Gadgety News

If you opt for a netbook you do so with the knowledge that it will crumble when faced with Crysis, Left4Dead and the likes.

Well, Nvidia plans to introduce “chip technology” that could allow low-cost netbooks run those lovely high-def games and media.

The Ion platform, announced on Thursday, effectively combines Nvidia’s GeForce 9400 graphics processing unit (GPU) with Intel’s Atom chipset. According to Nvidia, this combination will provide “up to ten times the graphics performance” of other graphics chipsets currently used with Atom in small, low-cost PCs.

The GeForce 9400 has 16 processing cores and is more than suited for graphics-intensive apps such as Adobe’s Photoshop CS4.

It’s already chugging under the hood of Apple’s latest MacBook, MacBook Pro and MacBook Air.

“Until now, a high-definition, affordable PC was an oxymoron,” said Drew Henry, general manager of Nvidia’s media communications processor business unit, in Thursday’s statement. “The Ion platform pairs the GeForce 9400 with a truly great Intel Atom CPU and lets consumers surf the Internet, play top games, edit photos and watch videos — all in high definition.”

Nvidia said that the new Ion platform will be designed to support the full Windows Vista user interface, however, and the upcoming Windows 7.  That news may be exciting to some of you I guess……….

In addition, it will be capable of running “full-spec 1,080 [pixels]” high-definition video and games as graphically intensive as Call of Duty 4.

According to Nvidia, “the GeForce 9400 GPU does all of this in about half of the space of today’s Atom CPU-based solutions, with minimal effect on battery life”.

The Ion platform will also let netbook users experience full Blu-ray playback on the smallest PCs and laptops, according to Alice Chang, chief executive of optical-drive maker CyberLink, who was quoted in Nvidia’s statement.

A spokesperson for Nvidia told ZDNet UK yesterday that the company expects manufacturers to offer netbooks using Ion sometime towards the end of the first half of 2009.

Portable gaming a-go-go! FTW!

Znet

There has been a rumbling about the specs of the rumoured USB 3.0 controllers.

Some have said that Intel have been dragging their feet to give themselves more time to design for it.

Today they have set the record straight saying the specs are now available and would be released for free, as planned.

As Intel’s ‘Fall Developer Forum’ is around the corner I’m guessing that USB 3.0 will make its debut there.

600MB/s transfer speeds for the win people!!!!

Asus have confirmed that they will be launching the 10-inch version of their ever-so popular Eee PC on Tuesday at the Computex trade show in Taiwan.

A spokesperson for the company has said that the larger-screened model should be on sale in the UK in November.

No other details have been confirmed.

Word out in the blogsphere is that it’s likely to be packing the all new Intel Atom chips, which are due for launch at the same time.

Thing is - I thought the Eee PC’s main selling point was it’s diminutive size and ultra-portabilty.  Or was I wrong?

Crave has reported that Intel are going to release their own brand of Solid State Drive (SSD) and this is a snap of the pre-production model.

Knut Grimsrud, an Intel fellow who leads an R&D group responsible for developing new mainstream storage innovations, described in a blog the difference between using a hard disk drive (HDD) and an SSD.

At the Intel Developer Forum in Shanghai, an Intel executive demonstrated upcoming Intel SSDs and said the chipmaker is on track to deliver SSDs later this year - rah!!!!

As we all should know by now SSDs are based on flash memory chip technology and have no moving parts.  Whereas Hard-disk drives use read-write heads that hover over spinning platters to access and record data. 

As SSDs have no moving parts avoid both the risk of mechanical failure and the mechanical delays of HDDs.  This means that SSDs are generally faster and more reliable.  The main catch is the cost: SSDs are currently much more expensive than HDDs.

This is what Lenovo is teasing us with and it’s fitted with Intels new Atom.

Unveiled at Intel’s IDF in Shanghai, the new Ideapad U8 device features a 4.8-inch touchscreen display and bullseye, optical mouse for single-handed operation while surfing the web via EDGE or 3G data.

The handheld also features “Live GPS,” hand writing recognition, and support for MS Office applications - it praps could even be used as a phone - check out the numeric pad.

With Intel calling this a MID, don’t expect to see a Microsoft OS being run on it.

UMPC Portal

I was wondering what happened about this little Linux based desktop as the rumours seemed to have faded since the first mention of such an animal back in November.

The Asus Eee EP20 desktop was unveiled at CeBIT.

Information about this machine is still scarce other than it will feature the Linux OS but I have heard talk that it will boast a Intel dual core processor at 1.87GHz, a 2.5″ hard disk instead of flash memory.

Pricing, following the EeePC’s ethos, should be ball-parking at around 200€.

I may consider this as a replacement for my current desktop as it’s: a) huge, b) old, c) ugly and d) a Dell! and the EP 20 is none of those :0P

Matbe

What am I going to do?  In the quest for my do-it-all laptop Evesham have thrown a spanner in the works.  What they’ve gone and done is released the Zieo NX600-HDX.

Now, it features Intel’s X7900 Xtreme processor (2.8GHz, 4MB cache, 800MHz) that claims to lead the market for intense mobile computing, providing power efficiency and supreme power for the most demanding usage. 

It also has 4GB DDRII RAM and a 200GB 7200rpm hard disk drive,includes a built-in Media Card Reader and a Dual Layer DVD-RW Drive as well as boasting a 17-inch WUXGA HD screen with a resolution of 1920 x 1200 and X-Bright technology!  Lummy!!

The new Zieo NX600-HDX also features Intel High Definition Audio support as well as 2.1 Speakers all for under £1900 (just).

Guess who might be going over to Evesham?