By Steve Seguin - Source : Tom's Hardware

HP has unveiled three new 12-inch notebooks Monday based on Intel’s new Centrino 2 platform

HP has announced three new ultra-portable notebooks Monday with the introduction of their HP EliteBook 2530p, HP EliteBook 2730p, and HP Compaq 2230s. All three new notebooks are based on Intel’s new Centrino 2 platform.

First up is the slim HP Elitebook 2530p, featuring a 12.1-inch widescreen LED display, military grade build quality, and a slew of storage options including SSD, dual hard drives, and optical drive. The notebook weighs in at just 3.19 pounds, has a 0.99-inch thickness, and offers the road warrior a durable anodized aluminum exterior and magnesium shell that HP calls DuraCase.

The HP EliteBook 2730p has a bit of a twist to it, as it’s a pen-based tablet PC with a 12.1-inch widescreen display and 1.11-inch thickness. For those looking for a tablet PC may enjoy the added jog dial, touchpad, tablet buttons, and optional 12 hour battery life. It weighs in at 3.74 pounds, with many of the same options as the HP Elitebook 2530p.

Both the two HP EliteBook notebooks mentioned feature Intel’s ULV and LV Core 2 Duo processors, Intel’s GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics, Wi-Fi, WWAN, Bluetooth, webcam with business card reading software, and spill resistant keyboards. The HP EliteBook 2530p and HP EliteBook 2730p should be available early September, fashionably late for the back-to-school shopper, and priced starting at $1,499 and $1,670, respectively.

Rounding off the set of new notebooks is the already available and more affordable HP Compaq 2230s. It has a 12.1" widescreen display, weighs in at 4.07 pounds, and has both Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. The graphics are also powered by the new Intel GMA 4500MHD, which won’t satisfy most casual gamers, but is a great option if on a tight budget. Its pricing starts at $999.

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By Jane McEntegart - Source : Tom's Guide

The self-professed “librarian” of a global Internet child abuse ring has been issued with an indeterminate sentence based on a minimum of three years and nine months. Following this period Phillip Thompson will be eligible for parole.

27 year old Thompson’s label of librarian is in reference to the near quarter of a million child abuse images he had on his home computer. Police raided the man’s home in February after an undercover investigation stretching back as far as May 2007 led them to Thompson.

According to the Times, Thompson was forum moderator of an Internet-based child abuse ring that spanned across 33 countries, including the U.S., Canada, Australia and the UK. His position of authority allowed him to copy images to his own computer. His arrest led to the biggest investigation for child pornography that the United Kingdom has ever seen, which has led to a total of 350 suspects worldwide.

Apparently the website Thompson moderated was mainly for posting images of children that weren’t quite illegal. Once individuals posted comments on the photos, members would contact them through more secure channels to share more explicit content.

"He was a senior administrator for a pedophile website and was effectively a librarian for the storing and distribution of indecent images of children," Detective Sergeant Rebecca Driscoll told Reuters.

The discovery of 241,000 images from the culprit’s computer is one of the largest seizures of indecent photos of children in the UK.

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By Marcus Yam - Source : Tom's Hardware

Not to let Apple carry on unchallenged in the super-ultra-portable notebook segment, Lenovo today quietly announced the next evolution of its X300 notebook — the X301.

Called the X301, the notebook retains its predecessor’s thin and light form starting at less than three pounds, one-inch thin and 13.3-inch LED backlit display. Lenovo likes to call it the “thinnest and lightest full-function notebook in its class,” which even if contested, still means the X301 is among the very best for travelers.

Those seeking for better battery performance for computing away from the socket will find a lot to like. The X301 will make use of the latest Intel Core 2 Duo ultra low voltage processors at 1.2 GHz (U9300) and 1.4GHz (U9400).

Another big aid to battery life is the introduction of decently sized solid-state drives. Both 65 GB and 128 GB SSDs will be available for order in September.

“Lenovo continues to push the technology envelope by giving road warriors the latest enhancements in solid state drive storage and digital display technologies with the new ThinkPad X301 notebook PC,” said Sam Dusi, vice president, worldwide notebook product marketing, at Lenovo. “This announcement extends our commitment to blending ultra-portability and functionality, and equipping today’s business users with the most advanced, highest-performing computing tools.”

