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- US Update: Dell Adamo 13, Storm 3, gorilla glass
- Gorilla glass withstands razor sharp kitchen knife?
- BlackBerry Storm 3 packs Retina-like display and 1.2 GHz processor
- SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC tops 45MB per second
- Dawn of War II Retribution beta goes live January 31st
- Dell Adamo 13 price cuts: MacBook Air beware?
- Teatime Tech: Steve Jobs steps down, Comes With Music killed and PlayStation Phone videos leak
- Steve Jobs and how Apple will work without him
- Apple stock drops after Steve Jobs announces sick leave
- Toshiba 46SL753 review roundup
| US Update: Dell Adamo 13, Storm 3, gorilla glass Posted: 17 Jan 2011 07:00 PM PST 
The Dell Adamo 13 is suddenly much more affordable thanks to a $200 price cut. The 13 inch MacBook Air competitor is now priced at $799, a savings of nearly 38 percent compared to the MBA. The Dawn of War II Retribution multiplayer beta goes live on January 31st. We've got all the details on how to get in on this beta. SanDisk has released their new Extreme Pro SDHC cards which can hit peak speeds of 45MB/s, up from 30MB/s. The new cards use the SD 3.0 UHS-I specification, but is the price worth the the speed? Leaked images and specs of the upcoming BlackBerry Storm 3 have surfaced today. The Storm 3 packs a 1.2 GHz processor and the highest-resolution display of any BlackBerry to date. Last up is a video showing off the power of Gorilla glass. After a big showing at CES 2011, the indestructible glass is now on dozens of smartphones and even TVs, but can the glass withstand a razor-sharp kitchen knife? Find out in the video. That wraps up things this fine morning from the states. Thanks for spending your morning with us as we break the headlines fresh off the press from our side of the world. Until tomorrow, this is Nick saying over and out. Related posts:
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| Gorilla glass withstands razor sharp kitchen knife? Posted: 17 Jan 2011 03:00 PM PST 
Gorilla glass made a huge showing at CES 2011, their glass is used on every Motorola handset and they've even moved into Sony Bravia TVs. As the saying goes the proof is in the pudding so while popularity is certainly good for sales, real world results is what counts. Instead of taking out a knife and seeing if your phone can withstand a razor-sharp blade, take a look at this demonstration. That's one point for Gorilla glass, no points for the kitchen knife. Normally we'd dare you to take a stab at it, but our appreciation for gadgets just can't bring us to do our own test. via PocketNow Related posts:
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| BlackBerry Storm 3 packs Retina-like display and 1.2 GHz processor Posted: 17 Jan 2011 02:00 PM PST 
The all-touchscreen BlackBerry Storm and Storm 2 will be replaced by the Storm 3 later this year. According to documents obtained by BGR, the Storm 3 will feature a 1.2 GHz processor, 512MB of RAM and like the Apollo and Dakota, it will run BlackBerry OS 6.1. Internally there's 8 GB of memory and a microSD card slot for expansion. An accelerometer and magnetometer are also standard. For now we know that there will be 3G support, Bluetooth and WiFi connectivity. Carrier agreements and pricing remain a mystery for now, but there is confirmation of 3G mobile hotspot capabilities. The real blockbuster feature for the Storm 3 will be the display. Measuring in at 3.7 inches and running at 800 x 480 pixel, the Storm 3 will be BlackBerry's highest resolution display to date.
