Archive for April 24th, 2009

Sure, the Nikon D5000 might have gotten itself a ship date today, but Canon’s Rebel T1i is doing one better and actually turning up in stores a couple weeks ahead of its scheduled mid-May debut. This particular specimen was spotted at Bromfield Camera in Boston, but we’d love to hear if you’ve seen this guy pop up elsewhere — let us know!

[Thanks, Conrado]

Filed under: Digital Cameras

Canon Rebel T1i trickling out to stores originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Nothing is completely official just yet, but Pocket-lint is reporting that its inside source at NVIDIA has “confirmed” that the initial batch of Ion-based netbooks will be announced at the big Computex trade show at the beginning of June, and that the first few netbooks could start shipping “as early as July.” Of course, there’s no word on any specific companies involved just yet, with the source only going so far as to say that the announcements will come from some “key players.” Acer would seem to be about as close to a sure thing as there is, however, considering that it just recently launched the first Ion-based nettop, the AspireRevo, and that it’s never passed up an opportunity to roll out yet another new nettbook in the past.

Filed under: Laptops

First Ion-based netbooks reportedly on track for June debut originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 16:22:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Talk about things you never knew you didn’t want! If Mom hadn’t much use for a Nintendo DS Lite before, do you think that throwing in some cooking software is gonna change her mind? Neither do we. That said, if you’re really stuck for a Mother’s Day present (or just want one you can play Nintendogs on), this bad boy hits the shops May 3rd. You are now free to go back to reading Garfield Minus Garfield and counting down the minutes ’til Happy Hour.

Continue reading Nintendo rolls out lime green DS bundle just in time for Mother’s Day

Filed under: Gaming

Nintendo rolls out lime green DS bundle just in time for Mother’s Day originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:51:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Look: there are purses, and then there are purses. Well, this one is none of those things. It’s a decent looking bag to begin with, but then… well, things get really fantastic. Jeri Ellsworth took it upon herself to cram a Nintendo-on-a-chip and a Commodore 64-on-a-chip (her own creation) into the bag, along with an LCD. Then she connected up some NES controllers, which are velcroed onto the outside of the bag. The result looks awesome, and is also actually useable. We haven’t heard anything about these guys being offered for sale, but we’re fairly certain that the august House of Dior will probably be ringing her up any day now. Seriously: this thing is a work of art. There’s a video of Jeri talking about her creation after the break.

[Via Make]

Continue reading Nintendo / C64 purse is runway-caliber fashion accessory

Filed under: Gaming, Wearables

Nintendo / C64 purse is runway-caliber fashion accessory originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 15:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Microsoft’s Surface has been shipping out to corporate customers for a year now, but we haven’t heard much about the backend setup of the $17,000 table — sure, we know it’s fun when it’s up and running all those custom apps, but what’s it like after the unboxing? Incredibly frustrating, says FD kinesis’s Gordon Miller. Hired to implement a Surface solution for a client, Miller and his team first spent 30 minutes on the phone with MS phone support trying to locate the power socket, and another lengthy period of time poking at an unresponsive touchscreen before realizing that the Surface doesn’t respond to touch out of the box. Yep, you read that right — Microsoft’s $17,000 big-ass touchscreen table requires a keyboard and mouse to set up, something which isn’t noted in any of the marketing or manuals. Ouch. Hopefully that’ll get fixed before this thing ships to consumers in 2011, but in the meantime, hit the read link for the entire harrowing tale — it’s a pretty fun read for a Friday afternoon.

P.S.- We actually talked to Gordon on the phone for a quick minute and he said that Microsoft’s been in touch about the experience — he’s working on an new post about that which we’ll link when it goes up.

[Via Daring Fireball]

Filed under: Desktops

Microsoft Surface setup impressions: “filled with mind-bogglingly frustrating usability issues” originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Technically, OCZ outed this here PCI-Express SSD way back at CeBIT in March, but it’s just now making things super official. Now available with a fresh face and hard specifications, the Z-Drive is aiming to take on wares by firms like Fusion-io and provide blistering transfer rates to anyone who buys in. Essentially, this device removes the SATA bottleneck by employing the PCIe architecture and four Vertex controllers configured in four-way RAID 0 array. Curious about performance? Read speeds can hit upwards of 510MB/sec, while write speeds top out at 480MB/sec — plenty respectable in our eyes. OCZ’s planning to push these out in 250GB, 500GB and 1TB capacities, and while final pricing is still being kept under wraps, we’re told that it’ll be kept “competitive.”

