Archive for October, 2009
Vizio releases LED-backlit 19- and 23-inch LCDs
October 28th, 2009
Vizio VM230XVT
(Credit:
Vizio)
Vizio is best-known for offering big screens at a low price, but the company’s latest offerings straddle that thin line between small TVs and computer monitors. Vizio announced the 23-inch VM230XVT ($400) and 19-inch VM19XVT ($350) Wednesday, with both sets utilizing LED-backlighting technology usually seen …
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Japanese Voice Recorder Toy Plays Back Everything You Say In Reverse [Toys]
October 28th, 2009
It’s simple. Takara Tomy‘s Sakasa Master Japan records anything you say and spits it out backwards. If you’re needing gift ideas for random relatives, this $15 toy should get a week’s use before it’s tossed aside. [Strapya via TokyoMango]
Asustek announces a 1.1 Teraflop, Tesla GPU powered supercomputer
October 28th, 2009
Continue reading Asustek announces a 1.1 Teraflop, Tesla GPU powered supercomputer
Filed under: Desktops
Asustek announces a 1.1 Teraflop, Tesla GPU powered supercomputer originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 28 Oct 2009 01:18:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
LapLink transfers your full system to Windows 7
October 28th, 2009
One of the biggest frustrations for most people upgrading their systems to Windows 7 is that what Microsoft calls a “custom upgrade” is nothing less than a full system install. Some Windows Vista users won’t have to re-install their programs after upgrading, but many will and all Windows XP users will, too. Here’s where LapLink’s PCmover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant steps in.
PCmover Windows 7 Upgrade Assistant will transfer most of your programs, settings, and files, but it will take a several hours.
(Credit:
LapLink)
For $30, LapLink will pack up your programs, settings, and data, store them as you upgrade to Windows 7, and then re-install them using its proprietary VAN file format. The process is simple, says LapLink: install and run the upgrade assistant, upgrade to Windows 7, then re-install PCmover and restore your programs and settings.
While that’s the gist of the process, it’s not quite as simple. Reading LapLink’s Quick Start PDF guide (PDF download) is a must. PCmover requires 200 MB of hard disk space in addition to the 16 GB that Windows 7 will need, and you’ll probably have to reboot your computer. If you don’t regularly run your antivirus program, you’ll need to do that, and it’s a good idea to run your defragger as well. Users will need to turn off their screensavers and power management options should all be set to Never. If the computer hibernates or goes to sleep during the upgrade, it will damage the process.
The guide recommends using the Windows Task Scheduler to make sure that all scheduled tasks and programs have been disabled, and warns that you should disable your security programs. If you’re not comfortable performing this kind of maintenance on your computer, PCmover is definitely not for you. …
Originally posted at Windows 7 Insider
Harvard Medical School’s H1N1 App Let’s You Panic On the Go [IPhone Apps]
October 27th, 2009
Swine flu! It’s the panic du jour, far less dangerous than eating poorly cooked chicken or getting in a car, yet apparently infinitely more scary. And now Harvard will take $2 to scare you on your iPhone.
Harvard Medical School has just released HMSMobile Swine Flu Center, a $1.99 app that offers all sorts of stuff that doesn’t quite seem worth $1.99. This includes:
-Videos on how to protect yourself (spoiler: wash your hands)
-A quiz on whether or not you have swine flu (spoiler: you don’t)
-An outbreak tracker to see if the fever has swept through your area
-Advice about survival kits, just in case shit gets really fucking serious
Combine this with the Pedophile Finder app and the HealthMap app and you’ll scare yourself into never leaving the house. Awesome? [HMSMobile Swine Flue Center]
How-to: recycle your old gadgets
October 27th, 2009
We see a lot of gadgets come in the door here at Engadget. In fact, getting them in the door is actually the easy part… it’s getting them back out that’s a bit confusing. Recycling — something that most of us do on a day-to-day basis with our trash — is a bit stickier when it comes to gadgets. In recent years, however, most major consumer electronics companies have stepped up their games a bit and begun “take back” recycling programs of their own. There are a lot of resources out there if you want to rid yourself of old gadgets in a responsible way, but it can be a pretty overwhelming prospect, especially if (like us) you have an actual pile of old cellphones which has been growing since 1998. We thought about that a lot, and decided to try to make sense of all the wild masses of information out there on the internet, and to provide our readers a central location to look for all that information. Read on and see what we’ve come up with!
Continue reading How-to: recycle your old gadgets
Filed under: Household
How-to: recycle your old gadgets originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 13:56:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
B&N to sell Plastic Logic Que along with Nook
October 27th, 2009
(Credit:
Plastic Logic)
Plastic Logic and Barnes & Noble announced on Tuesday that Plastic Logic’s Que proReader will be sold through Barnes & Noble’s retail stores and on B&N’s Web site in 2010. The Que is Plastic Logic’s long-awaited e-reader that is not set to be officially …
Apple’s Spending $4 Million To Renovate This Chicago Subway Station [Apple]
October 27th, 2009
We’ve heard of Apple spending money on minor restorations and renovations of the areas surrounding their stores, but $4 million to refurbish an adjacent subway station seems a bit excessive. Especially since they’re barely getting anything out of it.
The pictured subway station is located on Halsted Street in Chicago, next to a future Apple store location. While Apple’s stipulation that the subway station renovations be completed by September 30, 2010 gives us a bit of a hunch as to when the store might open, it still remains a mystery exactly why the company is pouring so much money into prettying up a corner of Chicago. According to the agreement they’re not getting very much out of it:
[I]n exchange for the improvements the CTA will lease the bus turnaround to Apple at no cost for 10 years, with options on four, five-year extensions. The CTA will also give Apple “first rights of refusal” for naming the station and placing advertising within the station, if the CTA later decides to offer those rights.
Alright, and Apple intends on making that bus turnaround into a “landscaped public park,” so there’s no profit to be found there and the “first rights of refusal” are worthless if the CTA never actually decides to offer any of those advertising options and rights. It almost seems as if Apple’s doing this for the warm fuzzy feeling that comes out of doing something incredibly wonderful for a city’s development. I’m proud of you, Apple, but I still think Bill Gates is cooler for trying to cure malaria with candy. [ifoAppleStore via Mac Rumors]
That Northwest Flight 188 San Diego to Minneapolis that went 150 miles off course? Well, it wasn’t because of alcohol or sleeping. No, the cause here was the pilots using their personal laptops while talking about “airline crew flight scheduling procedure.” As far as we can tell there was no in-flight WiFi, and it’s a good thing, too — no telling how far of they’d have been if the pilots had access to World of Warcraft.
[Thanks to everyone who sent this in!]
Filed under: Transportation
Pilots too busy with laptops to remember flight path, go 150 miles off course originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 27 Oct 2009 01:11:00 EST. Please see our terms for use of feeds.
Google Voice app gDial Pro updates for WebOS
October 27th, 2009
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gDial Pro)
Back in September, we tested out a Google Voice app for Palm WebOS phones called gDial Pro. The free gDial Pro just recently updated to version 0.8.9, and is available now in Palm’s App Catalog. While gDial Pro still isn’t quite as integrated …
Originally posted at The Download Blog