Archive for May 6th, 2009

We knew the Kindle DX pilot programs at Arizona State, Case Western Reserve, Princeton, Pace, Reed, and Darden School of Business at the University of Virginia would be limited in number, but it sounds like students at those schools will have be extremely lucky or well-connected to get their hands on Amazon’s latest — according to Pace reps at today’s launch event, each school will only receive around 50 Kindle DXs for the trial. That’s just about 300 total Kindles, and it makes Amazon’s crowing about revolutionizing education seem a little hasty. Not only that, but it’s not like the program is particularly ready to go, either: the schools still haven’t figured out which classes they’ll try and switch over to the Kindle, instructors have yet to be brought on board, and it’s still not clear whether Amazon or the schools themselves will pay for the Kindles, although students will definitely have to shell out for the books. That’s a lot of dealmaking to get done — looks like Amazon just gave itself some summer homework.

Filed under: Handhelds

Kindle DX college plans revealed: only 300 students total originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 16:44:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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And so it’s finally confirmed: no consumers on un-hacked T-Mobile G1s in the US have this yet, but Android 1.5 and all its gooey, chocolatey Cupcake goodness will finally be hitting American units come late next week. Of course, you know how Android updates go — they “roll” — and not everyone is expected to get hooked up until the end of the month. Meanwhile, British G1 owners are getting updated as we speak — so you might say they’re getting back their American counterparts for launching the hardware afterwards. You know, what goes around, comes around.

[Thanks, Shawn and David]

Update: The 1.5 update includes Picasa and YouTube uploads (you didn’t forget about video capability, did you?) straight from your device, which is pretty cool.

Read – T-Mobile USA announcement
Read – Android 1.5 now available in UK

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Android 1.5 coming to T-Mobile UK now, USA next week originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 16:19:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Robotic submarines have already achieved some pretty impressive feats of submersion, but this new Nereus sub developed by the folks at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution looks set to out-do those in a fairly big way, with it now on track to dive down into all 11,000 meters of the Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean. What’s more, while the sub can be operated remotely, it also has a fully autonomous mode, which’ll let it make use of the on-board chemical sensors, sonar, and digital photography to seek out areas of interest and map out “vast swathes of the seafloor” before returning to the ship automatically. As you might have guessed, all of that comes at a fairly hefty price tag — about $5 million — and it seems like may only be the first of a flood of robotic submarines to come, with British, French, Russian and Japanese teams said to be watching the Nereus’ progress “with interest.” It doesn’t look like they’ll have to wait all that long for the big show, however, as the sub is apparently now starting to undergo a series of progressively difficult test dives in advance of the main event planned for late May or early June.

Filed under: Robots

Robotic Nereus submarine aims to explore the depths of Challenger Deep originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 16:04:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Hannspree, best known for some pretty ridiculous products, has just announced its vanilla-as-it-gets HANNSnote netbook. The whole affair looks pretty middle of the road, with a 10-inch 1024 x 600 resolution LCD, Intel Atom N270 CPU, 1GB of RAM, Intel GMA950 graphics card, and a 160GB hard drive. It boasts WiFi, Ethernet and Bluetooth, has three USB 2.0 ports, and a 1.3 megapixel webcam. It will come in white and black when it is released in late May, in Spain, for a price somewhere between €299 and €399 ($400-$530). No word on availability outside of Spain as of yet — there’s one more shot after the break.

