This device has been tipped to be working with Intel processing power inside, that being one of the newer ATOM series SoCs according to benchmark results appearing this week. This device has been shown to be exceedingly similar to its predecessor in its display and processing abilities, while its form factor has left it a bit thinner and more sleek in appearance.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 3 7.0 works with a 7-inch display at 1024 x 600 pixel resolution up front, 1GB of RAM inside, and an unknown release date inside the USA. This tablet will be coming in at 111.1 x 188 x 9.9mm large and will be launched with Android 4.1 Jelly Bean if not higher.

This device will be appearing with 8GB and 16GB internal storage sizes and will likely be appearing on more than one mobile carrier here in the USA. Whether or not it’ll have its own microSD card slot for memory expansion may be dependent on region and/or carrier preference. Final pricing has not yet been revealed for USA-based sales, but it’s likely that Samsung will target somewhere well beneath it’s Galaxy Note 8.0 – so perhaps a bit closer to $250 USD.

The Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 7.0 was released last year with a styling that was rather similar to that of the Samsung Galaxy Tab 2 10.1. Before that, the Samsung Galaxy Tab 10.1 and Samsung Galaxy Tab 7.7 lead the way with a double-down on second-wave styling, while again, the first wave was only appearing in a 7-inch form factor.

SOURCE: Tablets Mag

The Gordon E. Moore Award was one of three scholarships given to students who participated in the Intel Foundation Young Scientist Awards, with the other two (both $50,000) going to Eesha Khare of Saratoga, California, and Henry Lin of Shreveport, Louisiana. In Budisteanu’s case, it was the artificial intelligence used in his project that earned him the grand honor.

The project involved using webcams and a radar to control the autonomous vehicle, with the projected cost being $4,000 for the system, quite a price difference over the systems being created by Google and other companies. The AI self-driving system monitored the car in real-time, and could detect all the various objects and hazards a driver would come across, such as other cars and items placed in the street.

The driving (ahem) force behind his project was the potential safety that self-driving cars offer, with the instances of crashes possibly decreasing as technology takes the wheel instead of humans. In an interview with NBC News, the student said: “87 percent of the car accidents are only because of human mistakes. They don’t see the cars, they don’t see the traffic signs, [while] the self-driving car will see everything.”

As far as the other two award recipients go, Lin received a scholarship for his galaxy clusters simulation, which provides researchers with a means to better understand astrophysics. Khare received an award for her tiny device that can charge a mobile’s battery in 30 seconds or less. The three were selected among 1600 participants.

SOURCE: NBC News

According to Khare, she’s been contacted by Google with interest of some type or another – she’s not being too open at the moment with the specific details. As Google is primarily a services group at the moment, they’re pushing in with hardware with such devices as the Chromebook Pixel and collaborating with groups like ASUS for the Nexus 7. It could be that this interest shows additional faith in their own ability to create without 3rd-party manufacturers.

Imagine if Google introduced the first smartphone with a battery able to be charged in less than a minute? Certainly such an impact on the mobile industry would want to be accessed by whichever group had first dibs.

You’ll find that Khare’s project: “Design and Synthesis of Hydrogenated TiO2-Polyaniline Nanorods for Flexible High-Performance Supercapacitors”, also won more than a few categories at this year’s event. Have a peek at the full winners list to see category after category dominated by Khare.

Khare is currently preparing to evolve the technology and continue research into the future, and has not yet announced any plan to sell her work to any group. As the technology she’s working with right this minute already works to hold 10,000 charge-recharge cycles, it wouldn’t be surprising for her to continue to show up in the news as a sort of Tony Stark-like name as she continues to kick the technology universe to its knees: a conventional rechargeable battery lasts for around 1,000 cycles.

This technology Khare is working on has been used to power an LED thus far, and is flexible – it’ll be able to be used in fabric and in bendable displays in the future as well. Khare’s solution is also solid-state, this meaning great things for the future in environmentally-friendly states – no worries about battery juice spilling all over your hands and face any more!

BELOW: B-Roll footage of the event, specifically surrounding Khare and her presentation of her battery technology.

Intel’s involvement in the mobile market has been limited, although it is both present and growing. ZTE, for example, unveiled an Intel-powered smartphone – the Grand X2 In – yesterday, while its previous Grand X In was dubbed the first Intel-Inside smartphone running Ice Cream Sandwich last August. Likewise, earlier this month Intel revealed an overhauled Atom processor lineup to help it compete with Qualcomm and get a better footing in the smartphone chip market.

There was one area in particular where – in hindsight – the company missed a solid opportunity to become fully entrenched in the mobile industry, however: providing chips for Apple’s iPhone. Such was one of the areas discussed by Otellini in an interview with The Atlantic. Said the former Intel CEO about the matter:

“The thing you have to remember is that this was before the iPhone was introduced and no one knew what the iPhone would do… At the end of the day, there was a chip that they were interested in that they wanted to pay a certain price for and not a nickel more and that price was below our forecasted cost. I couldn’t see it. It wasn’t one of these things you can make up on volume. And in hindsight, the forecasted cost was wrong and the volume was 100x what anyone thought.”

The past is the past, however, and new CEO Krzanich is looking to the future. He conceded at the shareholder’s meeting today that Intel did, indeed, miss the mark, being slow to enter the mobile industry with “tablets and some of the mobile computing.” He says that the company has a solid base, however, and from such a foundation will make a concerted effort towards going up from there.

According to Reuters, the CEO has already met with manufacturers, and is seeking guidance from them on the current state of the market, where its future lies, and what those customers need Intel to do in light of those two things. Such information is aiding Intel in adjustments to its product choices and architecture. Said Intel CFO Stacy Smith: “I think the emphasis is important. A focus on the end-customer, a focus on execution and a really strong focus on the ultra-mobile segment of the business. That’s pretty important.”

SOURCE: Reuters and The Atlantic

Perhaps the ZTE Grand X2 In’s greatest claim to fame is the hardware found under its hood – a dual-core Intel Atom Z2580 2GHz processor, as well as 8GB of storage and 1GB of RAM (storage expansion available via microSD up to 32GB). The Intel-Inside aspect aside, the handset also has a higher-end display, measuring in at 4.5-inches with an HD 1280 x 720 resolution. The phone runs Android Jelly Bean.

Another notable feature on the Grand X2 In is its 8-megapixel rear camera, which – in addition to offering 1080p recording – also features a rapid-shot mode capable of up to 24-frames-per-second without shutter lag. There’s also smart scene and facial recognition, and a real-time x2 axis stabilizer. There’s also auto-focus, an automatic flash, and a 1-megapixel front camera for video chatting.

The ZTE Grand X2 In also offers wireless display sharing (WiDi), as well as an unspecified integrated audio enhancement technology said to make the resulting audio of a higher quality. The phone itself is seamless and features a soft-touch finish, which helps keep fingerprints to a minimum. The battery has a decent capacity at 2,000mAh.

ZTE France’s Terminal Director William Chhao said: “We are proud to announce the ZTE Grand X2 In smartphone pursuing our multi-year strategic collaboration with Intel. The ZTE Grand X2 In is set to build on the success of the ZTE Grand X In, our first flagship smartphone in Europe to feature Intel Inside, and further increase ZTE’s growth in the high-performance smartphone market segment.”

SOURCE: Business Wire

It’s the company’s first Haswell-based laptop, and other than the processor, the machine runs on 8GB of memory, a 1TB hard drive, and a 32GB solid state drive. The laptop also boasts a 15.6-inch IPS display with an impressive 1920×1980 resolution, which something we don’t see everyday on a lot of laptops.

Of course, there will be different configurations for the LaVie L, with the highest-tier model expected to cost just under $2,000. A wealthy amount of details isn’t quite available yet, as NEC probably knows to wait until Computex next month to fully detail the new notebook as well as the rest of their Haswell lineup, but we certainly can’t blame them for wanting to jump the gun and tease some impatient buyers.

Intel will be announcing its next-generation Core chips at Computex on June 3, at which point we should be seeing a huge slew of desktops, laptops, and hybrid tablets make their way to the market at that point. It’s certainly been a busy time for computer manufacturers, as it was reported that Intel started shipping Haswell chips to OEMs early last month.

We’ve actually already heard some details about Haswell’s graphics portion, which is codenamed Iris, which will bump up the company’s HD Graphics series to 4600 and 5000. These new graphics chips will see a boost in performance over Intel’s previous HD 4000 graphics, as well as battery life improvement. Performance and battery life are the two kickers with Intel’s new Haswell chips, so we should be seeing new laptops that not only contain better graphics performance, but also longer battery life, assuming that OEMs pack in a big enough battery to see an increase.

VIA: CNET

SOURCE: NEC

Intel’s Chief Product Officer, Dadi Perlmutter, says that the new Atom architecture offers up to three times more computing power than current chips, and gobbles up five times less power than traditional mobile chips. Intel is up against strong competition, though, as many chip makers are partnered up with ARM, a direct rival with Intel in the mobile business.

Intel’s Atom processors have never been widely adopted in smartphones, and while a handful of them are out there in the wild (including the Lenovo IdeaPhone K900), Qualcomm still reigns supreme as one of the largest smartphone chip makers around. Ever since introducing the Atom line of chips in 2008, Intel has failed to bring the mobile chips to products other than netbooks.

