Archive for December 16th, 2009

Earlier this year, one of our dear readers wrote in asking the collective audience which wireless keyboard was the best out there for their living room. We’ve since seen all variations of that very inquiry, but the most common one was this: “what’s the best wireless keyboard for travel?” As more and more users resort to netbooks for getting things done on the go, more and more users are pulling their hair out as they attempt to bang out this month’s sales report on an 85 percent full-size keyboard. A few months back, Microsoft let loose a new Bluetooth ‘board that seemed perfect for the weary-eyed jetsetter, and we’ve been toying with it for the last little while. It’s easily one of the thinnest and lightest keyboards we’ve seen, and the carry-along-or-don’t numeric pad is certainly a nice touch. But is this slab of circuitry really what your digits need when typing on the go? Hop on past the break for a few of our impressions.

Continue reading Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000: the perfect travel keyboard?

Microsoft Bluetooth Mobile Keyboard 6000: the perfect travel keyboard? originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 16:59:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Sleek Audio has been trumpeting its “tunable acoustics” for years now, but up until the advent of the SA1, most every set of customizable earbuds from the outfit was only in the realm of feasibility for those with a copious amount of disposable income. Beyond that, the company was one of the few utilizing Kleer’s wireless technology in order to cut the cable between your ears and your media player, but again, the lofty price tag acted as a serious barrier to entry. Enter the SA1, which serves as Sleek’s first mainstream ‘buds that fall well within the “impulse buy” region for anyone on the hunt for a mid-range set. These just started shipping a few weeks back for $79.99, and if the Siam rosewood body didn’t turn you on already, maybe the litany of ear tip choices and promise of audiophile quality in a sub-$100 package will. Hop on past the break to see how we felt about our most intimate moments with the SA1 (and the optional Kleer W-1 wireless dongle).

Continue reading Sleek Audio SA1 (and Kleer W-1) earbud impressons

Sleek Audio SA1 (and Kleer W-1) earbud impressons originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 15:24:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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And it’s all over, folks: The US District Court for the Northern District of California has just permanently forbidden wannbe Mac cloner Psystar from selling modified versions of OS X, providing any tools that enable users to bypass the OS X kernel encryption, and / or intentionally aiding anyone else from infringing Apple’s OS X copyrights in any way. We knew this was coming following Apple’s decisive victory against Psystar last month — the only open questions were whether the court would include Snow Leopard and Psytar’s Rebel EFI software in the ban, since the lawsuit was specifically about Leopard and Rebel EFI wasn’t the subject of any proceedings. Both issues were predictably resolved in favor of Apple: the court specifically included Snow Leopard and any future versions of OS X in the scope of the injunction, and while Judge Alsup couldn’t address Rebel EFI directly, he did expressly forbid Psystar from “manufacturing, importing, offering to the public, providing, or otherwise trafficking” in anything that circumvents Apple’s OS X hardware locks — which we’d say covers Rebel EFI’s functionality pretty thoroughly. Psystar has until December 31 to comply, and the Judge Alsup isn’t kidding around: “Defendant must immediately begin this process, and take the quickest path to compliance; thus, if compliance can be achieved within one hour after this order is filed, defendant shall reasonably see it done.” Psystar can still appeal, obviously, but it’s already got it’s own hefty legal bills and a $2.67m fine to pay to Apple, so we’ve got a feeling this one might have reached the end of the line.

P.S.- Amusingly, Judge Alsup appears to be pretty sick of Apple’s shenanigans as well: in the section discussing Snow Leopard, he says Apple first tried to block any discovery of Snow Leopard before the OS was released, and then pushed to include the software in the case after it launched. That’s why the Florida case over Snow Leopard wasn’t merged into this case — Alsup thought it was a “slick tactic” that “smacked of trying to ‘have it both ways,’ and offended [his] sense of fair play.” Ouch.

