Intel’s Sandy Bridge E gets rounded up and reviewed, the E is for Excessive
You can guess how this one’s gonna go: top marks for performance and a shriek of despair when it comes to value for money. Is there anyone out there who really needs an over-sized six-core CPU that requires its own chubby LGA-2011 socket and tailored X79 chipset before it’ll even switch on in the morning? Could people seriously be persuaded to drop a grand on merely incremental improvements in technology, such as 15MB of L3 cache and a bigger 600MHz Turbo Boost for stock clock speeds up to 3.9GHz? Well now, let’s not get distracted. Even if there were no market — which there is — Intel would probably carry on releasing world-beating desktop chips simply to remind us that its rivals can’t, and we’d probably carry on reading about them. So here goes, a bunch of reviews covering both the i7-3960X and i7-3930K variants, which together represent the absurd awesomeness of Sandy Bridge E and are on sale at Newegg for $1,050 and $600 respectively:
AnandTech: bemoans the absence of an on-die GPU, criticizes the X79 chipset, and dislikes the “performance/functionality tradeoffs”
PC Pro: sedately noted that the i7-3960X shows an “improvement” over i7-2600K in real-world benchmarks, and that “AMD must be sweating.”
HotHardware: regards the 3960X as an “excellent overclocker” despite its vast power consumption, and says it combines with the X79 chipset to make “the most potent” desktop for gaming, content creation or productivity.
Tom’s Hardware: describes the 3960X is a “symbolic king in a crowd full of value,” and the 3930K is the processor moneyed enthusiasts should be lusting over.
ExtremeTech: says “the 3960X is a great chip on a solid platform,” but cautions that only the most demanding gamers and content creators need this kind of power.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Intel’s Sandy Bridge E gets rounded up and reviewed, the E is for Excessive originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | 
Newegg | Email this | Comments
Intel’s Sandy Bridge E gets rounded up and reviewed, the E is for Excessive
You can guess how this one’s gonna go: top marks for performance and a shriek of despair when it comes to value for money. Is there anyone out there who really needs an over-sized six-core CPU that requires its own chubby LGA-2011 socket and tailored X79 chipset before it’ll even switch on in the morning? Could people seriously be persuaded to drop a grand on merely incremental improvements in technology, such as 15MB of L3 cache and a bigger 600MHz Turbo Boost for stock clock speeds up to 3.9GHz? Well now, let’s not get distracted. Even if there were no market — which there is — Intel would probably carry on releasing world-beating desktop chips simply to remind us that its rivals can’t, and we’d probably carry on reading about them. So here goes, a bunch of reviews covering both the i7-3960X and i7-3930K variants, which together represent the absurd awesomeness of Sandy Bridge E and are on sale at Newegg for $600 and $1050 respectively:
AnandTech — bemoans the absence of an on-die GPU, criticizes the X79 chipset, and dislikes the “performance/functionality tradeoffs”
PC Pro — sedately noted that the i7-3960X shows an “improvement” over i7-2600K in real-world benchmarks, and that “AMD must be sweating.”
HotHardware — regards the 3960X as an “excellent overclocker” despite its vast power consumption, and says it combines with the X79 chipset to make “the most potent” desktop for gaming, content creation or productivity.
Tom’s Hardware — describes the 3960X is a “symbolic king in a crowd full of value,” and the 3930K is the processor moneyed enthusiasts should be lusting over.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]
Intel’s Sandy Bridge E gets rounded up and reviewed, the E is for Excessive originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 14 Nov 2011 08:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Newegg | Email this | Comments
Shuttle launches XPC H7 5820S mini PC for your collection of 16 monitors
Wondering what do with those 16 monitors you’ve got lying around your house? Well, the folks over at Shuttle have just come out with a mouthful of a solution, known as the XPC H7 5820S. Shuttle’s latest mini-PC is powered by an Intel Core i7 processor with up to six cores, boasts 16GB of RAM and features a pair of 1TB hard disks. The workstation, compatible with Windows 7, also ships with a Blu-ray burner and packs Matrox‘s M-Series multi-display graphics cards, allowing users to work across 16 different displays at once, at resolutions of up to 2560 x 1600 per screen. All this goodness is nestled within a box that’s just 7.5 inches tall, though it won’t come for cheap. According to SlashGear, the XPC H7 5820S is now available for a cool €1,446, or about $1,983. Find out more at the source link below, or in the full PR, waiting for you after the break.
Continue reading Shuttle launches XPC H7 5820S mini PC for your collection of 16 monitors
Shuttle launches XPC H7 5820S mini PC for your collection of 16 monitors originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 01 Nov 2011 09:38:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
NEC’s Tele Scouter head-mounted display makes it really hard to not look evil
Case in point: the guy on the right. Sure, he’s probably a mild-mannered, law-abiding citizen, but with NEC‘s Tele Scouter strapped to his spectacles, he looks just a wee bit sinister, doesn’t he? The system he’s wearing consists of a paperback-sized computer powered by an ARM 500MHz CPU and an AirScouter display mounted atop a pair of glasses. The display, manufactured by Brother, projects images upon the naked eye, but NEC insists that it won’t completely block a user’s field of vision. To the viewer, in fact, these projections appear as if they were displayed on a 16-inch, 800 x 600 screen standing one meter away. According to NEC, the idea is to allow employees to view manuals or other important documents while working with their hands, though that kind of multi-task wizardry certainly won’t come for cheap. The Tele Scouter will begin shipping on December 26th, with the device priced at ¥400,000 (about $5,200) and the software sitting at ¥1.9 million (around $25,000).
NEC’s Tele Scouter head-mounted display makes it really hard to not look evil originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 19 Oct 2011 15:39:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink 
PC World, Akihabara News | NEC (Translated) | Email this | Comments
Meet Patty, Microsoft’s Surface 2.0 stress test robot
Locked behind a gated fence and unseen by the public until now, lives Patty, Microsoft’s Surface 2.0 stress test robot. Designed to see just how much Gates’ touchscreen can take, this lady bot uses 80 compressed air-driven probes, six motors and a robotic moving head to apply maximum stress to the display. It works as such: by giving Patty a command, engineers can move probes across the screen at 25 inches per second — mimicking the movement of fingers, hands and whatever else it might encounter IRL. With so much multitasking, it’s no wonder she comes with a giant red emergency stop button — just in case. See Patty do her thing by hitting the source link below.
Meet Patty, Microsoft’s Surface 2.0 stress test robot originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 19 Aug 2011 02:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | The Microsoft Surface Blog | Email this | Comments
Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in-depth preview (video)
Make no mistake, Microsoft isn’t playing coy in the smartphone market any longer. The folks in Redmond are making a significant jump forward in the mobile arena, announcing that the upcoming version of Windows Phone, codenamed “Mango,” will be heading to a device near you in time for the holidays. As its competitors have raised the bar of expectations to a much higher level, Microsoft followed suit by adding at least 500 features to its mobile investment, which the company hopes will plug all of the gaping holes the first two versions left open.
We received a Samsung Focus preloaded with the most recent developer build (read: not even close to the market release version) and we had a few good days to put it through its paces. It’s still far from completion, as there were several key features that we couldn’t test out; some weren’t fully implemented, and others involved third-party apps that won’t be updated until closer to launch. Yet we don’t want to call this build half-baked — in fact, it was surprisingly smooth for software that still has at least four months to go before it’s available for public consumption.
At the risk of sounding ridiculously obvious, we’re mighty interested in seeing the final result when all is said and done this holiday season. As a disclaimer, we can’t guarantee that the stuff we cover here will actually look or act the same when it’s ready to peek out and make its official introduction in Q4; as often happens, features and UI enhancements are subject to be changed by the Windows Phone team as Mango gets closer and closer to release. Let’s get straight to brass tacks, since there’s a lot of details to dive into. It’d be best to grab a large beverage (we’d recommend a Big Gulp, at least), find your most comfortable chair, and meet us after the break.
Continue reading Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in-depth preview (video)
Windows Phone 7.5 Mango in-depth preview (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 27 Jun 2011 18:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
White iPhone 4 used to demo new multitasking, Spotlight search in ‘test version’ of iOS? (video)
We’ve just laid eyes on a video from the prolific leaksters over at Tinhte, who claim they not only have a white iPhone 4 from Apple, but it’s one with a “test version” of iOS that nobody else has yet seen. It’s difficult to ascertain how legitimate this software is — it could just be a neatly done jailbreak mod — but that site has a track record of getting its hands on Apple gear ahead of the pack. With that said, the multitasking menu shown here substitutes the current use of apps’ icons to represent them with a visual of each app’s open window. You can tap on a window to expand it (replete with animation) to fill the screen or long-press on it to bring up the familiar “x” button for shutting it down. This is all accompanied by a new “Search iPhone” dialog at the very top, which sends you into Spotlight search that looks very much the way it currently does (though it seems to no longer be accessible with a left swipe from the first homescreen as on previous versions of iOS). Jump past the break for the video.
Update: A second video has been uncovered, this one showing that we’re looking at a prototype unit and taking us on a tour around its body. A visit to the Settings menu shows a 64GB storage capacity, while app folder creation is also handled a little differently from iOS 4. The presence of the Touch Fighter app on this phone, which Apple built to show off the capabilities of earlier versions of the handset, and other internal-looking software seems to point to this indeed being some form of iOS beta build. Of course, it might not be iOS 5 at all, but simply a never-released version of iOS 4. All we know for sure is that the video’s after the break.
Update 2: All indications are that this is indeed an early, unreleased version of iOS 4. Interesting, but probably not something to get your hopes up about.
White iPhone 4 used to demo new multitasking, Spotlight search in ‘test version’ of iOS? (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 19 Apr 2011 09:12:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | Tinhte | Email this | Comments
Windows Phone adds multitasking, deeper OS integration, and sensor access to dev platform
We knew it was coming, and today at MIX 11, Microsoft showed off its developer platform for the next version of Windows Phone, which developers will be able to get their hands on for free in May. The new application platform adds:
- Multitasking for background processing, audio and file transfer, and fast app switching, including background audio playback for HTML5 webpages
- Deeper integration of apps into the OS, allowing programs to leverage Live Tiles, including push notifications via Live Agents running in the background
- Raw access to the camera and sensors (gyro and compass) via the Motion Sensor library, letting apps to control device hardware
Microsoft hopes this will allow developers to make even more creative and engaging apps. To get our juices flowing, it showed off demos of new app concepts from Skype, Spotify, Layar, Qantas, Amazon Shopping, and Kik Messenger. Check out our gallery below and hit the break for the details.
Windows Phone adds multitasking, deeper OS integration, and sensor access to dev platform originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 13 Apr 2011 12:21:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Permalink | | Email this | Comments
Motorola’s SocialTV app will turn your Xoom or Atrix into a communicative couch companion
Whether you look at stats or your own limitless experience, you know very well that humanity spends too much time staring at tubes, screens, and other unnatural visualizers. Motorola isn’t really here to fix that ailment, but at least it’s converging the uses of some of those device classes with its introduction of a SocialTV Companion Service. Designed to turn your smartphone, tablet or laptop into a, you guessed it, TV companion device, this new software serves up social networking, complimentary content, real-time chat, TV show ratings, and interactive (as opposed to what, non-interactive?) games. Basically, since you spend your TV-watching time idly browsing away on your Xoom anyway, why not fuse the two things together and “generate some incremental revenue” for your service provider in the process? We presume the new SocialTV stuff will be rolled out in app form, Moto doesn’t dish up those details or give us a launch date. If only we had an app to tell us when to expect new apps to arrive.
Motorola’s SocialTV app will turn your Xoom or Atrix into a communicative couch companion originally appeared on Engadget on Fri, 08 Apr 2011 06:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Windows Phone 7 hack brings instant app resumption, mobile multitasking to the masses
Looking for a little snappier response when jumping to and fro between apps on your WP7 device? Well, do we have just the hack for you — a dev from Windows Phone Hacker, Jaxbot, did some poking around in the Window’s Phone registry and found a way to instantly resume apps, no muss, no fuss. By setting the “DehydrateOnPause” registry key value to zero, he got rid of that pesky app dehydration / rehydration process altogether. Keep in mind there may be some “undesirable” side effects from force-feeding your device multitasking (ADD?) ahead of schedule and you’ll need a developer-unlocked device to access the registry, so only advanced users need apply — you taking notes, Mr. Ballmer? Hit up the source link for the full monty, and check out the hack in action after the break.
Windows Phone 7 hack brings instant app resumption, mobile multitasking to the masses originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 21 Mar 2011 22:26:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.