The folks over at Porsche Designs make drills, luggage, and now apparently phones. Its newest attempt, the P’9522, is a touchscreen enabled, world roaming, GPS touting, beauty milled from a solid piece of aluminum (just like a new MacBook). But all is not well in Porsche-town. From the mind of reviewer Joe Brown:
If you’re in a Wi-Fi hotspot, you’d be better off mugging some blogger for his MacBook than surfing the web using the horribly inaccurate touchscreen and knife-thin keys. And that touchscreen? It’s worse than any other touch-sensitive display we’ve ever used. You can’t tap an item in a list — you have to scroll to it. Just like the phone’s automotive namesake, the highlighting bar goes waaaay too fast, almost always passing the option you want. Really, even the vivid colors on the 2.8-inch, energy-efficient AMOLED screen don’t help the browser’s case.
Source : Blog wired
Porsche Design P’9522 Phone
iSkin Launches Purple Solo FX Case For iPhone 3G
iSkin has launched a new color in its Solo FX line of iPhone cases, which feature mirrored screen protectors, and embossed patterns in a high-gloss translucent casing. The purple “vive” color is the fifth shade for the FX, with blue, green, orange and red also being available. The cases offer full access to an iPhone 3G’s ports, as well as its camera lens and controls.
The mirroring on the screen protector is reflective when an iPhone is off, but fully transparent when the screen is operational. The new vive case costs $33, and has color-matching Cerulean XLR headphones available for an additional $23.
Source : Macnn
HTC Touch Diamond Finally Lands On Verizon Wireless
Has it really been eleven months since the HTC Touch Diamond’s first availability? Yup, it has. That’s why the news of it landing in the Verizon Wireless online store and business channels today is sorta ho-hum. Some folks have waited for it however, so this one’s for you. Well, if you saved up $369 during your long waiting period that is. You’ll get $70 back via a mail-in rebate though; that brings the handset down to a net cost of $299.
The Touch Diamond might be worth the wait. You’ll get the renowned HTC TouchFLO 3D interface on the 2.76-inch touch display and don’t forget about the browser you’ll use with the pretty 640×480 screen.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ Jkontherun
Scythe KamaBay Amp SDA-1000 - Universal Audio Amplifier Review
Long time ago, when multimedia speakers were at the primeval stage of development – low-power and low-sound-quality plastic boxes – I would often check out the price of their more serious counterparts from the hi-fi audio world. Entry-level hi-fi speaker systems looked impressive and promised acceptable sound quality but every time my shopping was cut short by the necessity to buy a power amplifier. This indispensable component cost as much as a couple of speakers, so the total cost of the purchase grew twofold. If I could only plug those speakers into something so as to produce any sound at all and buy a good amplifier later on…
I should confess I recalled all that when I learned about the new product from Scythe, the well-known developer of computer parts. This company has already earned worldwide recognition as a maker of coolers and modding accessories, but it goes on turning out more and more original products. Some time ago it released an active speaker system for a 5-inch bay of the system case. And at CeBIT 2008 it showcased another original solution, a compact power amplifier for passive speakers and headphones called Scythe KamaBay Amp SDA-1000. It can be installed inside a computer case, too. Besides, it can be used as a standalone device for various applications. This makes me wonder if this small box can do big deeds.
Small Wonder - Zotac GeForce 9300-ITX WiFi Review
For a long time, integrated graphics processors (IGP) have had a bad reputation amongst computer users. Anyone who has an inkling of knowledge of graphics chipsets will avoid IGPs in the same way Count Dracula avoids the sun. Truly, most, if not all IGPs, have long been considered as nasty things due to their incompetent graphics performance that is suited to nothing more than standard office editing applications.
AMD was probably the first to shake things up in the IGP platforms market with their AMD 690G platform and has raised the bar yet again with the AMD 780G platform boasting the Radeon HD 3200 graphics core. You can actually have a decent gaming platform out of these and have silky smooth Full HD video playback of Blu-ray content all of which says quite a bit of its power under the hood against past IGP implementations. But all this graphics goodness has so far been on the AMD processor based platform.
Fortunately, NVIDIA has come around last year to inject a much needed boost to the IGP scene involving Intel processor platforms with their GeForce 9300/9400 motherboard GPU (mGPU). Its success can simply be expressed by the fact that Apple’s entire new product lineup from desktops to Macbooks are all equipped with this system chipset. In our first experience with it, we were impressed at how much more powerful it was than anything that came before it, including Intel’s then new GMA X4500HD graphics engine on the G45 chipset. Undeniably it is the current king of the hill of IGP chipsets for both the Intel platform and in certain aspects, even the AMD platform with their equivalent 8300 series.
HD 4890 X2 Optional
When we asked about the fact that there are no dual 8-pin parts out there, explanation was simple: almost every decent power supply on the market has two 8-pin and two 6-pin connectors for Crossfire and SLI configurations, most of 700W+ ones come with three 8-pin and three 6-pin ones for 3-Way SLI. There is one ATI partner that actually plans such a design and wants to do dual-1GHz GPU clock, partnered with 2GB and 4GB of GDDR5 memory. We are going to leave to speculation what might be the identity of that partner, but know that we managed to see some very interesting engineering drawings.
