Latest Gear Live Videos
MacWorld 2008: Apple MacBook Air Notebook Announced
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Apple, PC / Laptop, Wireless / WiFi,
During this morning’s MacWorld keynote, Steve Jobs announced the new MacBook Air notebook. We’ve all been expecting some sort of Apple sub-notebook, and this one looks amazing. Apple it touting this as the “world’s thinnest notebook”. The MacBook Air is 0.16-inches to 0.76-inches. The thickest part of the Air is thinner than the thinnest part of a Sony TZ series notebook. That is impressive. The device features an 80 GB 1.8-inch hard drive, with a 64 GB SSD drive as an option. It ships standard with 2 GB of RAM and a 1.6 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo chip, with the option to switch to 1.8 GHz. Other features include a 45-watt MagSafe, 1 USB 2.0 port, a Micro-DVI port, and audio out. There is no Ethernet port (otherwise they couldn’t have gotten it this thin) so you will have to rely on the built-in 802.11n WiFI and Bluetooth 2.1+EDR. The MacBook Air also leaves out the optical drive, but you can purchase an external SuperDrive accessory for $99 USD. It also ships with software that allows it to “borrow” the optical drive of another Mac or PC. Expect 5 hours of battery life out of this one - or more if you opt for the SSD drive. The MacBook Air will hit retail in about two weeks, and will cost $1799. Pre-orders start today.
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| MacBook Air Product Page
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CES 2008 Video: Alienware Area 51 M15x Laptop
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Gizmatic, Short Bytes, CES, CES 2008, Features, HDTV, Home Entertainment, PC / Laptop, Podcasts, Video Games, Videocasts,
New this week from Alienware is their desktop replacement laptop, the Area 51 M15x. Weighing in at only 7 pounds, with a battery life of 4 hours (and the added bonus of a second battery), and a rear cooling system, the M15x is the only 15” laptop to feature Intel’s Core 2 Extreme 2.8 gHz processor.
With a screen resolution of 1920x1080, the M15x sports true 1080p to fully exploit the binary graphics - it can switch between its NVIDIA 8800 512 mhz graphics card and its integrated Intel card, which is perfect for getting the most out of DVDs viewed on the integrated Blu-Ray player. It also has an HDMI output to enjoy those Blu-Ray movies on a big screen. Alienware’s Area 51 M15x is available at a price point of around $2200 to $2300.
CES 2008 Video: A Hands-On look at the AMD Puma Notebook platform
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Full Episodes, Gizmatic, CES, CES 2008, Corporate News, Features, PC / Laptop, Podcasts, Videocasts,
We take a close look at AMD‘s recently announced “Puma” notebook platform. Puma is a tightly-knit system for notebook suppliers comprising of the chipset, CPU, GPU and wireless chipset. Similar in some ways to their Spider desktop platform, Puma takes it to the next level by allowing for a hybrid integrated and discreet graphics solution. While Intel has something similar, AMD is apparently the first to offer a dynamically switchable system, allowing your notebook to automatically switch to integrated graphics when it detects you’ve gone on battery, or to allow you to switch manually. I asked if they plan on making it automatic, based on load, which they seemed to think was a pretty great idea and relatively easy to achieve as well. What’s more, despite the fact that the integrated and discreet GPUs are chips of differing abilities and specs, they’re still able to operate in Crossfire/hybrid mode, providing an extra boost in power and achieving some very impressive framerates.
AMD shows us their reference bench system and two other identically-configured systems, the only difference between them an Intel versus AMD integrated graphics chipset. (And CPU, naturally.) With a price difference of around $25 to AMD’s favor, the AMD integrated chip actually performs considerably better in their demo, grain of salt included. The reference system shows off their hybrid processing and lets us see what framerates we might be able to hit on an entry- to mid-level hybrid Puma system.
Puma also brings about something that’s been announced with Intel as well—the ability to deactivate CPU cores and speeds, instead of just stepping down speed. This, coupled with an intelligent HD decoder will bring about several hours of additional battery life.