Sure, the iPhone 4 has higher pixel density with its Retina display, but this is a major step for RIM. Up until now we've been bombarded with HVGA displays that simply pale in comparison to the iPhone and high-end Android handsets. This will change with the Storm 3 and honestly it's very exciting to see RIM pursue a superior display. Other notable features on the Storm 3 include a 5-megapixel camera with 720p HD video recording. Is the BlackBerry Storm 3 your next smartphone? Coming Soon | RIM | TBD Related posts:
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| SanDisk Extreme Pro SDHC tops 45MB per second Posted: 17 Jan 2011 12:07 PM PST 
The SD 3.0 specification was expected to take off last year after Toshiba announced UHS-I SDHC cards with write speeds of up to 80 megabytes per second. That promise never materialized into a product release. Luckily, SanDisk has come to the rescue with the UHS-1 Extreme Pro. As you'll notice from the product picture, the 45MB/s has an asterisk. This is because that's the burst speed, however the card does have a "video-rated minimum sustainable write speed of 10MB/sec". So what's the cost for these premium SDHC cards? Currently the 8GB SanDisk Extreme Pro is $109.99, meanwhile the 32GB version is $349.99. In comparison, the older 30MB/sec SanDisk SDHC cards sell for as low as $170. So is double the price worth a 33 percent boost in performance? Well that depends on how you use your camera. The SanDisk Extreme Pro is targeted at the “prosumer”, a DSLR friendly folk who loves high-end gear. The benefits of the faster card are only seen once the buffer of the camera is passed. For the Nikon D7000 this occurs after 18 photos are taken. As the saying goes, you have to pay to play. Is the SanDisk Extreme Pro making it on your must have list year? Out Now | SanDisk | $109.99 – $349.99 Related posts:
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| Dawn of War II Retribution beta goes live January 31st Posted: 17 Jan 2011 11:40 AM PST 
Set to go live on January 31st, Dawn of War II Retribution multiplayer beta will run from the end of January through the end of February. The primary goal will be to test Steamworks networking and matchmaking features and to "help balance the multiplayer mode". All new units for each race will be available in the beta along with the new multiplayer maps which ship with Retribution. So how do you get in on the multiplayer beta? On Monday, January 31st global press sand key Dawn of War community members will be given access. This will expand to include everyone who has pre-ordered Dawn of War II – Retribution on Steam to date on February 1st. The last phase will include anyone who bought a Dawn of War game through Steam or has registered a Dawn of War II product on their Steam account on February 8th. So, there's no open registration to the beta, but as long as you either pre-order the game or have purchase a Dawn of War game through Steam, you'll be set to join the multiplayer beta by February 8th at the latest. So who's ready for Dawn of War II Retribution? Coming Soon | THQ Related posts:
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| Dell Adamo 13 price cuts: MacBook Air beware? Posted: 17 Jan 2011 11:13 AM PST 
Previously the decision between the Dell Adamo 13 and the 13 inch MacBook Air depended largely on whether you wanted to run OS X or Windows 7. With today's price drop, that decision becomes a little more complicated since the MacBook Air is now 38 percent more expensive than its counterpart. Other than price and operating system what separates these two systems? Off the bat the MacBook Air and Dell Adamo 13 both feature similar displays – Apple offers a higher resolution display (1440×900 versus 1366×768), but both screens are LED backlit. Build quality has been well received for both units so that area, like the OS, is left to personal preference. When you consider the move to a more portable laptop you generally sacrifice performance. To offset the sacrifices made in the smaller, lighter and thinner form factor — both the Adobe and MacBook Air use 128GB Solid State Drives (SSD). Memory is also similar, 2GB of DDR3 memory on both systems, but Apple runs at 1066MHz while Dell runs at 800MHz. So far it seems that the two systems a very evenly matched, but this changes when you begin exploring the GPU. Dell opted to use the Intel GS45 Graphics Media Accelerator while Apple went with the GeForce 320M, both use 256MB of shared memory. Intel has fallen behind in with the integrated graphics, this will change with Sandy Bridge, so the MacBook Air has the edge in this department. Processing power and battery life are also serious considerations. The MacBook Air clocks in at 1.86GHz while the Dell Adamo 13 runs at 1.4GHz. The combination of the slower processor and Front Side Bus (800MHz versus 1066MHz) are more points for Apple. With up to 7 hours of battery life and 30 days of standby time, the MacBook Air really begins to widen the gap.
Overall, you pay a premium for the MacBook Air. There's certainly an endless list of areas we could compare, whether that's connectivity options, ports, weight, trackpad, but the primary categories of speed and battery favor the MacBook Air. Whether or not that is worth the added cost is a tough decision. Let us know whether you'll be looking at the Dell Adamo 13 or MacBook Air with today's price drop? Is a 38 percent savings worth a dip in performance? Out Now | Dell | $799 Related posts:
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| Teatime Tech: Steve Jobs steps down, Comes With Music killed and PlayStation Phone videos leak Posted: 17 Jan 2011 10:21 AM PST 
First up, word broke of a huge bombshell at Apple. Steve Jobs is taking another medical leave of absence: it’s had a huge hit on the stock price, but is the future of Apple with Steve, or the company itself? Read our feature and find out. Elsewhere, more bad news followed in mobile, with Nokia quietly killing off its Comes With Music download service in the UK. On the plus side though, we saw the PlayStation Phone, AKA the Sony Ericsson Xperia Play, pop up in several new videos – check out the Android fuelled PSPgo-alike in action. Finally, we set loose our latest compo: a chance to win a copy of LittleBigPlanet 2 plus two Sackboy toys! Still want more news? Click on through to the homepage, where news flows in around the clock! Related posts:
