USB 3.0 Enabled PCs

Most of the news about USB 3.0—the finalization of the spec, the first drivers, the first controller—doesn't tell us much about when we'll actually get to see a product hit stores. The answer? According to Nikkei, before 2010.

Their contacts in the Tawianese PC industry predict the first machines to include the hardware will start rolling off the line by the end of the year, citing rapid development in integrated circuits and the shipment of compliant controllers to PC manufacturers. The date is a bit earlier than the "early 2010" prediction that's been bandied around recently, and inline with initial predictions of a 2009 release.

A quick reminder of what this means:

With transfer speeds of 4.8Gbps, it'll dump a 25GB HD file in about 70 seconds, and the architecture has been beefed up with extra data lanes to make for more sustained, rather than bursty transfer speeds, making it better for camcorders and the like. Even though it delivers more power than USB 2.0 to charge gadgets faster (and it'll revive a completely dead one too), its new polling architecture makes it more efficient.

Unfortunately, full 5Gbps speeds won't be reached for some time.

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AT&T Source Spills Details on New iPhone Coming in June?

* New iPhone announcement around mid-June (duh)
* New iPhone will be faster and have a more seamless experience unmatched by any device (could be just talking about 3.0, but we think it’s also a new iPhone)
* U-Verse iPhone application; will allow control of your home DVR (play, pause, rewind, etc.)
* The annual iPhone launch is “becoming a tradition.”
* Nothing official is being confirmed, but they said that people should prep for an exciting time this summer.
* AT&T is said to be working with Apple to create a unified product with an unparalleled experience across all their products and services.
* Apple’s 3.0 software should tell us where the iPhone platform is going… uh, k?
* They said customers shouldn’t need to choose from AT&T’s high-end devices because of features, they should choose based on preferences. The gap in capability should be filled with the new iPhone. Ok, bets on slide out QWERTY, autofocus camera, video sharing, blah blah?
* Seems like the higher speed HSDPA (7.2Mbps) is being hinted at too which should confirm the earlier rumors of the new Infineon chipset.
* The $99 3G netbook will start selling this summer, and the first one won’t be a Windows OS.

read more | digg story

Microsoft To Start Shipping Windows 7 In September 2009

Microsoft could have Windows 7 on shipping PCs by September, Compal president Ray Chen said today at an investor's conference. The PC contractor executive understands from plans that the software should be available in either late September or early October. The news would corroborate word of an April release candidate that would let Microsoft finish, manufacture and deliver Windows 7 well ahead of the holidays.

read more | digg story

Asus T91 Touch Screen Netbook Video

Sascha of Netbooknews.de got to muck around with the beta-version of Asus' T91 tablet netbook. While the UI is still rough around the edges, it looks to be a promising addition to the tablet family.

Video

Dell Releases Touch Screen Laptops, More to Come This Year

Looks like Dell's 12.1-inch Latitude XT2 has now been globally launched. The tablet convertible has got a multitouch screen, DDR3 memory and weighs just 3.8 pounds with a 6-cell 11-hour battery. Starting price: $2399.

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While that price may jump out as high, touch screen notebooks are soon to become more mainstream. Later this year, the touch screen Eee PC should be released. While trying to keep in line with their lower costs netbookss, this proposed model also plans to run Windows 7.

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10 Web Sites That Will Matter in 2009

You've probably never heard of many of them, but chances are you'll be using some of these Web sites by the end of this year.

read more | digg story

Microsoft's Ballmer touts 'best version of Windows ever'

LAS VEGAS, Nevada (CNN) -- Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer kicked off the 2009 International Consumer Electronics Show on Wednesday with an impassioned endorsement of PCs and a sneak peek at the company's future Windows 7 operating system.

Microsoft CEO Steve Ballmer says Windows 7 will make PCs easier to use.

As expected, Ballmer announced that Microsoft is releasing a beta version of Windows 7, which will be available for download beginning Friday. The news suggests the world's largest software maker may be giving up efforts to rehabilitate its often-maligned Vista operating system, which was released worldwide in January 2007.

"We are on track to deliver the best version of Windows ever," Ballmer told an audience of several thousand tech professionals and journalists inside a cavernous ballroom at the Venetian hotel. "We're working hard to get it right and get it ready."

Without mentioning the security and compatibility issues that have dogged Vista, Ballmer promised that Windows 7 will make PCs faster and easier to use. He didn't offer a timetable for its official release, although Windows Vista went on sale more than two years after it was issued in beta form.