Silvermont will be the model for Intel’s 22-nanometer Bay Trail tablet chips that are expected to arrive later this year, which are claimed to be twice as fast as their current generation of tablet offerings. Silvermont will also be used in the company’s Merrifield chips and Avoton chips that will be released later this year for microservers. This news comes after Intel’s detail on its “Haswell” chips, as well as the appointment of a new CEO for the company.

[via Reuters]

Krzanich became Intel’s chief operating officer in January 2012, so just over a year of being at that position, he’s been promoted to take over the company and lead its roughly 50,000 employees to success. Otellini will continue to serve as an advisor to Intel’s management staff, although his future plans aren’t set in stone.

The appointment of a new CEO comes shortly after Intel reported not-so-greaet quarterly financial results for Q1 2013. The company brought in a revenue of $12.6 billion and a net income of $2 billion, which missed analysts estimates. Revenue for the quarter was down 7% from the previous quarter, with operating income down a staggering 20%.

Krzanich has been with the company for over 30 years now, with Otellini serving nearly 40 years. This will be Intel’s sixth CEO, and Krzanich comes at a time when Intel is getting even more fierce with its mobile strategy, and even plans to get into the set-top box market at some point in the future.

Ultrabooks, where minimal power draw is still king, will get a range of 15W U-Series processors for prolonging runtimes. The onboard HD, HD 4600, and HD 5000 GPUs won’t be labeled Iris, but they will offer a bump over the HD 4000 graphics of the 3rd-gen range, with Intel claiming improvements across the board in the usual 3D graphics testing. Power consumption will also drop, thanks to 15W TDP chips where previously 17W was pretty much the lower limit.

It’s when you get to Iris and Iris Pro that things get really interesting, however. They’ll need at least 28W TDP to shine, but given that can up to double 3D graphics performance with the Iris GPU onboard.

Iris Pro sees the biggest leap, however. Intel has multiple ranges of Haswell processors in mind – to suit desktops, mainstream laptops, and various other iterations – but roughly the 65W TDP 4th-gen chips are good for up to twice the performance of their 77W TDP 3rd-gen counterparts. The difference gets even more pronounced when you slot in Intel’s 4th-gen 84W TDP processors, which deliver up to a 3x performance improvement over the last generation.

The GPUs each support OpenGL 4, DirectX 11.1, and OpenCL 1.2, along with enhanced 4K video support and the Display Port 1.2 standard for double the bandwidth. There’s also “Collage Display” for easier multi-screen setups, spreading the desktop across up to three panels. Haswell 4th-gen chips are expected to arrive in PCs later this year.

[via AnandTech]

Chances are we won’t be seeing these Haswell Chromebooks at Google I/O 2013 from May 15th-May 17th because the Haswell chips aren’t expected to be used by manufacturers until June 4th. But we could be seeing these Chromebooks by the time Fall comes around, or perhaps by the holiday season, when Google would be able to convince a good amount of users to purchase their efficient, easy-to-use devices.

Chromebooks are seen as an alternative to laptops, mainly for those who only need a portable computer to surf the web, type out a few documents, or perform other simple tasks. They are convenient devices, and with the inclusion of the new Intel Haswell chips, they should last much longer than the average 5 hour battery life span they have now, making them more efficient computers.

There are currently a few Chromebooks out on the market, some being affordable with a pricetag of $249, and others, like the Chrome Pixel, going for as high as $1299. The Chromebooks are currently increasing in popularity in the market as a replacement for the now-dead netbooks. If Google integrates its Chromebooks with the Haswell chips and still manages to keep its prices low, we could be seeing these devices skyrocket in popularity. Check out our review of Google’s latest Chromebook, the Chrome Pixel, to see what Chrome OS has to offer.

[via GigaOM]

This machine works with a 180-degree open angle on its display, allowing users to work with the keyboard and/or the touchscreen and Windows 8 in a variety of ways. This notebook works with 3rd generation Intel Core processor options and up to 8GB of memory. Also under the hood users will be able to keep 500GB of files, this allowing for students and entertainment users to store media to their content.

Lenovo appears to be moving toward a cross between small business users and budget thinkers this week with the ThinkPad S431. This release marks the first time that a Lenovo ThinkPad notebook is offered at a price point under a thousand dollars. Starting on the 21st of May, this machine will also be the first ThinkPad to be offered under nine hundred dollars and eight hundred dollars as well, coming in at a cool six hundred and ninty-nine dollars MSRP.

This machine will join its cousins in the ThinkPad line revealed earlier this year at CES and between then and the release of Windows 8. Have a peek at the timeline below to see additional insight on the Lenovo path from here into the future. Things are getting bendy, touchy, and ready for Windows 8, that’s for certain.

You’ve probably never heard of Expect Labs, but it’s a company that you should definitely keep your eye on. Intel, Samsung, and Telefonica all have invested in the small startup, and they join the likes of Google who have invested in the company in the past. Specific dollar amounts have not been disclosed as of right now.

The marvel behind Expect Labs’ Siri alternative is that the software constantly listens to and analyzes your conversations as they happen, and if it notices that you’re asking a factual question to a friend (like, “what time does the White Sox game start?”), it’ll pull up relevant information right at that moment without having to search for it.

Of course, it’s surprising why big companies are eyeing this kind of technology. More and more companies are getting into voice control software, and if it could offer something as revolutionary as what Expect Labs is cooking up, it could change the way voice control works. Of course, privacy is a big concern here, especially when the software listens in to your conversations at all times. Nonetheless, Expect Labs is looking to expand its team, and they didn’t go into detail as far as the future of the company, but it seems they have some big plans coming up.

[via TechCrunch]

Posting the image you see above to Twitter, Intel teases that in approximately 3,337,200,000,000,000 nanoseconds Intel will reveal their hotly anticipated 4th gen Intel Core processor to the world. Basically right at the beginning of Computex 2013, where we’ll see loads of Haswell powered hybrid PCs and more.

Haswell hasn’t been much of a secret, and earlier this month we confirmed Intel had already started shipping Haswell to an array of PC manufacturers. Haswell promises to bring a major boost in performance and more importantly battery life over Ivy-bridge for all those ultra-portables.

Around the same time we are also expecting to see Windows Blue show its face, so this years Computex is looking to be a pretty exciting event. We all knew the chip was coming but now all you enthusiasts can circle a time around June 3rd on your calendar and start getting ready for the onslaught of Haswell based systems. We could even see a few Android-based systems too, so stay tuned.

[via CNET]

Intel’s Dadi Perlmutter, who is the company’s executive vice president and chief product officer, says that these $200 laptops will mostly be running Android, rather than the traditional Windows 8 operating system. The low-cost laptops would also be running Intel’s Atom series of processors, the same chips that were used in a lot of netbooks.

As to whether or not Windows 8-based laptops will reach the $200 price range, or even $300 for that matter, largely depends on Microsoft itself, says Intel. The cost of a laptop usually comes down to how Microsoft would want to price Windows 8, considering that a copy of the new operatings system retails in the triple-digit price point.

Furthermore, Perlmutter says that while Atom-based laptops could reach $200, notebooks running Intel’s faster Core series of processor could be priced as low as $399, with some higher-end Android laptops ringing in at the price as well. Does this spell the comeback of netbooks, or are we actually at a point where full-blown laptops will cost way less?

[via CNET]

Intel Media said to GigaOM that Baldwin will be missed, “but we have a very strong engineering organization in place with a deep leadership bench,” that will make up for Baldwin’s absence. Baldwin played a crucial work for Intel Media’s TV project. He was previously a key player in the Microsoft Mediaroom project, where he stayed for 8 years. He worked on several other TV projects including WebTV Plus, Echostar Dishplayer, DirecTV, and Ultimate TV.

Baldwin was instrumental to making Intel’s dream of launching its new Web TV service a reality. Intel Media’s Web TV service will be a subscription service that will allow viewers to watch live TV, video on-demand, and also watch TV shows/movies that the viewer may have missed. Intel Media plans on launching the Web TV service in the U.S. by the end of the year.

Intel Media says that its Web TV service will be a game changer, but it has received some criticism from all around, mainly due to the camera installed on Intel Media’s set-top box. The camera will be used to monitor whether a user is in the room, if the user is paying attention to the TV content, and the age and gender of the user. It will use the data it gathered to play targeted advertisements for the users, as well as offering suggestions on TV shows/movies the viewer(s) may enjoy. Consumers and critics feel that the camera is an invasion of privacy, however, Erik Huggers, Intel Media’s CEO, defends the camera by comparing it to the Kinect devices millions of homes have, which people have no problem using.

[via GigaOM]

Some of the reason why tablets running the Windows operating system have not been as popular as Microsoft wanted has to do with price. Windows tablets came to the market at price points that most consumers simply weren’t willing to pay in the face of existing competition at a lower cost. It appears that will change in the future with Intel CEO Paul Otellini promising that future Windows tablets running Atom processors will be cheaper.

According to Otellini, tablets running Windows 8 and Atom processors in the future will start at about $200. That price is roughly half the cost of where your typical Windows 8 tablet starts today. Offering tablets for only $200 will go a long way towards raising consumer interest in Windows 8 powered devices.

