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 They're still pretty hard to come by 'round these parts, but it looks like the folks at UMPC Fever have managed to track down one of MSI's shiny new X-Slim X340 ultraportables and, like any good citizen of the internet, they've promptly gone and ripped it apart. As you might expect, there aren't exactly a ton of surprises, but it looks like anyone hoping to do a quick and easy 3G upgrade is out of luck, unless, as SlashGear points out, they're willing to ditch the built-in WiFi to free up a PCI-E slot. Hit up the read link below for the complete, not always pretty breakdown. [Via Slash Gear] Filed under: Laptops MSI X-Slim X340 gets dissected originally appeared on Engadget on Sat, 25 Apr 2009 00:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Lazarus be praised! The last time we heard about ASUS' P565 was back in February, when we mourned its sad and supposed demise. Turns out that's not the case, as we've now got a hands-on with the GPS / PDA phone from Polish site ASUSPDA, who claims (at least via machine translation) that it's been on sale for several months. The plethora of product / unboxing / interface pics look mighty legit, and as for the impressions, the reviewer seems very quite fond of it. Compliments are given for its general performance and design, though he does note the Glide interface isn't as seamless as you'd expect with a 816MHz processor inside. If you're interested in finding out for yourself, it looks like you can order the GSM / WCDMA-enabled device from Qbit for around $566. [Thanks, Jackob] Read - Unboxing Read - Product page Filed under: Cellphones ASUS P565 apparently available, unboxed originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 20:49:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Color us intrigued. The gang at SuperSite for Windows have revealed what they know about a pretty awesome Windows 7 feature: XP Mode, a virtualized copy of Windows XP with Service Pack 3. It'll reportedly be a free download for Professional and Ultimate Edition users, a shame it won't be coming to all versions. Unlike many other Virtual PC options, the environment won't require a separate workspace so you can run the individual apps as you would alongside those native to 7 -- in the example pictured, that's Word 2003 in XP mode next to Word 2007. It all sounds vaguely similar to the XP compatibility mode found in Vista, but if we're understanding this right, XPM should make legacy compatibility much less of a hassle. We haven't heard any reports of it being found in the leaked Release Candidate build, so if you're antsy to get a glimpse now, hit up the read link for a gallery. [Thanks, Axel] Filed under: Desktops, Laptops Virtualized Windows XP coming to Windows 7 Professional and Ultimate users originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 19:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments You may think that the Navy's just the baby brother to the two other US Armed Forces, but its weapon development record definitely shows otherwise. Just over two years after building an 8-Megajoule railgun, the branch has penned two $7 million checks to defense contractors Boeing and Raytheon for the design and development of a free-electron laser (FEL). For what it's worth, such a device has been yearned for since a day after the dawn of time, as unlike chemical-based lasers, the FEL would be 100 percent electric and easier to move. For those unaware,this stormy petrel of a weapon would be used to blast down missiles in mid-flight, all while putting on a pretty impressive light show. 'Course, the Navy must also figure out how to build a massive energy generating ship in order to use it, but let's not get too far ahead of ourselves here, okay? [Image courtesy of AIP] Filed under: Misc. Gadgets, Science Navy shells out for development of missile-killing free-electron laser originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 18:09:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Wow, it's been a great day for camera nerds -- the Nikon D5000 got a ship date, the Canon Rebel T1i started arriving in stores, and now the Panasonix Lumix DMC-GH1's been unboxed. That's a hat trick of hotly-anticipated DSLRs* right there, and the GH1 might be the most anticipated of the bunch. Sadly for would-be importers, the Japanese version here can't be set to display English menus, but we can still gawk at the pretty pictures, including an amazing shot of the lens cap entitled 'The Engadget Product Photo Effect.' Hit the read link for the full set, including some test shots. *Yes, we know GH1's not technically a DSLR -- what would you call it? [Thanks, Guillermo] Filed under: Digital Cameras Panasonic Lumix DMC-GH1 gets unboxed, takes some test shots originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 17:34:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Nothing is completely official just yet, but Pocket-lint is reporting that its inside source at NVIDIA has 'confirmed' that the initial batch of Ion-based netbooks will be announced at the big Computex trade show at the beginning of June, and that the first few netbooks could start shipping 'as early as July.' Of course, there's no word on any specific companies involved just yet, with the source only going so far as to say that the announcements will come from some 'key players.' Acer would seem to be about as close to a sure thing as there is, however, considering that it just recently launched the first Ion-based nettop, the AspireRevo, and that it's never passed up an opportunity to roll out yet another new nettbook in the past. Filed under: Laptops First Ion-based netbooks reportedly on track for June debut originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Look: there are purses, and then there are purses. Well, this one is none of those things. It's a decent looking bag to begin with, but then... well, things get really fantastic. Jeri Ellsworth took it upon herself to cram a Nintendo-on-a-chip and a Commodore 64-on-a-chip (her own creation) into the bag, along with an LCD. Then she connected up some NES controllers, which are velcroed onto the outside of the bag. The result looks awesome, and is also actually useable. We haven't heard anything about these guys being offered for sale, but we're fairly certain that the august House of Dior will probably be ringing her up any day now. Seriously: this thing is a work of art. There's a video of Jeri talking about her creation after the break. [Via Make] Continue reading Nintendo / C64 purse is runway-caliber fashion accessory Filed under: Gaming, Wearables Nintendo / C64 purse is runway-caliber fashion accessory originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Microsoft's Surface has been shipping out to corporate customers for a year now, but we haven't heard much about the backend setup of the $17,000 table -- sure, we know it's fun when it's up and running all those custom apps, but what's it like after the unboxing? Incredibly frustrating, says FD kinesis's Gordon Miller. Hired to implement a Surface solution for a client, Miller and his team first spent 30 minutes on the phone with MS phone support trying to locate the power socket, and another lengthy period of time poking at an unresponsive touchscreen before realizing that the Surface doesn't respond to touch out of the box. Yep, you read that right -- Microsoft's $17,000 big-ass touchscreen table requires a keyboard and mouse to set up, something which isn't noted in any of the marketing or manuals. Ouch. Hopefully that'll get fixed before this thing ships to consumers in 2011, but in the meantime, hit the read link for the entire harrowing tale -- it's a pretty fun read for a Friday afternoon. P.S.- We actually talked to Gordon on the phone for a quick minute and he said that Microsoft's been in touch about the experience -- he's working on an new post about that which we'll link when it goes up. [Via Daring Fireball] Filed under: Desktops Microsoft Surface setup impressions: 'filled with mind-bogglingly frustrating usability issues' originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Technically, OCZ outed this here PCI-Express SSD way back at CeBIT in March, but it's just now making things super official. Now available with a fresh face and hard specifications, the Z-Drive is aiming to take on wares by firms like Fusion-io and provide blistering transfer rates to anyone who buys in. Essentially, this device removes the SATA bottleneck by employing the PCIe architecture and four Vertex controllers configured in four-way RAID 0 array. Curious about performance? Read speeds can hit upwards of 510MB/sec, while write speeds top out at 480MB/sec -- plenty respectable in our eyes. OCZ's planning to push these out in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities, and while final pricing is still being kept under wraps, we're told that it'll be kept 'competitive.' Filed under: Storage OCZ gets official with Z-Drive PCI-Express SSD originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments Two years after we thought it was all over, it sounds like the saga of Sony, Immersion, and the rumblin' DualShock has yet another chapter: a New Jersey electrical engineer named Craig Thorner is now suing Sony and its attorneys, claiming that he was more or less duped out of one of his patents in a shady deal designed to help Sony and PDP/Electrosource beat Immersion's cases against them. Oh yeah, it's a tangled mess -- Thorner first signed over his patent to Immersion, hoping to score a little slice of royalty pie when the lawsuit settled, but then took it back when he decided Immersion wasn't pursuing it hard enough and signed it over to PDP/Electrosource, who promised him $150,000. So where does Sony come in? Thorner says PDP and Sony were teamed up to beat Immersion, and that Sony was secretly the one licensing the patent but trying to remain out of the picture to keep the price down -- and he's got proof, in the form of a $150,000 wire transfer between the two companies. Not only that, but Sony's attorneys apparently promised Thorner that they could 'wear two hats' during negotiations and represent both him and Sony, which is ten kinds of shady. You can guess what happened next: Sony lost, PDP settled, and Immersion sued Thorner for breaking his agreement -- and Sony's attorneys didn't help him defend the lawsuit. Did we say ten kinds of shady? Eleven kinds. Of course, it's doubtful that Thorner is totally innocent here, so it'll be interesting to see how Sony responds, but at this point we're treating the DualShock 3 as a miracle of nature and leaving it at that. [Via Joystiq] Read - GamePolitics article (with PDF of the complaint) Read - Law.com article Filed under: Gaming Sony sued for cheating man out of rumble patents originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments It's not exactly a huge surprise considering that the Cupcake-powered HTC Magic is confirmed to be coming out May 5th, but T-Mobile Germany's website now looks to have also confirmed that the Cupcake update itself will also be rolling out to G1 users sometime the same month -- in Germany, at least. That'll of course bring with it the much-desired on-screen keyboard, along with video recording, stereo Bluetooth support, and some new integration with Picasa and YouTube, among other fixes and additions. As you can see above, the update will 'skillfully' install itself on your G1 as soon as it's available, so you needn't do anything except go on about your daily business in the meantime, or check the interwebs furiously for a means of jumping the cue. [Via Talk Android] Filed under: Cellphones T-Mobile Germany website indicates May launch for Cupcake originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments In case you aren't hip to the Twittersphere, Josh, Nilay, Paul and Engadget's own Twitter bot put out their feelers for listener questions this week, and got a lot of great material for discussion. Inquisitive minds wanted to know which wild conjectures these fine men believe about the Zune HD, how particularly evil Time Warner Cable is, and other matters related to Chinese phone manufacturers and The End Times. If you failed to seize upon this opportunity to ask, or found your own question heartlessly ignored, make sure to take advantage of the various avenues of contact listed below and ask away! Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller Producer: Trent Wolbe Song: Ghostbusters 00:02:36 - Is this the Zune HD?00:23:08 - Time Warner Cable lays out broadband capping plans, says $150 for 'unlimited' use00:28:25 - Time Warner Cable to axe DOCSIS 3.0 trials without tiered billing?00:33:53 - Time Warner and Embarq can't compete with city-owned ISP, trying to outlaw it00:47:37 - Ugobe files for bankruptcy, Pleo facing extinction00:53:28 - Keepin' it real fake01:09:03 - T-Mobile Sidekick LX 2009 video hands-on Subscribe to the podcast [ iTunes] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in iTunes (enhanced AAC). [ RSS MP3] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in MP3) to your RSS aggregator and have the show delivered automatically. [ RSS AAC] Add the Engadget Podcast feed (in enhanced AAC) to your RSS aggregator. [ Zune] Subscribe to the Podcast directly in the Zune Marketplace Download the podcast LISTEN (MP3)
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Contact the podcast 1-888-ENGADGET or podcast (at) engadget (dot) com. Filed under: Podcasts Engadget Podcast 143 - 04.24.2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments Attention, Orange and the random supplier who's manufacturing these ripoffs: the world has moved on from the original HTC Touch's design language. Hell, we've actually moved on twice now; once to the Touch Diamond, and once to the Touch Diamond2. On that note, we're not sure what's possessing a Western European carrier to release a cheesy rip of a such a well-known late model phone -- whose manufacturer Orange has a great relationship with, no less -- other than the fact that they're looking to give entry-level customers a really inexpensive way to get into the touchscreen game. Indeed, the prepaid device will apparently run just £48.50 (about $71) when it launches, but in return, you're only getting a 1.3 megapixel camera, presumably EDGE data, and the mocking of everyone you've ever known -- including your own mother, who we understand uses an actual HTC Touch. [Via mobile-review] Update: If T-Mobile UK is more your style, turns out they're offering the very same device as the Vairy Touch. Thanks, everyone! Filed under: Cellphones Keepin' it real fake, part CCI: dirty Vegas plays Orange UK originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments This whole global economic crisis, and its resulting massive loss of jobs got us thinking. We here at Engadget didn't want to stand helplessly by, announcing every new round of misery without giving anything back -- so we decided to take the opportunity to spread a little positivity. We'll be handing out a new gadget every day (except for weekends) to lucky readers until we run out of stuff or companies stop sending things. Today we've got an 500GB Toshiba USB 2.0 portable hard drive, complete with a swank black / white motif and a nearly unlimited amount of room for, um, whatever the heck you want. Read the rules below (no skimming -- we're omniscient and can tell when you've skimmed) and get commenting! Hooray for free stuff!
Huge thanks to Toshiba for providing the gear!
The rules: - Leave a comment below. Any comment will do, but if you want to share your proposal for 'fixing' the world economy, that'd be sweet too.
- You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you'll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
- If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you'll be fine.
- Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don't make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
- Winner will be chosen randomly. The winner will receive one (1) 500GB Toshiba USB 2.0 portable HDD, model number HDDR500E03X. Approximate retail value is $139.99.
- If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of the end of the contest. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen.
- Entries can be submitted until Friday, April 24th, at 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
- Full rules can be found here.
Filed under: Announcements, Storage Engadget's recession antidote: win a 500GB Toshiba USB 2.0 portable HDD! originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:00:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds. Permalink | Email this | Comments
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