Mobile Computing News, Reviews, & Tips
Notebook News: IBM's Latest Light Laptop
At 2.7 pounds, IBM's new X41 is the lightest ThinkPad with a built-in fingerprint reader, the company says. Also, the new notebook includes a program that checks the system software and compares it to a list of available updates, so users can easily keep their drivers, BIOS updates, and system utilities current. Prices start at $1999.
Gadget News: Updated Network Walkman
Sony's latest Network Walkman portable music player features a new design, with buttons instead of a circular control and a portrait-style layout (compared to the landscape-style layout of earlier models). The 20GB NW-HD5 also has a removable battery that provides up to 40 hours of continuous playback, according to Sony; a USB port; and more. As of this writing, details for a U.S. release weren't available, though Sony plans to sell the device worldwide.
Notebook News: The Future of Notebook Hard Drives
Coming soon to a notebook near you: Internal hard drives that offer more capacity and faster transfer rates than drives available on today's notebooks. Hitachi and Fujitsu are both promoting 100GB drives for notebooks.
Unlike Fujitsu's new MHV2100BH, drives in Hitachi's Travelstar 7K100 series offer transfer rates of 7200 rpm--the same as high-performance desktop drives. The faster speed means quicker access to applications and files, which is essential for gaming and graphics-intensive work such as video editing. Hitachi's drive is currently found in Dell Inspiron XPS Gen 2 notebooks, aimed at gamers.
Meanwhile, Samsung has been showing at trade shows a prototype of a flash-memory hard drive for notebooks. Such a drive promises significantly reduced power usage and fewer hard drive failures, the company claims. The Samsung drives are expected to become available in late 2006 around the same time as Microsoft's next operating system, Longhorn.
Tablet PC News: Microsoft Offers Free Tablet PC Apps
Microsoft has released its free Experience Pack, featuring pen-enabled applications for Tablet PCs. The bundle includes Ink Desktop, for taking notes; Snipping Tool 2, for selecting and capturing part of a screen; Ink Art, a drawing application; and other utilities. The Experience Pack runs on Windows XP Tablet PC Edition. For more information, read "Microsoft Offers Free Apps for Tablet PCs."
Gadget Reviews: The Top MP3 Players
What landed at the top of PC World's recent Top 10 Audio Players chart? For large-capacity players, Apple's 30GB IPod Photo and 20GB IPod, and the 20GB IRiver H320. Atop the heap of mid-capacity winners are the Rio Carbon, 6GB IPod Mini, and Dell's Pocket DJ.
Wireless News: New Trojan Horse for Smart Phones
Here's another security alert: The antivirus company F-Secure recently warned users of Symbian Series 60 cell phones of a new, malicious program that prevents those phones from starting up. The Trojan horse, Fontal.A, must be downloaded in order to do its dirty deeds. F-Secure has posted instructions online for removing the Trojan horse.
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