Otellini didn’t offer any specific timeframe on when tablets running Intel hardware and Windows 8 software carrying a $200 price point surface, he only said in the near future. Otellini is specifically talking about Intel-based ultrathin notebooks using the Bay Trail processor. The Intel CEO also mentioned that devices running the companies Bay Trail will be as thin as 8 mm.

[via Neowin]

Both net income and earnings per share were down 17% this quarter as well. Intel earned a net income of $2 billion, compared to $3.2 billion from the previous quarter. As for earnings per share, it’s at $0.40 for Q1 2013, compared to $0.48 during Q4 2012. Intel blames the slight losses on poor PC demand for the quarter.

The future for Intel is in question, with this being CEO Paul Otellini’s last earnings call, the company could change drastically by the time the next earnings report rolls around. Otellini will officially step down from Intel and retire next month. However, the change in CEO may not play much of a roll in the company’s revenue and profits, but we’ll ultimately have to wait and see.

As for the company’s predictions for next quarter’s earnings results, they’re expecting to bring in a revenue of $12.9 billion, give or take $500 million. They’re also predicting to have a gross margin percentage of 58%. Hopefully the company can meet that goal the next time around, and with the new 14nm technology they’re working on, we can’t see why they wouldn’t bring back an increased profit.

With the Samsung Series 9 Premium Ultrabook that’s become available today, you’ll be working with a cool 128GB SSD and a 3rd Gen (Ivy Bridge) Intel Core i7 processor busting out with Samsung’s Fast Solutions technology. With this tech onboard, you’ll be booting up in less than 10 seconds with a resume time from sleep at nearly zilch.

The Series 9 Premium Ultrabook will be available starting this week (and today) everywhere fine Samsung devices are sold – notebooks and desktops, that is, for a cool MSRP of $1399.99 USD. This machine has also been sand-blasted for full fingerprint resistance, so you know it’s a high-quality build inside and out. From what we’ve seen of this device thus far – before this update – we’re all about it.

Have a peek at the looks we’ve had at the Samsung Series 9 family in the timeline below – pay special attention to the post in the “IFA 2012″ hotlink in the first paragraph of this post. There you’ll find the next generation as well!

This machine will have an undeniably strange combination of 8GB eMMC+1GBRAM. This means that while we’re working with a next-generation processor, we’ve still got just half the RAM we’d have on the rest of the hero devices out there today. With 8GB of storage inside, you’ll also be relying on this device’s microSD card slot for storage of games and whatnot.

The back-facing camera here is 8 megapixels strong, the front is a small 1 megapixel, and you’ll be kicking around a CPU frequency of 2.0Ghz – that’s nothing to joke about! This device is being released with this generation’s other ZTE devices like the Grand X IN (another Intel-based smartphone) and the ZTE V98 tablet. Have a peek at our ZTE tag portal for additional information on these devices.

Also have a peek at the timeline below to see the rest of the ZTE action we’ve covered over the past few weeks. Though most of these devices will not be reaching the USA, we’re still pumped up about the possibility of getting them in with their beastly processors ready to take on the games and high-powered apps of today regardless. Keep on cruzing, ZTE!

Intel has now unveiled details on three new low-power SoCs aimed at the data center that will be coming this year. The new products are for the data center will be in the Intel Atom Processor S12x9 product family for storage. These product will share several features with the S1200 SoC family, but will be tweaked specifically to support storage devices.

The S12x9 family will feature up to 40 lanes of integrated PCI Express 2.0 or physical paths between I/O and the processor. They will support hardware RAID storage acceleration and provide NTB failover support. In the second half of 2013, the 64-bit 22 nm processor for micro servers code-named Avoton will debut featuring an integrated Ethernet controller. Also available in the second half of 2013 will be a new Atom SoC code-named Rangeley promising energy efficient mechanism for processing communications workloads aimed at the entry to mid-level routers, switches, and security appliances.

Intel is also talking up some new Xeon processors including the E3, E5, and E7 families. The E3 1200 v3 product family is based on the Haswell architecture and promises to improve performance for video analytic workloads and to support improved transcode performance. The lowest TDP processor in this family will be 13 W for 25% power savings compared to the prior generation. The E5 family will be based on the 22nm manufacturing process and available in Q3 promising improved security and more. Intel’s E7 processor family will be available in Q4 2013 supporting three times the memory capacity for up to 12 TB in eight-socket node.

The E7 will also include Intel’s Run Sure Technology to deliver greater system reliability and increased data integrity on minimizing downtime for mission-critical workloads. The chip will also feature Resilient System Technologies with standardized technology for processor, firmware, and software layers to allow the system to recover from previously fatal errors. The processor family will also support Resilient Memory Technologies to ensure data integrity and allow systems to run reliably over longer periods of time. Interestingly, the Mac Pro family uses Xeon processors and rumors have been circulating that a refresh of the Mac Pro line is inbound. That refresh makes sense with Intel having new processors on the horizon.

[via Intel]

Intel says Falcon Ridge will include backwards compatibility with current-generation Thunderbolt devices, although anything using the current standard will be kept at those same speeds of 10Gbps. This means that Falcon Ridge is twice as fast as the current-generation of Thunderbolt, which is quite impressive and something that haven’t seen yet.

Intel demonstrated the new technology using top-of-the-line components that are available today and were able to achieve speeds of 1.2Gbps, which is a far cry from what the Falcon Ridge is capable of, but the most obvious bottleneck is the stage at which hardware components are at right now. If you were to use current-generation Thunderbolt, you’d have to get a solid state drive just to take advantage of the faster speeds.

Thunderbolt is over two years old now, and it’s becoming a mainstream feature in Apple’s products, but taking advantage of the file transfer protocol is costly, with Thunderbolt external hard drives costing much more than USB 3.0 or eSATA drives. It’s certainly an investment if you’re looking for faster transfer speeds, but it’s really worth it in the end.

[via Engadget]

While it hasn’t been officially confirmed that Intel’s Haswell chips are being shipped, many sources have come to CNET to confirm the news. They said that Intel should be releasing an official statement confirming the shipments at the IDF Beijing conference this week. The chips will provide major improvements to a critical aspect of laptops; battery life. Laptops with the chip are expected to last 24-hours with a single charge.

There will be some complications coming with the first batch of Intel’s Haswell chips. Intel has confirmed that the intial batch of Haswell chips have a bug that can affect USB 3.0 ports. Intel says that your files will be safe from data loss or corruption, but after waking up your computer from standby mode, you may need to re-plug your USB device into the socket. So far the issue seems isolated to a small amount of “USB SuperSpeed thumb drives”.

Along with the shipments of Haswell Chips, Intel will also be releasing its “Merrifeld” Atom chips for smartphones, as well as its “Bay Trail” Atom chips for tablets by the end of this year. The Haswell chips will fully utilize Windows Blue when it comes out, maximizing both performance and battery life in Windows Blue systems. Intel anticipates that the combination of both the chip and Windows Blue will revamp the laptop/ultrabook world.

[via CNET]

Hardware

The Tiki case is one that those unfamiliar with the intricacies of custom-made computers will easily overlook. It’s certainly not the flashy rainbow LED light show that some gaming PCs opt for – it’s almost as if the Tiki dares those that look at it to ask what the big deal is. Up close and personal, you’ll find that the Tiki boasts a fabulously simple set of aesthetics, a subtly lit Falcon Northwest logo up front, and a granite base.

The granite base we’ve got here is what the company calls “Absolute Black”. While you’ve got more than one color choice if you’d like to explore several shades, we’d certainly recommend the black if you’re working with the straight-up black case – together they’re quite classy. The whole unit is light enough that you’ll be able to transport it to and from LAN parties with ease (if that’s your sort of thing) and is perfectly well balanced due in a large part to the granite – it does its job well.

Getting inside the Tiki is just about as simple as it gets without working with magnets – here you’ll be undoing two thumbscrews and pushing one side off – you’ll want to be careful doing so only because the 120MM Asetek liquid cooler (550LC) is attached to it, tubes running from the casing to the main hunk of the unit. This setup works awesome for getting down into the guts of the machine as quick as possible – the fewer screws we’ve got to deal with for customization, the better.

Inside this setup you’ll find an ASUS P8Z77-I Deluxe mini ITX motherboard shining out in all its bluey glory amid the massive monsters that are the high-end components that this amalgamation is made of. We’re working with a 256GB SSD SATA3 (Crucial M4 with M500 available soon from Falcon Northwest – check on that when you’re picking up your own) as well as a 3TB WD “Caviar Green” SATA3 hard drive for all the data storage you could ask for.

Getting inside to remove / replace / give big kisses to your favorite components is only a few screw turns away. While there are wires here or there glued down for the trip between Falcon Northwest’s test shop and your home, they’re easily popped off and apart when you decide you want to move forward with any new components.

The two big monsters inside this build are the 3rd Generation Intel Core i7 processor (overclocked to 4.5GHz), and the 6GB NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN graphics card. When you’re picking up the TITAN, you’re not looking for a budget setup. You’ve got a beast right out of the box. Again, this isn’t the last time we’ll be working with NVIDIA’s TITAN GPU for video game reviews and cloud gaming action – stick around our NVIDIA tag portal as well as our NVIDIA Tegra hub for the full fireworks through the future.