Also new to the X301 is support for DisplayPort, which Lenovo hopes to market its virtues alongside the ultra-thin DVD burner as a media solution. With support for both DisplayPort and VGA, users can utilize multiple displays.

For those who must stay connected wirelessly, Lenovo offers “improved uplink performance by up to 250 percent” when compared to previous models with AT&T mobile broadband. Models supporting WiMAX will be available later this year.

Select X301 models will even prevent their users from getting lost with built-in GPS hardware, though it is unknown which software package will be called upon for navigation.

Pricing for models of the ThinkPad X301 notebook starts at approximately $2,599 and will be available on August 26.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Hardware

Opinion - IDF is just around the corner and Intel will provide a flood of new information about its upcoming Nehalem (Core i7) processor as well as its 32 nm and 22 nm successors, new architectures such as Larrabee, the ready-to-launch WiMax mobile platform, CE processors such as Tolapai and new partners such as Dreamworks. IDF’s marketing machine typically buries anything from AMD, but this year, AMD is reverting to a strategy from the past: AMD is setting up its camp in a hotel nearby in an effort to balance Intel’s messages. A first briefing discounting Intel’s current product line was given to journalists earlier today. And if the tone of this briefing is any indication, then Nehalem feels like Core 2 Duo all over again.

If you are somewhat interested in what Intel is up to these days, next week’s IDF should bring very few surprises. The new Core i7 processor, the first chip based on Nehalem architecture, will debut in desktop flavors in the fourth quarter, there will be more Nehalem mobile and server chips in 2009; there will be more details on the company’s much discussed 2009/2010; Larrabee graphics card; we will see USB 3.0 and WiMax demonstrations; Intel will announce that it is now producing more 45 nm than 65 nm processors and it will tell attendees that its mobile CPUs are overtaking desktop CPUs in terms of production volume. There will be plenty of information of future technologies that we can expect to see within the next four to five years. In fact we hear that the information coming out of IDF Fall will exceed any other previous IDF and we expect Intel to take full advantage to make its pitch to the 5000-or-so developers and a few hundred journalists from around the world.

There is not much AMD can do during this time, but I understand that it is a bit awkward for AMD executives and the marketing department to keep quiet and simply watch as Intel conquers the front pages of tech publications for a full week. Rather than wait for journalists to check back with AMD and ask the green team’s take on Intel’s claims, the company this year decided to take a pro-active approach again and relay its message before the feeding frenzy begins.

So, what is AMD’s message?

1. It’s all about graphics

Note to AMD: We got it. A great processor alone does not make you happy anymore. I believe most journalists out there are absolutely with AMD on this one, but repeating this story over and over does not convince us even more than we already are. There is nothing new to this story for IDF, other than I noticed a new marketing term for visual quality - "Eye Definition." I levae that up to you how well this one works.

AMD’s balanced platform approach consisting of a good-enough processor and strong graphics are probably the best weapon AMD currently has against Intel. As long as Intel graphics chipsets remain weak, this is AMD’s most effective pitch. However, the Radeon 4800 was just announced, so there is really nothing new from AMD and the company did not provide anything about what may come after the 4800 series. The company needs to follow up on this one quickly to keep its traction in the market.

2. Larrabee: Discussing a paper product

Nvidia already zeroed in on Larrabee and sent a document questioning Larrabee’s product claims to journalists. AMD now chimes in and asks questions about Larrabee’s scalability, power consumption and a possible failing software model for the new architecture. AMD’s executive said that "Larrabee feels like the next Itanium" to them, which may be a bit early to say, since we really haven’t seen a product yet. Also, AMD failed to mention that it does not have the best track record with choosing a software model for its stream processors either - the software model was changed twice within the past 12 months.

Attacks on Larrabee are to be expected and Nvidia in fact does this in a very efficient way while providing a very convincing platform, which is the market leader at this time. But these shots are little more than scatter shooting right now as neither AMD nor Nvidia know what they are actually shooting at. Intel needs to provide a lot more details about Larrabee before anyone can make any reasonable claims what this product will be able to do and what not.