You can expect 8+6-pin Radeon HD4890X2 2GB and 8+8-pin overclocked Radeon HD4890X2 2GB and 4GB parts. Unless PM’s of respective companies don’t get into frenzy mode and stop the parts. That would not be wise, guys.
Click Here To Read The Full Article @ Thetechlounge
OCZ Introduces PCP&C UPS
OCZ has announced the first ever Uninterruptible Power Supply (UPS) from PC Power & Cooling. Dubbed the Pro-Source 1500 UPS, OCZ is touting it as the cost effective power protection solution for today’s high-end enthusiast and mission-critical systems.
The full press release centers around the Pro-Source’s ability to produce a pure sine wave instead of the inferior step sine wave that some cheaper UPS’s offer. The pure sine wave is of the same quality that the utility line delivers, thus being easier on the PSU and offering greater reliability that the PSU doesn’t reject the power.
While there is no mention of availability, OCZ says that the Pro-Source 1500 will retail for under $300.
Source : Tweak Town
Packard Bell’s New DOT S And DOT M Netbooks For Europe
Acer-owned Packard Bell is taking Acer’s latest and greatest netbooks and rebadging them for the European market. The 10.1-inch DOT S swipes most of its specs from the Acer Aspire One D250, while the DOT M (pictured) goes for the 11.6-inch Aspire One’s guts. There do seem to be a few aesthetic differences, however, with a fancy textured palm rest, silver touches to the trackpads and a tweaked lid. The DOT S will be available this week for 299 Euros, while the DOT M hits at the end of this month for 399 Euros.
Source : Engadget
iBuyPower Gamer Paladin F970 System Review
Let’s face it; buying a gaming machine with today’s latest components is anything but inexpensive. iBuyPower’s Gamer Paladin F970, which is designed to make the most of its powerful Core i7 processor and other high-end components, is proof of that fact. When the Gamer Paladin F970 was first released, the standard configuration initially had a price tag of $3,799. Recently, iBuyPower dropped the price on the standard configuration of the Gamer Paladin F970 to $3,395. Even at that price, however, the Gamer Paladin F970 is still considerably more than its less expensive cousin, the F950, which has an MSRP of $2,319. Of course, the Gamer Paladin F950 also uses lower-end components throughout.
What’s important is that you get what you pay for–which is the overall value proposition of any product. With the iBuyPower Gamer Paladin F970, you’ll get a 3.2GHz Intel Core-i7 965 Extreme processor, 12GB of DDR3-1333 memory, an NVIDIA GeForce GTX 295, a 128GB RiDATA SATA MLC SSD, and a 1TB SATA-II 7,200-rpm hard drive. If you’ve ever configured a system on iBuyPower’s website, you know the company generally offers a boatload of configuration options which can increase or decrease the price accordingly. And this holds true with the Gamer Paladin F970, so you’re free to customize the system to your heart’s content. In the pages ahead, we’ll take a closer look at the iBuyPower Gamer Paladin F970’s features and performance so you can be the judge of what this high-end system has to offer.
The BlackBerry Storm 9500 Review
Brace yourself as the Storm has arrived and it is shaking things up for the BlackBerry-toting crowd. Known as BlackBerry’s first-ever capacitive touchscreen phone, it is a full 360-degree change from Research In Motion’s (RIM) well-loved formula of sporting a QWERTY keyboard. Launched in the States last year, the Storm has finally made it to our shores and we check it out in this review, right after a quick video preview of what you can expect, from RIM’s first touch-screen device. If your broadband connection is good, double click on the video and check out the HD version on YouTube that’s also available for better clarity:-
Riding on the coat-tails of the popular Apple iPhone, RIM has unveiled its answer to the ultimate iPhone competitor. Like its other fruity rival, the Storm dumps the traditional numeric keypad in favor of a relatively large touch screen for typing and navigation. Apart from four buttons sitting on the bottom of the phone, the front of the device is mostly occupied by a 3.25-inch capacitive touch-screen.
Hands-on - VisionRacer VR3 Racing Simulator Review
Racing games must be among the most popular genres of videogame and they come in all sorts of different shapes and sizes. Arcade games, such as the Project Gotham Racing, Race Driver: GRID and Need for Speed series’, focus on fun and accessibility and these are followed by the likes of Forza Mortorsport 2, where this accessibility is matched to a slightly more realistic driving engine.
If you’re a fan of these titles then you’re more than likely still using a controller, but those who are genuine hardcore racing game fanatics will be sampling the likes of SimBin’s GTR series or, more than likely, the daddy of them all: Gran Turismo. And, when you’re dealing with such games, nothing beats a steering wheel and pedals.
It’s with such people in mind that the VisionRacer VR3 exists. It’s the brainchild of Geoff Turton, who has been working in the design and fabrication of motorsport cars for over 25 years, working with, among others, Peugeot’s WRC Rally Team on the 306 Maxi. His inspiration for the VisionRacer came in 2004, when he was given a copy of Gran Tursimo and a PlayStation 2 but found it impossible to adapt to using a controller. He went out and bought a steering wheel and clamped it to a desk, but still found the result lacklustre, so he took his experience and know-how and applied it to something much better.