Early reviews of Windows 7, which was leaked to the Internet in beta form in late December, have been positive.

The forthcoming operating system will have touch-screen capability, side-by-side windows for comparison shopping and a "Peek" feature that makes open windows transparent, allowing users to see the icons on their desktop.

"Windows 7 makes it easier to move between the things on your desktop," said Microsoft group project manager Charlotte Jones, who gave a brief demonstration of the system on the hall's giant display screens. Jones said the new system also makes it easier to send files back and forth between home computers.


Read the full article here.

Eee PC T91 convertible tablet lives

It's been expected for months, now Asus has announced its Eee PC T91 convertible tablet ripe for a fresh Windows 7 tossing.

read more (video included)| digg story

2009: Year of the SSD

Intel has released a new 160GB solid state hard drive (SSD), the X25-M in a 2.5-inch form factor, with a 1.8-inch 160GB version, the X18-M, following soon in the next month.

You may remember that Intel announced the 80GB X25-M and X18-M - its first SSD products - at its Developers Forum in August.

Intel's 32GB Intel X25-E Extreme SATA is based on Intel's single-level cell NAND flash memory in order to maximise the input/output operations per second. While the new X25M is a multi-level cell memory which means it has much greater capacity.

read more | digg story

First look at Windows 7's User Interface

"At PDC today, Microsoft gave the first public demonstration of Windows 7. Until now, the company has been uncharacteristically secretive about its new OS; over the past few months, Microsoft has let on that the taskbar will undergo a number of changes, and that many bundled applications would be unbundled and shipped with Windows Live instead. There have also been occasional screenshots of some of the new applets like Calculator and Paint. Now that the covers are finally off, the scale of the new OS becomes clear. The user interface has undergone the most radical overhaul and update since the introduction of Windows 95 thirteen years ago.

First, however, it's important to note what Windows 7 isn't. Windows 7 will not contain anything like the kind of far-reaching architectural modifications that Microsoft made with Windows Vista. Vista brought a new display layer and vastly improved security, but that came at a cost: a significant number of (badly-written) applications had difficulty running on Vista. Applications expecting to run with Administrator access were still widespread when Vista was released, and though many software vendors do a great job, there are still those that haven't updated or fixed their software. Similarly, at its launch many hardware vendors did not have drivers that worked with the new sound or video subsystems, leaving many users frustrated.

While windows 7 doesn't undo these architectural changes—they were essential for the long-term health of the platform—it equally hasn't made any more. Any hardware or software that works with Windows Vista should also work correctly with Windows 7, so unlike the transition from XP to Vista, the transition from Vista to 7 won't show any regressions; nothing that used to work will stop working."

To read more and to view more screen shots of Windows 7 UI, please click here.

The Rise of the All-Conquering Liliputer

The number of models of "Liliputer" - low-cost ultraportable PCs running Windows or Linux - has exploded to more than 100 in less than a year, according to Liliputing.com, a site put together by the freelance journalist Brad Linder.

Since the introduction of the OLPC XO laptop last year, more than a dozen manufacturers have leapt into the space, spotting the potential for sales to children and schools - and, perhaps surprisingly, to adults keen to work while moving around but unwilling to carry fully fledged laptops.

read more | digg story

New internet domain names in 2009: ICANN

"People surf the Internet in Beijing in 2007. Internet users should soon be able to use new domain names such as .love, .paris or .bank if one of the world wide web's biggest shakeups is approved this week as expected by the web regulator ICANN."

The Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN) oversees the assingment of domain names and internet protocol addresses that help computers communicate. This week the ICANN is scheduled to vote on allowing new domain names. This move would allow people to acquire websites ending in something other than the typical "dot" com, org, net, etc. According to the article, "Apart from the .com, .net or .org, the 1.3 billion web users will be able from early 2009 to acquire generic addresses by lodging common words such as .love, .hate or .city or proper names." Corporation names such as .CNN or .Microsoft would be restricted. Competition to acquire popular domain names has become increasingly difficult with the amount of websites available today. As a result, newer websites are forced to abondon the typical .com and create catchy names by using country codes, such as www.del.icio.us.

With this new proposal domain name restrictions will be relaxed, allowing any common word to be used. Although 2009 may seem far away for some, be prepared to start seeing a flood of new websites ith these new domain names once this plan has been approved.