Larrabee is without doubt on AMD’s radar, but the company says it is "delighted" with its own direction, which involved a switch to an open programming model of its graphics cards. Beyond that, we don’t know much. Criticizing a high power consumption of Larrabee does not work (yet), as we don’t know how much power Larrabee will consume and AMD just rolled out its own 270 watt graphics card.

3. Opteron is fast, Xeon is slow and expensive

We also heard (again) that the company’s Opteron chip is faster and more power efficient than Intel’s Xeon processors. We don’t want to go too deep into this one, but anyone who is researching this topic knows that at least the power claims are justified. However, Intel has been cutting deep into Opteron revenues and shipments and, ultimately, AMD margins. There is an obvious problem AMD needs to come up with more convincing messages and products that are even more compelling than the B3 Opterons it is offering today.

Nehalem-based Xeons are just around the corner and it does not take much to see that these processors will continue the march that was started with Intel’s Woodcrest Xeons back in Q3 2006. So, what is AMD’s plan? First, AMD hopes that the dual-socket and four-socket Nehalems won’t be available anytime soon and then there is the 45 nm Shanghai that will be shipping in Q4. AMD said that it believes that actual Shanghai server will be available in Q4 as well. Desktop processors will follow "quickly", which, if AMD will keep its traditional product strategy in place, means that 45 nm desktop processors will roll out within 60 - 90 days after the Shanghai debut.

There was no additional information about Shanghai available.

4. 45 nm is late

AMD will not agree with this statement. But let’s cut through the chase and let’s be honest: Dirk Meyer, recently promoted to the role of CEO, stated during AMD’s Q2 2006 conference call that AMD would accelerate its 45 nm development and ship 45 nm processors by mid-2008 and close the gap to Intel by 6 months. It is unclear what Meyer exactly meant with "shipping" at the time (Samples? Volume?), and you can always twist and stretch the meaning of words. What we know, however, is AMD certainly has not closed the gap to Intel. AMD was one year behind Intel with 65 nm and AMD will be one year behind Intel with 45 nm, senior vice president Randy Allen confirmed today. He told us that AMD aims to catch up with future generations.

However, Allen now claims that 45 nm "is ahead of schedule", which just does not make much sense to us, even if he explained this remark by stating that 45 nm is ahead of schedule in terms of "clock speed and performance". In some way, it appears Allen and Meyer may not have been on the same page what mid-2008 actually means and the inconsistency of the message originates in miscommunication.

No one of us journalists really care if AMD is behind or ahead by a few months. If AMD can squeeze more months out of 65 nm and remain competitive, then this is actually a good thing and just shows how strong the manufacturing process really is. I just don’t like being told that AMD is ahead of schedule, when they are actually behind.

Conclusion: Is AMD ignoring a threat?

I was left scratching my head over the briefing AMD gave today. There was no news, just the mantra we have heard multiple times this year already and lots of doubts and concerns about Intel’s technology. My first impression was that in targeting Intel’s products with today’s technology, AMD really had not much to say about how it will be answering the obvious threat Nehalem and Larrabee are - with the exception of the balanced platform message. No news about Shanghai, no news about the 45 desktop part, no news about a future graphics part. Isn’t IDF a great opportunity to provide future product plans that would enable us to see what the future will bring?

This is a completely subjective impression, but at least to me, Nehalem feels like Core 2 Duo all over again. Back in spring of 2006, AMD had a similar marketing and PR strategy in place, discounting Core 2 Duo as a paper product that won’t be able to touch the Opteron and Athlon X2 in terms of performance and power efficiency. We all know that Core 2 Duo and its derivates almost bankrupted AMD, stripping AMD of virtually all advantages and market gains it had made in the 18 months before. Back then, I was concerned that AMD would underestimate Intel and I have the same feeling again.

So, is ignoring AMD an obvious threat? I doubt that AMD is underestimating Intel internally, but AMD’s public presentations leave the impression that the company isn’t taking Intel’s products serious enough. AMD may already have been at the mercy with Intel and its Core 2 Duo processor and Nehalem may feel like a reboot to Q3 2006 for AMD. Only now, AMD has a substantial weaker position from a financial point of view, but is prepared much better to deal with another hard hitting technology: Intel’s bases are loaded and AMD really needs to come up with a really good pitcher.