Once you’re done rummaging around the insides, you’ll find more inputs and outputs than you’ll ever have a need for. The build we’ve got here works with a Sony Optiarc slot load DVD+-RW on top near a a headphone jack, microphone jack, and set of two USB 3.0 ports. You’ll also see a symmetrical set of vents that, when you peek through, you’ll be able to see the side of the TITAN: “GEFORCE GTX” in bright NVIDIA green lights just below the surface – only visible up close.

The back of this machine has its IO panel labels set in upside-down for easy reading whilst looking down over the top – as you’re prone to do with such a desktop. That massive set of connections includes two eSATA ports, four USB 3.0 ports, and four USB 2.0 ports. You’ll also find GigE, ASUS Wifi connections (you’ll get two external antenna in your package from Falcon Northwest), and standard optical and analog audio jacks. Ethernet and processor-powered display outputs DVI, HDMI, and Display Port are also down there if you want to make use of them.

Nearer the top you’ve got two DL-DVI ports as well as HDMI and DisplayPort outputs bringing the heat via your GeForce TITAN GPU. Your power supply (Silverstone ST-45B 450W) sits nearest the bottom on the back. On either side of the case you’ll more airflow action allowing this Tiki setup to remain impressively cool no matter what we throw at it. With that you’ll still be hearing next no noise – you’ll certainly not be having to dismiss a “hum” while you’re enjoying the greatness of the highest powered games on the market – those being the games you’re essentially obligated to test out and work with when you’re rolling with Tiki.

Software and Performance

Under the hood out of the box we’re working with 64bit Windows 8 Professional, and though it’s still a little odd working with this operating system without a touchscreen interface, it’s certainly starting to feel more natural than it did when Microsoft first pushed the system to consumers. That said, the real power here comes from the software we’re using outside the standard Microsoft experience: games, games, and more games. And with a system this size, big-time possibilities!

Steam Big Picture Mode

The size of this system suggests some rather unique use-cases, even before we consider the fact that NVIDIA has some big plans for GeForce and cloud computing in the home this year. The Tiki case isn’t much larger than the average major-label gaming console today, and even compared to what’s coming out later this year (more than likely), you can be confident you’ll have a size-to-power ratio that blows any gaming console out of the water. And unless the Xbox 720 or PlayStation 4 pull some real magic out of their sleeves with regards to digital game distribution soon, Valve’s Steam will continue to be the premiere destination for the universe’s greatest downloadable games.

NVIDIA GeForce Experience

NVIDIA has made some rather interesting strides recently in making sure the average citizen is able to have a top-notch gaming experience. Just this year the GeForce Experience was released – an NVIDIA-powered app interface where a collection of the world’s most fabulous games can have their settings optimized for your unique gaming hardware setup instantly and automatically. NVIDIA has released a new GeForce driver software update for esentially every major game delivered in the first quarter of 2013, each of them able to be accessed via this GeForce Experience with a single button click, a unique game settings interface appearing for you then if you’ve got said game on your computer.

With the automatic settings optimization feature, your games will become as excellent as they possibly can be – both aesthetically and performance-wise. With the Tiki rolling with a GeForce GTX TITAN under the hood and NVIDIA optimizing settings game-to-game, we’ve had nothing but the best gaming experiences we’ve ever seen on a gaming computer.

Right this minute we’ve done just our standard fare as far as benchmarks go, Geekbench showing this build to be amongst the most powerful gaming PCs we’ve reviewed. Also be sure to check out similar results on much larger machines, too: AVADirect Quiet Gaming PC and NEEDLETAIL SX – and have a peek at a couple relatively small machines so you know what the Tiki is up against physical size-wise: MainGear Potenza and iBuyPower Revolt.

Whilst playing Batman: Arkham City, we’ve experienced a been a bit of a re-birth of interest with the much higher-definition display than we used when originally reviewing the game, not to mention a system that’s on a whole different level than the Alienware notebook (pre 3rd-gen Intel Core processors and so-forth). While it’s not that working with a beast like the MX-17 from a couple years ago is a bad thing (it’s actually still quite amazing), there’s just no comparing to the smoothness and detail we’re getting here.

In Hawken the only thing that stops one from having the miraculous non-stop smoothness we’re seeing in Arkham City is the fact that part of our experience is based online. If we’d be working with the connections our friends in Japan have with wires so thick you could drive a truck through them, we’d be golden – here we’ll have to settle for just “destroys all gaming experiences we’ve had before this year.” Have a peek at our first look at Hawken while you’re at it.

Even Star Wars: The Old Republic looks great. As it’s included in NVIDIA’s GeForce Experience list of games that can be optimized for greatness automatically, we certainly had to give it a go. As it turns out, the difference between what you get in this game on a basic level and what NVIDIA can give you is immense. While the gameplay remains the same – you’re still firing blasters at your opponents and rolling in the Force like mad – you can take part in the deepest visual details the developers intended you to see. Just look at that water ripple!

We’ll be continuing to benchmark the build we’ve got here through the future, so be sure to ask if you’ve got any tests you’d like us to run. We’ll be putting this setup through the punches in any and all ways you desire!

Wrap-Up

The Falcon Northwest Tiki is not a machine made for penny-pinchers. If you’re planning on working with any gaming PC packing an NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN GPU, you’re going to be paying quite a chunk of change – this isn’t the sort of situation where you’re paying just a little bit of cash for a just-good-enough helping of performance. Instead you’re going to want to save up for a couple months – the build we’ve gotten from Falcon Northwest here will cost you more than $3k.

You can make your Tiki cost quite a bit less if you don’t want to pack it full of the top-of-the-line components we’ve got here – and you’ll still have an amazing build – but that’s not what NVIDIA’s TITAN brand is about. With the Falcon Northwest Tiki packing NVIDIA’s TITAN, you’ve got a gaming masterpiece, plain and simple.

Of course with NVIDIA GT 640M LE (1GB DDR3, Optimus Technology) you’ve not exactly got the biggest, baddest beast in the land, but you’re still running with a brand that boasts its greatness on a daily basis. The tablet itself is 278.5 mm x 178.85 mm x 19.5 mm / 10.9″ x 7″ x .80″ – not exactly tiny. All that comes in the PRO version – there’s also a basic edition which you can find out more about in our fabulous original rundown.

Since we saw this device back at CES 2013 for our most recent hands-on adventure, the tablet itself has been modified just a bit – but for the most part, it’s still the same device we described then as “a rather interesting combination of ‘why would I want this’ and ‘take my money right this minute’”. You’ll almost certainly be saying one of the two when you see the price: $1,450 USD brand new for the PRO – go grab one!

If you need a bit more convincing, hear this: this is just about as close to NVIDIA’s Project SHIELD that you’re going to get until later this year. With a 10.1-inch 1366×768 IPS display up front and Windows under the hood, it’s also the only experience you’re going to get like this on the market today. Unless you create your own handlebars and control connections for your own Windows 8 tablet, that is.

There’s also a keyboard dock, mind you. We’re expecting that this tablet will have no end to its accessory add-ons throughout its life. Expect the oddities to roll in!

Why would you want it?

Because playing games on a 10.1-inch tablet is cool, but playing games on a 10.1-inch tablet with a massive set of physical controls attached is even cooler. This device isn’t for everyone, but if you’re the sort of person that’s looking for a gaming experience that’s not exactly like one you’ve ever had before, this is a good place to start!

Have a peek at our hands-on with the Razer Edge and get pumped up about our future coverage as well – this is a rather unique experience, we assure you – don’t miss it!

Hardware

This notebook, also known as model NP540U3C-A01US, is not the thinnest beast on the block, nor is it the lightest. But it’s no monster, either. Instead what you’re getting is a 12.4 x 8.6 x 0.6-inch notebook made from a mix of aluminum and plastic parts, certainly sturdy enough – and aesthetically pleasing enough on the outside – to be your daily driver in a public place. As an Ultrabook such as this will likely be used by you for doing work first and foremost, it’s important to take a peek at the keyboard right out of the box.

What you’ve got here is a top-class keyboard that’s not unlike what we’ve seen from the generation of Samsung notebooks that’ve come out over the past year. If you’re used to working with a MacBook, not a PC, you’ll still feel rather at home with this layout and pressure sensitivity. The keyboard features a real no-nonsense set of keys as well, so no worries pecking away at the bits you’re not wanting to hit.

The display is certainly nice looking, and if you’re not used to the ultra-high-definition eye-shattering screens that are also out there on the market today, you’ll have a great time with the 1366 x 768 resolution here with LED HD technology and 10-finger touch. That means that if you’ve got an app that needs every single one of your fingers at once, you’ll be able to do it here. Covering this display you’ve got Corning Gorilla Glass – resistant against scratches and damage like a pro. This display is also 300 nits bright, working with SuperBright Technology so you know you’re backed up by a brand that means business.

Inside you’ll be working with 8GB of system memory, a hard drive of 128GB (SSD), and a find little web camera peeking up at you above the screen. You’ve also got Intel HD Graphics 4000, perfectly generous for your everyday movie watching, and you’ll be connecting to the web either wirelessly with Intel WiDi and Intel Centrino Advanced-N 6235 802.11 a/b/g/n or wired with this machine’s built-in ethernet port.

Next to your ethernet port (which pops open or closes down for a more compact experience, mind you), you’ll see one USB 3.0 port, HDMI out, and your very own headphone/microphone jack. Lucky you! On the right you’ve got another two USB 2.0 ports and a multi-card reader (SD/SDHC/SDXC). Altogether you’ve got a really solid package, certainly one you can bring home to mother.