Unboxing Live 026: HP Pavilion HDX Dragon Entertainment Notebook PC
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Features, HDTV, Home Entertainment, PC, Portable Video, Videocasts,
In this episode, we open up the HP Pavilion HDX Dragon PC. This thing is a monster - a 20.1-inch notebook that specializes in home entertainment, sporting dual-lamp displays and weighing in at 15.5 pounds. Other stats of note on the HDX Dragon are the 64-bit Core 2 Duo processor and 2GB included memory (it supports up to 4GB), HP Imprint casing (looks very sleek), and fingerprint reader for security.
Since it’s a computer geared towards entertainment, the video card should also be mentioned. The HDX Dragon ships with a 512MB ATi Mobility Radeon HD2600 XT. That means that you get DirectX 10 support out of the box. Continuing on the whole entertainment meme, it also has a built-in HD DVD-ROM drive, allowing you to play back your HD DVD movies at 1080p.
Finally we have the connections, which are too many for us to go through - so we will let HP tell the story here:
The HDX comes with 4 USB 2.0 ports, an Express Card/54 slot (which also supports Express Card/34), an HDMI port, an S-Video, a VGA, an RJ-11, an RK-45, an IEEE 1394 FireWire, and a Consumer IR. A 5-in-1 digital media Card reader supports Secure Digital, Memory Stick, Memory Stick Pro, MultiMediaCard, and xD-Picture Cards. You get an eSATA port for high-speed data transfer to external storage devices up to six times faster than existing solutions, which is perfect for high-def video content recording. There’s an integrated 802.11a/g/b/pre-N plus Bluetooth for highest-speed wireless connections. And the adjustable webcam with integrated microphones lets you capture still photos and short videos and for live video chat.
So yeah - they packed a lot into this machine. Now hit the video to actually see how it all came together.
Let us know what you think, or what you want us to unbox next!
HP Pavilion HDX Dragon Product Page
Bleeding Edge TV 188: MTV and HP’s Take Action Make Art Competition
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Full Episodes, Gizmatic, Design, Features, PC / Laptop, Podcasts, Videocasts,
Alright gang, this is our final video from the HP Your Life is the Show event that HP put on recently. In this episode, we chat with Jonathan Kaye about the collaboration between HP and MTV on their “Take Action…Make Art” competition. In essence, the contest is open to anyone who’d like to their their art transformed into the newest HP notebook design. Over at the official TAMA site, you can see all current entries, download design templates, upload your own creations, etc. It’s all fairly slick, plus the winner gets their design made and printed on 50,000 notebook computers. Plus they get one of their own. Not too shabby, right? Head on over to the site now to participate before things closes on October 17. Let us know what you think and definitely if you enter, and stay tuned for one more video more from the Your Life is the Show event.
Bleeding Edge TV 183: HP “Your Life is the Show” Montage
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Gizmatic, Short Bytes, Cell Phones, Corporate News, Features, Handhelds, PC / Laptop, Podcasts, Videocasts,
A few days ago HP threw a big launch party in NYC celebrating the launch of a bunch of products. We are talking about new iPaq handhelds, consumer and business oriented notebook computers, and a bunch of other gadgets and software announcements. Over the next few days, we will be publishing a bunch of video content from the event, focusing on the products themselves. For now, enjoy this preview - a montage of the sights and sounds from the Your Life is the Show event.
UPDATES: Here are more videos from the event:
Bleeding Edge TV 177: Interview: Stacy Wolff, Director of Notebook Product Design at HP
Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Full Episodes, Gizmatic, Design, Features, PC / Laptop, Portable Audio / Video, Videocasts, Videos,
This episode was sponsored by Geek Squad’s Idea Festival. Submit your ideas for using technology to save the planet at ideafest.geeksquad.com.
At Gnomedex 7.0, we caught up with Stacy Wolff of HP. This is the man in charge of designing all those shiny (literally) new laptops we have been seeing come out of Hewlett-Packard. We talk to Stacy about product design in a day and age where fashion can be just as important as function - after all, Apple has turned computers into accessories. Stacy shows us the thought process behind a couple of new consumer-level and professional-level HP notebooks in this video.
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