New Electronic News

Asus Lamborghini Notebook With 1 TB SSD

2009-03-11T03:53:00.001-07:00

Asus unveils its stylish new Lamborghini-inspired VX5 notebook, featuring a 1 TB solid state drive (SSD).

The new Asus Lamborghini VX5 made an appearance at CeBIT 2009 this week, which housed what Asus claimed as the world's largest density SSD currently available. Although not specified, the included SSD might be the new 1 TB SSD from Puresilicon, which was announced earlier this year and flaunted a blazingly fast sustained read and write speed of 240 MB/sec. and 215 MB/sec, respectively.

The Asus Lamborghini VX5 notebook also features a futuristic-looking design inspired by the Lamborghini Reventón; the most powerful and expensive Lamborghini road car to date. The notebook has a black and gray color scheme, leather palm rests, chrome accents, a Lamborghini logo and a chiclet keyboard that lights up automatically under low light conditions. While the notebook does look pretty fancy, it also looks pretty big, but that added size is in part due to the notebook's large 16-inch LCD display with full HD resolution.

Under the hood, the VX5 notebook is powered by an Intel Core 2 Quad processor and comes with 4 GB of DDR3 memory and dedicated Nvidia Geforce GT 130M graphics with 1 GB of GDDR3 VRAM. For added performance, the notebook also features a TwinTurbo mode that can increase CPU and GPU speed with the press of a button. Also included in the VX5 notebook is a Blu-ray disc combo drive, a 2.0-megapixel webcam, a slew of useful ports and Windows Vista Ultimate.

Lastly, the notebook weighs in at 7.23-pounds (3.3 kg) with a 6-cell battery and has a whopping thickness of 1.89-inches (48 mm). There is no word yet on price or availability, but expect this

Sony Ericsson launches C903 Cyber-shot camera phone

2009-03-11T03:27:00.000-07:00

Sony Ericsson announces the slim five megapixel C903 slider camera phone. The new camera phone offers most features found on today's digital cameras, such as Face Detection, Smile Shutter, and BestPic to pick the best picture from nine images automatically shot in quick succession. The C903 also comes with aGPS to simply tag your photos to a location. The C903 phone supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900/UMTS/HSPA, and will be available in selected markets from Q2 in Lacquer Black, Techno White and Glamour Red....

PRESS SUMMARY

Seeing is believing with the C903 Cyber-shot. The slick and stylish mobile phone has a unique sliding lens cover to make great photography as easy as one, two, three.

The C903 Cyber-shot is made for taking memorable pictures – just slide down the protective lens cover and shoot! The slim slider has dedicated camera keys and an impressive five megapixel camera to create big pictures with rich details and true colours.

Packed full of features the C903 Cyber-shot will give you the best picture possible with Face Detection, finding up to three people in the frame at a time and Smile Shutter which automatically picks out beaming smiles. Snap up to nine images in quick succession using BestPic, pick your best and delete the rest.

“The C903 Cyber-shot adds a creative and stylish mobile phone to our mid-range segment.” said Daniel Sandblom Global Business Marketing Manager at Sony Ericsson. “The C903 Cyber-shot furthers Sony Ericsson's digital camera heritage and makes capturing special images even more memorable.”

Show off your images with the crystal clear, auto rotating 2.4” display, send them to your blog or connect to your TV screen using the TV-out function and get up close and personal.

The C903 Cyber-shot also comes complete with aGPS – never lose track of where you took an image or where you are – simply tag your photos to a location or use the feature to find your way home or to the pub.

Made for taking memorable pictures

• Snap really clear, big pictures with auto focus and the five megapixel camera
• Turn your subjects into stars with Smile Shutter and face detection
• View images on the big screen using TV-Out cable
• Tag a place-name to your memories or stay on track with aGPS
• The C903 Cyber-shot supports GSM/GPRS/EDGE 850/900/1800/1900 and UMTS/HSPA 900/2100.

C903 Cyber-shot will be available in selected markets from Q2 in the colours Lacquer Black, Techno White and Glamour Red.

Sony PlayStation Network guns for Xbox Live, adds NBC Universal lineup

2009-03-11T03:20:00.000-07:00

Sony said today that it added NBC Universal's TV shows and movies to its lineup of videos for rent or purchase on the PlayStation Network, an online marketplace for PlayStation 3 game console owners.

The deal bumps PSN's download offerings to 1,300 movies -- such as "Hellboy II: The Golden Army" and "The Incredible Hulk" -- and 4,500 TV episodes, including those from "The Office," "Heroes" and "Battlestar Galactica."

Sony, which projected a $1.5-billion loss its current fiscal year, is in the midst of a massive reorganization designed to transform the electronics giant into a more nimble media company (its Sony Pictures unit cut 350 jobs today). PlayStation Network fits neatly into this plan being championed by Sony Chief Executive Howard Stringer, who has vowed to give the vast majority of Sony devices the ability to connect to the Internet in order to retrieve, store or play digital content.

Kaz Hirai, who heads up Sony's worldwide PlayStation business, has his work cut out. For one thing, Hirai has to compete with Microsoft, whose Xbox Live marketplace for ...

... owners of the Xbox 360 game console has been around since November 2005, a full year before the PS3 came out. Sony's deal with NBC Universal, for example, simply levels the playing field: Xbox Live already features NBC's content. And while Sony's PSN has 5,800 movies and shows, Xbox Live has 30,000.

But Sony is catching up fast, with 20 million registered accounts on PSN, compared with more than 17 million active users on Xbox Live. Note, however, that Sony's figure is just for registered accounts. Sony hasn't said how many of those accounts are actively logging on to PSN. Microsoft's number is for active subscribers who have logged on at least once in the last six months. In addition, more than half of Xbox Live members, nearly 10 million players, pay $50 a year for premium subscriptions. Sony's service is free.

The race is not just to build the biggest libraries of video. It's about creating a living room gateway for delivering all sorts of digital goodies, including games and music. The business model can also support services, such as on-demand video rentals, subscriptions for music streaming and access to weather and news.

Perhaps that's why Sony's announcement said the deal with NBC would help make PS3 "the ultimate entertainment platform."

Nokia Launches VoIP Blocker

2009-03-11T03:04:00.000-07:00

Nokia is launching a platform which defies the so-called Net-Neutrality by enabling operators to block specific types of data services, namely peer to peer file sharing and VoIP calls. The centralized solution is implemented as a software upgrade to the Nokia Flexi Intelligent Service Node (ISN) and will be commercially available during the first half of 2007.

"With the explosion of affordable high-speed mobile data access, operators are now being challenged to make the best possible use of their networks, especially when peer-to-peer applications increase their traffic load and compete with their own services," says Roberto Loiola, Vice President, Marketing and Sales, Networks, Nokia. "The Nokia Peer-to-peer Traffic Control solution now gives operators the means to analyse and manage such traffic. It allows them to apply their business models by prioritizing the traffic of preferred services and partners, maximize their return on network investment, and avoid becoming only bit pipes for other content providers."

The Nokia Peer-to-peer Traffic Control solution enhances the service, subscriber, and access awareness capabilities of the Nokia Flexi ISN to identify data traffic according to the type of service, for example file sharing, so that operators can treat that traffic in a way that best optimizes the use of network resources according to the operators' business strategy."