If, however, you are actually planning to scale Mt. Everest, you might want to look into the 6 pound, 8 ounce GoBook XR-1 from General Dynamics. It features an Intel Core Duo 1.83GHz and various memory and hard drive configurations in a case designed to withstand the most torturous situations, and General Dynamics is a defense contractor, so they actually design torturous situations. Maybe it’s a form of reverse engineering or something.

The system also includes glow in the dark keys, many wireless options (WLAN, WWAN, Bluetooth and GPS), a dedicated external graphics controller and can be equipped with fingerprint and/or smart card readers. It’ll set you back $4300 before all the clearly necessary upgrades.

General Dynamics GoBook XR-1 rugged notebook [Popgadget via Gizmodo]
from CrunchGear

Somehow those good ol’ boys down in Texas got sneaky on us — while we were busy getting ready for Labor Day, Dell went and updated the Latitude, Inspiron, and XPS series with Core 2 Duo chips. Laptop took the new bumped Dell Latitude D820 for a spin and wasn’t dissappointed. This spiffy new laptop topped the charts on the magazine’s MobileMark 2005 test with an all-time high score of 308. Further tests showed that the Core 2 Duo scored high marks when processing more information at a time, such as running a virus scan while ripping a CD: the Core 2 Duo machine scanned 15,446 items and ripped the CD in 8 minutes 32 seconds while the Core Duo scanned 2,579 items and ripped the same CD in 6 minutes 36 seconds. We’re still waiting to see if Apple will follow Dell’s lead — maybe that’s what’s happening next week in San Francisco?

More info
from engadget

It’s not like your average SNES of PSX-inspired PC gamepad is really too much of a chore to lug around, but if you’ve really got to get your game on with minimal addition to your gear bag, Buffalo‘s new USB Micro-Pads seem to be the way to go. The folding controller comes in both an analog stick version (pictured) and a traditional direction pad edition, and both Micro-Pads feature dual shoulder buttons, a couple of extra face buttons, and a mini-USB to USB adaptor. Along with being a good match for most PC emulators and other relevant titles, we’re thinking this could do good things for a Pocket PC-based emulation fan if Buffalo brings the necessary drivers to the table, but we’ll have to wait and see. No word on price or availability yet.

More info
from engadget

Sure, SLI laptops are a dime a dozen these days, but Alienware’s Aurora m9700 is one of the few 17-inch SLI lappies around, and it just got a severe performance boost in the form of dual nVIDIA GeForce Go 7900 GS graphics cards with 512MB of memory apiece. In celebration of the new juicy spec, Alienware is throwing down two new colors: Conspiracy Blue and Cyborg Green, for $100 extra. It doesn’t look like many other specs have budged, the processors still top out at a 2.4GHz AMD Turion 64 processor, and there are options for MIMO networking and a TV tuner, along with the standard Bluetooth and gigabit Ethernet. Prices start at $1700, and the dual 512MB graphics will bump that price up to $2300. Everything should be shipping by the 11th.

[Via laptoping]
more info
from engadget

We hope you’re not preparing for this to be a specced out monster of a cellphone, but for those longing for a Chocolate flip phone that may be a little (ok, a lot) too reminiscent of the KRZR, look no further than the Black Sapphire MG810 (aka VX8600, and U830). It’ll apparently have a 1.3 megapixel camera, 176 x 220 internal display (and 96x 96 external), media player that supports MP3 and AAC, Bluetooth, FM radio, 128MB of flash memory, and GRPS. Still, she’s ah so beautiful. According to our Brazilian pal who sent this in, they snuck it right out underneath our ever lovin’ noses and apparently put it on sale in South America for 999 Brazil Reais (or about $465 US). Steep, for a phone that doesn’t appear to have EDGE or expandable media, but you’re not paying for features here, remember?

more info
from engadget

Apparently, keeping your pet indoors or ponying up for a fenced in a yard just isn’t in style anymore, as the RoamEO GPS tracking system for pets joins the crowd of other locating devices, texting adornments, and inflatable collars that folks seem to prefer over the more traditional methods. This particular setup is geared to work on all roaming pets, but certainly has its limitations. While the GPS-enabled collar sends the exact location, movements, and velocity to your handheld tracking unit, your pet still turns MIA if it wanders more than a mile away. If you’re fairly certain Fido isn’t apt to stray all that far, you can setup a GPS fence that will send audible alerts if that perimeter is breached. This seems to be a decent system for multi-pet owners who have a tough time keeping things on a leash, as you can maintain a keen eye on three creatures simultaneously — but it’ll cost you $459 for the first one, and $149 for each additional collar.

[Via The Raw Feed]
more info
from engadget

All four of these phones have had their fair share of leaks, but now HTC is ready to fess up and assign some names to their Q4 lineup of phones, which is all set to bust up on Europe this fall. Starting from the left we’ve got the S3300, codenamed Artemis, which is due for an October launch, and features TomTom software to power the GPS action, along with a 2.8-inch screen and a snazzy new “RollRTM” trackball / track wheel. The P3600 (aka Trinity) picks up where the Prophet and Magician left off with a bit of bulk, some cute looks, but sadly no QWERTY action. The phone does, however, manage HSDPA speeds and a 2 megapixel camera, so it won’t be all tears when this thing drops in September. Next we have the Q-killin’ “Excalibur” S620, which measures a mere 0.5-inches thick, weighs 4.6 ounces, and manages that lovable QWERTY keyboard and 2.4-inch screen. The phone, due for an October launch, will also come with quad band GPRS/EDGE (3G is conspicuously absent), WiFi and Bluetooth connectivity. Finally, HTC’s S310 “Oxygen” candybar isn’t anything too terribly interesting, but it’s a nice new look for HTC candybar fans who found the HTC Breeze to be a bit too squarish. The S310 should be out this September. Possibly the best news among all this action is that it seems HTC has decided to abandon the frightening naming convention they adopted for the “TyTN” and “MTeoR.” That was a slippery slope if we ever saw one. The worst news is, of course, HTC is only self-branding these phones in Europe right now, and will be letting US carriers adulterate these phones with garish branding and spec drops before we ever get a chance at ‘em. Oh well, such is life. Keep reading for entirely-too-large pr0n of all four phones at their shiniest.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
more info
from engadget
Continue Reading