Filed under: Storage

OCZ gets official with Z-Drive PCI-Express SSD originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 14:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Two years after we thought it was all over, it sounds like the saga of Sony, Immersion, and the rumblin’ DualShock has yet another chapter: a New Jersey electrical engineer named Craig Thorner is now suing Sony and its attorneys, claiming that he was more or less duped out of one of his patents in a shady deal designed to help Sony and PDP/Electrosource beat Immersion’s cases against them. Oh yeah, it’s a tangled mess — Thorner first signed over his patent to Immersion, hoping to score a little slice of royalty pie when the lawsuit settled, but then took it back when he decided Immersion wasn’t pursuing it hard enough and signed it over to PDP/Electrosource, who promised him $150,000. So where does Sony come in? Thorner says PDP and Sony were teamed up to beat Immersion, and that Sony was secretly the one licensing the patent but trying to remain out of the picture to keep the price down — and he’s got proof, in the form of a $150,000 wire transfer between the two companies. Not only that, but Sony’s attorneys apparently promised Thorner that they could “wear two hats” during negotiations and represent both him and Sony, which is ten kinds of shady. You can guess what happened next: Sony lost, PDP settled, and Immersion sued Thorner for breaking his agreement — and Sony’s attorneys didn’t help him defend the lawsuit. Did we say ten kinds of shady? Eleven kinds. Of course, it’s doubtful that Thorner is totally innocent here, so it’ll be interesting to see how Sony responds, but at this point we’re treating the DualShock 3 as a miracle of nature and leaving it at that.

[Via Joystiq]

Read – GamePolitics article (with PDF of the complaint)
Read – Law.com article

Filed under: Gaming

Sony sued for cheating man out of rumble patents originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s not exactly a huge surprise considering that the Cupcake-powered HTC Magic is confirmed to be coming out May 5th, but T-Mobile Germany’s website now looks to have also confirmed that the Cupcake update itself will also be rolling out to G1 users sometime the same month — in Germany, at least. That’ll of course bring with it the much-desired on-screen keyboard, along with video recording, stereo Bluetooth support, and some new integration with Picasa and YouTube, among other fixes and additions. As you can see above, the update will “skillfully” install itself on your G1 as soon as it’s available, so you needn’t do anything except go on about your daily business in the meantime, or check the interwebs furiously for a means of jumping the cue.

[Via Talk Android]

Filed under: Cellphones

T-Mobile Germany website indicates May launch for Cupcake originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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In case you aren’t hip to the Twittersphere, Josh, Nilay, Paul and Engadget’s own Twitter bot put out their feelers for listener questions this week, and got a lot of great material for discussion. Inquisitive minds wanted to know which wild conjectures these fine men believe about the Zune HD, how particularly evil Time Warner Cable is, and other matters related to Chinese phone manufacturers and The End Times. If you failed to seize upon this opportunity to ask, or found your own question heartlessly ignored, make sure to take advantage of the various avenues of contact listed below and ask away!

Hosts: Joshua Topolsky, Nilay Patel, Paul Miller
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00:02:36 – Is this the Zune HD?
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00:28:25 – Time Warner Cable to axe DOCSIS 3.0 trials without tiered billing?
00:33:53 – Time Warner and Embarq can’t compete with city-owned ISP, trying to outlaw it
00:47:37 – Ugobe files for bankruptcy, Pleo facing extinction
00:53:28 – Keepin’ it real fake
01:09:03 – T-Mobile Sidekick LX 2009 video hands-on

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Filed under: Podcasts

Engadget Podcast 143 – 04.24.2009 originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 13:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Attention, Orange and the random supplier who’s manufacturing these ripoffs: the world has moved on from the original HTC Touch’s design language. Hell, we’ve actually moved on twice now; once to the Touch Diamond, and once to the Touch Diamond2. On that note, we’re not sure what’s possessing a Western European carrier to release a cheesy rip of a such a well-known late model phone — whose manufacturer Orange has a great relationship with, no less — other than the fact that they’re looking to give entry-level customers a really inexpensive way to get into the touchscreen game. Indeed, the prepaid device will apparently run just £48.50 (about $71) when it launches, but in return, you’re only getting a 1.3 megapixel camera, presumably EDGE data, and the mocking of everyone you’ve ever known — including your own mother, who we understand uses an actual HTC Touch.

[Via mobile-review]

Update: If T-Mobile UK is more your style, turns out they’re offering the very same device as the Vairy Touch. Thanks, everyone!

Filed under: Cellphones

Keepin’ it real fake, part CCI: dirty Vegas plays Orange UK originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 24 Apr 2009 12:28:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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