Acer America introduced two new PC platforms today, the TravelMate 6593 and TravelMate 6493. These new notebooks are designed to suite the professional on the go. The new TravelMate notebook series offers a robust, secure and powerful PC solution for corporate and business customers.
Remote controls have undoubtedly made the worlds population just a little bit lazier if nothing more. The Amulet Remote seems to be aimed at taking this just a little bit further. No need to be straining your fingers as you flip through channels anymore, just shout at the remote.
ASUS’ R50a UMPC was always taking on a serious challenge: Windows Vista on a 1.33GHz Atom Z520 processor with 1GB of RAM is asking either for nth-degree fine-tuning or just plain trouble. Initial reports seemed vaguely promising, but Ben over at UMPC Portal has found things less impressive. Chief criticism – aside from the bloatware, cramped writing area and difficult form-factor – is the sluggish performance.
Microsoft will be widely selling the Windows Vista PRODUCT (RED) edition, debuted on Dell PCs, as of December 15th. The package consists of several new wallpapers, a screensaver, two sidebar gadgets and a Dreamscene, and for every sale Microsoft will make a donation to the PRODUCT (RED) fund.
Samsung’s MediaLive HDTV Media Center Extender has finally got a shipping date: October 15th. The compact box is intended to bridge the divide between your Vista Media Center and your Samsung HDTV; it basically straps to the back of the set and brings the Vista interface into your living room, streaming content either via WiFi draft-n or cabled ethernet.
Windows 7, Milestone 3 was just previewed and Mary Jo Foley got a brief look at it. And though Microsoft is now just one more preview away from the official Beta 1 version, not a whole lot has changed from Vista.
Having been unboxed on video, the Willcom D4 UMPC has now travelled over to Jenn at Pocketables for some darned good testing. While the system is still something of a miniturization marvel, the first reports aren’t exactly glowing. Top of the list (or should that be bottom?) is battery life; Willcom themselves only promise 1.5hrs and that measly figure looks sadly accurate. Worse still, Jenn found that leaving the D4 in Vista’s sleep mode for 7hrs drained it to just 19-percent: around 15 minutes of actual use.
Samsung has announced two new versions of the company’s Q1 Ultra UMPC. The Q1U-CMXP adds a 3G HSDPA modem, while the Q1UP-V replaces Windows XP with Vista Business. Both use Intel’s 1.33GHz Core Solo U1500 processor, but in a nod to Vista’s greater RAM hunger the Q1UP-V doubles standard memory to 2GB.
Yet another home media option from Samsung, this time aiming to connect your shiny new LCD or plasma TV up to your media center PC. The Samsung MediaLive is an extender that brings the Vista Media Center to your HDTV screen; that means you can watch recorded or downloaded media, pause live TV and also watch live high-definition programming via a CableCARD tuner.
SanDisk has criticised Microsoft’s Windows Vista OS as not being “optimized” to take advantage of the speed benefits of solid-state drives. Speaking during the company’s Q2 financial results conference call, SanDisk Chairman and Chief Executive Officer Eli Harari described what he called the “Vista shortfalls” and how developing their SSD drives had been a special challenge. In fact, Harari blamed Vista for putting SanDisk behind its competitors in the sector.
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