Android on netbooks might be the fad du jour, but it sounds like Routon’s still working the MID angle — the company just dropped word of two devices in the pipeline. The P760 and P730 are said to be in the “research phase,” so we don’t know too much about ‘em, but they certainly look nice, and they’re scheduled to hit sometime in the second half of the year. Honestly, though, we can’t help but wonder when and where we’re supposed to use these things — anyone craving a MID over a netbook or smartphone?
If all this talk of Windows 7 Release Candidate 1 has thoroughly piqued your interests, here’s something to tickle your fancy even more. Acer UK marketing director Bobby Waltkins has told Pocket-Init that the Z5600 all-in-one PC is due out October 23rd along with — and here’s the kicker — a genuine copy of Windows 7 pre-loaded on the device. That jibes with what Compal’s president said back in late February, but it’s hard to say for certain from the wording of his response whether he’s referring to the OS’s wide release or just his company’s 7-equipped desktop, although his talk of a 30-day upgrade free upgrade period might be suggesting the former. Until the boys in Redmond call it official, we’re just gonna mark our calendars very lightly with a pencil.
The Sixth European Satellite Competition is an annual search for the best application ideas for satellite navigation. In recent years, the winning innovations have included a rescue system for persons who have fallen overboard at sea; a mobile, GPS-supported social network; a mobile phone-based guidance system that aids more economical driving; a remote monitoring system for recovering heart patients; a Web 2.0 platform that delivers location-based videos in real time; and a flood prediction system. It’s not quite American Idol for entrepreneurs, but there are many similarities. Apart from the monetary prize, success in the competition paves the way to market for your talents, with significant partners. Entries open May 1…
This is funny because a) it’s ultra-realistic and b) it is precisely one of the main uses of the iPhone in many clubs all around the world. And you gotta love their on-your-face sales pitch:
Be the envy of in-crowd. Get ejected from nightclubs. Shock and amaze your so-called friends. Get oral sex from Z-list celebrities.
Cocaine in a paragraph, boys and girls. Yours for five British pounds ($7.40) and a jailbreak. [iSnort]
We’ve seen iPod hacks run the gamut, from the useful to the just plain absurd, but no matter how rough around the edges such a project may seem, we always get a kick out of the ingenuity and hard work involved. Today’s DIY wonder comes from a cat named Benjamin Kokes, who’s using his engineering chops to put together a GPS peripheral for the iPod nano. As the project stands right now, he’s taken a reference board sporting a Nemerix GPS and written a screen driver for it, allowing it to do its thing on the handheld. Apparently, all this bad boy is capable of doing right now is finding a satellite and displaying your latitude and longitude — but we’d like to see your old nano do that! Hit the read link for the whole, sordid tale in geek-tastic detail, or to speak with the developer if you’d like to give this a shot your own self. Tell him Engadget sent you.
Apple’s wants the iPhone to be the next major gaming platform, a fact the company isn’t making any bones about. This mission is reflected in the company’s latest hire–one Richard Teversham, the senior director of business, insights and strategy for Xbox’s European division.
Apple has never been known for gaming devices, a fact to which the mid-90s Pippin can sadly attest. With more than 9,000 games now available for download via the iTunes App store, however, such stigmas may become a thing of the past.
The real question here, I think is whether this hire also signals an improvement in the gaming capabilities of the company’s computers. The last couple of Macbook refreshes have seen a push toward increased graphic capabilities, but when it comes to titles, the Mac OS is still far behind the PC.
The base price for Falcon’s storied portable gaming system is just over $2,000 and in the past we’ve awarded it high ratings and even an Editors’ Choice for low-cost gaming systems. Which is why the price point of the latest model, the Falcon Northwest FragBox 2 (Core i7), is particularly baffling. What in the world would drive the price of a $2K system up to nearly $9,000? We did the math to tell you what you get for your (giant pile of) money.
FragBox: $2,068.27. Everyone’s favorite shoebox-size portable gaming system comes in an aluminum chassis with side windows to show off your premium parts and a carrying handle on top. There’s a Falcon Northwest logo cut out of the front with a 3-axis laser, with optional blue backlighting for a “very modern, but not flashy effect.”
Paint job: $797.06. That’s right. Nearly $800. But for your money, you get some pretty nifty racing stripes.
1,000 Watt power supply: $144.46. This is the the power supply Goldilocks would select, promising efficiency, little wire clutter, and a sizable 135mm fan for better cooling.
Core i7 Extreme 965 3.2 GHz: $1,031.12. Of course, we got the most souped-up processor. This quad-core CPU offers Hyper-Threading and “Turbo-Boost” on top of its 3.2GHz of Core i7 power.
Good ol’ Nokla, with its punny branding and utter shameless, has taken upon itself to build the touchscreen N98, based on a sketchy Nokia concept that was making the rounds last year and never materialized. There’s a 3-inch QVGA screen and dual-sim support, but things lean into the realm of Nokia parody with the complete lack of 3G or EDGE data. The worst part is that this phone actually looks kind of nice. All this unintentional humor can be yours for a mere $78.
One day, we’ll all have armless, boxy, nagging robots in the home to remind us to take our meds and that it’s time to watch Jeopardy! This is the dream behind GeckoSystems Intl. Corp.’s CareBot personal robot.
Under development for over a decade, the CareBot prototype is a mobile automaton that can easily, if very slowly, navigate among people and objects. It’ll follow grandma around the house, let other families watch her from afar (via internet-based video teleconferencing) and contact someone on the outside if grandma falls down and can’t get up. According to GeckoSystem company execs, it can also operate for up to 14 hours on a single charge.
The 12-inch HP Pavilion dv2 is designed to bridge (and exploit) the gap between netbooks and standard laptops. Its $750 price is true to that credo, though full-fledged budget laptops have been edging down into that space.
The dv2 is lightweight, it’s thin, and it’s billed by HP as a non-netbook–the first laptop to run AMD’s Neo processor. (The Neo is somewhat more powerful than the ubiquitous Intel Atom netbook processor, though still markedly inferior to even an Intel Core 2 Duo processor.) It has a 92%-sized keyboard and lacks a built-in optical drive, though it ships with an external drive. The dv2 does have discrete graphics and 4GB of RAM. Does it have enough going for it to pass muster?
