Say what you like about Microsoft, but their Research arm certainly know how to put together an eye-catching demo. Chief research and strategy officer Craig Mundie has been doing a tour of US colleges showing off a prototype next-gen computer – among other things – that has a transparent glass display and can be controlled by pen, voice, touch-free gestures and eye-tracking.
Continued »
AMD are reportedly planning two new desktop platforms which will see a May 2010 launch, at least that's the latest rumor out of motherboard manufacturers. The AMD Dorado and Leo platforms will target the mainstream and high-end respectively, with each using ATI Radeon HD 5000 series video cards and processors from either the Athlon II or Phenom II ranges.
While we often can be found heaping scorn onto the me-too Atom N270 netbook ranges that pass our viewing window, Intel’s low-power chip does occasionally find its way into an interesting machine. Stealth Computer have slotted the 1.6GHz chip into their latest “Little PC”, the Stealth LPC-395F, a fanless nettop with a ruggedized chassis and front-loading 2.5-inch hard-drive bay.
When companies like ASUS are reasonably legitimately launching desktop supercomputers, describing your performance PC as a “personal supercomputer” seems like asking for trouble. Still, that’s how Maingear are referring to their latest desktop, the SHIFT, packing as it does a choice of Intel Core i7 processor, stacks of DDR3-1600 memory, Asetek liquid-cooling and a choice of up to six regular hard-drives or twelve SSDs.
Remember Lenovo’s mysterious all-in-one that showed up in the company’s Flickr stream last week? The desktop has been named and detailed today, as the Lenovo ThinkCentre A70z, and while it’s targeted at small and medium businesses there’s still plenty of appeal if you like your desktops functional rather than showy. The ThinkCentre A70z has a choice of Intel Celeron or Core 2 Duo processors, 19-inch display and – while the specifications are really nothing to get excited about – does at least do a convincing impression of a simple LCD monitor.
We love a little mystery, especially when that mystery is fuelled by a manufacturer themselves, and Lenovo have done us proud today with a new all-in-one PC. While the company is no stranger to all-in-ones – we reviewed their IdeaCentre C300 back in August – what makes this unnamed model different is that it’s the first in the Lenovo ThinkCentre range, an all-in-one targeted at business users.
Samsung Mobile’s 2-inch transparent OLED didn’t exactly blow us away, but their other prototypes are far more impressive. The company has also been showing off a 14-inch AMOLED notebook prototype, with a whopping 1,000,000:1 contrast ratio and 300cd/m2 brightness. Despite that, the display is a mere 2.7mm thick.
Video demo after the cut
ASUS have outed their first supercomputer, and while you might associate the term with rooms packed full of ominous black totems, the ASUS ECS 1000 is actually a simple desktop. Despite the compact size, the ECS 1000 manages to hit speeds of up to 1.1 terraflops courtesy of NVIDIA graphics cards; the 3.33GHz Intel LGA1366 Xeon W3580 is paired with three NVIDIA Tesla C1060 computing processors and a single Quadro FX5800.
It feels like its been a long path to Windows 7; close to a year ago today we were looking at early screenshots of Vista’s replacement, and the months in-between have been punctuated with test builds, broad RC distribution, eight million beta testers and tentative enthusiasm. Now, October 22nd 2009, Microsoft have officially launched Windows 7, along with a number of partnerships integrating the OS with CBS, Netflix, Amazon and more.
Dell’s latest all-in-one is yet to show up on the company’s US pages, with Japan sneaking a lead, but we expect the Windows 7 desktop to make its North American appearance in short order. The Dell Inspiron One 19 lacks any sort of fancy multitouch support for the new OS, but does squeeze in a choice of 2.6GHz or 2.93GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processors, up to 4GB of RAM, up to 500GB storage and a DVD burner, all hiding behind an 18.5-inch 1366 x 768 LCD display.
JP
