Product Central
Dispatches from the Reviews Editor's desk
Wednesday 14 May 2008, 10:50 AM
Tablet trouble
We've had Dell's Latitude XT convertible tablet at ZDNet Towers for a couple of days, and been impressed with its sleek brushed aluminium finish, near-ThinkPad-quality keyboard, integrated HSPDA, diminutive AC adapter and capacitative touchscreen.
About the touchscreen. We don't have a lot of luck with touchscreens, and now the XT has fallen victim to The Curse of ZDNet Reviews. The very morning we were planning to do a video review of the unit, it woke up looking like this:
The machine has suffered no more than the average London-Bedford commuter at this time of year (jostling, overheating, general sense of ennui).
As soon as Dell has got to the bottom of the fault, or provided another sample, we'll bring you the review!
UPDATE:
Having sat and thought about it all morning, the Latitude XT has decided to show half a Vista desktop. Not the most useful half, mind you, but it's some sort of progress. Maybe by home time it'll all come back...
Tuesday 13 May 2008, 2:39 PM
Telescopic oversight
Microsoft Research's new WorldWide Telescope, in the brief time we've had to play with the beta, looks wonderful. A real productivity-killer, in fact -- especially as I'm lucky enough to have a powerful PC and a 30in. screen to view it on. So it would be churlish to poke fun at a typo we found in the 'Many worlds' guided tour wouldn't it?
Ah well, here it is:
Eruopa eh? Those Amreicans could sure use a spelling lesson!
More sensible stuff on the WWT soon.
Friday 11 April 2008, 11:02 AM
Fujitsu goes wooden
Fed up with plastic or magnesium alloy notebooks? How about a wooden one? That's what Fujitsu is showing at the 'Japan Design 2008 - Innovation' show, which runs from April 16 to 20 in Milan as part of of the Salone Internazionale del Mobile, an interior design trade show (the world's largest, it says here).
Pity the keyboard isn't wooden too, but the system does use environmentally friendly bio-based plastics, as seen in the slightly more conventional FMV-BIBLO NX95Y/D:
It may not be quite so green, but what we'd like is a perspex laptop honeycombed with tubes filled with a selection of transparent brightly coloured liquids that move around as the system heats up — a sort of Liquid Len-top, for those of a certain vintage. Oh dear, it must be nearly the weekend...
Tuesday 8 April 2008, 4:18 PM
HP's Mini-Note is official
HP's much-rumoured 2133 Mini-Note PC is now official in the UK. This attempt to exploit the market tapped so successfully by the ASUS Eee will cost from £299 (ex. VAT) for a Linux-based configuration.
The 1.27kg Mini-Note has an 8.9in. display and a webcam, is powered by a VIA C7-M processor (not Intel's new Atom), and comes with either 1GB or 2GB of RAM, 802.11b/g or a/b/g Wi-Fi, Bluetooth (optional), a shock-protected 120GB hard disk (not an SSD), a 3-cell (2h 15m claimed life) or 6-cell (4h 30m claimed) Li-ion battery and runs Linux.
We'll post a full review of this ultramobile system just as soon as we can get our hot little hands on it.
Tuesday 1 April 2008, 9:51 AM
Nehalem sighted at IDF
Hot off the press from our Shanghai correspondent at IDF — a picture of Nehalem, Intel's next-generation processor:
Pressed into Rupert Goodwins' eager hands literally minutes ago, this chip represents the 'tock' part of Intel's 'tick-tock' development cycle, building a new and improved architecture on top of the 45nm fabrication process introduced last year with the Penryn chips.
Rupert's keyboard seems to bear a few battle scars too — more from our man at IDF later.
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