Following the conference call, I actually got in touch with AMD to discuss much of the content that was discussed, content I did not agree with and content that should have been but was not discussed during the call. And there are certain aspects that shed light why AMD gave the presentation in this way. Perhaps most importantly, there were journalists with different technology knowledge levels on the call and AMD chose to emphasize its graphics message, to provide a counter weight against Larrabee. There is a tremendous amount of pressure on AMD to limit the possible damage that can result out of IDF and questioning certain claims about Nehalem & Co. was the preferred way to build up a defense.

Also, we should not forget that AMD constantly lives with the dilemma that it is out-resourced and out-spent in comparison with Intel. If it reveals too much about its future strategy and Intel likes that strategy there is at least the theoretical chance that Intel could take this idea and deliver a product even before AMD. This was probably a key reason for the company to switch its entire communications strategy and remain completely quiet about a new product until it exactly knows its specs and capabilities - and is convinced that Nvidia or Intel can’t beat it to market anymore. In turn, if AMD does not provide any information, which really was the case today, there will be doubt about the competitiveness of the company’s products.

Undoubtedly, this week there will be questions whether AMD will be able to withstand the force of Nehalem and Larrabee. But will AMD go away? Well, it may split, but it won’t go away. Even if Intel could strip AMD of its remaining life lines, a functioning AMD is in the best interest of us all: Intel can control its anti-trust concerns even if AMD turned out to be a major pain in the you know what for them - but keeping AMD small and at a manageable level is actually much better for Intel than no AMD at all. System vendors and consumers need AMD as a balance in the market and they need two strong players as suppliers. And strong AMD is the reason why we saw the stunning innovation in the microprocessor industry this decade.

I don’t want to paint a completely dark scenario. In fact, it is obvious that the company enjoys a great deal of sympathy in the market right now. I also agree that AMD has impressive products in its lineup today and there are reasons its PR strategy has to be different than what Intel does. But the current approach just does not work and will create more problems for AMD.

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By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Guide

Orlando (FL) - Some high tech crooks had the gall to plant a not-so-hidden camera in a Wal-Mart store. According to authorities, the camera overlooked a cash register area and could have captured credit card numbers. Unfortunately for the crooks, the camera was discovered after an hour, not because it looked like a camera, but because it resembled a bomb.

The camera was hidden inside a box complete with a protruding antenna and wrapped in black electrical tape. The local bomb squad arrived, evacuated the store and "defused" the bomb. Police believe the camera was beaming footage back to a van in the parking lot. Wal-Mart has surveillance footage of the people planting the device and plan on releasing their photos soon.

Read more ... Orlando Local 6

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By Humphrey Cheung - Source : Tom's Guide

Catawba (Wisconsin) - You can buy almost anything on eBay these days and one man has put up his "Million Mile" pickup truck for sale with a minimum bid of $29,999. The red 1992 Chevy Silverado belonging to Frank Oresnik of Catawba Wisconsin has 1.03 million miles - so many miles that eBay displays the miles as simply 999,999. Oresnik credits his car’s longevity to regular oil changes and insane maintenance which has replaced four radiators, three gas tanks, five transmissions and six water pumps. Oh, but at least the engine is still original.

Geez, and I was so happy to get my 1992 Saturn to 300,000 miles before it died.

Read more ... Michigan Live

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide

Hollywood celebrities that are tired of driving around in their Prius now have the option to upgrade to a Cadillac Escalade large SUV with a hybrid engine. It does not have quite the MPG performance of the Prius - the Escalade Hybrid is rated at 20/21 miles per gallon (city/highway) compared to 12/18 miles per gallon (city/highway) of the non hybrid 4WD Escalade - but at least it is a hybrid, right?

More than a dozen "Hybrid" badges plastered on the car come with a big price tag: Cadillac will ask you to fork over at least $71,685, which, according to the company, represents only a $3600 premium over a comparably-equipped (and fully-equipped) regular Escalade. However, you could also say that the 332 hp Escalade Hybrid will cost $15,000 more than the basic 403 hp Escalade, which you can buy today with discounts of more than $10,000.