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| Steve Jobs and how Apple will work without him Posted: 17 Jan 2011 09:07 AM PST 
 During his wilderness years in exile from the company he founded, and while saving Pixar from George Lucas and steering NEXT to build the basis for OS X, Jobs left Apple floundering with a lack of direction. Without Jobs there were too many products, too many middle managers with tentacles in every product category. Apple had become a bloated mess. Thankfully though, corrective surgery was swift and decisive after Jobs’ return. Steve Jobs cut off the useless limbs and stripped Apple back to the core. He built the titan that Apple is now incrementally. He made his mistakes (initially failing to see the appeal of digital music and CD burners) but he moved quickly when he realised the direction things were going in. Since the iMac and the iPod, Apple has had very few duds. The ones we focus on (the Apple Hi-Fi, we’re glowering at you) are so notable because they can be contrasted with the world-changing products, like the iPhone and the iPad, borne forth by Jobs’ incredibly rare attention to detail and nose for a hit. Count on Cook But now with Jobs taking his second medical leave of absence in two years, will Apple stay on course? Will the iPad 2 and iPhone 5 launches and Apple’s involvement in Rupert Murdoch’s The Daily suffer with the absence of the Steve Jobs magic? Fear not stockholders and Apple fans, Steve Jobs has applied that legendary attention to detail to his executives too. Steve’s finest achievement isn’t a product you can hold in your hands, it’s a value system you can live and breathe. Tim Cook will take the reigns during Steve Jobs’ leave of absence. He was the cool head who took the helm during the last medical crisis. Cook is Apple’s COO and the man who turned Apple’s byzantine supply chain into one of the most efficient in the world (if not THE most efficient). Cook cut Apple’s number of suppliers to a slim 24 and got those firms to move their factories and warehouses to Apple’s assembly plants creating a just-in-time manufacturing system that is envied by the rest of the industry. According to Inside Steve’s Brain, Cook cut Apple’s inventory from months to six or seven days. Only Nokia has better supply chain management than Apple. It can ship millions of units quickly without breaking a sweat. Of course, Cook lacks the rhetorical flourish of Steve Jobs. He is a decent presenter who performs well at keynotes, and he has learned well from Jobs. It’s no accident that Jobs has been delegating more elements of new product presentations to the rest of his executive team – it’s like a live audition for them and good practice for their potential ascension to a permanent CEO and presenter-in-chief role. While Cook takes the helm now, should a permanent replacement be required, there are several other candidates including Phil Schiller, Jonathan Ive and iOS boss Scott Forstall. There is no shortage of talent in the Apple executive pool. But it is not in Apple’s interest to announce the heir apparent. To do that would mean that the strong team currently in place could be broken up and disturbed. With various candidates in the frame, there is a sense that everyone can compete for the crown as and when Steve Jobs chooses to go. And make no mistake, Steve Jobs will, like Tony Blair once said he wished to, go at a time of own choosing. There will be no repeat of the boardroom coup that saw Jobs ousted before those wilderness years. What Would Steve Do Shareholders and Apple fans should not panic about the leave of absence. Steve Jobs has stated that he will maintain responsibility and a guiding hand on strategy but there is even more reason to feel confident. Steve Jobs has built Apple in his own image. The abiding thought within the organisation is “what would Steve do?” and like in a Looney Tunes cartoon, each Apple exec has a tiny devil Steve sat on their shoulder guiding their actions. Apple’s DNA is wound through with the DNA of Steve Jobs, both for good and for ill. Steve Jobs leaving Apple would not be like Bill Gates taking off from Microsoft. Apple will not go off the boil because Steve Jobs has designed its culture as carefully as Apple designed the sleep light on the Macbook Pro, or the Gorilla Glass screen on the iPhone 4. Apple is Steve Jobs’ greatest product. So while the AAPL stock price will wobble and commentators like me will expend thousands of words wondering “what next for Apple?”, the answer is that it will continue to produce great products while the legend of Steve Jobs lives on. The influence of Steve Jobs is like The Force in Star Wars, it is strong in Apple, built into its very core (pun intended) and while the magic of Jobs cannot be replicated, the institutional memory knows What Steve Would Do. And even if it didn’t? A wobble? A faltering of confidence? Steve Jobs isn’t going anywhere. He’s remaining both CEO and major Apple stockholder, and while speculation is inevitable, consider this a calming call. We shouldn’t wish for a Jobs Mark II. Instead, we should breathe easy that his teachings are well regarded in the Cupertino mothership, and wish a speedy recovery of technology’s most interesting and enduring character. What Would Steve Do t-shirt available from Far Out T-Shirts. Related posts:
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| Apple stock drops after Steve Jobs announces sick leave Posted: 17 Jan 2011 08:14 AM PST 
Stock in Frankfurt dropped almost 8% at its worst, but has climbed 1.5% since then. We can’t see the effect on the US market yet, as it’s Martin Luther King day over in the States, but it will be interesting to see how many shareholders follow suit when trading opens in America tomorrow.
