The New Toshiba Portege Handsets Officially Presented

The Italian division of Toshiba recently presented, in Milan, the new Portege handsets announced a few months ago: Toshiba G910 / G920 and Toshiba G710,
plus Toshiba G450 – a USB modem with phone functionality.

It seems that the G920 and G910 names hide the same device, and its naming will differ depending on the market it's launched for. Since in Italy (hence Europe) the handset was just presented as G910, the US will probably get it as G920.

The official specifications for Toshiba G910, as presented in Italy, are: 3 inch touchscreen TFT display with a 480 x 800 pixel resolution, 2 Megapixel camera, 3G/HSPDA, built-in GPS receiver, GPRS, Bluetooth, VoIP (via Wi-Fi), Media Player, Java (MIDP 2.0 and JSR179), Mobile Outlook and ActiveSync. The handset measures 117 x 64 x 19,8 millimeters, weighs 183 grams, packs a full QWERTY keyboard and can offer up to 6 hours of talk-time and up to 460 hours of stand-by time. Toshiba G910 runs on Windows Mobile 6 Professional and will be available in Europe starting April 2008 for a retail price of about 600 Euros ($880).

Toshiba G710 is the second handset from the Portege series that got an official presentation, and it's a compact-form GSM/EDGE smartphone that runs Windows Mobile 6 Standard. The device offers a full QWERTY keypad, GPS receiver, a 2.4 inch TFT display with QVGA resolution, photo camera with 2 Megapixels, stereo Bluetooth and microSD card support for up to 2GB of extended memory. Toshiba G710 measures 115 × 62 x 13 mm, weighs 130 grams and will hit the market in March 2008 for an estimated price of 300 Euros (about $440).

Toshiba G710

Both Toshiba G910/G920 and Toshiba G710 are created mainly for those who need devices with business functionality.

The third Portege device that was unveiled by the Japanese company is Toshiba G450, which is a USB modem, a MP3 player and a mobile phone – all in one case that measures only 98 x 36 x 16 millimeters. The handset supports GSM, GPRS, EDGE, UMTS and HSDPA connectivity, comes with a USB mini interface and can provide 3 hours of talk-time and about 300 hours of stand-by time. The interesting aspects about Toshiba G450 are its unusual rounded design, unusual rounded split-keypad and its more than unusual tiny OLED display with the 96 × 36 pixels resolution.

Toshiba G450

Aside from the interesting aspects about Toshiba G450, there's a strange one too. About a week ago, at the CES 2008, UTStarcom showcased the UTStarcom HSM 180 device which, in my eyes at least, looks exactly the same as the G450 exposed by Toshiba. Moreover, the HSM 180 was presented with the same functions the G450 is said to have, which makes me wonder what in the name of mobility is going on? I searched the web for references regarding the device's resemblance and I haven't found anything except some info on two Russian sites, but they're as confused as I am. I believe many other mobile users will be confused too, so either Toshiba or UTStarcom should say something about the matter.

Dell UltraSharp 3008WFP 30-inch LCD With DisplayPort

Like high-end graphics cards setup in multi-GPU configurations, terabyte desktop drives, and 3GHz quad-core processors, 30-inch wide screen LCDs cater to what we like to call the "enthusiast" niche. And though this niche obviously drives lower volume demand versus the mainstream, you have to remember that the enthusiast end-user is a very influential segment of the market, often times assisting in the definition of what will become mainstream technology tomorrow. Not to mention 30 inches of screen real-estate is a professional workstation designer's nirvana, so perhaps this niche isn't as small as it would appear on the surface.

Regardless, though there are fewer in our audience who might find it practical to justify the cost of a 30" monitor, the undeniable allure of a panel of this size makes these products easily one of our most popular areas of coverage here at HotHardware.com. There's just something about them. Maybe it's a size thing. We've got people buzzing over tiny, little Eee PCs and they're also in a tizzy at the other end of the spectrum about huge LCDs. Sexy is in the extremes we would surmise, though the ever-present "newness" factor is obviously a head-turner for these products as well.

