Usually a lightweight laptop means sacrificing processor speed, but not with the Studio 14z laptop from Dell. The 14z weighs in at 1.95 kg with the six cell battery option which isn’t bad for a laptop sporting a 14 inch display. Dell have achieved this weight by removing the optical drive, that’s right, there’s no internal DVD or Blu-ray player, so if you’re after a fast light-weight laptop but aren’t stressed by the absence of an optical drive then Dell’s Studio 14z may be an option for you. Here are the rest of the specs on the 14z

* Intel® Pentium™ Dual Core T4200 (2.0GHz/800Mhz FSB/1MB cache)
* Genuine Windows Vista® Home Premium Edition SP1, 64-Bit
* 14.0” High Definition (720p) LED Display
* 3GB Shared Dual Channel DDR3 at 1066MHz
* 250GB SATA Hard Drive (5400RPM)
* NVIDIA® GeForce® 9400M G
* Dell Wireless 1397 802.11g Half Mini-Card
* 56 Whr Lithium Ion Battery (6 cell)
* 13.23 x 1.22 x 9.02 inches
* 1.95 kg

And all this for a very respectable US$650. Dell offer a portable CD/DVD-RW drive with the Studio 14z for a mere $90 if you must absolutely have an optical drive. Plus the 14z is available in a range of colours from Ruby Red through to, err, Promise Pink. Actually moving away from the standard Black option will cost you an extra $40 but who wouldn’t do that to be able to say they have a Plum Purple laptop.

After a plethora of under-powered laptops around, it’s nice to see Dell offering a slimline option that doesn’t skimp on processing power and still has a reasonable price tag with it.

Source: Dell

Featured Tags dell, laptop


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Hitachi have just announced a series of new home entertainment LCD HDTVs. They come in two ranges, the UltraVision and Alpha range. Ultravision has three models, rocking in at 42, 46 and 55 inches and all sporting 1080p. The Alpha series has two units, the 42 inch model also sporting 1080p, but the diminutive 32 incher can only boast 720p. Check out the details below for a comparison of the various units

Range	UltraVision Series			Alpha Series
Model	L55S603	L46S603	L42S503	L42A403	L32A403
Size (inches)	55	46	42	42	32
Screen Display	Full HD 1080p (1920×1080)				HD 720p (1366×768)
	Reel120™ Motion Correction
Stereo Sound	24W	24W	24W	24W	20W
HDMI Inputs	5	5	4	4	4
Component Inputs	2	2	2	2	2
Composite Inputs	2	2	2	2	2
S-Video Inputs	2	2	2	2	1
PC Input	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes	Yes
Price	US$1800	US$1300	US$1000	US$850	US$500
Available	September	August	June	May	May

Certainly plenty of inputs for you, but with a lack of currently available specs we are a little loathed to give the UltraVision and Alpha ranges the big thumbs up at the moment. The price tags certainly look attractive but without a bit more depth to the figures we’ll reserve judgement for the time being. Of course if you’ve had a chance to play with one of these suckers please let us know what you think.

Source: Hitachi

Featured Tags hitachi, lcd-hdtv


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BenQ have just unleashed a cute mini-projector, the JoyBee GP1. Whilst the specs are nothing to blab about, the GP1 certainly wins hands down on portability. It weighs in at 1.4 pounds or around 640g, which is certainly light enough to be considered portable and also you don’t need a laptop or PC to show off your latest pics or vids. Simply plug a USB stick with the appropriate media into the JoyBee GP1 and away you go! Pretty impressive eh? Here are the rest of the details on the GP1 if you’re interested

* SVGA 858 x 600 res
* 100 ANSI lumens
* 3LED (RGB) technology
* 2000:1 contrast ratio
* 4:3 Native, 16:9 Selectable Ratios
* 15” to 80” images size
* Handles VGA(640 x 480) to SXGA(1280 x 1024)
* Handles 480i, 480p, 576i, 576p, 720p, 1080i
* Inputs include Component Video, Composite Video, USB reader
* 136 x 54 x 120 mm
* USB reader handles JPEG, GIF, BMP, TIFF, MPEG-1, MJPEG, MPEG-1 layer 2, PCM file formats

As we said, nothing exceptional here, in fact downright ugly, apart from the size, weight and USB reader functionality. All in all we do like the BenQ GP1 JoyBee, it certainly fills a niche, not sure how big the market is but at only US$500 it could be a big one.

Source: BenQ

Featured Tags benq, projector


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CellularSouth have just unleashed RIM’s Blackberry Pearl Flip8230 handset on their customers. The Flip 8230 sports a US$100 price tag including the usual two year shackle and an online $50 discount. According to the marketing spiel the unit

combines the best of a smartphone with the convenience of a flip form factor. In addition to high-speed data capability, e-mail, a 2-megapixel camera and a video recorder, the Pearl Flip comes preloaded with the BlackBerry App World

How they managed to fit a whole world in there is beyond us ;-) but seriously it’s a definite mid-road product, wannabe smartphone yet trying to appeal to trendy handsets consumers, with even a pink option being available. Anyway to help you decide whether you’d take a chance on the Pearl Flip 8230 here’s the low-down on the specs

