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.
Some analysts are saying that the economy is starting to show signs of recovery, which is a good thing for all of us. The latest quarterly numbers for the PC industry are in from research Firm IDC and PC shipments have reportedly risen by 2.3% and there have been some changes at the top of the PC shippers list.
Acer’s attempts to corner the touch market haven’t stopped at their multitouch notebook; the company has also outed a touchscreen all-in-one desktop, the Acer Aspire Z5610-U9072, with a 23-inch 1920 x 1080 HD display. Running Windows 7 on a dual-core Pentium E5300 2.60GHz with 4GB of RAM, a 320GB hard-drive and an ATI Mobility Radeon HD4570 512MB video card, the Z5610 comes with Microsoft’s Touch Pack as well as Acer’s own TouchSuite.
There’s a lot of discussion about the role of convergence of devices. Everywhere you go, it seems that someone’s pushing the notion that every function needs to be converged into one device. Now convergence is a great idea: the idea of carrying one device instead of multiple devices is compelling, but is it really realistic? Sure, I’d rather carry one device than two, but our research shows consumers will carry two or, in some age demographics, they’ll even carry as many as three.
It’s not just the LOOX C CULV notebooks new from Fujitsu today; the company have also outed a number of desktops and notebooks, some supporting multitouch touchscreens. The range kicks off with the TV-alike Fujitsu F-Series, a range of 2.53GHz Core 2 Duo P8700 all-in-ones with either 20-inch 1600 x 900 or 23-inch 1920 x 1080 Full HD multitouch displays. Meanwhile the Fujitsu F/ER-Series desktops are specially-customized versions of the F-range, intended for elderly users whom the company hopes will find its tweaked UI more usable.
HP have also updated their business notebooks and desktop range today, in the shape of the HP ProBook 6445b and ProBook 6545b laptops and the HP Elite 7000 Business Desktop PC. The two notebooks each offer a choice of AMD Turion II, Athlon II or Sempron processors, together with up to 8GB of RAM, up to 500GB HDD/128GB SSD, and ATI Mobility Radeon HD 4200 graphics. The ProBook 6445b has a 14-inch display running at 1,366 x 768 while the ProBook 6545b has a 15.6-inch display running at either 1,366 x 768 or 1,600 x 900.
HP have gone touch-crazy in the run-up to Windows 7’s release, pushing out several new touch-sensitive products including a 42-inch widescreen LCD. The HP TouchSmart tx2 updates the original convertible tx2, and has a 12.1-inch capacitive touchscreen which also accepts stylus input; meanwhile there are two new TouchSmart desktop ranges, in the shape of the consumer-oriented HP TouchSmart 300 and 600 – at 20- and 23-inches respectively – and the business-centric HP TouchSmart 9100, a 23-inch model targeted at the hospitality and retail markets.
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