Posts tagged "Laptops"

Microsoft Kinect Could Make Its Way to Laptops

We could be seeing Kinect gesture-recognition technology embedded in laptops within the next year. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The ability to control a Windows desktop with a simple hand gesture could become reality sooner than we once thought.

The Daily got a sneak peek at two Microsoft-developed Windows 8 notebook prototypes with built-in Kinect sensors. The system would allow for gesture recognition in portable devices for the first time. The prototypes “appear to be Asus netbooks” and “feature an array of small sensors stretching over the top of the screen where the webcam would normally be,” The Daily reported.

3-D gesture control on a laptop could offer more interactive, Kinect-style PC gaming, as well as new computer interfaces and ways to control one’s notebook.

Microsoft opened up its Kinect SDK to developers in June, and recently said it would be bringing Kinect to desktop PCs in 2012. The Xbox Kinect console itself is already in 18 million households the world over.

Although Microsoft popularized it, the 3-D gesture recognition space is rapidly becoming a hot area of innovation.

Another company, SoftKinetic, is working on similar technology aimed at the notebook market. Using a different technology than what the Kinect currently incorporates, the SoftKinetic system can sense motion as close as 5.9 inches away. And then there’s LG and Samsung, whose upcoming Smart TVs have taken a cue from Microsoft, and will incorporate Kinect-style gesture recognition, along with other forms of interface control like voice control, and touchscreen remotes.

Although Microsoft is demonstrating and testing this technology, finished Kinect-based portable products may not come straight from Redmond, but rather from developers or OEMs.

Windows 8 is set to debut in beta in February. We should start seeing finished Windows 8 products (notebooks and tablets) arriving toward the middle and end of this year.

via The Daily

View full post on Gadget Lab

Microsoft Kinect Could Make Its Way Onto Laptops

We could be seeing Kinect gesture-recognition technology embedded in laptops within the next year. Photo: Jon Snyder/Wired.com

The ability to control a Windows desktop with a simple hand gesture could become reality sooner than we once thought.

The Daily got a sneak peek at two Microsoft-developed Windows 8 notebook prototypes with built-in Kinect sensors. The system would allow for gesture recognition in portable devices for the first time. The prototypes “appear to be Asus netbooks” and “feature an array of small sensors stretching over the top of the screen where the webcam would normally be,” The Daily reported.

3D gesture control on a laptop could offer more interactive, Kinect-style PC gaming, as well as new computer interfaces and ways to control one’s notebook.

Microsoft opened up its Kinect SDK to developers in June, and recently said it would be bringing Kinect to desktop PCs in 2012. The Xbox Kinect console itself is already in 18 million households the world over.

Although Microsoft popularized it, the 3D gesture recognition space is rapidly becoming a hot area of innovation.

Another company, SoftKinetic, is working on similar technology aimed at the notebook market. Using a different technology than what the Kinect currently incorporates, the SoftKinetic system can sense motion as close as 5.9 inches away. And then there’s LG and Samsung, whose upcoming Smart TVs have taken a cue from Microsoft, and will incorporate Kinect-style gesture recognition, along with other forms of interface control like voice control, and touchscreen remotes.

Although Microsoft is demonstrating and testing this technology, finished Kinect-based portable products may not come straight from Redmond, but rather from developers or OEMs.

Windows 8 is set to debut in beta in February. We should start seeing finished Windows 8 products (notebooks and tablets) arriving towards the middle and end of this year.

via The Daily

View full post on Gadget Lab

Lenovo Debuts Low-Cost Tablet and Skinny Laptops

The 7-inch A1 tablet will run Android 2.3 and sell for $199. Photo courtesy of Lenovo.

Lenovo announced their newest tablet, the IdeaPad A1, which will undercut the competition with a starting price of $200.

The A1 tablet will run Android version 2.3 (Gingerbread), feature both front and back-facing cameras, Wi-Fi connectivity and all of the typical tablet accoutrements. Unique to Lenovo, the tablet will feature offline GPS, which connects directly to a satellite feed rather than through the wireless network. Like Lenovo’s other tablets, the A1 supports apps from both the Lenovo app market, and the Android store.

The A1 follows alongside three other tablets just released by Lenovo, which we reviewed last month.

For those who miss the comfort of a keyboard and a Microsoft OS, Lenovo is also releasing its U Series of laptops, including the U300s which comes in an ultra-slim, MacBook Air-like profile. The IdeaPad  U300s has a solid-state hard drive, and weighs in at .01 kg. less than the 13″ Air. A keyboard-centered fan ensures cooling despite the frame’s vent-less base.

Of course, if you favor computing brawn over slimness and portability, Lenovo’s U300 and 400 models are also available.

View full post on Gadget Lab

AMD Equips HP Laptops With Fusion A-Series Chips

AMD's new series of APUs (accelerated processing units) will power a line of HP laptops. Photo courtesy of AMD

HP and AMD announced Tuesday a fleet of new laptop and notebook computers, powered by a new series of AMD processors.

