We’d been hearing that HP’s slick UMPC 2133 was going sport VIA processors, and now we’ve got some more info to back that up — we just received what appears to be a full spec list for the upcoming machine, and it’s VIA C7-Ms all around, with graphics courtesy of a VIA Chrome 9 chipset. According to our source, these will hit on April 7th, and it looks like those pricing whispers were pretty accurate as well: $600 will buy you a 1.2GHz C7-M, a 120GB drive, 1GB of RAM and Vista Home Basic, while $749 bumps you up to 1.6GHz and Vista Business and adds Bluetooth, another gig of RAM, and a bigger battery. There’s also a mysterious $849 Vista Basic model listed as having “regional” availability (the others are listed as “Smart Buy”) with Bluetooth and bigger battery, but we don’t see why it’s more expensive than the Vista Business version. Regardless, what really caught our eye was the $549 model that shares the same specs as the $600 unit, but looks to be running SuSE Enterprise — another rumor that’s come true. That could be the one that HP expects to sell like hotcakes — after all, the goal is to have people buy these “without a thought,” and that’s certainly not going to happen at $749. We’ll see soon enough, we suppose.

From engadget

It’s only taken about a million years, but someone has finally decided that improvements are possible in automobile braking lights. Students from Virginia Tech have developed a new system that can show not just whether you’re stopping, but if you’re slowing down, when you’re about to stop, and how quickly you’re pressing the pedal. The concept uses an array of horizontally arranged LED lights — when you begin to slow, lights in the center glow orange, after a certain threshold side lights turn to red, and if you’re slamming on the brake, they’ll all flash red. The team, led by mechanical engineering Professor Mehdi Ahmadian, has plans for the system beyond the lab, though they speculate that it will be easier to add them as additional indicators on commercial vehicles at first. If this pans out, someday soon we may all be tailgating a totally psychedelic light show.

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from engadget

It’s always worth noting when a reviewer says that a device, “sets a new standard for image quality in a compact camera.” That’s PopPhoto’s conclusion after testing the Sigma DP1 with a DSLR-sized, FOVEON X3 CMOS sensor packing 14 megapixels. The image quality and color accuracy remained “stellar” right up to ISO 800 where other compacts shackled with tiny sensors begin to lose control of the noise. The biggest nits are with the sluggish 9-zone AF system, an unsophisticated flash, lack of image stabilization, and delays between shots. Fix those while whittling-back the $800 street price a bit and PopPhoto believes the DP1 could go mainstream.

[Via Photography Blog]
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from engadget

Our week o’ Dell scoops continues with what Dell calls its “mainstream” and “essential” series of Latitude E-series laptops. While the enterprise-ready, mainstream series packs just about everything (and more) that you could hope for in a balanced spec-for-size lappie, the essential series is only essential if you’re on a tight budget and just can’t live without the comparatively low-end chub. The 15.4-inch E6500 and 14.1-inch E6400 models will replace Dell’s D830 and D630 whereas the “essential” 15.4-inch E5500 and 14.1-inch E5400 carry on the low-end tradition of Dell’s D531 and D530. With any luck, these will be Dell’s first Montevina / Centrino 2 class machines if they all hit the targeted June release date as planned. AMD fans will see the E5500a and E5400a configurations at about the same time. So what can you expect under the hood? Well, just look at the 5.1-pound E6500 which reads like a suit’s, geek fantasy:

• UWB, Bluetooth 2.1, mobile broadband
• Integrated GPS, yes GPS
• New 84WHr slice batteries for “all day” computing
• LED backlighting, 1920 x 1200 pixel resolution, discrete nVIDIA graphics and DisplayPort out
• Hard, Hybrid, and Solid State disk drive options with eSATA jack for more
• Optional camera and mic
• Plenty of security options including contact-less smart cards and encrypted hard disks

Time to pad those budgets a bit, eh CIOs? Full low-down in the gallery below.

Gallery: Dell’s leaked Latitude E6000 and E5000-series of laptops pack GPS, DisplayPort, WWAN, UWB and much more

    
from engadget

Take that WD, Toshiba, and Hitachi. Fujitsu just returned from exile with a claim to the biggest fastest laptop-disk throne. The 3Gbps SATA-equipped MHZ2 BJ series measures in at a standard 9.5-mm and spins at 7,200rpm with a 16MB cache and 25dB idle noise level. Average seek times are listed at 10.5-ms for data reads and 12.5-ms for writes while drawing 2.3 watts of power. Oh sure, a couple of 2.5-inch 500GB disk drives have already been announced. But most of those measure in at a non-standard 12.5-mm making them unsuitable for the majority of laptops on the market today. Sales of the new MHZ2 BJ-series begins in June.

Update: Oops, almost forgot about Samsung’s Spinpoint M6 which does hit the 500GB mark in a standard 9.5mm-height package.

[Via Impress]
from engadget
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It’s been just a little over a year since we saw Cybernet’s zero footprint, keyboard-only computer — now the company has upped the line with new features (but mistakenly stripped that shiny red paint job). The new systems — which harken back to the glorious days of the TI-99 — now support Core 2 Duo and Core 2 Quad chips, sport the GMA X3100 graphics chipset, up to 4GB of RAM, a slimline optical drive, and can astonishingly handle expansion via a Mini PCI and PCI-e slot. The all-in-one combos start at $629 and head marginally skyward from there.

[Thanks, stagueve]
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from engadget

It’s been a while since the HP dv2000 laptop made its original appearance, and it looks like HP’s giving the newest version a new model number as well as a slight redesign — say bonjour to the dv3000. Based around an oh-so-hip 13.3-inch display, the overall look of the machine is basically the same as the older model, but it’s slightly smaller. Inside, you’re looking at a 2.5GHz T9300 Penryn Core 2 Duo, GeForce Go 8400M graphics with HDMI out, 2GB of RAM, a 160GB disk, VGA webcam, a dual-layer burner, and an unusual combo USB / eSATA port that we’d like to take a closer look at. Not a bad piece of kit for $1,399

Gallery: HP launches dv3000

    
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from engadget