It's easy to see where Dell was going with the introduction of their new UltraSharp 3008 WFP 30" LCD. Calling upon the input received from previous 30" panel incarnations and marrying these feature requests in with new technologies like a wider color gamut and the bleeding-edge of display interface technologies. As the first DisplayPort-enabled LCD from Dell, the 3008 WFP is claiming that sexy is back. No Justin, not you -- she's getting a Dell?





Dell UltraSharp 3008 WFP 30" Widescreen LCD
Specifications and Features
Viewable Image Size 30 inches
Diagonal Size 30 inches
Display Type Active Matrix - TFT LCD
Color Gamut 117%
Image Scaling Built in image scaler/processor
Depth 9.35 inches
Height
18.98 inches compressed
22.52 inches extended
Width 27.43 inches
Weight (with stand) 34.36 lbs.
Stand Adjustability Tilt, Swivel, Height Adjustable
Horizontal Viewing Angle 178o (typical)
Vertical Viewing Angle 178o (typical)
Color Support 16.7 million colors
Contrast Ratio 3000:1
Response Time
8 ms (grey-to-grey)
Brightness 370 cd/m2
Resolution 2560x1600 (max)
Pixel Pitch (Dot Pitch) 0.2505 mm
Ports
Analog, DVI-D (dual link) with HDCP x2, S-Video, Composite, Component, HDMI, DisplayPort
USB 2.0 (4)
9-in-2 Media Card Reader
Kensington security port
Power Consumption
250W(max)
Less than 2W switched off

Taking what we know of Dell's previous 30" LCD product, the 3007 WFP HC, you'll note that there are more than a few upgrades provided with this newer 3008 version. Specifically, the 3008 WFP now has a 117% color gamut, in addition to having a 3000:1 contrast ratio versus the 1000:1 performance of its predecessor. The panel also comes with the same pixel response time of 8ms but now has enhanced brightness capability at 370 cd/m2 (or nits if you prefer) versus 300 for the previous 3007 model. Finally, Dell also heard our plea back when they introduced the 3007 WFP, and saw fit to adding significantly more connectivity to the panel, with not only two DVI-D inputs, but also HDMI, Composite, Component, S-Video and the new DisplayPort interface. In short, anything you could want to hook up now or in the future, can be hooked up to this new Dell 30" panel. Bravo, Dell, bravo.

Dell Assures Users They're Safe With The Jolting XPS Notebooks

Dell has finally issued a response regarding its notebooks that have been reported to give their users frequent electrical shocks. Users previously complained on the manufacturer's forums
that they either receive a continuous electrical tingling, or they suffer brutal electrical discharges whenever they touch the aluminum casings of the XPS M1330 and XPS M1530 notebook models.

The company finally acknowledged in a Knowledge Base ticket that "a tingling sensation may be noticed when connecting devices to Dell notebook computers or printers and touching exposed metal parts of the devices being connected or the parent device."

However, the company refused to admit that these electric jolts might be dangerous for the human operator. According to previous evaluations, the electric discharges are the result of a two-pronged connection between the main lead and the power adapter, which is not grounded because there is no available third pin on the power adapter. The jolts occur due to the electrical potential that accumulates between the laptop's aluminum coating and the earth.

According to the company, "the voltage does not present any risk of injury to the user," but I strongly doubt that some user paid for this kind of "bonus" feature, as well as I doubt that any sane user would find pleasure in this "side effect". One more thing: although Dell states that there is no risk of injury, a voltage test shows that the notebook's case may give off more than 100 volts of power, which totally contradicts the company's statements.

The simplest solution to solve the problem is to provide the users with three-pronged power adapters that would connect the notebook case to the ground. However, the manufacturer has been shipping two-prong (unearthed) power adapters with the majority of its systems worldwide for some time and thus it cannot immediately provide such a great number of customers with the proper, three-pronged adapters.

Dell is currently looking for a solution to sell properly-earthed adapters to its laptop customers at a discounted price.

What Your U3 Shouldn't Be Without

Although U3 technology has been on the market for some while and it has already been adopted by many users, I still get questions from friends of mine asking me to explain the difference
between a regular USB drive and a U3 Smart one. At the end of the explanation they are pretty disappointed that the U3 is not that smart to cook or do laundry and that the only difference is ease of management via the LaunchPad it comes with and the security program that protects the key via a password.

