Ricavision continues to rock the SideShow action today — in addition to the devices unveiled yesterday, it looks like they’re finally ready to ship that nifty SideShow-enabled Vista Media Center Edition we saw back at CES as the RICA100. There’s been a few changes since — Bluetooth range has been increased to 300 meters, the button layout has been substantially beefed-up and revised to meet Microsoft’s MCE guidelines, and the docking / charging cradle has been totally redesigned into a smaller, sleeker unit. All those changes don’t come cheap, though — the RICA100′s MSRP is now $299, up from $199. We can’t help but notice that this design is just a render too, though — let’s hope Ricavision shows off an actual physical product sometime soon.

[Via eHomeUpgrade]
from engadget

No, the laptop industry hasn’t bypassed the idea of quad-core laptops in favour of octo-core machines, since NextComputing’s 8-core flextops are machines you wouldn’t want anywhere near your lap. Based as they are around the Intel Xeon 5300 processor, the NextDimension Pro and Evo can take advantage of the relatively low power requirements of 100W for two quad-core CPUs (down from 160 Watts for its power hungrier desktop equivalent). For a sense of just how expandable the NextDimension machines are, consider that they can hold up to twelve 160GB 2.5-inch 7200RPM hard disk drives. They also manage to pack in four PCI / PCI-e slots in the Evo model, and Firewire, Gigabit Ethernet, and support for 24GB of memory through four DMA channels on both models. These 20-pound desktop machines with a handle will be shown off at Interop Las Vegas later this month, but beyond that we’re not sure when or for how much you’ll be able to lug one away.

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from engadget