Archive for March, 2008
Flash cards, drives for ASUS Eee PC users
You know something is really catching on when companies starts branding otherwise generic products as specially designed for said something, and it now looks like that’s now true for the Eee PC, thanks to these two new clever bits of marketing from A-DATA. While you could of course use any USB flash drive of SDHC card with the laptop, A-DATA’s apparently hoping that its new “special edition” flash cards and drives will sway over at least a couple of Eee PC users, and we don’t doubt that they will. Apparently available only in 8GB versions, they each come in Eee PC-coordinating white, with the USB flash drive also boasting the extra bonus of a leather carrying strap. No word on pricing or availability just yet, unfortunately, but we wouldn’t be surprised if they demand a bit of a premium over their non-Eee counterparts.
Via Engadget
Adobe: Flash is coming to the iPhone!
The word is out, kids. Adobe has apparently gone against old Jobsy’s wishes, and it’s planning a Flash player made all special for the iPhone (ala Windows Mobile) despite Apple’s concerns that the technology — in its current incarnation, anyway — isn’t cut out for mobile duty. During a conference call today, Chief Executive Shantanu Narayen said, “We believe Flash is synonymous with the Internet experience, and we are committed to bringing Flash to the iPhone,” adding, “We have evaluated (the software developer tools) and we think we can develop an iPhone Flash player ourselves.” We wouldn’t be surprised if Adobe were to be given a pass on all those pesky SDK rules that would likely prevent a proper browser-based Flash component to be coded for the device, though those Apple dudes can be real sticklers for rules.
vie Engadget
Intel’s Netbook: vs. Asus EEE PC?
We’re not exactly sure what to make of this one just yet, but the photo above seems to indicate that Intel may be hopping on the quickly growing sub-$400 laptop bandwagon. Reportedly spotted at an undisclosed OEM facility, the so-called Netbook would weigh less than three pounds, arrive in June and feature a 900MHz Celeron processor, 512MB of RAM, a 40GB hard drive, 9-inch display, built-in WiFi / Ethernet and a convenient carry handle à la Eduwise. We know, you’ve no idea how you’re going to contain your excitement over another budget priced lappie, but feel free to tap the read link for a couple more snapshots.
Via Engadget
iPhone SDK downloads exceed 100,000, upcoming games get outed
Just four days after Apple announced that the beta version of the iPhone SDK would be available to developers, some 100,000 downloads have taken place. ‘Course, it’s not like we’re shocked by Cupertino’s latest horn tooting, but we’ve all ideas that number pales in comparison to the amount of requests for unlocks. Nevertheless, the real news from the Apple camp is that companies such as Namco and PopCap are apparently on board to bring titles such as Pac-man, Galaga, Bejeweled, Zuma and Peggle to the iPod touch / iPhone via App Store. Furthermore, Six Apart’s CEO admitted that it’s already developing a “native iPhone application for TypePad,” and the VP of THQ Wireless implied that we’d be seeing some of its wares surface here as well. As for release dates? Your guess is as good as ours.
Via Engadget
THE FIRST QUAD-CORE LAPTOP!
XtremeNotebooks has announced the 17-inch Xtreme 917V Accelerator, the first US distributed laptop to feature a quad core processor.
The Xtreme 917V Accelerator gaming/workstation notebook features desktop-use Intel Core Quad Q6600 or Q6700 CPU, depending on customer’s choice. Both processors have 8MB of L2 cache and 1066MHz front side bus, and are clocked at 2.4GHz and 2.66GHz respectively.
The laptop’s 17″ widescreen display with a resolution of up to 1920 x 1200 is managed by DirectX 10-ready single or dual NVIDIA GeForce 8700M GT 512MB video cards or by the GeForce Go 7950 GTX 512MB single or dual graphics supporting DirectX 9.
The customers can choose up to 4GB of DDR2 system memory at 667MHz or 800MHz and up to three hard drives for a total of 750GB storage. These HDDs can operate in RAID 0,1 or 5 mode. In addition, there are 32GB and 64GB solid state drive options. The 917V Accelerator comes with a DVD burner or with an optional Blu Ray drive.
The system includes a wireless connection supporting up to 802.11n wireless standard, a Bluetooth option, a built-in 1.3 megapixel web camera, and an optional PAL/NTSC TV tuner.
Since this laptop is built on Clevo’s D900C, it should feature wired LAN and a 56K modem, four USB ports, an ExpressCard slot, a 7-in-1 media card reader, and FireWire port, as well as VGA, DVI and S-Video outputs. It should weigh around 11.9 lbs.