Hands-on

This device is only surprisingly heavy because I’m so very used to handling computers now that are lighter than they have any business being. When you’re working with Ultrabooks and MacBook Airs and the like every single day of the week, having one like this UltraTouch will seem like a slight change. But as it is with most notebooks and such, the weight and the shape of this machine feels natural rather quickly.

The location of each of the ports feels quite natural, and though it does still feel a bit odd to be pulling open the ethernet port on the left hand side whenever it’s needed, it’s not been a burdon in any way. Toss this and the Samsung Galaxy Note 10.1 and the GALAXY S 4 in your pockets and backpack and you’re set!

Software

Samsung is particularly proud of its collection of apps made specifically for Windows 8, including such winners as Quick Starter. With Quick Starter, you’re able to grab your own toolbar and start button (otherwise willfully yanked from your life by Windows 8) so you’ll have a more familiar user interface if you’ve never used Windows 8 before. You’ll also have all kinds of awesome AllShare Play action going on – particularly awesome if you’re a Samsung Galaxy S III or GALAXY S 4 or Galaxy Note user.

With AllShare Play you’ll be connecting with your mobile devices with ease, sharing your media from device to device in a personal mobile network instantly. This interface also works with Samsung Smart TVs and tablets as well as smartphones.

Above and you’ll also find some read-outs we’ve taken of the notebook. You’ll see some additional details about what this Ultrabook is packing as well as some benchmark results from our standard test: Geekbench. Feel free to head back to our archive of reviewed devices to compare and contrast as well!

Battery Time

Off the wall connection we’ve found the Samsung Series 5 UltraTouch to be getting a little over 5 hours of battery life. That’s without streaming video – if you’re going to be doing heavy processing tasks, this may not be the workhorse for you. Instead you’ll find this device best for daily work on-the-go without demanding a full 8-hour workday spread without power.

That said, battery life on this device isn’t all that different from the rest of the Ultrabooks out there right now. You’ll find a machine like the Lenovo IdeaPad Yoga 13 working with essentially the same amount of battery time where the newest era of MacBook Air units are some of the only mobile notebooks we’ve worked with that last longer in the field. Choose wisely!

Wrap-up

With the Samsung Series 5 UltraTouch you’ve got an Ultrabook that’s ready to be your best buddy in college, your friendly office companion, or your coffee shop cohort. While the Samsung notebook line doesn’t hold quite the “cool” factor their smartphones and tablets have earned over the past few years, they still connect in more ways than any other machine – particularly if you want to work with the oddity that is AllShare.

The model we’ve reviewed here will cost you a cool $859.99 USD and is available everywhere fine Ultrabooks are sold. We’d recommend, as always, heading out to your local notebook dealer to see how this unit feels before picking one up for yourself. Samsung has made a fabulous notebook here, and you’re going to want to take it out for a test drive before you make the big jump.

According to CNET’s sources, the Haswell ultrabooks will be much faster than ultrabooks currently utilizing Intel’s Ivy-Bridge processors. While running Windows Blue, they will also be coming with improved Standby capabilities that will allow your device to stay connected to social networks, e-mails, and other push-services while the ultrabook is asleep. When you turn your device back on, everything will automatically be up-to-date.

Back in 2011, Intel bragged about its new Haswell chips being able to last up to 24 hours on a single charge, and being able to survive 10 days on standby. It will certainly be appealing to customers who’s main priority is having a laptop with a great battery life. According to Paul Otellni, CEO of Intel, the Haswell CPUs will have “the single largest generation-to-generation battery life improvement in Intel history.”

Intel is speculated to be launching its Haswell CPUs in June, and it will be implemented in both ultrabooks, and hybrid laptops (half tablet, half laptop). That’s around the same time-frame that Microsoft plans on launching Windows Blue. The combination between Intel’s upcoming processor and Microsoft’s upcoming operating system is said to be bringing ultrabooks that “act more like a smartphone or tablet OS”.

[via CNET]

With the Hailstorm II you’ll have space for four radiators, four GPU units, and two CPUs. That’s one massive amount of space on its own – then you consider how it’ll all be blasting forth with the components Digital Storm is quoting here as out-of-box builds, you’ll find your fingers sweating. With the Hailstorm II, you’ve got the first appearance of the Corsair Obsidian Series 900D, a monstrous black tower with a big window on the side so you can view this futuristic wallet-crushing collection for yourself.

Inside you’ve got a liquid cooling system with three front intake fans and a lovely large rear exhaust fan to keep the air running through. If you’d like, this build allows you to ad an absurd 15 fans in total – so much freaking airflow you’ll have to wear a jacket.

Up front you’ll find a lovely brushed aluminum front panel that’ll open up to show you a vast number of expansion slots – ten expansion slots in all, with room for up to nine hard drives or SSD with three hot-swappable mounts, four 5.25-inch optical drive bays, and more! You’ll have two USB 3.0 ports for super quick transfer, four USB 2.0 ports for all your peripherals, and, just incase you’re an over-the-top expander, the ability to work with two power supplies on the back.

If that weren’t enough, you’ll find that each unit has gone through a 72-hour stress-test by Digital Storm, this including industry standard testing of the hardware and software as well as a proprietary testing process in place to detect any and all components that show the potential to fail in the future – you’ll be set!

The system builds you’ll be working with are as you see above, each of the prices reflective of the beastly innards they contain. You’ll find that each of these systems uses fabulous Intel CPU power with the Core i7 across the board as well as NVIDIA GPUs. As noted, this is one of the first systems to work with the NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN GPU, and you’ll be able to knock it up to 3x SLI NVIDIA GeForce GTX TITAN at 6GB – intense!

The Intel MSRD is a partner project to Intel’s own Web TV plans, detailed earlier this year, which will see the company launch its own on-demand streaming service later in 2013. That system is expected to use viewer-tracking as well as other, more traditional control systems; an onboard webcam will monitor the general demographics of the current viewer – age bracket, gender, etc. – and tailor advertising content and suggestions based on that data. SlashGear saw a demonstration of the technology back at Mobile World Congress.

It’s unclear if the MSRD will include the same camera technology out of the box. Intel has so far confirmed that it will include the Atom CE5300 dualcore SoC, complete with hyperthreading and virtualization, 3D/2D graphics encoding, an H.264 B-picture hardware encoder, and integrated power management, along with DBV-T2/T/C broadcast and media sharing stacks, and the aVia media player, already available for Android.

Intel’s own system will likely be built on the same technology, though with the company’s own tailoring to suit its Web TV intentions. The firm hopes to license out the MSRD reference design as a software and hardware shortcut for cable, home entertainment, and other providers hoping to enable things like second-screen interaction with tablets and smartphones, pay-TV, and media streaming.

Inside the ThinkPad T431s you’ll find a third-generation Intel Core i7 processor (with options for other i-family architecture if you wish, i5 if you’re feeling like you’d like less than the top amount of power to back you up). You’ll be working with Windows 7 right out of the box (with option for Windows 8 if you wish), and you’ll have Intel HD Graphics as well as Dolby Home Theater v4 for boosted graphics performance and improved video and audio performance top to bottom.

With this machine you’ll have the option of booting up 40% faster with Lenovo RapidBoot 2.0, you’ll have USB 3.0 ports galore for your 10x faster than USB 2.0, and you’ve got your very own built-in Fingerprint Reader that can be used to turn on the machine and log in with just one swipe. Inside you’ll have self-encrypting drives for protecting data in case of theft or loss. This protection comes as part of the Hardware Password Manager suite in the machine for full-fledged “security at your finger tips.”

This machine has Lenovo Mobile Access with WWAN support, always-on USB port for powering up your mobile devices without needing to power up the laptop itself, and Mobile Hotspot for sharing your wifi, WWAN, or ethernet wirelessly. Up front you’ve also got a 720 HD camera with Face tracking, Polycom Ready for voice clarity and video communication, and a full build meeting Mil-SPEC 8 standards for ruggedness, durability, and high quality hardware.

This machine will be out soon and we’ll have pricing information real soon – stick around for the full push!

Volz is from Colorado Spring, Colorado, and was praised heavily for her work, which is said to be the result of years of effort and of a special passion for the topic that extends beyond mere rote work. According to one of the judges, Volz is well versed in many areas of science, and likewise knowledgeable of advanced mathematics. She beat out more than 1,700 other entries.

The Chairman of the judging panel, who is also a University of Illinois professor, David Marker had this to say: “It’s something she’s worked on for years, and that shows a certain passion and drive that you don’t always see in heavily mentored projects. And what really set her off was that she’s so well-rounded in all areas of science — I was able to ask her very advanced math questions that she answers easily.”

The second-place award and designation went to 17-year-old Jonah Kallenbach, who’s project is titled the mouthful, “Characterizing and Identifying Interactions of Intrinsically Disordered Proteins.” This project focused on the areas of genomics and bioinformatics and looked at abnormal structures within protein chains, something that could eventually be used as part of a larger treatment for illnesses and cancer.

[via New York Times]

This news comes from DigiTimes – a publication which you’ll certainly want to take some measure of salt listening to – speaking with unnamed “institutional investors.” The note speaks of Apple’s business aiming for Intel with an approximate 10% chop of the market in creating this next-generation mobile SoC. As for the rest of the pie, a rumor persists that TSMC – Taiwan Semiconductor Manufacturing Company – will be rolling in the production.

