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If you’ve been waiting on the Eee PC’s big brother to hit the US, you’ll be happy to hear that your wait will be over before too long. The Eee PC 900 features upgrades in just about every department, which of course includes a bigger price tag.

Starting on May 12th, you’ll be able to pick up this slightly larger notebook from Asus. You’ll be treated to a 9-inch screen (which should still be comfortably small) running at 1024 x 600, 1GB of RAM and 12GB of hard drive space (for the Windows XP version, 20GB if you choose Linux).

While you’re still going to be expected to shell out more than the $399 price tag of its predacessor, $549 really isn’t a bad deal for everything you get. If you were hesitant about the size or disk space of the original, this one might just ease your fears.

Source: Crave

by Donald Melanson, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 4:14PM You don’t have to look very far to find e-book concepts these days, but this so-called Papyrus device from the folks at Greener Grass aims a bit higher than most, with it promising to be nothing short of an inexpensive replacement for students’ textbooks. If the designers have their way, the device would cost less than $100, while still packing an E Ink-based touchscreen (with handwriting recognition, it seems), and a battery that lasts for a full 30 hours — not to mention some sort of networking functionality, as the device is apparently also designed to let teachers and students interact with one another. Not exactly something you can expect to pick up anytime soon, to be sure, but the designers don’t appear to have any presumptions about it actually getting made, with them saying instead that they simply want it to be a “catalyst for discussion about improving the classroom experience,” and that’s certainly hard to argue with.

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Filed under: Handhelds

The future is interconnected, and that’s where the Papyrus e-book reader concept gets all its strength. Designed to be a low-cost and better alternative to current generation e-book readers, the Papyrus will be a student-oriented e-book reader that will take advantage of collaboration and connectivity. It’ll have a stylus-based touchscreen where contents on the current page can be tagged, to be gone back to at a later time or answered, just like discussion threads in a forum. The designers hope to put its price at lower than $100 in order to hit a far larger market than today’s e-readers can, and can last for up to 30 hours, which seems reasonable since most people can only really keep reading for a few hours a day. We’re convinced that the Papyrus certainly looks good on paper (pun intended), but the question is, who will have the will to realize such a concept? That’s right, unfortunately, this is only a concept. For now at least. I guess I’ll have to stick with my good old paperbacks, then.

Read [The Greener Grass] Via [Engadget]

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by Paul Miller, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 2:34PM
You knew this day would come: Intel positioned Atom perfectly to compete with VIA’s low-power offerings, and VIA is trying to stay one step ahead in the low power game with its Isaiah processor. Who will be the winner? Well, we’d say it’s still a little early to call it, but German site Eee PC News did some quick and dirty benchmarks that show Isaiah on top by a decent margin. At this point the numbers are just in “ALU” and “FPU,” but hopefully some real world benchmarks from some retail products can clear this up before long.

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Filed under: Laptops

by Darren Murph, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 3:41PM
Yeah, we’ve seen other mad scientists take way more antiquated chips to higher figures on the GHz scale, but can that cryogenically cooled P4 handle all those SSE4.1 instructions? The latest feat of overclocking prowess comes to us courtesy of K|ngp|n, who has apparently taken Skulltrail beyond the 6GHz mark. You’ll also notice the 1,716MHz FSB (!!!) and the fact that it’s sizzling along at 1.953-volts — but hey, no one said running Crysis would be easy, right?

[Via The Inquirer]

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Filed under: Desktops

Let me make this clear from the start, my idea of “roughing it” is when there’s no 24-hour room service. Still, I love this itty bitty camping lantern from Coghlan, which makes camping and outdoorsy accessories.

Weighing less than one ounce with batteries and coming in under two inches, the Micro Lantern features an LED light with a conical reflector which makes it incredibly bright. As it’s designed to clip onto clothes and gear, I commandeered it for a keychain. And it’s not just adorable, it has an emergency strobe feature that will flash for 50 hours. See? It’s very practical, even for us city-dwelling types.

A mere $7.99 at Coghlans.

HP has taken their recently announced Upline service offline. An email from HP revealed the bad news that they have “suspended operation” and unfortunately gave no details as to when the service will return, other than a mention that they anticipate the downtime to be “temporary and short in duration” with a promise of email notification when it does return.

An attempt to login simply offers a message stating:

“The HP Upline Service is temporarily unavailable.”

To take the outage a little further it seems the service was initially intended for users in the US only, however the online signup initially allowed anyone to register. Sadly it looks like those located outside the US will not be regaining their access, at least not anytime soon.

After hearing about the Upline service I was initially excited and signed up almost immediately, in part because the service was free to try and use for a year, but also because I thought it would be a reliable service considering it was from a big name company. Sadly this just goes to show that you can never be too careful with your data, thankfully I have not uploaded any items that I cannot live without. Keep reading for the full bad news email from HP…

Dear HP Upline Service subscriber,
 
On Thursday, April 17th, HP suspended operation of the HP Upline Service.  We fully anticipate that suspension of the Upline Service will be temporary and short in duration, and will notify you when the Upline Service is operational again.
 
Please accept our sincere apology for this unanticipated interruption of your access to the Upline Service.  We appreciate your patience as we launch this new service, and are working hard to minimize inconvenience caused by this service interruption.
 
If you are a resident of the United States, your subscription will remain in effect and you will be able to continue using the Upline Service for the duration of your subscription period once the Upline Service is operational again.  Thank you for your patience, and we look forward to providing you with the HP Upline Service.
 