This could make the Escalade Hybrid a tough sell outside of Hollywood: If you are shopping for an environmentally friendly car, you wouldn’t aim for an Escalade Hybrid anyway, whether it is a hybrid or not. Those $25,000 you can save over a hybrid version can buy a lot of gas and even give you some room for those shiny 22" rims and gadgets like a navigation system.

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By Christian Zibreg - Source : Tom's Guide US

Chicago (IL) - Apple’s iPhone will see its first serious competitor soon: T-Mobile preps HTC "Dream" for an October release and is expected to launch its own application store alongside the handset. However, the Dream faces an uphill battle, since first reports claim that the device lacks Apple’s appealing design and, if we believe these sources, the operating system is not as elegantly integrated with the handset as Apple’s OS X-based OS with the iPhone.

The first Android-powered mobile phone is just around the corner, but it looks like it won’t be an iPhone-killer. Lots of excitement was generated around new HTC "Dream" and spy photos were posted all over the web. Supposedly coming from an insider who has seen the prototype, the handset is apparently a hot item in Google’s cafeterias these days. A source "familiar with the product" told Silicon Alley Insider that although both the HTC phone and Google-made Android operating system are technically powerful, the interplay between the two isn’t as elegant as the combination of the iPhone hardware and OS X.

According to the source, the HTC prototype lacks Apple’s design and is described as "big and bulky." It has a full physical five-row keyboard that slides out underneath the screen, as shown in this YouTube video. The source also said that Android is extremely powerful but still less-elegant, with a user interface that cannot match the iPhone. Of course, these impressions have to be taken with a grain of salt since the source isn’t verified and the actual product may come in a different shape.

In the meantime, the New York Times claims that T-Mobile will be the first carrier to offer the HTC Android-powered handset in the U.S. as early as October, while a Christmas release is considered to be more likely. HTC recently denied claims of the phone being delayed. If the New York Times is right, T-Mobile and its parent company Deutsche Telekom could significantly improve their position among U.S. carriers: T-Mobile is preparing an App Store rival with an important detail: It will offer software for pretty much every mobile phone platform and handset, excluding the iPhone.

If T-Mobile in fact will be first to launch an Android handset and is able successfully pair it with its application store, it could become the first carrier in the world to challenge Apple’s iPhone platform with a more comprehensive entire ecosystem. However, any handset maker using Android may find it tough, if not impossible, to crack Apple’s unique vertical integration. At least one analyst expects Android to be short-lived as yet another mobile phone platform, proposing that Symbian and Android will merge into a single mobile phone platform.

But before that happens, there is no doubt that Google will throw a lot of weight behind Android. In an interview with CNBC this week, Google CEO Eric Schmidt said Google "can make more money on mobile than on the desktop, eventually."

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide US

Redmond (WA) - There is no denying that the initial news about Windows 7, Vista’s successor, weren’t especially great for Microsoft. Vista is by far not as successful as Microsoft would have hoped and Windows 7 will have to carry the company until a completely new operating system, speculated to be code-named Midori, will be available. So, will Windows 7 be another Vista? Will it lag behind OS X Snow Leopard? Is multi-touch UI really as great as Microsoft claims it will be?

It seems that Microsoft is now confident enough to offer a sneak peek at the new Windows features at its upcoming developer and hardware conferences in October and November. It even set up an official Windows 7 blog on which senior engineers promise to discuss the operating system with users. It is a different approach than what the company took with Vista and appears that the wave of Vista criticism has had an impact.

Microsoft said that it will publicly reveal details and "in-depth technical information" about Windows 7 to developers attending its Professional Developers Conference (PDC) set to take place from October 26-29 and at the Windows Hardware Engineering Conference (WinHEC) scheduled for November 5-7.

Writing on the new Windows 7 blog, Steven Sinofsky and Jon DeVaan, senior engineering team leaders, pledged to document the pace of development and offer a peak at Windows 7 features in the works from time to time. "With this blog we’re opening up a two-way discussion about how we are making Windows 7," the company wrote. "We strongly believe that success for Windows 7 includes an open and honest, and two-way, discussion about how we balance all of these interests and deliver software on the scale of Windows. We promise and will deliver such a dialog with this blog."

