VIA’s ARTiGO 1150: a $265 barebones nettop with big potential (video)

That VE-900 mini-ITX kit still too big for you, eh? Then check out VIA’s latest pico-ITX alternative: the ARTiGO 1150 DIY nettop. It improves on last year’s 1100 model with a dual-core Eden X2 processor clocked at 1GHz and a VX900H media system processor for accelerated decoding of video up to 1080p. The palm-sized chassis houses the usual HDMI and VGA outputs, gigabit Ethernet and four USB 2.0 host ports, while also leaving just enough room for you to install up to 4GB of DDR3 RAM, one 2.5-inch SATA HDD or SSD, plus optional WiFi and SD card reader modules. We’ve found the 1150 selling for $265, which strikes us as appropriately diminutive, but there’s a promo video and press release after the break to help you weigh it up for yourself. Continue reading VIA’s ARTiGO 1150: a $265 barebones nettop with big potential (video) VIA’s ARTiGO 1150: a $265 barebones nettop with big potential (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Nov 2011 01:06:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds .

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VIA’s ARTiGO 1150: a $265 barebones nettop with big potential (video)

ZTE Smart Tab V55 tablet shows its face at the Bluetooth SIG

After flaunting its rear side at the FCC, ZTE’s unannounced Smart Tab V55 has now given us a full frontal courtesy of the Bluetooth SIG. Aside from the flash of Honeycomb, the official listing tells us nothing beyond what we already know: there’s a CDMA modem inside, along with WiFi and Bluetooth. Oh well, at least it’s good to see that the slate is still alive and jumping through all the right hoops for a possible release early next year . Is there any hope that it’ll pack Tegra 3, like that curious T98 ? ZTE Smart Tab V55 tablet shows its face at the Bluetooth SIG originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 23 Nov 2011 00:11:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds .

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ZTE Smart Tab V55 tablet shows its face at the Bluetooth SIG

Samsung announces WiFi-only Series 5 Chromebook, on sale now for $349

After Samsung released its Series 5 Chromebook , lots of you said you’d buy it — if Sammy slashed the asking price in half. Well, we’re not there yet, but the company did just unveil a WiFi-only version with a more palatable MSRP of $349. (It has a black lid, too, in case that snow white number was too precious for you.) To recap, it has a bright, matte 12.1-inch (1280 x 800) display, a dual-core Intel Atom CPU, two USB 2.0 ports and a memory card slot. And design-wise, at least, it’s a step up from most netbooks, with a comfortable keyboard and surprisingly solid 0.8-inch-thick chassis. In any case, if you were planning on picking one up for the Chrome OS lover in your life (or, you know, the low-tech person who only ever uses a web browser anyway), it’s on sale now at the likes of Best Buy, Amazon, NewEgg and Tigerdirect. Continue reading Samsung announces WiFi-only Series 5 Chromebook, on sale now for $349 Samsung announces WiFi-only Series 5 Chromebook, on sale now for $349 originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Nov 2011 11:41:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds

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Samsung announces WiFi-only Series 5 Chromebook, on sale now for $349

Ice Cream Sandwich supports USB mass storage after all, Galaxy Nexus does not

When we gave our first impressions of the Samsung Galaxy Nexus, we were a bit taken aback by the fact that USB mass storage wasn’t supported on the device, leading us to believe that it was a flaw in Android 4.0. Android engineer Dan Morrill took to the ‘net to sort out the confusion, explaining that Ice Cream Sandwich does indeed support the feature, but only on devices that offer removable storage cards — which explains why we weren’t able to use it on the Nexus. Here’s why, according to Dan: It isn’t physically possible to support UMS on devices that don’t have a dedicated partition for storage (like a removable SD card, or a separate partition like Nexus S.) This is because UMS is a block-level protocol that gives the host PC direct access to the physical blocks on the storage, so that Android cannot have it mounted at the same time. With the unified storage model we introduced in Honeycomb, we share your full 32GB (or 16GB or whatever) between app data and media data. That is, no more staring sadly at your 5GB free on Nexus S when your internal app data partition has filled up — it’s all one big happy volume. However the cost is that Android can no longer ever yield up the storage for the host PC to molest directly over USB.

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Ice Cream Sandwich supports USB mass storage after all, Galaxy Nexus does not

Apple Co-Founder Speaks in Armenia

Last week, the president of Armenia honored Steve Wozniak, Co-founder of Apple Inc., with the Global Award of the President of the Republic of Armenia for Outstanding Contribution to Humanity through IT 2011. Wozniak visited the country on Thursday to speak about education, youth, and the IT industry in Armenia.

At the ceremony, President Serzh Sargsyan had this to say about the honor: “He [Wozniak] is a person, who has revolutionized the world by initiating the creation of personal computers. Thanks to him, computers stepped out from the scientific and military establishments, huge corporations and entered every home, every person’s life.” Wozniak was the second recipient of this award; the first was chairman of the board of the Intel Corporation, Craig Barrett.

During his visit last week, Wozniak met with government official, university leaders and students. In addition to the Global Award, Wozniak also received a certificate from Synopsis Armenia, reported ArmRadio.

In an interview in the country, Wozniak encouraged Armenian businesses to hire smart young people whether they have a college degree or not. He said, “It’s not that great when companies require all sorts of degrees or certification. You have to be able to spot young people who will think for themselves and come up with good new ideas — the real innovators.”

Behind Amazon’s Silk browser lurks a really fast supercomputer

We were hardly shocked to see Fujitsu atop the most recent list of the world’s fastest supercomputers , but perhaps more surprising is the fact that Amazon cracked the top 50, as well. Turns out, the company’s Elastic Compute Cloud (EC2) servers are powered by a Linux-based, 240-teraflop beast that boasts 17,024 cores, 66,000 GB of memory, and a ten gigabit Ethernet interconnect. That’s good for 42nd place on Top 500′s global rankings, and it’s also good enough to power Silk , the browser you’ll find on the Kindle Fire . But Amazon has a long way to go before catching up with the Fujitsu K, which recently cracked that vaunted ten petaflop barrier. Behind Amazon’s Silk browser lurks a really fast supercomputer originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Nov 2011 07:19:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds .

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Behind Amazon’s Silk browser lurks a really fast supercomputer

Plextor outs M3S SSD: SATA III and an ‘ironclad’ five-year warranty from $199

Harken to the news of Plextor’s latest 2.5-inch SSD, which beats previous offerings with three things you can’t complain about: a lower price, a modest spec bump and an extra two annums beyond the usual three-year warranty. The M3S employs SATA III and a Marvell controller to deliver speeds of 525MB/s and 445MB/s for sequential reads and writes, and 70,000 and 65,000 IOPS for random reads and writes. The lowest 128GB capacity will sell for $200 from the end of this month, alongside a 256GB variant for $350 and — from early next year — 512GB for $700. The company’s proprietary True Speed software is also in attendance, which claims to preserve “like-new” rapidity even as the drive fills up with fragmented data. You’ll find further specs in the PR after the break, but alas it has none of the third-person narrative flair we saw last time . Continue reading Plextor outs M3S SSD: SATA III and an ‘ironclad’ five-year warranty from $199 Plextor outs M3S SSD: SATA III and an ‘ironclad’ five-year warranty from $199 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 18 Nov 2011 06:18:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

Acer A700 and A701 tabs leak on support site, sporting Tegra 3 and full HD displays

Don’t think that ASUS is going to be having all of the Tegra 3 fun by itself, Acer appears to have a pair of Iconia -branded tabs on the way also sporting NVIDIA’s quad-core mobile chip. The A700 and A701 are showing up as hardware profiles over at the company’s support site. The XML file doesn’t give away too much in the specs department, but it does list the devices as having a screen size of 1920 x 1200. Seriously! We’re talking about a panel of higher res than your 42-inch TV shrunk down to a portable device. The screen’s physical dimensions aren’t specified, but we imagine this is at least a 10-inch slate (otherwise, you’re gonna be doing a lot of squinting). When exactly the WiFi-only A700 and GSM-equipped A701 might ship is anyone’s guess, but it looks like they’ll be doing so with Honeycomb instead of Android 4.0 .

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Acer A700 and A701 tabs leak on support site, sporting Tegra 3 and full HD displays

AT&T in talks to offer Nokia’s Windows Phones

It’s apparently not a done deal just yet, but Bloomberg is reporting that AT&T is currently in negotiations to offer at least one Nokia Windows Phone sometime next year. That word comes straight from the head of AT&T’s tablet unit, Glenn Lurie, who reportedly said that AT&T is now working on completing the details of the agreement — no word on any specific phones, though. In other news, Lurie also said that “you are going to see prices come down” on tablets next year, although in that case he was unsurprisingly only referring to prices on a two-year contract (and tablets from Acer and Samsung, specifically). AT&T in talks to offer Nokia’s Windows Phones originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Nov 2011 16:31:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds . Permalink

MIT student creates tesla coil musical hat for Halloween, survives

Some of us express our

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