Filed under: Tablet PCs

Earlier this month, Mr. Khalil Zaidan of Portland, Oregon, sued Acer, Gateway, Toshiba, HP, IBM, and Fujitsu for violating his 1996 patent “Hinge Assembly for Electronic Devices.” A closer reading of the patent indicates that Zaidan seems to have patented the basic principle behind a tablet PC, allowing a computer to perform “rotational adjustment.” Still, the case — filed in United States District Court, Eastern District of Texas, Tyler Division — seems like a pretty easy way to milk these big companies for some cash, given that tablet PCs have been around well before November 2006. Nevertheless, while Zaidan is asking the court for damages on patent infringement be decided in a jury trial, we’re betting that this gets settled out-of-court pretty quick. We’re pretty sure that if Zaidan could actually build a Commodore 64-esque tablet (that’s what his diagram is supposed to represent, right?), he could just make money from that instead of going through all this legal nonsense.

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: GPS, Transportation

Yeah, we love GPS around here as much as the next guy, but it really doesn’t impress our lady friends too much when our mellifluous prose gets interrupted by Cro Magnon-like gestures while we have to ask for directions on our nav units. We’d much prefer to use a phrase like “Find me a hotel in Paris in the seizième arrondissement, play Serge Gainsbourg’s ‘Je t’aime‘ and adjust for mood lighting — s’il te plaît” and have our ride respond instantly. Well, save for that last request, apparently plain English queries (or 13 other languges) to a GPS stystem are now possible thanks to software by IBM built onto Pioneer’s new AVIC-HD1BT nav unit. It’s loaded up with a 30GB hard drive (20GB for maps and the rest for music), a DVD player and an iPod connection of some sort. Although Pioneer claims that the AVIC-HD1BT is for the European-only non-”luxury car market” driver (sorry, us Lexus-driving Yankees will have to suffer), it still doesn’t come cheap: €2,500 ($3,145).

[Via IDG News Service]

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Filed under: Laptops, Transportation

Virgin Atlantic has altered its sweeping policy of banning all Inspiron, Latitude, iBook, PowerBook, MacBook and MacBook Pro batteries from its flights, saying “If the battery is identified as being from the affected batch as identified by Apple and Dell, the battery must be removed. In cabins where the seats are fitted with In Seat Power Supplies, leads/adapters will be offered. Where no ISPS is provided or no laptop leads/adapters are available, the use of these affected laptops is prohibited.” No word yet on whether Qantas or Korean Air has gotten the memo that it doesn’t need to forbid every Dell laptop under the sun on their flights as well. But we’ve yet to hear of airlines banning Panasonic, Toshiba, and IBM laptops — something that may be coming sooner than you think, if someone doesn’t figure out pretty fast what the devil is going on.

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Laptops

We suppose “We Didn’t Start the Fire” is quite the popular tune around the Sony HQ these days, but, unfortunately, that statement seems to be proving increasingly false. After a recent rash of violent Lenovo battery explosions, Sony claims they’re “investigating” the fires, specifically the LAX incident. Sony apparently thinks there is no official confirmation that the battery in the PC was Sony-made, but we’ve got a lot of empirical evidence that has us betting otherwise. Lenovo wasn’t available for comment, but it doesn’t seem far-fetched that we could have the making of a fourth major Sony battery recall in the recent weeks.

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Laptops

It appears that the exploding IBM ThinkPad that we spotted last week at LAX may not have been a fluke after all. A Welshwoman named Telsa was hanging out with her husband Alan last night, when Alan’s ThinkPad’s battery suddenly exploded (see the photo on the next page), after which “a couple of fires started where the (presumably) boiling battery landed,” with one of the fragments taking out a nearby LCD monitor. Alan sustained a few minor burns, but other than the laptop itself there were no serious injuries, thankfully. Telsa does note, however, that the battery was third-party and was bought on eBay, so it may not be an authentic IBM pack at all. Still, somebody need to get to the bottom of this, like, now — after the Apple, Dell, Panasonic, and Toshiba recalls, the public demands and deserves complete and rapid disclosure.

