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Two sparsely-buttoned large, touchscreen phones: the Apple iPhone, and the LG KE850 (which already won the International Forum Design Product Design Award for 2007). Separated at birth, or possible lawsuit number two for Apple? You decide.

Source: Engadget

If you feel the need to have a nuclear reactor in your gaming case, the 2000W ATX Power Supply from Ultra Products should be enough for you. Being unveiled at CES, the 2000W PS is modular, and feeds up to 1800W on the 12V connection alone.

With all that power, you’re going to be able to support quad core, quad GPU cards, or a gigantic RAID system to store all your homemade movies. No word on price, but we’re guessing somewhere around the PlayStation 3′s price tag.

View: Ultra Products Homepage
Source: Gizmodo

Sharp Electronics took the wraps off the largest LCD television: a 108-incher. Sharp realizes, of course, that not very many people will want such a gargantuan TV. Their rebuttal? There is always commercial customers, price drops and those early adopters. It should also be noted that this is yet another blow to plasma televisions: one of their main advantages was sheer size. Not only is this LCD television larger than any plasma one announced (105″), it has a higher resolution than plasmas and a lower power consumption.

“There is no question that LCD is becoming the dominant format in flat panels,” Toshihiko Fujimoto, CEO of Sharp Electronics said. Consequently, Sharp plans to increase its marketing and branding efforts for LCD TVs in 2007 as well as apply price pressure to its closest competitors.

Opened in August 2006, Sharp’s secret weapon is an eighth-generation plant in Kameyama, Japan. The factory processes glass sheets, which measure just more than 7 feet by 8 feet. Monthly production will go up to 30,000 sheets of glass in January 2007 and should be at 90,000 in March 2008. A single sheet is equivalent to six 52-inch LCDs. Thanks to the plant, Sharp has four separate lines of LCD televisions that differ in technical specifications. For example, Sharp plans to release (later in 2007) televisions with a refresh rate of 120Hz (as opposed to 60Hz) – this is expected to largely increase picture quality.

Source: C|Net

ASUS has introduced the XG Station: a dedicated external graphics card. Laptop users rejoice; high end graphics performance is availabe, without losing the portability of a laptop. The XG Station is powered by a power brick that plugs directly into the adaptor. An integrated LCD screen can display information such as frame rate, fan speed, GPU temperature and more while the included control knob can change various settings of the XG Station such as the core and memory clocks.

Currently, the XG Station only connects to any notebook’s ExpressCard slot but will eventually work with PCIe ExpressCard interfaces installed in a desktop PC. The station can be equipped with any PCI Express x16 based graphics card: AMD, NVIDIA or even Matrox. ASUS chose the first XG Station to contain an NVIDIA 7900GS powered graphics card. Pricing is presently unknown but expect ASUS to release the XG Station in Q2 2007.

View: XG Station (Image)
Source: DailyTech

Toshiba has announced that their new HD DVD recorder, the SD-H903A, will be available later in January. The drive is a regular 5.25″ form factor, runs on the SATA interface and is compatible with various DVD and CD formats. But don’t get too excited. This is a first generation model: write speeds are very limited. 1x on HD DVD-R (and Dual Layer) media, 8x on DVD-R and DVD+R media (2.4x on Dual Layer) and finally 10x on CD-R. Regardless, all the early adopters are going to want to get their hands on the drive. Too bad Toshiba is only shipping the drive to OEMs.

News source: DailyTech via MSFN

Seagate Technology was the first and only company to release a 750GB hard disk drive. Deciding to stay ahead of the competition, Seagate plans to be the first to release a 3.5-inch 1TB hard disk drive to the market. Such a feat can only be achieved with perpendicular recording: a technology where the bits are positioned perpendicularly and closer together on the magnetic platter. Performance should also be improved; fewer platters and heads will be used. Perpendicular recording technology increases drive reliability while reducing operating temperatures, power consumption, noise and weight. The 1TB Barracuda from Seagate is supposed to hit the market sometime in the first half of 2007. Until then, your “video collection” will have to be split into 2 x 500GB.

Source: DailyTech via MSFN

A Silicon Valley memory manufacturer plans to unveil what it claims to be the world’s fastest memory modules at next week’s Consumer Electronics Show. Patriot Memory said that it will be featuring working displays of the 1302MHz Extreme Performance PC2-10100 module. The models are over-clocked DDR-2 modules. DDR-2 chips normally operate at speeds of 667-800MHz. Although Patriot’s new modules may be the fastest, the act of over-clocking a memory module is hardly a technological breakthrough, according to Nam Hyung-Kim, director and principal analyst at research firm iSuppli.

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Source: vnunet

Before Nvidia lifts all the embargoes and all the other nonsense, let me introduce you to Adriane.

The cool chick was on the cover of the February 2006 Playboy model but rendered on Geforce 8800 GTX card she still looks cool. We won’t go on much about the chick I am sure you will hear enough about her today.

Oh, and Nvidia is launching three new chipsets for Core 2 Duo, Quad, Nforce 680i SLI, Nforce 650i SLI and Nforce 650i Ultra, details to follow but first some pictures.

View: Full Story
Source: The Inquirer

In a race with rival Advanced Micro Devices, Intel will bring its quad-core chips to market in a new line of Hewlett-Packard workstations due to be introduced on November 13.

HP sent out invitations to the event but did not specify exact models and prices. The computers will probably use Intel’s planned Xeon 5300 chip, and will be designed to run high-end applications like seismic analysis and visualization technologies from Ansys, Autodesk, Landmark Graphics, and Parametric Technology.

The launch would mean that Intel brings quad-core processors to market before AMD, a crucial win in a year when Intel has made as many headlines for its layoffs and missed earnings targets as for its technology.

View: Full Story
Source: PC World

DVDs will soon be tracked with embedded radio transmitter chips to prevent copying and piracy, according to the company which makes movie discs for Warner, Disney, Fox and other major studios. The technology, which can also be used for Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs, will allow movie studios to remotely track individual discs as they travel from factories to retail shelves to consumers’ homes.

Home DVD players will eventually be able to check on the chip embedded in a disc, and refuse to play discs which are copied or played in the ‘wrong’ geographical region, the companies behind the technology expect. “This technology holds the potential to protect the intellectual property of music companies, film studios, gaming and software developers worldwide,” said Gordon Yeh, chief executive of Ritek Corporation. Ritek is the world’s largest DVD maker, and its U-Tech subsidiary will make the discs.

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Source: vnunet