Developages - Development and Technology Blog

Filed under: Laptops

Toshiba aimed at the suits yesterday with the introduction of its Satellite Pro S300 and S300M, and today it’s finishing things off in one fell swoop. The Satellite U405 (pictured), Satellite M305, Satellite M305D, Satellite ｋ, Satellite A305, Satellite L305 and Satellite L355 are all being refreshed today in order to cram in newer (read: zippier) Intel / AMD CPUs, face recognition software, USB Sleep-and-Charge ports, an eSATA combo port, built-in FM tuner and ATI Hybrid CrossFireX graphics in select models. Outside of a few expected increases in speed, capacity and capability, there’s nothing here to really cheer about — particularly if you were never hot with passion about the designs in the first place.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Laptops

Hard to believe it’s been over two years since we wrapped our noodles around the Intel Eduwise and the OLPC XO, and while the average Atom-powered netbook has practically swiped the limelight, the low-cost laptop still holds a special place in our hearts. So it’s with great joy that we present this mystical tour through the genealogy of the Classmate PC. On hand are a number of prototypes, a non-working mockup and a version of the Eduwise that actually retains the bulk of its hardware in the rear of the LCD. Heck, there’s even a bright blue convertible in there that could probably give Doom a run for its money. Unfortunately, the writeup is in translated English, but chances are the images will do the bulk of the speaking to your soul.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops

With all these nettops, netbooks and plain ole motherboards flying every which-away, it’s hard to say if Portwell’s Atom-based nano-ITX board really is the first, but it’s close enough to count in our book. Utilizing all sorts of legerdemain and black magic, the engineers at Portwell were able to craft a Linux-friendly mobo that measures just 4.72- x 4.72- x 0.65-inches and supports Intel’s Silverthorne Atom while including six USB 2.0 ports, embedded audio and a gigabit Ethernet jack. The Nano-8044 can be ordered in two flavors — the Z530, which packs a 1.6GHz CPU, or the Z510, which clocks in at 1.1GHz. As you could likely guess, this one’s aimed primarily at point-of-sale machines, digital signage devices and other commercial applications, and the sub-10-watt power draw should keep energy costs to a minimum. Oh, and it should totally play Doom in a pinch.

[Via LinuxDevices]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

AMD’s breakup into two separate companies is certain to have wide-ranging impact in the industry, and unsurprisingly, Intel’s among the first to react — it’s warning that it has “serious questions about this transaction” as it relates to its patent cross-licensing agreement with AMD and that it’ll will “vigorously protect” its intellectual property rights. That’s about as aggro a patent attorney can get without coming to your house and peeing on the lawn (or, uh, filing a lawsuit), so we’ll see how this shakes out — for its part, AMD says that it’s taken the deal into account, and that it’ll “continue respecting Intel’s intellectual property rights, just as we expect them to respect ours.” That’s a respect throwdown, right there — you gonna take that, Intel?

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Laptops

Sure, we’ve seen projects like SplashTop boot a stripped Linux build quickly, but Intel engineers at the recent Linux Plumbers Conference took things a little father last Thursday, starting up modified versions of Fedora and Intel’s own Moblin Linux on an SSD-equipped Eee PC in just five seconds. That’s all the way to an idle CPU and disk, not cheating and starting a window manager while background services thrash in the background, mind you — and it’s fast enough that the splash screen was removed from both distros. The changes are being sent back to the Moblin and Fedora trunks, but if you’re curious, a detailed overview of the changes awaits at the read link.

[Via SlashGear]

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Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Storage

Kingston has announced it’s teaming up with Intel — new to the SSD market itself — to market flash memory-based drives for laptops and servers. This is a bold move for Kingston, which is usually known to stick to mature markets; clearly, the company sees the technology’s potential. The effort “almost flies in the face of the usual Kingston model,” said spokesman Dave Leong. “We are large and in charge!” (OK, so we made that last part up.) This is all set to pop off in Q4 2008 — Samsung, you’ve been warned.

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Original post by Joseph L. Flatley

Filed under: Wireless

Back in June, we heard that Sprint would be going live with its XOHM WiMAX service in Baltimore, um, this month. As of today, it’s pretty clear that the service won’t be rolled out fully before October dawns, but at least some progress is being made. Based on a survey sent out to select (read: lucky) Baltimore-area residents, it seems that Intel and Sprint are willing to give away free laptops in order to trial the XOHM service in the city. Unfortunately, the lappies won’t even be given out until late October, and the trial itself is set to last 30 days, so frankly, we’ll be lucky to see XOHM hit the general populace before Santa takes to the friendly skies. Though, why are we not surprised?

[Thanks, Anonymous]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Home Entertainment, Transportation

While the world waits to see the first Android cellphone revealed in New York later today, others are hard at work extending the reach of the open-source OS beyond just handsets. John Bruggeman, chief marketing officer at Wind River Systems says, “We’re starting to see Android get designed in on devices that extend way beyond the phone–things that might go in the automobile or things that might go in the home.” Bruggeman then collects his wits and adds, “I don′t want to pre-announce any design wins, I think you′ll see them in 2009. I would be shocked if you didn′t.” Indeed. After all, Intel and Wind River (both Android Open Handset Alliance members) have been working on an open, Linux-based car-computing platform since at least May of this year — so a switch to Android would be an over-simplified snap. It certainly makes sense for the hardware independent — thanks to Java-based Dalvik virtual machine — OS, middleware, and apps to spread throughout a consumer electronics industry lacking a common develoment platform. Whether this occurs by Google’s design or just a happy by-product of Android’s momentum remains to be seen.

