HUD-Sporting “Google Glasses” May Hit Streets This Year
by Brad Chacos
22 Feb 2012 at 7:18pm
Is reaching into your pocket to snag your smartphone just too much work? Did you ever want to see the world through the eyes of a video game character? Am I asking too many questions? If you answered “Yes” to any of those, you’ll be jazzed by the following sentence. Apparently, the long-rumored “Google Glasses” — Google-built shades with a HUD and all kinds of cool connectivity features — could be on track to launch later this year, and for less cash than you might have expected. Game on!
According to the New York Times’ Nick Bilton and 9 to 5 Google’s Seth Weintraub, the shades reportedly run on some flavor of the Android operating system and should include 3G or 4G integration as well as motion control and GPS sensors, amongst others. The HUD will only be on one lens, and Google Glasses will allegedly sport a low-res front-facing camera, last-gen smartphone-esque hardware specs, and full voice input and output.
Google Glasses should cost somewhere between $250 and $600 and be av…
Asus Releases Bootloader Unlocking Tool For Transformer Prime
by Brad Chacos
22 Feb 2012 at 6:39pm
Asus fans expecting a whole lot of awesome when they unboxed their spiffy new Tegra 3-sporting Asus Eee Pad Transformer Prime were, for the most part, satisfied when they got their hands on the cutting-edge tablet — with one exception. Yep, Asus shipped the Prime with a locked bootloader. Bleh! Early adopters took to the Interwebz to voice their rage, and all the e-complaining paid off: today, Asus released a tool that’ll crack Transformer Primes wide open.
Sanctioned unlocking always comes with a couple of caveats, however, and the Transformer Prime is no exception. First and foremost, you’ll be voiding your warranty if you use the unlocking tool, but we’re guessing you knew that already. Also, if you’re running an out-of-the-box Prime, you won’t be able to run the unlocking tool at all. You’ll need to upgrade to Ice Cream Sandwich first. Fortunately, the Asus support page that contains the bootloader unlocking utility also offers the ICS firmware, so check it out for all your on…
PowerColor Intros Overclocked Radeon HD 7970 With A Built-In Waterblock
by Brad Chacos
22 Feb 2012 at 6:21pm
If your AMD-based build keeps getting all hot and bothered, your rampant “incognito mode” Chrome browsing isn’t to blame — you’ve probably got a problem with thermals. Pouring a bucket of ice cold water over your PC isn’t recommended, but that’s not to say that a little aqua can’t help cool things down. PowerColor just announced what it claims is the first Radeon HD 7970 with a liquid cooling waterblock built right onto the card.
PowerColor joined forces with EK WaterBlocks to produce the PowerColor LCS HD7970, which has an acetal waterblock with a nickel-plated copper base covering all of its most critical — and heat generating — components. Additionally, the LCS HD7970 includes “high-flow 3/8″ and 1/2″ fittings (barbs) to maximize water flow with captured o-rings to prevent leakage.” PowerColor claims the setup can keep GPU temps under 50 degrees Celsius even when the card is firing on all cylinders.
The actual GPU got a bit of a boost over reference 7970s, too, with overclock…
Hitachi Ships Record 25 Million 7mm Laptop Drives, Launches Travelstar Z7K500…
by Paul Lilly
22 Feb 2012 at 3:00pm
Hitachi on Wednesday announced the shipment of more than 25 million Travelstar Z-series, 7mm hard drives for notebooks, ultra-thins, Ultrabooks, and other portable form factors that support slim 2.5-inch storage devices. It’s the sort of thing companies like to brag about, but rather than gloat over record shipment numbers, Hitachi spent the bulk of its press release talking about the 7mm form factor and its new 500GB Travelstar Z7K500 drive, supposedly the industry’s fastest and highest capacity single-disk 7200RPM hard drive.
The Travelstar Z7K500 features a 6Gbps SATA interface and 32MB of cache. Hitachi says it offers up to 33 percent better performance in PCMark Vantage than other 2.5-inch hard drives on the market, and it does it while sipping on just 1.8 watts of read/write power (0.8W when idle). In addition to the 500GB model, the Z7K500 is also available in 320GB and 250GB capacities.
Hitachi envisions its 7mm drives being combined with a small amount of SSD cache in tomor…
Dell Forecast Spooks Investors After Reporting Best Year Ever
by Paul Lilly
22 Feb 2012 at 2:24pm
Record enterprise solutions and services revenue of $18.6 billion for fiscal year 2011 ($4.9 billion the fourth quarter) played a big role in Dell reporting its “most successful financial year ever.” Revenue for the full year topped $62 billion, representing a 1 percent year-over-year increase, with $16 billion pouring in during the final quarter, a 2 percent increase over the previous year. But it was Dell’s outlook for the coming quarter that didn’t sit well with investors, who collectively sent the company’s shares down more than 4 percent.
Dell said it expects revenue to drop 7 percent next quarter, adding that its figure aligns with normal seasonality. Investors saw things differently, perhaps as a reflection of a weak PC market that has yet to rebound. Either way, Dell plans to keep doing what it’s been doing.
“The expanding mix of revenue and earnings from enterprise solutions and services is critical to our future,” said Brian Gladden, Dell chief financial officer. “Our full…
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