Surely, these do not seem like much, but to tell you the truth, Launchpad makes things a whole lot easier as you do not have to appeal to application launchers (I imagine you do not dig for the executable manually each time you want to start an app) and installation files no longer mix with personal data as there is a delimitation between the two (just like Program Files on a PC. Only on U3 these are hidden from view).

I have a list of applications installed on my U3 I can't do without. This is a software that makes moving to a new computer as easy as plugging in my U3 Smart drive. The basic apps a regular user needs include an email client, and for this Mozilla Thunderbird's capabilities are great and if you are willing to shell out some money, The Bat! Professional and Voyager make an extraordinary team. Not a single email is missed and everything is securely stored on your U3 smart drive.

If you are looking for easy navigation on your computer or another one you stick your USB into, my recommendation goes for Total Commander. This is a tool that makes an installed version portable for all memory sticks while this one is specially tailored for U3 Smart drives. But the Real U3 installation McCoy can be found here. They both work great, although for U3 installation I would pick the second link.

With email and file managing problems down, I say we stick with keeping things organized and make some order in our lives as well. Essential PIM also has a portable form for U3 drives which maintains the same ease of use and flexibility as the desktop version of the application. The only downside is that it will create a folder right in the middle of the drive for storing created database.

Web browsing is a constant need of today and the tools to do this are plenty and various, providing a myriad of options, ease of use and low computer resource footprint. In the case of portable devices, there is another aspect to consider and that is security. If a portable web browser does not delete the temporary files, cookies and web forms before ejection and they remain on the host computer, there goes your privacy. Mozilla Firefox however does take this thing seriously and its portable version will not leave a trace.

Staying in the same field of web navigation and security of sensitive data, the portable side of Roboform 2 Go just has to be mentioned. Thanks to U3 equipment it can start whenever the stick is stuck into a computer, helping you to easily complete username and password fields as well as web forms with your data, in an absolute jiffy.

Staying in touch with your friends from absolutely any computer is no longer a desire as it turned as real as you and me. Chatting with your close ones, be it in writing or in speech is a long forgotten issue due to the release of Skype and Trillian in portable form. They can both be installed on U3 easily and hassle free and with Trillian you will have access to AIM, ICQ, IRC, MSN and Yahoo networks (sure, for all of them there are web alternatives like Meebo or KoolIM so this can be covered by your web browser).

An office suite is an element that should not be left out on a memory stick as you never know when you need to create a new spreadsheet or quickly make a presentation or simply write a letter. I remember in my younger age going to Internet Cafes just to write a final page of a paper and how tough it was for me to find a computer with a text processor that would provide the same choice I had home. Nowadays, a simple copy of OpenOffice would totally eliminate the problem.

Besides all these, I also have some apps I need in my line of work, but as they are specific to my daily activities, I will spare you from presenting them as well (plus not all of them are U3 compliant). Sure you can customize the U3 with whatever apps you want, thus obtaining a flexibility of the memory stick that fits your needs perfectly.

But, if you are not a U3 fan or simply do not want to put your money into a new memory stick, I suggest you to try the regular USB drive customized with MojoPac. This little fellow here is as portable as can be, and contagious also, because it permits you to make absolutely any application portable. The reason is that MojoPac is a portable virtualization software that mimics perfectly Windows XP environment and permits you to "carry" XP on a stick.

Although U3's advantages over the regular thumb drive are not overwhelming, it does make your life easier and comes with innate capability of securing all data it carries. The handy LaunchPad provides access to more U3 compliant software from different categories.

AMD to Start Launching Low-Power Phenom Processors

Chip manufacturer Advanced Micro Devices has begun the process of reconstruction after a tough year that spelled disaster. After having failed to launch two important quad-core processor lines that were
to ensure the company's survival (the Phenoms and the Barcelonas), the company gets back on track and will finally unveil a new line of low-power quad-core Phenom and dual-core Athlon CPU.

The launch is scheduled for the first quarter of 2008, but delays might occur, and therefore, AMD is considering an early Q2 release, too. The first processor in the low-power lineup is the Phenom 9100e, slated for release during February or March.