Previously codenamed Llano, AMD’s Fusion A-series of chips come inside each of HP’s 11 new notebook models — six consumer-based devices, five for the enterprise. Under the new APU moniker (accelerated processing unit), the chips are a hybrid of traditional CPUs, or central processing units, and GPUs, or graphics-processing units.

HP’s claims are bold. The company says with AMD’s APUs installed, the new line of laptops will see up to 10.5 hours of battery life, along with a 2x boost in graphics performance in the Pavillion dv-series of laptops (compared to previous dv versions).

The quad-core Llano APU chips have been in the pipeline for AMD since 2008. Since it’s difficult for AMD to compete with chip-industry giant Intel in terms of raw processing power, AMD opted for a low-power consumption design.

In terms of price and power, AMD’s A-Series is more aligned to compete with Intel’s Sandy Bridge line of mobile processors. AMD, however, seems to have the edge on graphical performance and added features that aren’t seen on Intel’s chips. A-Series chips, for instance, are compatible with Direct X version 11, as well as USB 3.0-friendly. Intel can’t say the same of its Sandy Bridge chips quite yet.

What Intel has on the horizon, however, is impressive. The company recently debuted its new line of 3-D transistors, which allow for the production of its cheap, more-efficient Ivy Bridge line of forthcoming chips. The 3-D nomenclature stems from the addition of a thin silicon fin that literally juts out atop the chip. This allows for better current control of the voltage running through the chip, with less leakage than ever before. Also, more transistors can be packed onto the increased surface area of the chips using Intel’s 22-nanometer manufacturing process.

APUs are already shipping, and AMD expects to see the chips in over 150 different notebooks by summertime. HP in particular priced its APU-powered notebooks in the $450 to $700 range, most of which will debut this summer.

View full post on Gadget Lab

Toshiba Jumps In With Enhanced E-Books For Laptops

Image from Toshiba

Today, Toshiba will announce its entry into the e-book market with Toshiba Book Place, a Windows application to both purchase and read enhanced e-books. The application will be bundled with all of Toshiba’s laptops, and will also be available as a free download from their website. The library will initially offer 6,000 e-books for purchase.

Wired.com interviewed Terry Cronin, vice president of Business Development and Channel Marketing for Toshiba America. While e-books for dedicated e-readers and other devices have been successful, he believes e-books for laptops can offer something unique for particular kinds of reading — especially those that benefit from immediate access to other media.

“It’s a device that people already have,” he said. “If you’re traveling or bringing a bag, you’re already bringing your laptop with you. You don’t need to bring another device.”

Cookbooks, children’s books, and textbooks all benefit from the greater storage space and graphics capabilities of a laptop, Cronin said. The goal a library of e-books enhanced with 3-D viewing and embedded video, audio, and online search and web browsing.

Toshiba developed the application with futurist Ray Kurzweil’s K-NFB Reading Technology, Inc., a joint venture with the National Federation for the Blind. K-NFB is working with publishers to encode the books in the XPS e-book format and add video and audio enhancements to the e-book library.

It’s not clear to me whether this will work. There are already e-book applications from Amazon, Barnes & Noble, and others available for Windows laptops with a much wider selection of books and portability across devices. The hope is that XPS will catch on, and emerge as a standard alongside EPUB, MOBI, PDF, and other electronic document formats. Then the store will be able to expand to support other outlets.

Toshiba Book Place [ToshibaBookPlace.com]

See Also:

• Toshiba Dual Screen PC Folds Like a Book
• Why Metadata Matters for the Future of E-Books
• Stephen Fry and Our Transmedia Reading Future
• E-Books Are Still Waiting for Their Avant-Garde
• Apple iPad Raises the Stakes for E-Readers
• Video Boxes, 'Notbooks' and E-Books to Dominate Gadgets in 2010 …

View full post on Gadget Lab

Lego Keycaps for Laptops

For $15, you can turn your notebook computer into what looks like a box of Lego. Those keys are in fact stickers which sit atop your MacBook keycaps and turn the keyboard into a sea of dimpled plastic bricks.

The stickers, made from easily-removed vinyl, come from Etsy-seller openandclose. They’re kind of neat, but the toy-nerd in me can’t help spot the non-Lego elements in these “Lego-style” bricks. First, the colors are way off. Whoever heard of pink Lego?

Second, the circular nubbins are too small on the function keys and too big on the letters. Only on the spacebar do you see anything approaching Lego-like proportions. Going by the shadows, though, it looks like openandclose at least made the stickers in real 3D, and didn’t just shade the tops to look as if they are raised.

Available now, for you to buy and use for five minutes before ripping them off in a fit of annoyance.

Lego Style MacBook Keyboard Decor Decal Sticker [Etsy via Oh Gizmo!]

View full post on Gadget Lab