The Xtreme 917V Accelerator ships with Windows XP or Windows Vista operating system or without any OS preloaded.
Its starting price is $3,359. So expensive!!
(From Laptoping.com)
Novare Technologies: Software for iPhone!
MANILA, Philippines–Hong Kong-based Novare Technologies says it is making applications for Apple’s hugely popular iPhone device through its team of Filipino developers.
Novare is headquartered in Hong Kong, but its applications development unit is located in the Philippines.
Asked in an interview what applications will be made for the iPhone, Ernie Imperial, Novare’s business development director, said the applications would probably be for sales force automation and CRM (customer relationship management).
Some consumer-oriented applications may also be developed to take advantage of the iPhone’s multimedia features, he added.
“The product itself can be finished in three months but the market is the question,” Imperial said, adding that Novare will sell its applications abroad since the iPhone has yet to be launched in the region.
Novare has already developed and deployed enterprise solutions running on Blackberry and Windows Mobile handhelds for local clients, he said.
yeah boi 
Install Windows XP to your Windows Vista or Mac using Virtual PC
Free Virtual PC from Microsoft
By Jeremy Reimer | Published: July 12, 2006 - 06:09PM CT
Virtualization has long been a fun toy for PC enthusiasts, and a godsend for developers who need to test their applications on a wide variety of operating systems. Now Microsoft has opened up the fun to everyone by releasing Virtual PC 2004 SP1 for Windows as a free download.
Virtual PC started life out as a commercial product sold by Connectix for the Macintosh platform that enabled Mac users to run PC applications. The company later released versions for Windows, OS/2, and Red Hat Linux. In 2003 Microsoft purchased the company and the product became known as Microsoft Virtual PC.
The download came in the form of a 18.2 MB zip file, and it installed quickly and easily on my PC without requiring any reboots, although I did have to uninstall an earlier version of Connectix Virtual PC before I could begin. When run, the application presents a small window that contains the user’s various virtual operating system images. As there were no images installed, I took a fresh Ubuntu CD (well, fairly fresh, it was version 5.10) and started to put Virtual PC through its paces.
The “New Virtual Machine” wizard is fairly straightforward, although support for non-Microsoft operating systems seems somewhat lacking. From a dropdown menu I could select MSDOS, Windows 95, Windows 98, Windows ME, Windows NT, Windows 2000, Windows XP, OS/2, Windows NT Server, Windows 2000 Server, Windows 2003 Server, and “Other.” Seeing as Ubuntu was probably “other,” I chose that option. Virtual PC then asked for the amount of virtual RAM to allocate and the location to store the virtual hard drive.
One disappointment is that the amount of virtual RAM you can allocate to a new VM is limited by the amount of free physical RAM on your host machine. With 1 GB of RAM and several applications running, I was only able to select 128 MB for my virtual PC—any higher allocations caused the VM to fail with an out of memory error. While restricting RAM sizes to physical memory helps to increase performance of the VM, it would be nice to be able to select higher amounts of RAM and wait for the OS to swap it out.
Virtual PC uses your existing CD-ROM drives as devices in the VM, so it is easy to install a new operating system on a blank virtual hard drive by simply putting the CD in and waiting for it to autoboot. A Sound Blaster sound card and a generic network adapter are also provided as virtual devices. On my system, I had to set the network settings to Shared Networking (NAT) before Ubuntu would recognize and configure the network adapter. The virtual hard drive is auto-resizing, so it starts out as zero bytes and only grows as much as it needs to, although according to the Ubuntu install it was a 17.3 GB drive when empty. The Linux distro installed without incident, although it did take about three hours to complete the process.
Will giving away this product for free hurt other products such as VMware? Possibly, but keep in mind that in our Ars head-to-head showdown it was found to be somewhat inferior to VMware at the time it was originally released. One big advantage of VMWare is the availability of “VMware tools” that can be optionally added after the OS is installed in order to increase graphics and sound performance. VMware is also available for free in a more limited version known as VMware Player, which will run existing virtual machine images but cannot create new ones. Still, for those on a budget who either want or need to test different operating systems, having Virtual PC available for free is a great bargain.
Microsoft is currently working on Virtual PC 2007 which will support Vista and offer enhanced performance. The company plans to make it available as a free download as well. Microsoft has not made any comments about a new version of Virtual PC for the Intel-based Macintoshes, aside from saying that they are “working with Apple” on exploring the possibility of such a product. In the mean time, Mac fans are well advised to check out Parallels, a VM product that runs on Intel-based Macs.