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Laptops

In a time when you’re not even allowed to say the word “bomb” in an airport (hey, it’s for good reason), it’s got to be like, really freaking embarrassing to have to run up the jetway at full speed, shoving other passengers out of the way as your flaming laptop explodes on the ground. (Sound familiar?) According to an eyewitness report on the Awful Forums, passersby stared aghast or fled crying terrorist, the ThinkPad (which was quoted to be an IBM, not a Lenovo) apparently had a number of death throes as the fire went through various phases, until eventually a United employee busted out the fire extinguisher and laid the laptop to rest. Apparently the machine’s owner already checked its battery against the recalls and it was not listed — and why would it be? IBM and Lenovo aren’t flagged for bad batteries — yet. (Sony, we’re looking your direction.) But the coup de grâce at LAX: onlookers apparently mumbling that “too many viruses on your computer” can lead to this horrendous fate. How true, indeed.

[Thanks, Peter]

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Misc

Filed under: Laptops

Two of the biggest names in chips, Intel and Texas Instruments, have taken this fine Monday to announce independent advancements made by their R&D departments in the never-ending search to continue Moore’s law. TI kicked things off by unveiling their new 45nm manufacturing process that uses some immersion lithography trickery to trump Intel’s current 65nm chips by 30 percent. They plan to use the tech for memory chips. Intel, of course, is not to be outdone, and announced a new better way to insulate circuits. Their new “tri-gate transistors,” which should be on the scene by 2010, reduce the power leak problems experienced when transistors are dropped lower than 90nm. The tech could cut power consumption by as much as 35 percent or boost performance by 45 percent. “This will be an option for chips somewhere beyond 45 nm–in the 32 or 22 nm mode–so that gives us confidence we can continue scaling Moore’s Law into the next decade,” said Intel’s Mike Mayberry. The tech also does away with the troublesome carbon nanotubes that IBM has been proposing, which are currently too costly to produce chips with. Now we’re just waiting for AMD to announce a 22nm chip due next week and for half the cost, then our day will be complete. Don’t let us down, guys!

Read - Intel “tri-gate transistors”
Read - AMD 45nm manufacturing

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Filed under: Laptops

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Steve Jobs’ announcement — almost a year ago, now — that Apple was transitioning to x86 processors was one of the most shocking bits of news that the industry had ever heard, and yet there were a group of employees at a startup chip manufacturer called PA Semi who were even more shocked than most, according to reports, because right up until that keynote, they were sure that their company, and not Intel, would be chosen to supply the brains for what’s now known as the MacBook family of laptops. The Register is reporting that PA Semi had a close relationship with Apple in the months prior to the switch, and that the two companies were working together to gauge the feasibility of running native PowerPC-coded software on 2GHz dual-core chips that PA Semi claims run at only a third of the 21 to 25 watts consumed by Intel’s Core Duo models. Sources who spoke to El Reg say that executives were virtually positive that they’d win the contract, and that CEO Dan Dobberpuhl was understandably “furious” when he found out PA Semi had been passed over. The company still has a bright future developing chips for the embedded market and storage devices, but they’ll probably never again have the opportunity to become an instantly-recognized name like Intel, AMD, or IBM.

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Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Remember a few months ago when the US State Department ordered thousands of Lenovo PCs despite concerns by some that the boxes could be infested with evil Commie spyware? Well, the computers have apparently been delivered, and the government has now decided those concerns should be taken seriously. The 16,000 Lenovo computers will basically be quarantined from other government computers, and won’t be used for any classified work. Which we assume means they’ll be used for games of Solitaire and BitTorrent downloads of patriotic anthems. C’mon guys, let’s get real here. Sure, Lenovo’s  computers are made in China. But so are plenty of other computers, including Apple’s shiny new MacBooks. And ThinkPads and ThinkCenters were made in China, in the exact same factories, even when IBM still owned the brands. The fact is, if Chinese spymasters really wanted to use PCs to check in on the US government, they could do it without Lenovo. We’re not suggesting that the government not be wary of international espionage. But if they really want to get serious about it, there are better ways to do it than buying 16,000 computers and then limiting their use to back-office functions.