It is quite apparent that Microsoft will be gauging early interest for the yet-to-be-revealed Windows 7 features and establish a measure to control or at least balance the news flow about Windows 7. Actual information coming out of this blog may actually be not as comprehensive as Windows might expect, as the authors said they will "not set expectations around the release that end up disappointing," like "features that don’t make it, claims that don’t stick, or support we don’t provide."

So far, Microsoft kept a low profile on Windows 7 features. In terms of the base technology, we know that its kernel will be based on Windows Server 2008 kernel, which is an evolution of the Windows Vista kernel. It will keep the current driver model and will not be able to tap GPU for general-purpose computing. In short, Microsoft decided to play it safe and keep the Windows foundation in place. The new operating system comes in times when Microsoft is facing increasing competition on its own soil, especially by Apple whose OS X now leapfrogs Windows in terms of features and innovation. We can already hear Apple and pessimists saying that Windows 7 will be little more than a giant Windows Vista patch that uses multi-touch support as a sales pitch.

In fact, the only end-user feature that was promoted to this point was a multi-touch interface that will support multi-finger gestures in Windows, similar to the iPhone. Multi-touch will not be the default input method, but it will improve user interaction in all applications if the user chooses to use it. For example, you will be able to play a virtual piano by touching virtual keys on the screen, easily drag photos around the screen, rotate and zoom photos with two fingers and employ other multi-touch-based gestures to manipulate objects on the screen. The company first demonstrated these features at the WSJ’s D: All Things Digital conference in May.

Microsoft is aiming Windows 7 for a late 2009 or early 2010 release (and according to our sources Q4 is the targeted time frame, since Microsoft does not want to miss the Christmas season again). If the company will be out by Christmas 2009, it will beat Apple in its own game, being the first to bring multi-touch user interface to the PC market. Apple’s next OS X version dubbed Snow Leopard is schedule for an early 2009 released. For the first time, Apple’s OS X won’t be focused on new end-user features. Instead, Apple said it will optimize OS code, re-write it for full 64-bit support and support GPUs for general-purpose processing tasks.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide

Golden (CO) - Scientists at the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DoE) National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) claim to have set a new world record in solar cell efficiency: A new photovoltaic device can convert 40.8% of the light it is exposed to into electricity - which is more than twice as much as average solar cells can achieve today.

Improving the efficiency of solar cells is a key research area in the photovoltaic segment, as current mas market solar cells are converting less than 20% of sunlight into electricity, but high-end solar cells made by Boeing-Spectrolab and used by the DoE and NASA have been approaching 40%. A new material now allowed the NREL to increase the efficiency by a few more percentage points.

Instead of using a germanium wafer as the bottom junction of the device, the new design uses compositions of gallium indium phosphide and gallium indium arsenide to split the solar spectrum into three equal parts that are absorbed by each of the cell’s three junctions for higher potential efficiencies. This new "inverted metamorphic triple-junction solar cell" design proved to be highly effective, hitting an efficiency of 40.8% under concentrated light of 326 suns (326 times the amount of light that hits Earth on a sunny day.)

The NREL said that the solar cell is "extremely thin and light and represents a new class of solar cells with advantages in performance, design, operation and cost." Just don’t expect this device to become available for the roof of your home or a future Toyota Prius anytime soon: According to the NREL, the solar cell technology will be targeting the space satellite market as well as photovoltaic arrays which are typically sued by solar cell power plants and use lenses or mirrors to focus sunlight onto the solar cells.

It may take some time until consumers will see similarly efficient solar cells. There are research projects that claim to increase solar cell efficiency with relatively simple enhancements above 23% and nano-flakes may improve this value to 30% at some point. For the near future, solar cell efficiency enhancements such as a new technology from National Semiconductor could have an impact on solar cells and further out we hope that nanoantennas may complement solar cells to convert created heat into electricity.

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By Wolfgang Gruener - Source : Tom's Guide US

Epic, developer of the Unreal Engine, said it will be distributing an "all-new action title for the PC, Xbox 360 and Playstation 3" through publisher Electronic Arts (EA). The new game is currently in development by Epic’s People Can Fly studio in Poland.

The companies did not provide further details about the game.

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