It will feature a core frequency of 1.8GHz, DDR2 1066 memory controller and a thermal envelope of 65W. Sources at the motherboard manufacturers' labs are reporting that AMD will discontinue the 9100e during the second quarter and replace it with the 9150e. It seems that the 9150e version is based on the fixed B3 stepping silicon.

The 9100e and 9150e low-voltage quad-cores will be accompanied by thee low-power dual-core processors in the Athlon family: the Athlon 4850e, the Athlon 4450e and the Athlon 4050e. The 4850e will come with a core clock speed of 2.5GHz, 1 MB of L2 cache and DDR2 800 support. The 4450e will be a lower-clock version, running at 2.3GHz, while the rest of the specs are unchanged. Athlon 4050e will be the slowest in the series, with a core clock of only 2.1GHz. There is no word about their thermal envelope yet.

AMD will also launch two single-core CPUs with a thermal design power of 45W: the Athlon BE-1640 running at a core frequency of 2.7GHz with a L2 cache of 512KB, and the Athlon BE-1660 running at 2.8GHz. The former CPU is slated to arrive later this month, while the slower part will emerge in the second quarter.

When the launch is complete, AMD will start phasing out some of its older architecture, including the dual-core Athlon X2 BE-2400, BE-2350 and BE-2300, as well as the single-core Athlon BE-1620, Athlon 64 4000+ and 3800+ processors.

Seagate: Laptop HDDs to Sell Better than Desktop Ones by 2011

Storage specialist Seagate Technologies published a second-quarter revenue of $3.4 billion, with a net income of $403 million. Laptop sales had a tremendous impact over the final sales figures as they have
continued to grow for some years now.

The quiet battle between the notebook and the desktop PC segments is about to end with the mobile segment taking over. It is the logical result of progress, as more and more people want to have access to their data wherever they might roam.

More powerful portable PCs can easily compete with their desktop counterparts, but at the same time they can be easily carried into a laptop bag, a purse or, more recently, directly into a pocket. These are the main reasons that should slow down and even stop desktop PC sales and make their mobile rivals bloom.

The hard drive industry expects a further increase in the near future, and Seagate estimates that laptop hard disk drives shipments have increased about 20 percent from 2000 to 2007, from 25 million to almost 100 million last year. Seagate managed to push 50 more million hard disk drives on the market in three months alone.

"During the quarter, Seagate achieved record shipments and experienced some capacity constraints, underscoring the phenomenal growth of digital content in both the consumer and commercial markets," said Bill Watkins, Seagate's CEO. " The storage industry remains one of the world’s most important and exciting industries. We are confident Seagate’s vision, technology, and operational excellence will drive us to continued strong financial and operating performance in the March quarter and double-digit year-over-year growth."

Seagate estimates that notebooks and mobile devices will be the future, and will treat them accordingly. The company tipped the market that it is already working on a 500GB notebook drive that will arrive in the second quarter of 2008, while some other "consistent" surprises, such as the 750GB and 1TB drives, are slated to arrive in the late-2010 – early-2011 interval.

What’s New in Microsoft Land: 14-18 January, 2008

With all the talks surrounding security that have been going on recently in all domains, the Redmond giant couldn’t have neglected this category and decided to invest in it some serious money in order to keep its users and clients happy. That being said, Monday saw Microsoft announcing a series of initiatives that have at heart the continuing of help given to its partners, for designing effective and profitable business models, at the same time striving to stay on top of the security landscape.

A little boasting was in order if the job was to be started on the right foot, so the corporation had research firm IDC conduct a survey that had as subject 349 (why not 350?) resellers in the United States and Britain and, of course, the conclusion drawn was that Microsoft security partners were "often more profitable than partners that sell other vendors’ security partners", as the press release did not fail to mention.

Mark Hassall, the Microsoft Forefront Security Partner Marketing Director, gave an interview to the corporation’s PressPass, in which he mentioned the size of the program he was involved with: "We have over 6,000 partners enrolled in the Security Software Advisor program, which allows partners to earn up to 30 percent
in advisor fees when they help drive deployment of Forefront-based security solutions. And we have over 1,000 partners in the Security Solutions Competency, which is now the fastest growing competency in the Microsoft portfolio. We are committed to continued investment in our security partner programs with partner profitability as the focus."