The newest break-up of production, again according to DigiTimes, is a 50/40/10 sharing of efforts, with Samsung keeping the largest slice while TSMC takes the 40 and Intel takes the 10. In the end, the A7 chip will remain Apple-branded and, unlike smartphones made by most other major manufacturers, the processor inside the iPhone, iPad, and iPod touch will only be promoted as Apple-made. We’ll have to wait until the tear-down and magnifying glass up-close looks to be sure.

Have a peek at the timeline below to see more information on what Apple’s A-series chips have been up to, and stick around later this year to hear all about what’s almost certainly going to be the iPhone 5S, too. Is it time for the A7 chip to go much more than multi-core? Quite possibly!

[via DigiTimes]

WIth the Intel Atom CE5300 series you’ll be working with brands such as Asustor, Synology, and Thecus – just for starters. These systems will be working with the low power system-on-chip (SoC) of the CE5300 and will be rolling hard with “browse, click, and play” ease. So says Bev Crair, general manager, of Intel’s Storage Division, who adds that the power runs hand-in-hand with the simplicity here in the very near future:

“Streaming content across numerous mobile devices, not just from the cloud but locally, has become a common practice for today’s consumers. New storage solutions based on the Intel Atom CE5300 series elevate this to a whole new level by making it simple to ‘browse, click, and play’. The new SoC provides an excellent foundation for creating compelling entertainment experiences.” – Crair

You’ll be working with your storage system as either an iTunes-based server or as a media server blasting forth with full DLNA capabilities. With DLNA (Digital Network Living Alliance, that is), you’ll be transcoding 1080p video on the run with intelligent adaptation for any screen resolution you’ve got on hand. HD 1080p content will be knocked down to 480p when your smartphone is such a small size, while larger displays can easily bust out the full 1080 pixels of power.

With Asustor you’ll soon be working with 2 bays of up to 8 Terabytes or 4 bays up to 16 Terabytes. Once again with Thecus you’ll have the ability kick out 2 bays of up to 8 Terabytes – and the 4 bays up to 16 Terabytes holds true here as well. Finally with Synology you’ll only be pushing forth with 2 bays up to 8 Terabytes – but who needs more than that these days?

[via Intel]

In Vodafone’s demo, two screens showed the two perspectives involved: the upper screen would be the TV in the viewer’s home, while the lower display showed what the camera – a simple Logitech webcam – saw and calculated. While facial recognition and tracking is already commonplace, particularly in cameras, Intel’s refinement is to gage attention too: if you’re not actually looking at the screen, instead engrossed in your phone, book, or tablet for instance, it won’t include you in the count of overall viewers.

Initial identification is almost instantaneous, though the system takes a few seconds of prolonged attention in order to identify gender and other details. Once that happens, the box overlaid on the user’s face – which tracks around as the viewer moves in the frame – turns either blue for males or red for females. Meanwhile, other graphics show more specific demographics, such as age bracket, and track historical viewing trends.

Vodafone had a playlist of three commercials for the system to cycle between, and depending on the split of male and female attention, as well as other factors, would choose which to queue up next. For the viewer it’s all seamless: there’s no sudden jump to new content, simply a selection of adverts that they might well be more interested in than the regular network choice.

The system isn’t perfect. We had trouble being recognized while wearing glasses – the camera simply didn’t flag us up as a viewer – and Vodafone told us that people with bald heads could also confuse things, with Intel’s computation unable to figure out gender. As for the inevitable privacy concerns, Intel has already said that it will be fitting a shutter mechanism to its STB, allowing coy subscribers to block off the view of the camera altogether.

Vodafone couldn’t tell us specific details about the Intel system, nor indeed confirm or deny whether this particular implementation would find its way into the eventual Web TV device. Still, this certainly fits in with what the chip company has described. Intel Web TV will launch sometime in 2013.

The new platform is for smartphones and Android tablets and will be the company’s first multimode-multiband LTE solution shipping in the first half of 2013. Intel says that the new platform and smartphone reference design delivers industry-leading performance combined with low-power consumption and a long battery life. Intel says that the new platform is able to rival today’s most popular Android phones.

The platform uses a 32nm dual core Atom Processor in one of three varieties. Those three processors include the Z2580, Z2560, and Z2520 operating at speeds up to 2 GHz, 1.6 GHz, and 1.2 GHz respectively. The processors support Intel Hyper-Threading technology allowing for application threads to execute at one time. The platform also has integrated Intel Graphics Media Accelerator engine with the graphics core operating at up to 533 MHz.

That graphics core supports full 1080p hardware-accelerated video encoding and decoding and 30 frames per second. Intel also promises advanced imaging capabilities for the platform with support for two cameras, and support for primary camera sensor up to 16 megapixels of resolution. The imaging system also supports panorama capture, 15 frame per second burst mode for eight megapixel photos, real-time facial detection and recognition, and mobile HDR image capture. Another important feature of the platform is Intel Identity Protection Technology supporting two-factor authentication.

The platform supports displays with resolutions up to 1900 x 1200 enabling larger screen Android tablet designs. The platform supports Android 4.2, Intel Wireless Display Technology, HSPA+ at 42Mbps along with the Intel XMM 6360 Slim modem solution, and it supports UltraViolrt file format. Intel says that customers that will use the platform include Lenovo, Asus, and ZTE.

[via Intel]

Intel had said that it would be moving to a more advanced process for constructing the next generation Itanium processor. That next-generation processor is code-named Kittson. Intel recently posted a notice that Kittson would be produced using the same 32 nanometer manufacturing process that Intel uses on current versions of Itanium processors.

Intel had previously promised that Kittson would use a more advanced manufacturing process. Typically, each new generation of processors uses a smaller nanometer manufacturing process allowing more transistors, faster operation, and less power consumption. Intel also changed its plans to make Kittson socket compatible with Xeon server chips, a move that would have reduced costs for Intel and HP.

Kittson will reportedly use the same socket is existing Itanium 9300 and 9500 processors. Analyst Nathan Brookwood from Insight64 believes this could be Intel’s way of cutting back in giving itself an exit strategy from the line. He also said that Itanium’s time may have come and gone.

[via PC World]

Chatter of such a system broke last year, with Intel supposedly looking at categories like age and gender to split up its viewership. Using the same sort of face-identification technology as we’ve seen on ultrabooks as well as smart TVs from Samsung, the Intel system would provide content owners and advertisers with far more useful information as to who, exactly, was consuming their shows and commercials.

As Intel sees it, the current recommendations system services like Netflix use is too blunt to be particularly effective. That’s because it works on a per-screen basis, not a per-viewer basis: everything watched by all users of a single Netflix account is combined to generate the newest suggestions, for instance, even if different members of the household have broadly different niches they individually prefer.

Intel’s system, however, would be more precise in its targeting than that. By using the Web TV STB’s in-built camera to watch the viewer as the viewer watches content, it can ascertain more accurate demographic details and tailor connected media to the right person at the right time.

Although the technology for individual identification exists, previous rumors around Intel’s tracking implementation suggested it would take a broader-strokes approach than that. Rather than logging specific members of the household, the Intel-powered STB will merely look at general demographics – i.e. membership of certain age brackets, gender, etc. – that, though a step away from exact tracking, would still unlock considerably more data than the current viewership methods. However, Huggers did say that viewers would be able to use the camera to log into specific accounts, implying far more accurate identification.

Intel’s eventual hope is that the extra information will encourage content owners to unbundle their collections of channels, something the industry has historically been reluctant to do. That won’t be the case from day one, however. As Huggers said during AllThingsD‘s D: Dive Into Media conference this week, “there are opportunities to create a more flexible environment [but] I don’t believe the industry’s ready for unbundling.”

Huggers also recognizes that Intel will face an uphill challenge trying to reassure viewers that a camera pointed out at them isn’t a privacy issue, though the physical shutter to optionally turn off the feature should go some way to helping with that. The Intel Web TV system is expected to launch sometime in 2013.

[via The Register]

Intel‘s Erik Huggers spoke up at the D: Dive Into Media conference this Tuesday. As the Corporate Vice President of the new sector, Huggers was able to confirm the news that’s been “tipped” for quite a few weeks on end. Interestingly enough, Huggers assured the public that this new sector was made up of hires from Apple, Netflix, and Google. Quite the triple-snipe, that is.

It was also revealed that Intel would be bringing on a set-top box to compete with the already ripe market. This box and its abilities will be the embodiment of what Huggers said would be Intel’s new mandate: “Build the best Internet television service ever.” Sounds like a mighty big hill to climb – but with their claim to also be “working with the entire industry” to get it all done, we’ll likely see a service and a device by the end of this year.

This is also the timeline delivered by Huggers this week – inside this year, 2013. That’s the expectation, at least, while services are being confirmed between here and there. It’s been promised by Huggers that this system will work with a collection of apps as well as on-demand content and live TV. Nothing like another operating system to get into for developers – but perhaps this is a come-as-you-are type situation. We can only dream!

In this case a single core really isn’t going to be much compared to the four (plus 1) cores you’ll get with the Tegra 3 on the Nexus 7. The Intel Atom Z2420 single-core processor has been tipped as running in this tablet somewhere between 1 and 2GHz clock speed. This processor exists thus far only in rather inexpensive devices made with low-cost parts in mind – and benchmarks have shown the processor to be nothing compared to multi-core processors across the board.

