Bleeding Edge TV 278: HP Elite Business-Rugged Laptops

Posted by Nate True Categories: Gizmatic, Announcements, PC / Laptop, Videocasts, Videos,

At the Connecting Your World event in Berlin, Germany, HP announced its hardiest line of laptops yet. The HP Elite notebook PCs have been engineered to resist drops, scratches, spills, anything that comes its way.

It also features a handy business card reader, and the HP Quicklook no-boot-required information display (not to be confused with Mac OSX’s Quick Look) puts information right at your fingertips.

Bleeding Edge TV 277: AverMedia Volar TV Tuner for Mac

Posted by Nate True Categories: Gizmatic, Apple, HDTV, Home Entertainment, PC / Laptop, Peripherals, Podcasts, Portable Audio / Video, Videocasts, Videos,

At Computex 2008 in Taipei, Taiwan, AverMedia shows off their new digital TV Tuner solution for the Mac. It looks like a competent solution, and it’s great to see more TV tuner hardware that’s OSX compatible.

Look for it by the end of 2008. Pricing is likely to be on par with the other Volar series, which is around $100.

Bleeding Edge TV 276: The Voodoo Omen ultimate custom PC

Posted by Nate True Categories: Gizmatic, Mods / Hacks, PC / Laptop, Videocasts, Videos,

At HP’s Connecting Your World 2008 conference in Berlin, Germany, Rahul Sood of Voodoo PC announced the Voodoo Omen, a new top-of-the-line water-cooled PC using an as-yet-unannounced new set of nVidia SLI GPU’s and a new Intel CPU as well. It also features a fully functional LCD monitor on the front of the case.

The construction on this PC is amazing, but with its $7000 price tag we’re not sure we’re ready to upgrade just yet. The Omen is currently only available to former Voodoo customers on an invite-only basis, so if you are looking to get your hands on one, you might just be out of luck.

Bleeding Edge TV 275: The EeeStick motion game controllers from Asus

Posted by Nate True Categories: Gizmatic, Home Entertainment, Misc. Tech, PC / Laptop, Peripherals, Video Games, Videocasts, Videos,

At the Asus booth during Computex 2008, we had the pleasure of looking at their new EeeStick video gaming controllers. Similar to the Nintendo Wii‘s Wii Remote and Nunchuk, aiming and player movement is controlled by swinging the right controller around and moving the left thumbstick.

Sunrise Kuo of Asus showed us a demo of the controllers in action. When they’re ready in July or August, they will be packaged with the Asus EeePC 901 or EeePC 1000 models.

Bleeding Edge TV 273: Gigabyte’s NetBook M912 Tiny Convertible Tablet PC

Posted by Nate True Categories: Gizmatic, Handhelds, PC / Laptop, Videocasts, Videos,

We were pleasantly surprised at this Computex 2008 when we saw Gigabyte’s new convertible tablet, the M912. At $650, with an 8.9-inch screen and 160gb HDD, it promises to be an excellent competitor to the HP Mini-Note, which we reviewed recently. Gigabyte’s Brendon Lo says that the M912 should be out somewhere around July 2008.

We’re looking forward to getting our hands on one.

Bleeding Edge TV 272: Computex 2008 - AMD Live! Home Theatre hardware

Posted by Nate True Categories: Gizmatic, HDTV, Home Entertainment, Household, PC / Laptop, Videocasts, Videos,

AMD shows us how the home theatre PC arena is getting exciting again. Thanks to AMD Live!, manufacturers are finally creating affordable high-quality and high-performance components for the home theatre PC. Inexpensive platforms supporting full-resolution 1080p HD and 7.1 channel surround sound are being manufactured and will be out for sale real soon.

We love the intiative AMD has taken on this one! We talk with Jay Taylor of AMD Live! and have a look at the new components.

Bleeding Edge TV 271: Hands-on with the new HP TouchSmart PC

Posted by Nate True Categories: Gizmatic, Announcements, Household, Internet, PC / Laptop, Videocasts, Videos,

At HP‘s Connecting Your World event in Berlin, Germany, we talked with John Cook, VP of marketing for HP’s Consumer PC group. He gave us a hands-on first look at the beautiful new HP TouchSmart PC.

One thing we really liked about the new TouchSmart is its completely redone interface.  The software looks clean, polished, useful, and eminently easy to use.  It would be great, however, if the TouchSmart made more use of multi-touch.  Cook demonstrates a pinch gesture in the software but that’s pretty much it.  We’re keeping our eyes peeled for more multi-touch functionality in upcoming software updates and releases.

Bleeding Edge TV 270: Computex 2008 - A look at the Promise SmartStor NAS Media Server

Posted by Nate True Categories: Gizmatic, Announcements, Home Entertainment, Internet, Movies, Music, PC / Laptop, Storage, Videocasts, Videos,

Drobo is meeting some fierce competition from Promise this year.  The SmartStor is an all-in-one RAID5 controller with hot-swappable drives just like the Drobo, but it also includes a built-in NAS to share files over the network, and a BitTorrent client to boot.  It’s compatible with dlna, UPnP, and AMD Live! systems so sharing media is a breeze as well.

We talk with Alex Ling from Promise at Computex 2008 and he walks us through the SmartStor’s many features.

Bleeding Edge TV 269: Computex 2008 - A Talk with AMD’s Pat Moorhead about Turion X2

Posted by Andru Edwards Categories: Gizmatic, PC / Laptop, Videocasts, Videos,

We caught up with Pat Moorhead of AMD and had a chat with him about the new Turion X2 chipsets and the new Hybrid Graphics technology, which allows dynamic switching between integrated and discrete graphics cards, with no restart required.  The technology promises better battery life and enhanced rendering performance (although, unfortunately, not necessarily at the same time).

Stay tuned for more news from Computex 2008.

Bleeding Edge TV 268: HP’s Connecting Your World conference overview

Posted by Sparky Categories: Gizmatic, Announcements, Handhelds, PC / Laptop,

HP hosted the Connecting Your World event in Berlin, Germany to launch a bevy of new products including 17 new laptops, new monitors, and cell phones. Check out our interview with HP’s Elizabeth Gillam to get a quick overview of the conference and what HP has in store at this prestigious event.