Not too bad, I might say, it’s definitely a window of opportunity worth exploring for Microsoft, the enlarging of its partner base by having a survey say that it is the best.

The box of the product

Mac and Windows aren’t the closest friends to the best of my knowledge, but if it’s profitable, it’s going to be delivered no matter how much stepping on pride is involved. That’s why the Mac users were given the best present on Tuesday, the official launch of Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac. The Macworld Conference & Expo 2008 was the site where the announcement was made. The second "location" where Mac users had to have felt like kings was the web page dedicated by the Redmond based company to their needs, Mactopia.

"We developed Office 2008 for Mac as a comprehensive productivity suite that also helps people simplify their work. […] To complement the deep set of new and improved features, we redesigned the interface so that it is truly easier to use. Even Office beginners can create great-looking documents very quickly. And, at the core, we focused on delivering reliable compatibility so that users can confidently share documents across platforms", said Craig Eisler, general manager of the Mac BU at Microsoft.

There are three versions of Office 2008 for Mac to be made available by the end of the first quarter of the year: the standard Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac, priced somewhere between $239.95 for the upgrade from a previous version and $399.95 for the full retail version. The second option is Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Home and Student Edition, priced at $149.95, and the last one to be available will be Microsoft Office 2008 for Mac Special Media Edition, at $299.95 for the upgrade version and $499.95 for the full retail version.

A very profitable deal was set up on Wednesday between Microsoft Corp. and EDGAR Online, in order to bring relevant advertising to the latter’s audience and content to the MSN portal. March will be the first month to see the Microsoft advertising displayed on the EDGAR site and MSN Money will most likely receive its share later in the year, a date was not mentioned for the event.

"EDGAR Online attracts a highly targeted audience with its deep business and financial content, and coupling that audience with Microsoft’s advertising technologies is going to be a winning combination for advertisers", Brian McAndrews, senior vice president, Advertiser and Publisher Solutions at Microsoft said. "The inclusion of EDGAR Online as a syndicated advertising partner site and the addition of its content to MSN Money will add value for our users and will help advertisers reach an even broader audience in this highly attractive financial vertical", he continued for Microsoft’s PressPass.

EDGAR Online is overall a premier source of information in the financial and corporate intelligence field and a leading provider of XML and XBRL tagged data and information.

Regardless of that, how would Alcatel-Lucent, Microsoft and MTS Allstream joint venture for introducing enhanced broadband Internet and TV services sound? Thrilling? I’m sure it does and I’m sure it will be just that, as Thursday they signed the deal that has them aboard the same ship. Unfortunately for MTS Allstream, the deal is limited only to 2008, but the set of services should be able to be continued if the project proves to be a success.

The upsides of the deal are better definition offerings (HDTV), functionalities that include personal and digital video recorders, improved guide features and a few others.

"As the television becomes connected to the broadband network and powerful software is added, new connected TV experiences become possible, so people can connect with their favorite content, services, devices and people. […] Together with Alcatel-Lucent and Microsoft, MTS Allstream is very well positioned to offer a way for its customers to experience the next generation of television, featuring entirely new connected TV services", said Christine Heckart, general manager of marketing for Microsoft TV at Microsoft Corp.

The numbers for all the players in the game

Friday turned out to be a bleak day for Microsoft’s MSN Video site, as the figures for November 2007 were released by comScore and they did not paint a pretty picture at all. Google thrashed the Redmond based company’s video service in the worst way possible. It received about 1.9 percent market share, meaning 181 million videos out of the total of 9.5 billion. "In total, 138 million Americans – approximately three in four U.S Internet users – viewed online video in November. Google Sites also captured the largest online video audience with 76.2 million unique viewers, followed by Fox Interactive Media with 46.3 million and Yahoo! Sites with 37.3 million. 74.5 million people viewed 2.9 billion videos on YouTube.com (39 videos per viewer)", comScore said in the press release accompanying the data.