core processor.Video for the laptop is handled by ATI Radeon™ HD 3200 Graphics which is supplemented by 4GB of DDR2 667MHz system memory. Windows 7 Home Premium also comes preloaded on the laptop’s 250GB hard drive. The notebook, which comes with a one year warranty, will retail for $599.99.
If you know a racing fan who is also a computer geek this Ferrari notebook will be the perfect gift. Acer did a great job of making sure the laptop is as sexy as it is powerful. That sounds like a Ferrari to me.

Read more at the Acer press release

Read More

FASTRA II: the world’s most powerful desktop supercomputer

Is it possible to fit the computing power of a large supercomputer cluster in the tight space of a PC case? In our research on image reconstruction we often have to perform large-scale scientific computations, which can easily take weeks on a normal PC. Last year, the FASTRA project was launched to develop a desktop supercomputer based on gaming hardware. Although highly successful, even FASTRA cannot provide the computational power required for our latest research projects. FASTRA needs a successor, which should be much more powerful, while maintaining the favorable properties of its older brother: green, mobile and inexpensive. For just 6000 euros, you can have 12TFLOPS of computing power at your fingertips.
Part of the Vision Lab of the University of Antwerp, the research group ASTRA focuses on the development of new computational methods for tomography. Tomography is a technique used in medical scanners to create three-dimensional images of the internal organs of patients, based on a large number of X-ray photos that are acquired over a range of angles. ASTRA develops new reconstruction techniques that lead to better reconstruction quality than classical methods.
One of the applications is 3D imaging of bone tissue in mice, which is commonly required in medicine research for osteoporosis. The structures of interest are at the resolution limits of current micro-CT scanners. We are working on advanced computational methods that allow for the computation of higher resolution images based on the same scanner data. The downside: computation time, which was already a major issue, increases even further.

Fortunately, these computations can be carried out in parallel on graphics hardware, much faster than when using normal CPUs. Graphical Processing Units (GPUs) are becoming more and more common now for all kinds of scientific computing. For suitable applications, a single GPU already has the computing power equivalent to a moderate CPU cluster. In collaboration with Tones.be and ASUS, We have now developed a PC design that incorporates 13 GPUs, resulting in a massive 12TFLOPS of computing power.
Although the system is up and running, we are still experiencing software stability issues, probably caused by an incompatibility between the video drivers and the BIOS and Linux modifications we had to use. Check out the blog for more details on the current status of FASTRA II.
The FASTRA II design contains six NVIDIA GTX295 dual-GPU cards, and one GTX275 single-GPU card. To fit all this hardware in a single PC case, a special cage was designed for the graphics cards, which are connected to the motherboard by flexible riser cables. To satisfy all 13 GPUs, The system has four power supplies. At full speed, it can outperform a moderately sized cluster of state-of-the-art CPUs. And guess what… this system costs less than 6000 euros!

News from

Read More

Google Phone is half as thick as the T-Mobile G1

Dec. 15, 2009 (12:41 pm) By: John Brownlee

One of the first details everyone heard about the HTC Nexus One, aka the “Google Phone” is just how lusciously thin it is.
That’s important in a smartphone. The trend in phones towards minimization has increasingly shifted away from making phones smaller on the x and y axis, which decreases the phone’s functionality, and shrinking its z axis, which makes a phone feel smaller and lighter without negatively impacting its ease of use.
So how thin is the Nexus One? At first, all we heard was that it was thinner than Apple’s iPhone, which is no mean trick, but now, thanks to an intrepid Google mole, we’ve got an even better idea of the Nexus One’s svelteness.
According to an image published by Boy Genius Report comparing the Nexus One lying side by side with the first Android phone, the T-Mobile G1, the Google Phone is only half the thickness of the latter phone. Since the G1 is around 17mm thick, it makes sense to estimate the Google Phone to be around 10mm.
Now, granted, the G1 was never described as svelte… but 10mm is still a significant decrease in depth from the iPhone. Thinness matters in smartphone design: it’s the new sexy. For a company as obsessed with thinness as Apple, this has to have their design departments scrambling to shrink down the iPod’s already tightly packed chassis.
Read more at Boy Genius Report

Read More

Apple, watch out: The FCC approves the Google Phone

Dec. 14, 2009 (3:40 pm) By: Christian Zibreg

Naysayers won’t like this: A Google-developed smartphone dubbed Nexus One has been given the FCC blessing, turning a rumored gizmo into a done deal.
When a product filing emerges in the Federal Communications Commission (FCC) database, it’s when rumors turn into reality. All electronic products must be checked for interference and approved by the FCC before they can be sold in the US. The FCC publicly posts approved filings on its website that media outlets use as an unofficial source of upcoming new products.
According to the FCC filing discovered by Engadget on Monday, the so-called Google Phone is actually a HTC device (code-named “Bravo”) with a model number PB99100, marketed as “NEXUSONE.” The document reveals a few “boring” engineering specs rather than Earth-shattering new features. Nexus One will contain Bluetooth 2.1 + EDR and 802.11b/g wireless networking, contrasting some rumors that have called for the fastest 802.11n standard. Storage-wise, Nexus One will accept microSD cards like almost any other Android-powered smartphone on the market. When it comes to the supported band frequencies, the filing is a bit ambiguous. The bands listed suggest that Nexus One will be a quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE phone supporting both UMTS and high-speed 3HSUPA for 2Mbps uplink and 7.2Mbps downlink, both available on T-Mobile and AT&T.
However, the publication suggested that AT&T may not be supported because the test lab incorrectly listed 815-880MHz frequencies as part of band VIII. Engadget later updated the original article with the following note:

Only WCDMA Band IV was tested in the Part 22H / 24E / 27 Report, leading us to believe that the Nexus One is going to be HSPA 900 / 1700 / 2100 (a pretty common tri-band 3G setup) plus quadband EDGE. Sorry, AT&T, but that’s how the cookie crumbles.

Check out our list of eight HTC phones that you’ll crave for in 2010 for more juicy details about the Android 2.1-powered Nexus One. You may also want to browse Engadget’s exclusive image gallery showcasing the phone’s sleek appearance.
Read more at Engadget.

Christian’s Opinion

The FCC’s approval of the Nexus One leaves little room to doubt the existence of what the media has pompously dubbed a Google Phone. All that remains now is for Google’s marketing folks to press the “launch” button. With the FCC filing now public and the CES 2010 almost upon us, I bet that Nexus One will launch in January 2010, as most rumors have predicted. I believe that the question of the bands listed raised in Engadget’s report will soon be sorted out. Frankly, I’d find it hard to believe Google would limit the flagship device to T-Mobile’s network only.
T-Mobile is the nation’s fourth-largest wireless carrier that reported 33.4 million users in the third quarter. Should Nexus One launch on both T-Mobile and AT&T (81.6 million subscribers reported for the third quarter), the device will be tapping the potential addressable market of nearly 120 million subscribers. The figure represents roughly 40 percent of the nation’s population and it also eclipses Verizon Wireless’ 89 million subscribers reported in the third quarter. On the other hand, it’s quite possible that AT&T wouldn’t risk its cosy relationship with Apple by greeting a possible iPhone killer on its network. If it does, then it won’t be too long before the iPhone hits T-Mobile’s US network, as suggested in an earlier report.

Get the news from this site

Read More

Foxconn releases two sexy Bamboo PC cases

Dec. 11, 2009 (12:16 pm) By: John Brownlee

Although the innards of computers are about as toxic as ever, cases are getting more and more environmentally friendly thanks to consumer pressure. One particular material that cases are increasingly being manufactured from is bamboo. Bamboo not only looks good, but it’s also durable and quickly replenishable, since it grows so quickly.
The latest company to jump on the bamboo bandwagon is Foxconn, whose latest two bamboo desktop cases are just indescribably sexy, even if they look a little bit like set props from Gilligan’s Island.
The first case is a mid-tower called the Bamboo One, which replaces the front cover — normally made of plastic — with a darkly stained bamboo wood. It’s not without its faults: the drive bay covers aren’t cut from the same bamboo as the front piece as a whole, so the patterns and colors don’t quite match. But it is undeniably cute to see those vendor stickers slapped upon a wooden case.
The other chassis is for home theater enthusiasts looking to build an HTPC system, called the Bamboo II TMX-355. Unlike the Bamboo One, the smaller chassis has a bamboo front cover cut from one piece so it all matches.
I’d be tempted to drop money on one or both of these. The HTPC oriented Bamboo II would look particularly good in my entertainment center. Too bad that Foxconn reports that both chassises sold out quickly. Hopefully, they’ll remake them and release them in the States soon.
Read more at PCPop

Cocok banget buat bamboonet ;)

Read More

Rad Blaster mini boombox plays tunes and stores files

Dec. 15, 2009 (2:42 pm) By: Doug Osborne

It is often said that good things come in small packages. Take for example this little gem of a device called the Rad Blaster. Indeed, it looks like a toy boombox you might find at the bottom of a cereal box or kid’s meal. But don’t let its diminutive size fool you. This gadget is actually a MP3 player and is chock full with features to help you take and make your music on the go.
Loaded with a 1 inch (128×64) color OLED screen, built-in high quality speakers and a 3.5mm earphone jack, the Rad Blaster can play most audio formats like MP3, WMA, WAV, FLAC, APE along with AAC. And to make the music sound even better, the boombox even features multiple playback modes as well as 7 EQ settings to get the most out of your tunes.
Loading files onto the boombox is a breeze. Just detach the right speaker and it serves a 2GB Flash drive that you can use to store music or other files. Also – if you ever feel the need to bust out a few rhymes, the Rad Blaster has you covered with a built-in microphone and record switch to help save those lyrics for a later time.

All this in a rechargeable device that can hang easily from a necklace that is even included with the kit. The Rad Blaster is portable, fun looking, functional and also fashionable. What more could you want in a unique MP-3 player?
They are available now from SubUrban Toys for just $59.99
Read more at Rad Blaster.

Read More