The upside is that if you’ve always dreamed of buying Apple shares, now might be the time. If the US follows Frankfurt’s lead, then there might be space to take a minor gamble and snatch up some stock. The same thing happened last time Jobs took time off ill, and Apple survived it without a scratch. Tomorrow we’ll be listening in on the Apple earnings call, where hopefully we’ll get some info about what’s happened to Apple today. Will you invest in Apple in light of Steve Jobs’s sick leave? Shout out in the comments! [via Digital Daily, image: Yahoo] Related posts:
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| Toshiba 46SL753 review roundup Posted: 17 Jan 2011 08:09 AM PST 
We took a look at the two most in depth Toshiba 46SL753 review posts online: let’s see what TechRadar and AVForums made of the edge backlit LED machine. BuildThe Toshiba 46SL753’s frame divided the two reviewers. TechRadar’s Martin Pipe outright hated its unimaginative design. “It looks distinctly average, with a bezel wide enough to drive a bus through,” he wrote. AVForums‘ Steve Withers however wasn’t too phased by it, preferring a plain look so as to keep all eyes on the screen. “My only complaint would be that the 46SL753 has a slightly cheap feel to the construction…I have seen better construction from other manufacturers at a similar price point.” Both were satisfied by the array of ports on the back, which includes four HDMI sockets, two scart, component, and even “an SD card slot, meaning you can whip the card from your digital camera and temporarily convert this Tosh into a large-scale picture frame,” Pipe wrote. Though there’s no internet connectivity, it’s still possible to connect the Toshiba 46SL753 over your LAN to stream media to it over your home network, if you don’t have a games console or set top box with this capability already. YOu can do this via means of an Ethernet cable or optional Wi-Fi dongle. Pipe also flagged up the CI slot to allowed for Pay TV upgrades should you get tired of Freeview HD’s basic channels. RemoteWhile AVForums gave only a cursory look at the remote, TechRadar wasn’t particularly pleased with it, even if HDMI CEC support means it can be used to control other HDMI CEC devices plugged into the Toshiba 46SL753 too. “The gloss-finished handset itself could be of better design. For a start, it’s not backlit. Another criticism is its central joypad, which is surrounded by a disc of additional controls. The spacing between the two regions is insufficient, and as a result, you can accidentally nudge into effect the wrong function,” Pipe said. ScreenHere’s where the two reviewers were really torn. “This Toshiba is a bit like a Sara Lee chocolate gateaux – good, but not Michelin standard,” said TechRadar. “Switch to pics from the in-built tuner and things noticeably deteriorate…and a noise reduction feature does little to address the visible feathering that spoils sharply defined outlines.” After some thorough testing and benchmarking, AVForums came away much more satisfied with the Toshiba 46SL753 however, even praising the standard definition performance on the 1080p resolution screen and citing impressive black levels. “When watching Freeview material the image was largely free of any jagged edges, juddering or flickering and any artefacts were usually the result of the broadcast, itself, rather than the display,” Withers wrote. “The high definition performance of the 46SL753 was even better with the accuracy of the greyscale and the colour gamut really shining through…everything looked natural with wonderful detail and very realistic and smooth images.” Both reviewers expressed concern over the Toshiba 46SL753’s inconsistent LED backlighting, leading to some distortion. “Unfortunately these impressive blacks were compromised by a very poor backlight uniformity,” said AVForums. As TechRadar pointed out however, “this is something we’re seeing quite often with edge LED TVs”, so you might be willing to put up with this for the sake of wall mounting the HD TV. SoundWe hope you have speakers you’re planning on plugging into the Toshiba 46SL753, as both reviewers panned the audio quality. “Sound quality…is atrocious. It may as well be coming from an old tea chest…I’d advise any buyers of this TV to stick with external AV gear,” said TechRadar. “Considering the 46SL753's relative depth, I was surprised that it sounded no better than some of the ultra-thin displays I have reviewed,” wrote Withers. VerdictWhile TechRadar only gave the Toshiba 46SL753 three out of five, much of that was down to the lack of IPTV connectivity beyond home network media streaming, lack of 3D support and the construction of the screen. If you’re not interested in 3D TV – and we wouldn’t blame you – and just want a great value large screen for Blu-rays and HD TV channels, you could do far worse. Related posts:
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THQ
If you’ve been away from your desk this afternoon – where have you been?! You’ve missed some huge headlines, both good and bad: let’s break them down for you right here in our teatime tech news roundup.
The Toshiba 46SL753 LED backlit LCD TV has just hit store shelves, so we thought we’d have a peek at what the HD experts make of this new flatscreen TV. Find out if it’s worth the pricetag in our Toshiba 46SL753 review roundup.| You are subscribed to email updates from Electricpig.co.uk - The UK's fastest-growing tech news site To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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