Archive for August 6th, 2009

While most of Dell’s latest FCC filing is hidden behind a confidentiality agreement, we couldn’t help but notice on the label location host picture a distinct bump on the laptop’s back side, which matches up quite well that pretty Latitude Z series leak we covered back in June. Testing a 802.11 b/g single-chip client is somewhat of a downer since it implies no Draft-N, but hey, we don’t mind being proven wrong here. External photos and user manual are being withheld at Dell’s request until October 25, but hopefully we won’t have to wait that long for the full story.

Filed under: Laptops

Mysterious Dell laptop hits FCC, is a shoo-in for leaked Latitude Z originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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This is seriously Microsoft’s Windows 7 upgrade chart, and it’s ridiculous. It manages to highlight the insanity of shipping multiple OS versions while totally minimizing the good news: most Vista users will be able to upgrade in place to the corresponding 32- or 64-bit version of 7. That should cover the vast majority of people running Vista, but if you’re still on XP or you’re trying to do anything out of the ordinary you’d better get ready for some pain: all those ominous blue boxes require you to back up, wipe your drive, and reinstall a totally clean copy of 7. You heard that right — the Windows 7 installer won’t even try to retain your data and programs if you’re not updating from the corresponding version of Vista. Pretty lame move, considering Microsoft is currently selling millions of copies of XP on netbooks and will sell XP downgrades until 2011 — sure, we get that most netbook owners aren’t going to spring for 7, but it’s insane that you can’t just pop in a disc and upgrade. Of course, now that 7′s been released to manufacturing and the final bits are available there’s not much to be done, so let’s all just take a moment to contemplate the fact that Ed Bott at ZDNet managed to totally outdo Redmond’s infographics people with a much friendlier chart with “about an hour” of work — check it below.

Read – Original chart at AllThingsD
Read – Ed Bott’s revised chart

Continue reading Official Windows 7 upgrade chart is ridiculous

Filed under: Software

Official Windows 7 upgrade chart is ridiculous originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:29:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Editor’s note: The following report comes from Don Dodge, who blogs at Don Dodge on The Next Big Thing and is a business development executive for Microsoft. TechStarsis a startup incubator that selects 10 teams and provides funding of $18,000 per team, as well as free office space, operational support, and mentoring from investors, entrepreneurs and business leaders.

TechStars has now been operating for three years. Three of the original ten companies from 2007 have already been acquired (SocialThing by AOL, Intense Debate by Automattic, and Brightkite by Limbo). Today, TechStars debuted ten new startups from their 2009 class in Boulder, Colorado. The teams presented today to about 150 VCs and Angel investors for the first time. These companies are about three months old and have two or three founder employees. Here are Don’s notes on each of the ten startups to present at TechStars today. (He also did this for us last year).

Apple’s already put liquid submersion sensors in some of its recent products, but a recent patent application seems to suggest that it has some considerably grander plans in mind to detect and prevent gadget abuse. Described as a “Consumer Abuse Detection System and Method,” the new system would apparently make use of a whole range of sensors to various issues that might void the warranty of the device, like exposure to extreme cold or heat, drops, or submersion in liquid. What’s more, unlike the current liquid sensors that simply change color when something bad happens, the new system would apparently store the damage digitally in memory which, presumably, wouldn’t be as susceptible to damage as the device itself. The system would also apparently do its best to protect the devices by disabling them if it detects some imminent danger, although Apple doesn’t make any bones about the fact that it’s primarily designed to save money on returned products that have been abused by the user.

Filed under: Cellphones, Misc. Gadgets, Laptops

Apple patent application promises means to detect gadget abuse originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 16:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’re one of the lucky few who own a Tesla Roadster, this will certainly be of interest to you. And, for the rest of us — well, let’s indulge ourselves in a bit of vicarious living for a moment, shall we? Eberhard’s just made its rapid charger — the Roadster Foundry Mobile Connector (or RFMC) — available to order. The RFMC comes with adapters that will allow charging at 12, 16, 24, 32 or 40 amps, and a fully depleted battery will charge overnight when charging at 40 amps. All you need to do (owning a Roadster is the hardest part, no doubt) to get the newer, faster charger is send the standard MC120 charger the car came with, plus $960 to EV components, wait for the new RFMC to show up, then go back to your normal life — you know, sitting on a desolate beach in your insane car watching the sun go down.

[Via Autoblog Green]

Filed under: Transportation

Eberhard’s RFMC rapid charger for Tesla Roadster now up for order originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:37:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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We’ll go ahead and make it clear, for the sake of those who missed the headline: This post is not something you want to peruse in your cubicle. We’ll try to keep the post itself pretty clean, but clicking through just about any of the links within will lead you to pages packed with boobies, wing-wongs, and hoo-has. And yes, I did just use those words on TechCrunch.

Back in March, adult social network AdultSpace (who, we have reason to believe, spent at least 13 minutes coming up with their name) got a hot cash injection of $1.3 million from various angel investors. At the time, AdultSpace disclosed that one of their primary goals was to get into the mobile space.

Five months later, that goal has been reached — to some extent, at least.

Natural England needs you, dear urbanite, to put on your conservationist hat — and beesuit, by the looks of it — and start taking care of a small bee colony. Because, as you already know, you can’t have healthy plant life without healthy insect populations to sustain it. At this point, a lot of us might be intrigued — after all, who doesn’t find the idea of homemade honey and a houseful of killer bees appealing? And all would indeed be well, but for the £465 ($790) price of the beekeeping unit, which renders the entire idea the exclusive preserve of the very wealthy and very bored and leaves us poor nature lovers looking on helplessly. Like a bee trying to fly through a window.

[Via PhysOrg]

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Omlet Beehaus is a plastic beehive for the urban conservationist originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 15:12:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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If you’ve been eagerly waiting for the MSI Wind U200 to hit the shelves, we finally have some news: According to the lovely and delightful Fudzilla, the 12.1-inch Celeron ULV 723-powered device will be hitting retailers and e-tailers ’round Europe next week, with a roughly €499 ($716) price tag. What are your hard-earned Euros getting you in this case? 2GB of memory, 250GB hard drive, a 6-cell battery, and HDMI and D-Sub outputs, for starters. If you’re in the mood for a blast from the past, check out this hands-on video of the thing that popped up a while back. It’s a real scream.

[via SlashGear]

Filed under: Laptops

MSI Wind U200 gets €499 price tag, up for pre-order originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 06 Aug 2009 14:47:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Our commenters have proven themselves to be a brilliant bunch once again today. Perhaps you saw our best comment ever a few weeks ago. That’s followed-up today by a commenter, tenthings, who has deciphered the code Apple uses to reject apps. Funny, we’ve been led to believe all this time that human beings actually look at the apps and make the call — even though it often doesn’t seem like it — but the script makes much more sense.

Behold, the code:

A DDOS attack this morning took Twitter out at the knees and they were down for hours. Rival Facebook faced a similar attack (likely related), but for the most part managed to remain online. Some users couldn’t access the site or post content, but the site remained online for most users.

Facebook’s statement: