Another week has come and gone leaving us with memories and a hoard of cool stories to throw your way for weekend reading in case you missed them over the week. An Asus 900HA netbook was hacked into a touchscreen slate on Monday and we really liked it. DIY gear is so cool, especially when it turns out this good. Monday also brought some details on the Blackberry Storm 2 piezo touchscreen tech. We really hope its better than the original Storm.
It’s looking more and more like online retailers are letting the ball slip on these kinds of things; or maybe it’s crafty marketing by the manufacturers, to get people enticed by early leaks and what not. We can’t say for sure, and wouldn’t that ruin the surprise? And let’s face it, after days like today and the official price reduction of the current line of Xbox 360s, we need some more rumors and speculation. Thankfully, we’ve got Amazon Germany.
Sony has outed three new DSLRs in its flagship Alpha range, the α850, α550 and α500, packing 24.6-, 14.2- and 12.3-megapixel sensors respectively. The α850 picks up much of the goodness from the Sony α900’s table, including accessory compatibility, only at a much lower (comparatively-speaking) price, while the α550 and α500 differentiate themselves by packing new Memory Stick and SDHC card slots rather than Compact Flash.
We’re still waiting to see a real, working model of Sony’s new Reader Daily Edition, announced earlier this week, but until then we’ll make do with a video review of another of the company’s recent ebook devices. MobileTechReview have been running through the functionality of the touchscreen PRS-600, and as we’ve already heard hint of it’s a blend of decent new functionality but middling text quality compared to its predecessor.
Video review after the cut
Google have updated their ebook project with the ability to download titles in EPUB format, the same file type as Sony recently switched to with its new range of ebook Reader devices. It means that in excess of a million titles are now available in the more Reader-friendly format, having been scanned in, processed and edited by Google themselves in many cases.
Tearing down gadgets isn’t new. In fact, The PSP Go’s bigger brethren just went through the same thing. There’s plenty of reasons to do these things to new pieces of tech, but most of it revolves around finding out what makes them tick, and how much it cost to put it all together. In the case of the PSP Go, there’s nothing really new to show off. And to be honest, we’d much prefer to have one not disassembled, rather than look at those standard guts within.
When announcements are imminent, or even weeks away, it gets to the point where every day seems to be filled with he-said she-said shenanigans, and no company is left out in this process. Especially the big ones. Microsoft happens to be one of those big ones, and considering the news from Sony this last week, everyone is (im)patiently waiting for the Xbox 360 to follow suit. And while many thought it was going to happen at GamesCon, it looked like Sony’s announcement of the same material might have swayed that decision.
With the veracity of his information seemingly corroborated by accurately tipping the Sony PS3 Slim back in June now that the skinny console has been made official, tipster Super_Secret’s next prediction – regarding Sony’s portable gaming line – is now under the microscope. In June the anonymous source suggested that rather than phasing out UMD-based PSP models, Sony were instead preparing to replace the current PSP-3000 with a new PSP-4000.
Sony Japan have unveiled their latest range of Blu-ray recorders, and since there’s no such thing as too much storage they’ve also thrown hard-drives inside the five new models too. Capacity of the BDZ-series ranges from 320GB all the way up to a whopping 2TB in the flagship BDZ-EX200, which is apparently good for up to 253 hours of high-definition TV.
With Sony’s PS3 Slim showing up for sale all over, and word from the company themselves that retailers have been given the green light to begin swapping cash for consoles, it’s only right and fair that the trusty teardown teams begin their dismantling. Both iFixit and Rapid Repair have had their screwdrivers on standby in the run up to the new PS3 Slim’s release, and along with the warning that a teardown “should not be used as disassembly instructions” have set to work stripping the console to its component parts.
Video of teardown process after the cut
JP