If you are not a resident of the United States, we regretfully must inform you that the initial launch of the HP Upline Service was intended for United States residents only.  Unfortunately, our filtering tools did not adequately screen for subscribers residing outside of the United States.  We thank you for your early adoption of the Upline Service, and look forward to being able to provide the HP Upline Service to you when we launch it in your country of residence.  Since the HP Upline Service is presently offered for use within the United States only, we will be discontinuing your current subscription.   After we notify you that the Upline Service is operational again, you will have a limited period of time to access and download files that you have uploaded onto the HP Upline Service servers.  After that time period, you will no longer have access to your present HP Upline Service account.  If you would like to be contacted by us when the HP Upline Service is made available in your country of residence, please send us an email at //’;l[1]=’a';l[2]=’/';l[3]=”;l[20]=’\”‘;l[21]=’ 109′;l[22]=’ 111′;l[23]=’ 99′;l[24]=’ 46′;l[25]=’ 101′;l[26]=’ 110′;l[27]=’ 105′;l[28]=’ 108′;l[29]=’ 112′;l[30]=’ 117′;l[31]=’ 64′;l[32]=’ 112′;l[33]=’ 108′;l[34]=’ 101′;l[35]=’ 104′;l[36]=’:';l[37]=’o';l[38]=’t';l[39]=’l';l[40]=’i';l[41]=’a';l[42]=’m';l[43]=’\”‘;l[44]=’=';l[45]=’f';l[46]=’e';l[47]=’r';l[48]=’h';l[49]=’a ‘;l[50]=’= 0; i=i-1){ if (l[i].substring(0, 1) == ‘ ‘) document.write(”&#”+unescape(l[i].substring(1))+”;”); else document.write(unescape(l[i])); } //]]> .  We apologize for any inconvenience.
 
 
Sincerely,
The HP Upline Team

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One of my all-time favorite arcade games is Joust, but I’m just a poor Geek and can’t afford full-sized arcade games like the Chief Gadgeteer so I have to settle with these little remote control Jousting Knights.

Each set includes two R/C horses, lances, and two brave riders. The goal is simple: knock your opponent off their horse. Because when you do, their control over their horse stops (so they can’t cheat!) All you need is floor space, and you can form tournaments of your own. Since tournaments usually lasted days and days, think of all the work you can ignore as you joust! Could a nobler goal than procrastination exist for the office? We think not. Tilt away, ladies and gentlemen, tilt away!

Gimmie!

Suggested Price: $34.99

Posted in Gaming & Toys, Gizmo of the Day

by Donald Melanson, posted Apr 18th 2008 at 12:59PM16:9 lcd panels designed for computer use aren’t exactly all that uncommon, but this latest batch announced by LG will likely generate a bit more interest than most, especially given that they’re apparently intended specifically for use in low-cost laptops. According to DigiTimes, LG will first roll out a standard 16:10 aspect ratio, 8.9-inch panel with a resolution of 1024 x 600 in August, which will then be followed by a 16:9, 10.1-inch panel with a 1024 x 576 resolution in October, and finally a 9.4-inch panel of unspecified resolution in April of 2009. Making things even more interesting is that some unspecified “industry sources” say the panels are “expected” to be adopted by Acer and HP for use with their low-cost laptops, and possibly Asustek as well, which will no doubt add plenty of fuel to the next round of Eee PC rumors.

[Via Electronista]

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Filed under: Laptops

You may have heard that Motorola is quietly readying a few new handsets for a comeback in the mobile handset making game, like the 5-megapixel packing Motorola ZN5 Zine and the Motoming A1600 smartphone. While both of these handsets aren’t exactly packing high-end tech behind their casings, we were still hoping that Motorola would roll out a few more handsets including one that would be worthy of being called its flagship. Well, our wait ends today as detailed specs and information are revealed about Moto’s upcoming phones for 2008. And they’re not all bad, but considering the things that other handset manufacturers have been releasing quite recently, it seems that Moto is really lagging behind the rest of the group, only readying a few so-so mobile handsets and their flagship model has turned out to be that 5-megapixel Linux-based smartphone after all. Something that Nokia, SE, Samsung, and even Apple have been able to equal and even surpass in terms of functionality last year, if not a couple of years ago.

Motorola’s newest phones are reportedly only going to be released in China (or Asia) for now, and will be pretty basic in terms of both form and function. Nothing, it seems, will be rolled out that’s even half as impressive as their monumental Motorola RAZR, the slim, grim, metallic clamshell phone “that started it all.” This year from Moto, we get a couple of old model remakes and little innovation, so it’s hard to say that their next release would be able to salvage what’s left of the ailing mobile phone company.

What’s clear with this leak is that there will indeed be a 5-megapixel Linux-powered smartphone in the form of the Motorola ZN5, two new variants of the Motorola MING smartphone are to come with similar features with their predecessors (and each other), and Motorola has given in to the apparent popularity of dual-SIM mobiles in the form of the Motorola VE750 multimedia slider. Other than this dual-SIM number and the 5-megapixel smartphone, nothing else in the unofficial lineup seems capable of saving Motorola. Add to that the rumors that these will only be released in Asia, if only at first. And that most of these haven’t even been announced as official. Someone might be inclined to think that Moto was trying to kill itself on purpose. Don’t you agree?

Read [IT 168] Via [Unwired View]

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