Psystar banned from copying any version of OS X, helping others install it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 13:43:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Continue reading Pikavu GPS tracker teaches kids to abandon privacy for safety

Pikavu GPS tracker teaches kids to abandon privacy for safety originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 11:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Here we go, folks. FTC is suing Intel for what it sees to be “anticompetitive tactics.” The FTC has been circling this debate since last year, but now it has followed in the steps of the EU, and the New York attorney general (but no longer a cash-flush AMD) in prosecuting the chip giant. The FTC claims, among other things, that Intel has abused its monopoly position to “[wage] a systematic campaign to shut out rivals’ competing microchips by cutting off their access to the marketplace.” Tough words. The FTC says that Intel messed with a compiler to cheat competitors out of performance gains, has “stifled innovation” and “harmed consumers.” The damages the FTC is after are a bit less clear: mainly it wants to stop Intel from keeping out competition or building or modifying its own products to impair the performance of other products. We’ll be diving into the implications of this as we find out more, but it looks like Christmas came early for NVIDIA.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

FTC sues Intel for alleged monopoly abuse originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 10:41:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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What do you do when you’ve got two disused shipping crates, some photovoltaics, and a couple buckets of toxic green paint? Why, you make a solar electric vehicle charging station, the first in New York as it happens. It was created by Beautiful Earth Group, which whipped up this self-contained charging station to juice the company’s car, a similarly painted BMW Mini E that just so happens to fit nicely inside — so long as you don’t want to open the doors too wide. About three hours charges the little sucker up for its maximum range of 100 miles, which ought to be just enough to get you out to the Hamptons. Not that you’d want to go there this time of year.

New York gets its first solar EV charging station, you can’t use it originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 08:48:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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When we first mentioned D-Wave way back in early 2007 we immediately compared it to Steorn — less than optimal beginnings. The company was promising quantum computing for the masses and, while it did demonstrate a machine that exhibited qubit-like behavior, the company never really silenced critics who believed the underpinnings of the machine were rather more binary in nature. Those disbelievers are surely shutting up now, with word hitting the street that Google is has signed on, building new image search algorithms that run on D-Wave’s C4 Chimera chip. The first task was to learn to spot automobiles in pictures, something that the quantum machine apparently learned to do simply by looking at other pictures of cars. It all sounds rather neural-networkish to us, but don’t let our fuzzy logic cloud your excitement over the prospect of honest to gosh commercial quantum computing.

Google working with D-Wave on what may or may not be quantum computing originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 06:54:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Egads, you see that? 42.78Mbps over a wireless data card! Not just any card, mind you, it’s presumably the new Samsung 4G card running on TeliaSonera in Sweden and Norway, the world’s first commercial LTE network launched on Monday. TeliaSonera bundles the 4G service with 30GB of data for just 599kr (85$) per month. That 5.3Mbps upload and 37ms ping aren’t too shabby either. Not exactly the theoretical 100Mbps down / 50Mbps up provided by the LTE spec, but not AT&T either.

TeliaSonera’s new LTE network astounds with 43Mbps downloads originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:46:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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As PC cases go, the Level 10 is easily the most outrageous design to ever get the go-ahead for commercial distribution, and according to PC Perspective the reason for that is clear: the product’s workmanship and long-term durability match its most excellent looks. Weighing in at nearly 50 pounds of densely packed aluminum, the Level 10 sports a modular design with room for six hard (or solid state) drives, three optical drives, multiple jumbo-sized GPUs, and even an appropriately huge power supply. Alas, the one shortcoming of all this supersizing (apart from the price) is pretty big in itself — the case turned out to be so large as to make it impossible to connect some components with their standard cabling. We’ll call that a newbie filtration feature and continue to hope someone loves us enough to buy us one.

BMW-designed Thermaltake Level 10 scores breathless review originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 04:06:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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It’s one thing to see the Entourage Edge in a controlled demonstration by a company representative, something else entirely in the capable hands on CNET‘s Ina Fried. Ina got down with a prototype of the Marvell-powered, dual-display, 9.7-inch E Ink and 10-inch LCD hybrid with built-in WiFi. The video walkthrough after the break shows that Android-powered resistive touchscreen browsing the web and launching other apps from the familiar Android desktop. The E Ink display lets you read EPUB and PDF files, as you’d expect, in addition to taking notes and manipulating text with the help of an included stylus. You can also move content between the displays and record audio via a pair of mics (one to record the lecture, one to cancel the noise). Unfortunately, Fried says that the device is still buggy and “definitely has the look and feel of a first-generation product.” Sounds like the company has its work cut out in order to launch as planned in February as a textbook / notebook replacement for “typical highschool students” with $490 to burn. Let’s hope they have more luck with that than Amazon did in its early Princeton pilot. Right.

[Thanks, Henry]

Continue reading Entourage Edge dual-screen Android e-reader given lusty hands-on (video)

Entourage Edge dual-screen Android e-reader given lusty hands-on (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 16 Dec 2009 03:17:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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