This tablet will be working with a 7-inch display with IPS LCD technology and a resolution of 1280 x 800 pixels. Inside you’ll find 1GB of RAM with options for for 8, 16, or 32GB of internal storage. This tablet will also come with a microSD card slot for memory expansion as well as Android 4.1 Jelly Bean right out of the box.

With a 3 megapixel camera on the back and a 1.2 megapixel camera on the front, this device will be ready for a market release across the world soon, but such “bonuses” above the Nexus 7 won’t be enough to keep the first of two ASUS tablets at bay. If this is an attempt by ASUS to out-do the Google Nexus counterpart to this tablet, they’ve not done their job very well.

If on the other hand they’re able to release this device for half the price of the Nexus 7, minds may change rather quickly. Stay tuned for more information on this “aluminum housed” tablet coming in rather rapidly!

[via Tablets BG]

Hardware and Design

You could easily mistake the Surface Pro for the ARM-based Surface at first glance, given how aesthetically similar each tablet is. Look a little closer, though, and the key differences become apparent. Microsoft has used the same VaporMg treated magnesium alloy for the casing, and it still feels great in the hand: smooth and easy to hold, but still sturdy and scratch-resistant.

Surface Pro is a little bigger than the original Surface: at 10.81 x 6.81 x 0.53 inches, it’s slightly taller and noticeably thicker, a side-effect of accommodating PC-class components and a bigger capacity battery. That makes it heavier, too, a smudge under 2lbs versus the 1.5lbs of Surface. It’s still comfortable to hold, but for single-handed use we found ourselves cradling the slate in the crook of our arm, rather than gripping it by the bezel as we might do with an iPad. The fact that Windows still prefers landscape to portrait orientation emphasizes that too.

Microsoft’s approach to cooling is an interesting one. Rather than a patch of obvious grills for ventilation, there’s a slot that runs all the way around the edge of the Surface Pro, and from which warm air is pushed out while cool air is pulled in. Two fans, rather than one, have been used to dynamically adjust the airflow depending on what’s hottest and how you’re holding the tablet. Altogether, the design makes it difficult to figure out where, exactly, the tablet is venting from; plus, it helps mask the noise of the fans. In regular use, the Surface Pro is near silent, in fact.

On the back, there’s a kickstand to prop the Surface Pro up on your desk. It actually snaps out to a slightly different angle – a little further reclined – than the stand on the Surface RT, though whether you’ll notice the difference in day-to-day use is questionable. More interestingly, there’s a change in the selection of ports Microsoft spreads around the slate: you now get a full-sized USB 3.0, rather than USB 2.0, as well as a Mini DisplayPort instead of the Surface RT’s HD video output. Otherwise, there’s still a headphone jack and a microSDXC card slot, along with a magnetic cover port for attaching the same Touch Cover or Type Cover keyboard accessories as we’ve seen before.

Specifications

Where the Surface RT ran its pared-back Windows on NVIDIA’s Tegra 3, the Surface Pro has far more familiar fare inside. An Intel Core i5 3rd-gen processor is the tablet’s beating heart, with Intel HD Graphics 4000 driving the 10.6-inch display (more on which later). Memory is doubled, to 4GB, while two storage versions are offered: 64GB and 128GB.

Here, though, is the first of the issues the Surface Pro runs into. Windows is a notorious drive hog, and when coupled with the default applications and the mandatory recovery partition – provided in-lieu of recovery discs or, as Apple includes with its recent driveless notebooks, a USB stick with the OS – there’s a surprisingly small amount of space left for users themselves. On the 64GB version, in fact, only around 23GB of space is actually available, while the 128GB model does a little better with 83GB free.

Microsoft points out that owners wanting more capacity can throw in a memory card – a 64GB microSDXC can be had for around sixty bucks – but it’s still likely to be a surprise for those expecting closer to the number printed on the box. There’s also cloud storage, such as Microsoft’s own SkyDrive, which could help fill in the gaps, though without an integrated cellular modem you’d need to be within range of a WiFi network in order to actually access it. It’s possible to create your own bootable USB drive, and then delete the recovery partition manually, but we can’t help wishing Microsoft had done this for us.

In addition to the USB 3.0 port, the Surface Pro has WiFi a/b/g/n and Bluetooth 4.0. Inside, there’s an ambient light sensor, accelerometer, gyroscope, and a digital compass, though no hardware GPS. Microsoft has found space for stereo speakers, as per the Surface RT, but only a single microphone against the RT version’s dual mic array. The pair of 720p HD cameras – one on the front, one on the back – remain.

Pen and Display

Microsoft had high hopes for its ClearType-blessed display on the original Surface, but we found the 1366 x 768 resolution to be underwhelming in comparison to better-than-HD panels on the iPad and Nexus 10. Happily, the Surface Pro brings with it a far better screen: still 10.6-inches and 16:9 widescreen, but running at 1920 x 1080 Full HD.

The difference is vast. Where once we had slightly fuzzy text, everything is now crisp. Viewing angles seem better too, and we’re impressed by the richness of the colors. It might not be the Retina-level resolution of the latest iPad, but it’s far more in keeping with what, at upwards of $899, is most definitely a premium tablet.

The Surface Pro’s talents don’t end at a great display, though. In addition to 10-finger multitouch – double what the Surface RT can recognize – there’s also pen support. Not the fake-finger capacitive styli offered for the iPad and other tablets, but a special pen that works with an active digitizer embedded in the screen.

Usually, the pen clings to the right side of the tablet, magnetically attached. It’s a firm grip – Microsoft says it purposefully increased the magnet strength from what holds the keyboard on – and should keep it in place even if you drop the whole thing into your bag. As the nib gets within a few millimeters of the display, the usual capacitive touch is shut off and everything is controlled via the pen instead: you can wave it above the surface of the screen to move the mouse pointer, and then tap to mimic a left mouse click. A button on the side does right mouse click duty.

On the opposite end to the nib is an “eraser” which, as long as the app recognizes it, allows you to rub out mistakes. Just as you’d expect, there’s palm-rejection that means you can lean your hand on the screen and not have it skew your digital ink. The pen is battery-free, too, getting its power from the digitizer layer in the Surface Pro itself.

Microsoft obviously intends for the pen to play a big role in the Surface Pro experience: it’s included as standard in the box, whereas the Touch Cover and Type Cover are both optional extras. Windows tablets aren’t exactly unfamiliar with stylus control, but in the early years of the iPad modern tablet use got associated with finger control, and the technology fell from favor. Since then Samsung has restarted interest in what can be done with a digital pen, with the Galaxy Note series, and the Surface Pro can wear its stylus with pride.

Windows 8

Special screen and VaporMg chassis aside, the Surface Pro is basically just another Windows PC. We’ve already comprehensively reviewed Windows 8, though it’s worth noting that the tile-based UI makes far more sense when you’re swiping and tapping through it with your fingers than it does when navigated using a mouse.

As you’d hope from a Core i5 processor and 4GB of memory, there are no noticeable slow-downs and the Surface Pro handled any app we threw at it. Capacity concerns aside, Microsoft’s use of flash storage also lends a welcome boost to software load times, while multitasking is instantaneous, flipping between apps without delay.

Slot on a Touch Cover or Type Cover, meanwhile – the same accessories for the Surface RT will work with the Pro – and you’ve got a workable ultrabook alternative. We still prefer the Type Cover for anything more than the basics of text-entry, mind; the zero-profile keys of the Touch Cover, while an improvement over on-screen typing, nonetheless lack the responsiveness that makes extended use comfortable.

An alternative to both is using the Surface as the hub of a desktop setup, something that’s easy to achieve if you opt for a Bluetooth keyboard and mouse. The Surface Pro is more than capable of powering a large display over Mini DisplayPort, leaving the USB 3.0 port free for hooking up an external drive or other peripherals. Since this is full-fat Windows, there’s no making sure that your accessory of choice is on Microsoft’s “approved” list, as is the case with Windows RT.

When the Surface Pro really comes into its own is when the pen gets involved. Frustratingly, Microsoft hasn’t really done everything it can to demonstrate what benefits a stylus brings: the obvious showcase app would be OneNote, which was offering Evernote-style digital notetaking functionality long before Evernote sprouted in the cloud, but Surface Pro buyers will need to cough up $69.99 for a copy (or get it as part of Office 2013 or an Office 365 subscription).

It’s worth it, though, as is trying out a digital art app, such as the copies of Autodesk SketchBook Express Microsoft and Fresh Paint Microsoft had loaded onto our review device. The Wacom stylus can differentiate between 1024 different levels of pressure, automatically adjusting the thickness of the on-screen ink depending on how hard you press, for instance, and it’s a far more user-friendly way to sketch out ideas (even if your art skills fall short). Surface Pro also supports being turned into a graphics tablet of sorts: hook up an external display and you can tell Windows 8 to map your pen movements on the tablet to the external screen by default, mimicking a standalone Wacom tablet.

More patchy are plain Windows apps, which lack distinct touchscreen support and, as a result, can be a little more difficult to control with your fingers. Browsers are a good example: Microsoft’s own Internet Explorer gives the best touch experience, while others – Firefox, Chrome, Safari, etc. – generally expect you to be using a mouse, and hence navigate by using the scroll bars on the side of the screen rather than flicking and pinch-zooming. In the traditional Windows desktop you can optionally enlarge the scroll bars to give yourself a bigger target, but it still lacks the immediacy of, say, the iPad’s Safari browser.

Where the Surface Pro’s internet experience does pull ahead is in speed. We expected strong browser performance from the grown-up processor and full OS, and sure enough the SunSpider results – the test of JavaScript performance, where faster results are better – delivered. In IE, the test was complete in 144ms, while Safari and Chrome took a little longer, at over 240ms apiece. Contrast all three results, though, with the 4th-gen iPad with Retina display, which took 879ms to complete the same test.

The Surface Pro’s integrated graphics – rather than a discrete GPU – preclude any serious gaming or video editing, unfortunately. Still, we were able to load up Photoshop and complete some of the more day-to-day tasks without the tablet stumbling to a halt.

It’s in day-to-day use that the Surface Pro arguably shows its full hand. The combination of the kickstand and the broad display viewing angles meant the tablet generally followed us around the home, stood up on whatever surface was nearby. The kitchen counter was a particular favorite, at which point the Windows 8 Live Tiles showed their merit. Surface Pro sits quietly updating, flagging up new messages and the like; however, it’s also a great at what we’d call “natural discovery,” where content you might have forgotten about or overlooked is brought to the fore.

A good example of that is the photo integration. Windows 8′s abilities to bring online galleries through to the Live Tiles and cycle through photos meant we rediscovered whole folders-worth of images, including those shared by friends. It’s an engaging way to interact with the Surface Pro, and helped by the fact that software in the Metro-style interface co-exists neatly with what’s running on the traditional desktop. So, we could have the full Spotify app playing music in the background, while using the more finger-friendly UI to browse the web and flick through galleries.

Battery

To say Microsoft is shy on making battery life predictions is an understatement: beyond the confirmation that it’s a 42Wh pack inside the Surface Pro – up from the 31.5Wh of the Surface RT – there’s little indication of what sort of runtime owners might expect. Still, with specifications akin to a mainstream ultrabook, it comes as little surprise that the Surface Pro manages roughly ultrabook-length longevity.

In a test with the display permanently on, and playing streaming media constantly, the Surface Pro lasted for between 4.5 and 5 hours. In a slightly more mixed test, with a combination of web browsing while listening to Spotify, as well as streaming via Netflix and YouTube, that rose to six hours.

Both of those scenarios are probably some of the biggest battery challenges the Surface Pro might be expected to take on. More typical daily use, then, could see the tablet run for a few hours more, especially if you’re predominantly web browsing, emailing, and using art apps.

Wrap-up

With a new 128GB iPad with Retina display on the scene, it’s easy to make comparisons between Apple’s tablet and the Surface Pro. In practice, however, they’re very different beasts. The iPad is focused resolutely on the mass market, and if you want one you have to be willing to concede to Apple’s Way: their decision about what apps are worthy of the App Store, their decision about what accessories can be used, their decision about what, exactly, you can do with the tablet you just spent more than a few hundred dollars on. In contrast, the Surface Pro is a paragon of freedom. If you have unusual requests of it, you can probably find the software and/or hardware to achieve them. It is, after all, a touchscreen ultrabook wearing a different costume.

If you actually need a full Windows PC that you can strum with your fingers is the question. Not being limited to pared-down versions of apps is a big bonus if there’s particular software you need access to; however, that flexibility comes with its fair share of compromises, such as the limitations on battery life compared to ARM-based slates, the increase in bulk, and the higher price.

The Surface Pro is slickly designed, its digital pen a joy to use – if you have the need of it – and it comes without the software niggles that dampened our enthusiasm about the Surface RT last year. Think of it as a touchscreen notebook with an optional keyboard and it makes the most sense. That may be semantics, but it also means the Surface Pro is more likely to cannibalize ultrabook sales than eat into Apple’s iPad market. Whether that’s the market Microsoft was aiming for, we’re not sure, but the Surface Pro makes considerable sense for the prosumer.

Hardware

The Acer Iconia W510-1422 is not just a tablet first, notebook second sort of situation like many modern multi-mode machines are. Instead you’ve got full Windows 8 (as opposed to the tablet-centric Windows RT) along with a solid touchscreen display and a keyboard dock thats clearly made to be part of the full package rather than an after-thought. The keyboard here is clearly the bottom half of the unit rather than the piece you leave at home when you’re feeling no need to key.

Because you can bend the display back to a display position (with the keys of the keyboard then facing down towards the table) you’ve got a rather nice and nearly unique situation on your hands. While we’ve seen this position for tablet convertible machines several times over the past few months, you can rest assured that Acer does it right with a well-balanced and relatively rugged delivery of all pieces involved. And it feels natural to use this machine in each of its three major positions – that’s important when it comes to this modern touch-friendly Windows 8 environment we’re in here in the first part of 2013.

On this unit you’ve got a LED-backlit TFT LCD HD 10.1-inch display up front with 1366 x 768 pixel resolution covered by a smooth sheet of Gorilla Glass 2. Viewing angles are essentially perfect across the grid and the brightness you’ve got here is ready for everyday action (everywhere save direct sunlight). You’ll be rolling out with 5-finger touch as opposed to the 10 you’ll find on desktop PCs in 2013 for the most part, but unless you’ve got something rather unique on your hands that needs more than a couple fingers at a time, you’ll never notice.

Inside you’ve got wireless connectivity as well as Bluetooth 4.0+HS and all around the rim you’ve got high-quality connections and blasters of media. Two speakers sit on the sides of the tablet portion of this setup to the left and the right, this allowing sound to bounce off your palm and into your ears with ease. This machine has an integrated digital microphone that works well with the cameras in front and back and you’ve got a set of ports for USB connectivity as well.

On the tablet itself you’ve got a microUSB port and a microHDMI port for 1080p output as well as multi-display. With this port you’re able to use a massive display as a second screen – as you well should – and it works smooth as if it were a single-unit solution. The microUSB port allows you to connect to whatever other PC you’ve got handy and works with the microUSB-to-full size USB converter accessory that comes in the box as well – great for mice.

The keyboard portion of this setup also has a full-sized USB port for additional accessories, and the whole setup is powered by a port (with included power cord) that exists on the tablet itself and on the keyboard dock. When the tablet is connected to the keyboard, it does so with this port, leaving the keyboard dock to do all the powering of the whole unit.

Camera

The front-facing camera you’ve got here is more than ready for great video chat – better than some desktop machines these days with 1920 x 1080 resolution and 1080p video recording ready for action. The back-facing camera is also decent, though not exactly on-par with the camera you’re getting on most modern smartphones with the same specifications. have a peek at a few demo photos below to get an idea of what you’re working with here.

Note that most of the photos are taken with the back-facing camera indoors while the photo looking upward at the dog was taken with the front-facing camera. Again, this front-facing camera should be used primarily for video chat rather than photography, mind you.

Software and Performance

The full Windows 8 experience you’ll be working with here offers up a collection of Acer-added applications for cloud computing, security, connectivity with your other wireless devices on the web, and everything in-between. This machine features the “Acer Ring” with its ability to quick-launch apps and websites as well as take screenshots on-the-fly. Acer Ring is essentially a home screen replacement app that allow you to take control of your machine in tablet mode, this version of the app made specifically for this device. You’ll find each of the ports sitting in their right places and all of your media action controllable from one location – great stuff!

You’ll be able to run nearly every kind of app you’d be able to run on any other Windows 8 machine (within reason.) While the whole experience is fluid and surprisingly powerful for what the physical size of the unit implies, you wont be anywhere near the monstrous power of desktop machines like the Acer Predator. Don’t expect to play Hawken at full power here (not yet, at least).

Under the hood you’ve got an Intel Atom Dual-Core processor from the Clover Trail generation that proves its might by doing well with every app the device comes with and some of the more interesting nearly high-powered oddities you’ll find like Remote Desktop. With Remote Desktop you’ll be able to work with your computer from another over a wireless network – the Iconia W510-1422 keeps up rather nicely. The exact model we’ve got here is the Intel Atom Z2760 1.5GHz (dual core) complete with Intel Burst Technology up to 1.8GHz (1MB L2 cache).

Also under the hood you’ve got a 64GB Solid State Drive, 2GB of DDR3 SDRAM, and Intel Graphic Media Accelerator technology with 64MB of dedicated system memory. Battery time with the tablet alone has proven to be right between 7 and 8 hours when we’re using it and several days if it’s just sitting on the desk on its own, asleep. The tablet itself works with a 3450mAh battery while the base includes an additional battery that adds nearly as much battery time again. Together you’re looking at several days of standby time at LEAST with around 11 hours of up-time just so long as you’re browsing the web and playing videos (high-powered games give you a bit less).

Wrap-up

This machine is ready for the 2013 season of Windows 8 action, but it’s not going to replace your MacBook Air. It’s not meant to – if you’re a Windows user and want a mobile device ready for everyday action and a relatively large amount of battery time, that’s where you’ll find the greatness in the Iconia W5. The whole setup is solid, the presentation is ready to take on the top competition in the market today, and it’s easily one of our top choices for convertible tablets running full Windows 8 today – and not just because there aren’t many of them out there!