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Original post by Thomas Ricker

Filed under: Desktops

Cloud computing concepts for netbook / nettop-sized machines aren’t all new, but TechNovus is looking to jump in head first with its Nova Navigator. The tiny machine gets powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU and possesses no hard drive within; instead, it utilizes a 512Kbps or higher internet connection to access 50GB of online applications / storage. The unit runs Windows (Server) and SUSE Linux side-by-side, and aside from a few core apps (Firefox, Skype and a media player), everything else is ran from the cloud. As it stands, the box is scheduled to launch next month in India for around $199 plus a $15 to $20 monthly subscription, though there’s no word as to when it’ll be launched in other nations.

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Wait, what’s this? Intel’s shipping the dual-core Atom 330? Despite reports that the 1.6GHz chip wouldn′t actually leave the dock until Q4, Intel itself has stepped up to ensure everyone that it’s getting ‘em out in ̭. The brief points out the obvious — you know, that the 330 was designed with nettops in mind — while also confirming that it boasts 1MB of L2 cache, an 8-watt TDP and support for DDR2 667. So yeah, let’s get these in some systems, shall we?

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Intel’s Atom processor and the netbook are the silicon equivalent of Lindsay Lohan and Samantha Ronson; they’re inseparable. Naturally we can’t wait for the dual-core Atom 330 to cozy up to the next generation of economical portables, but have to wait a bit as it’s being soldered exclusively into tiny desktops at the moment, like the one tech site The Guru of 3D just ran through a series of benchmarks. The posted results could have been interesting had they compared its performance to the single-core Atom 230 rather than AMD’s (relatively) heavy-hitting Athlon 4850 X2 and Phenom 9850 — not exactly apples to apples. We′ll just have to assume it’s roughly twice as fast on the right apps, all that for only twice the power consumption. That’s still only a measly 8-watts!

[Via The Inquirer]

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Original post by Tim Stevens

Filed under: Desktops

While some companies are already out there promising Core i7-based gear, we haven′t yet heard many official specifics about the actual processors that’ll be at the heart of them (at least not since their earlier Nehelem days). That’s now changed in a pretty big way, however, with some supposedly authentic leaked materials revealing the complete spec list and some pricing details. Apparently, you can expect Core i7 920, 940 and 965 models to roll out in November, with ‘em clocking in at 2.66GHz, 2.93GHz, and 3.2GHz, respectively. Each, as expected, are quad-core, 45nm processors, and each boast the same 8MB of shared L3 cache, 256kb of L2 cache per core, and TDP rating of 130W. No word on individual unit pricing just yet, but it looks like the Core i7 920 will run $284 in quantities of 1,000, with Core i7 940 upping things considerably to $562, and the “extreme” Core i7 965 demanding a hefty $999.

[Thanks, kris120890]

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Original post by Donald Melanson

Small is cool, and smaller is even better!

No doubt inspired by the drive to create the $100 laptop, netbooks (teeny, tiny laptops) have been coming on strong.

The Aspire One (photo at left) and the Eee PC 1000 are popular options. This is a HOT segment right now.

And you’re right that the little Atom chip from Intel is awesome.

At 2W max power consumption (compared to something like 35W for a Core 2 Duo laptop chip), with a big 6-cell battery, you can easily get five or six hours of battery life. 

Read a lot more about this at The Dawn of Atom.

Tags: aspire one, atom, eee, intel, netbook

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Original post by nafiz

Filed under: Desktops

C′mon, who here doesn’t want their very own supercomputer to do, um, whatever they want with? In an effort to make sure every man, woman and child has an absurdly powerful number cruncher in their home (let’s go with OSPP, or One Supercomputer Per Person), Microsoft has tag-teamed with the fabled Cray in order to “drive high productivity computing into the mainstream.” The Cray CX1 Supercomputer comes loaded with Windows HPC Server 2008 and incorporates up to 8 nodes and 16 Intel Xeon CPUs (dual- or quad-core); additionally, it boasts up to 4TB of internal storage, 64GB of memory per node and interoperates nicely with Linux. The Cͱ is said to be the most affordable supercomputer offered by Cray (not to mention the “world’s highest-performing computer that uses standard office power”), but it′ll still run you anywhere between $25,000 to well over $60,000. Chump change, right?

[Via NetworkWorld]

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Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Desktops

Thanks to Google’s Chrome and Microsoft’s IE8, discrete processes are the new hotness, and more apps running simultaneously on your desktop is a great excuse to buy a CPU with more cores! On cue, Intel has officially launched its new Xeon 7400 processor, hitting 2.6 GHz on six cores and boasting an advertised 43 percent jump in performance over the lowly quad-core 7300, which had only half the 7400’s 16MB of L3 cache. Impressive stuff, especially considering a bonus 10 percent drop in power consumption, but at $2729 for the top of the line model it’s not exactly consumer-oriented. Perhaps Intel could interest you in a nice Core С?

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Original post by Tim Stevens