[Via Engadget Spanish]

Continue reading Hannspree 10-inch HANNSnote netbook announced for Spain

Filed under: Laptops

Hannspree 10-inch HANNSnote netbook announced for Spain originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 15:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Been itching to get your hands on a personal supercomputer, as NVIDIA’s ad wizards put it? The company has just announced that its CUDA-based Tesla C1060 GPU is now available in Dell’s Precision R5400, T5500 and T7500 workstations. And just to put things into perspective, NVIDIA points out that a Dell workstation rockin’ a single Tesla C1060 has enough going on under the hood to power the control system for the European Extremely Large Telescope project (“the world’s largest,” apparently). According to one of the developers, Jeff Meisel at National Instruments, a workstation “equipped with a single Tesla C1060 can achieve near real-time control of the mirror simulation and controller, which before wouldn’t be possible in a single machine without the computational density offered by GPUs.” Wild, huh? If you’re curious about the workout that Tesla GPUs are getting on a wide range of projects, from Bio-Informatics to Computational Chemistry to Molecular Dynamics and more — or if you’re merely a glutton for long-winded PR — check out the good stuff after the break.

Continue reading NVIDIA Tesla GPUs now shipping with Dell ‘personal supercomputers’

Filed under: Desktops

NVIDIA Tesla GPUs now shipping with Dell ‘personal supercomputers’ originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 15:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re up for a trip to New York or Chicago (both are lovely this time of year), you now have a shot at scoring the North American version of Nokia’s landscape QWERTY slider, the E75. Of course, “scoring” costs you $529.99 in this case — and you can only get it in black right now — but if you spend a lot of time in the seedier parts of either of these towns, the concept of scoring for several hundred dollars should be very familiar.

[Via Symbian-Guru]

Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds

Nokia E75 NAM hits the US flagship stores originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 14:55:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Forget 101Mbps Internet service or even the 160Mbps available in on J:COM in Japan, Virgin Media is about to put a lucky few of its slick new modems to real work, testing 200Mbps internet, “full HD” broadband content (we take that to mean 1080p) and 3D. All delivered via DOCSIS 3.0, the downside is that at least for the next six months this pilot project will be extended only to about 100 “lead adopters” around Ashford, Kent for testing. We’ve heard all we need to get packed for a move, how about you?

[Via Hexus]

Filed under: HDTV, Networking

Virgin Media testing DOCSIS 3.0 to new limits with 200Mbps, 3D and 1080p originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 14:38:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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You wouldn’t think what amounts to a screen-size upgrade over the Kindle 2 would provoke such heated debate, but discussion at Engadget HQ has been at fever pitch since Bezos & Co. announced the Kindle DX this morning. Rather than try and condense the opinions of the staff into one Grand Unified Theory of The Ebook Market, we thought we’d let everyone speak for themselves — check it out below.

Update: Paul tacked on his thoughts as well.

Continue reading Editorial: Engadget on the Kindle DX

Filed under: Handhelds

Editorial: Engadget on the Kindle DX originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 14:16:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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With its 2009 LED-backlit LH90 LCDs already announced, LG has decided its LH80 line should be next up, its first of many — following Panasonic’s lead – packing a Wireless HD media box to stream any HDMI, USB, or OTA content to the TV. Available in Korea is just this 55-inch model for about 5.1 million South Korean won ($4,008) but you can check out our CES ’09 Wireless HD demo for a better look at the box and display while we wait for its LH85 branded U.S. cousin to make an appearance later on this year.

Filed under: Displays, HDTV, Home Entertainment

LG’s WirelessHD LH80 LCD TVs released in Korea originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 13:57:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It may not be the ideal solution for those in need of some military-grade security, but those simply looking to keep their co-workers from snooping on their laptop may want to consider Phoenix’s new Freeze application, which promises to turn any old Bluetooth-enabled cellphone into a proximity lock. What’s more, you can apparently even use one phone to control multiple laptops, and configure the application to switch the laptop into a power-saving mode when the phone moves outside the proximity zone (which can also be configured to suit your needs). Best of all, the application is available as a free download right now (Windows XP and Vista only, unfortunately), and Phoenix seems to have some even grander plans for the future, with it now apparently busily courting computer manufactures in the hope of getting it offered as a standard option on new laptops.

Filed under: Cellphones, Laptops, Wireless

Phoenix Freeze turns your Bluetooth phone into a proximity lock originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 06 May 2009 13:39:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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