* 3G High-Speed Data Capable
* 2.4″, 240×320-pixel internal color display
* 1.6″, 128×160-pixel external color display
* Supports the following e-mail protocols – BlackBerry, POP3, IMAP4, MS OWA, Exchange, Domino, and Groupwise
* Supports the following video formats: MPEG4 Part 2 Simple Profile, H.263 and WMV
* Supports the following audio formats: MP3, MIDI, AMR-NB, AAC/AAC+/eAAC+ and WMA
* 2 Mp camera
* 128MB of memory with microSD card slot
* 3.98″x1.97″x0.69″
* 3.6 ounces
* 3.5 hours of talk-time
* 216 hours on standby
* CDMA 850/1900 MHz
* 3.5mm headphone jack

For those of us who just can’t decide between a trendy cellphone or an app laden smartphone, the Blackberry Pearl Flip 8230 from CellularSouth may just be the answer. US$100 seems a pretty good price for the unit. If you’ve played with one of these suckers let us know what you think.

Source: CellularSouth

Featured Tags blackberry, cellphone, cellularsouth


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The marketeers over at LG have decided to turn their BD390 Blu-Ray player which already sports Wi-Fi connectivity into a DIVX playing unit too. According to the press release from LG

Consumers are using HD video across multiple platforms and devices, and there is a strong demand for playback of DivX HD files. By adding DivX support to the BD390, now consumers can play DivX video up to HD 1080p burned to DVDs or stored on USB flash drives. DivX HD 1080p content can also be streamed directly from a network with a DLNA server making it simple for consumers to playback their library of favorite HD videos.

Which of course in turn boils down to great news for the consumer. Just in case you hadn’t checked out the features on LG’s BD390 Blu-Ray player already, here they are

* Integrated Wi-Fi Connectivity allows you take advantage of NetCast™ Entertainment Access and BD Live from any available Wi-Fi connection
* Blu-ray disc playback delivers exceptional Full HD 1080p video performance, gives you access to real-time extras on BD Live
* You can choose Cinema mode to watch movies at the 24 or 60 frames per second
* Standard DVD Up-Scaling
* Superior Audio Performance that supports surround sound up to 7.1 channels with Dolby Digital Plus, Dolby TrueHD and dts-HD Advanced Digital Out
* 1GB Built-in Memory
* Supports Audio CD, CD-R/RW, Blu-ray Disc, BD-R/RE, DVD, DVD-R, DVD-RW, DVD+R, DVD+RW discs
* Supports format MPEG2, MPEG4, DivX/DivX HD, MKV video formats
* Blu-ray BonusView & Blu-ray BD Live
* Composite Output Up to 480i, Component Output Up to 1080i, HDMI Output Up to 1080p (24 & 60Hz)
* Digitial Optical & Coaxial outputs
* Component, Composite, HDMI outputs
* 17.0″ x 2.2″ x 10.9″
* 6.0 lbs

Impressed? We are! The price tag on the BD390 unit rocks in at US$400 over at Best Buy as well as a few other places, and it also sports a 4.3 out of 5 from customers at Best Buy. Could be just the unit to make you take that Blu-Ray plunge!

Source: DIVX

Featured Tags blu-ray-player, lg


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Known more for their petite netbooks, Asus have launched a distinctly middle of the road notebook for us. The Asus K40 Series K40IN-A1 sports 4 GB of memory along with a 14 inch 1366 x 768 display. Like we said distinctly mid-range, however if you’re a kind of average person then read on

* 14 inch Wide Screen LED backlight 1366 x 768 res display
* Windows Vista Home Premium OS
* Intel Core 2 Duo T6400 2.0GHz CPU
* 4GB DDR2 RAM
* 320GB HDD
* DVD Super Multi Optical Drive
* NVIDIA GeForce G102M 512MB DDR2 VRAM Integrated Graphics Card
* 13.4 x 9.5 x 1.5 inches
* 5.3 lbs
* 10/100/1000Mbps LAN connectivity
* 802.11b/g/n Wi-Fi connectivity
* 4 USB and 1 VGA ports
* Internal Speakers
* SD, MMC, MS card reader
* 6-cell lithium ion battery

Fortunately the price tag is average too at US$850 over at NewEgg. So if you’re kind of an ‘Average Joe’ then the K40 may just the laptop you’re after.

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Finally Sony have unleashed their response to Apple’s iPod Touch with the X Series Walkman, which sports a 3 inch OLED touchscreen, Wi-Fi connectivity and 33 hours of music playback time. It comes in two capacities, namely 16 and 32 GB and has Slacker Radio integrated. Here are some more numbers on the Sony X Series Walkman

* 3 inch OLED WQVGA 432 x 240 res display
* Supports MP3/WMA/AAC/L-PCM audio formats
* Supports AVC(H.264/AVC)/MPEG-4/WMV video formats
* 2.2 x 3.9 x 0.5 inches
* 3.5 oz
* 5 band equalizer

The 32 GB version will set you back US$400 whilst the 16GB unit has a price tag of US$300, which match Apple’s prices for their iPod Touch exactly for similar capacities. The specs are relatively similar too, with the Walkman being slightly lighter, so we guess the difference will be in the displays. The iPod Touch boasts a larger display and resolution but what about the quality? Unfortunately we’ve seen neither unit in action, so if you’ve taken a look at either the Sony Walkman X Series or the Apple iPod Touch let us know what you think.

Source: Sony

Featured Tags pmp, Sony


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