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Filed under: Laptops

In addition to the Z61series laptops we mentioned earlier this week, Lenovo is also upgrading the specs of its R60 series. Like its big brother, the upgraded R60 gets a Core Duo processor, the option of integrated or separate graphics processors, and built-in Verizon EV-DO support. RAM can be expanded up to 4GB, and displays come in 14 or 15-inches. Pricing starts at about $1,200 with a 14-inch display, 512MB RAM and a 40GB drive.

Filed under: Storage

If you thought that magnetic tape cartridges were headed the way of Zip disks and five-and-a-quarter-inch floppies into the storage medium graveyard, think again, because IBM and Fujitsu are currently working together to make the venerable technology capable of storing a Blu-ray-humbling eight terabytes-per-cartridge. Using barium ferrite crystal film from Fuji and read/write technology from IBM, the two companies are reporting success in creating storage densities of up to 6.67 billion-bits/square-inch, which is something like fifteen times the capacility of current backup tape. Unfortunately there is no word yet if the cartridges, which should be available in about five years, will be able to fit in your old 8-track player for rocking millions and millions of MP3s.

Filed under: Desktops, Laptops

Intel's been busy in the realm of multi-core processors lately, first unveiling their quad-core replacement for the Itanium Montecito, named Tukwila, and today -- taking a page out of MC "2 Legit 2 Quit" Hammer's book -- renaming the next-gen mobile Merom and desktop Conroe dual-core chips "Core 2 Duo." What's more, the company announced that another version of the processor will be released for performance junkies, called, not surprisingly, "Core 2 Extreme." As for Tukwila, the deets on this server-targeted chip came to light thanks thanks to a little digging by Real World Technologies, who found a set of slides that Intel recently presented on the topic at a conference in Asia. According to RWT, Tukwila will run at an estimated 40 gigaflops, sport 6MB of L3 cache for each core, and feature other additions that IT-types will likely be into, including an on-die FB-DIMM memory controller and Common Systems Interconnect (CSI) router. First called "Tanglewood" and scheduled for a 2007 rollout, Tukwila will now be released in 2008 and go head-to-head with other enterprise offerings from Intel and Sun, probably making it an exciting year for those aforementioned IT-types.

Read- Core 2 Duo [Thanks, Dave Z.]
Read- Tukwila [Via The Register]

Filed under: Desktops

With a street price of under $500 you certainly can't expect to get the company's high-end jet pack and armor-plating features, but according to PC Mag's review, Lenovo still manages to pack some solid performance into their 3000 J105 small business-oriented desktop. The 3000 J105 is most noteworthy, however, for being Lenovo's first non-IBM branded minitower, although business-types will be pleased to learn that it retains a popular feature of the ThinkCentre line, the ThinkVantage help and recovery utility. Keeping in mind that this model is meant for crunching numbers and not fragging enemies, the 2.2GHz AMD Athlon 64 3200 , 80GB hard drive, and 512MB of RAM serve their purpose well, and there's enough software in the box to get some work done without shelling out too much more cash. Other nice touches include both PCI (but no PCIe) and AGP card slots for super-cheap graphics upgrades, a not-hideous-looking case, and the always-appreciated lack of Chinese spyware. Overall the J105 earns a three-and-a-half star "Good" rating, which is probably due mostly to its value, considering that it's able to throw down decent benchmark results that are within a stone's throw of machines twice the price.

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Not a fan of hardware DRM enforcement and trusted computing models? Well, you might want to plug your ears (or pay close attention, depending on how you treat this kind of news), because IBM announced that they'll be marketing future chipset solutions with SecureBlue -- their new take on secure computing hardware (with a specific bend toward locking down DRM for the end user). But SecureBlue's not only necessarily for computers; they also seem to want to launch the technology on "low-cost, relatively low performance electronics." In other words, you might start seeing SecureBlue "protecting" your computer from viruses and malevolent (or unsigned / unapproved) software just like it might also be powering the next wave of lower-power consumptive DRM-enabled portable audio players. Honestly we don't really know exactly what and how, though, since IBM didn't really seem to want to get incredibly verbose or specific on the matter. But you know how these things work, so expect to be hearing the SecureBlue name -- at least a little -- in the coming months.