Dell Introduces New XPS Laptops in Singapore

At yesterday'sevent, Dell showcased thenew Dell XPS laptops which claim to incorporate JBL and Waves sound design, and high-definition Nvidia graphics to provide the cinematic experience to consumers. The latops are also 3D TV ready and include Nvidia's 3DTV Play software that allows you to hook up to your 3D TV and play your PC or movies in stereoscopic 3D.

Offered in 14- and 15-inch screen sizes, the XPS machines are also Skype-certified with HD video streaming webcams so that you can do video calls with friends and family easily. According to Dell, the XPS 14 and XPS 1 are available now (from http://www.dell.com.sg/) and the starting prices for both are S$1,499.

Besides the XPS 14 and 15 laptops, Dell also showcased their some of their other products including the 5-inch Dell Streak Android tablet and Dell Venue Pro Windows Phone 7.

Quick hands-onof Dell Streak

The Dell Streak is the company's first Android tabletwith a 5-inch display. While it is smaller than the iPad, we have no problem reading the text and the size feels about just right in our hands. According to a Dell executive, the Streak will appeal more to the ladies as it is smaller and lighter compared to other Internet tablets or ebook readers.

The Streak also offers a 5-megapixel camera with LED flash. At the top are the 3.5mm audio jack, volume/zoom control and the camera button. When you want to take a picture with the tablet, you hold it exactly like how you would with a touchscreen phone, in a landscape orientation.

On the right is a unique connector that fits to the power adapter, USB cable or docking station. The Streak when its available here could be Android 1.6, but is upgradeable to 2.1. No pricing and availability information available yet though.

Quick hands-on of Dell Venue Pro

The Dell Venue Pro was one of the Windows Phone 7 when Microsoft announced their highly anticipated mobile platform, but it was only available in US. And it seems like the company could be bringing the phone to Asia after all.

The Venue Pro has a intuitive 4.1-inch touchscreen with a layer of toughened Gorilla glass to give the brilliance and durability, although it also offers a QWERTY keypad. But unlike most of the QWERTY phones that slide from the side, this one slide out from the bottom. The keys are pretty small to type on, though there is always theoption of using the onscreen keyboard.

The power button and 3.5mm jack are at the top, while the volume control are on the right. At the rear is the 5-megapixel camera with flash for taking pictures and videos.

No word as to when the Dell Streak or Venue Pro Windows Phone 7 will be available in Singapore yet, or their pricing. But they are definitely coming.

India to launch $45 tablet computer

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India is set Wednesday to launch its long-awaited low-cost computer, a $45 tablet device designed to bring the information technology revolution to tens of millions of students.

The touchscreen computer has a seven-inch (18-centimetre) screen, Wi-Fi Internet access, a media player and 180 minutes of

"It will cost 2,200 rupees ($45) and the first batch of 500 tablets will be handed over to students after the release," ministry spokeswoman Mamata Varma told AFP.

"Initially, 700 Akash tablets will be made every day and we expect the production to pick up when more companies join in to manufacture the device," she said.

The commercial marketing strategy for the Akash remains unclear, but most of the computers are likely to be sold through universities and colleges rather than shops.

Canada-based Datawind, the current manufacturer, said the tablet used an Android 2.2 operating system, had video-conferencing capability, two USB ports and a 32GB expandable memory.

But experts warned its 256-megabyte

Industry observers say rising labour charges, cheap imports, and more sophisticated tablets could undermine the Akash among India's tech-savvy youngsters.

Hitachi Delivers New Power-Efficient Terabyte Hard Drive

Hitachi Global Storage has announced today the Deskstar 7K1000.B, the world’s most energy-efficient 7,200 RPM one terabyte (1TB) hard drive.

The Deskstar 7K1000.B provides an exceptional blend of power efficiency and performance, making it an ideal solution for power-friendly consumer and commercial PCs. The new three-disk design improves idle power consumption up to 43 percent over its 1TB predecessor, which was already among the industry’s most energy efficient hard drives. Increased protection against data loss and piracy is provided via Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) which is available as an optional feature to users. Hitachi is also shipping the Deskstar E7K1000, designed to provide high-capacity storage for low-duty-cycle, 24x7 applications.

Hitachi debuted the industry’s first 1TB hard drive in January 2007 to address consumers’ insatiable appetite for storage capacity. Entire libraries of photos, movies, music and games are increasingly being stored and accessed from a variety of digital entertainment devices within the home and a plethora of mobile devices. As the distribution of video content to social networking sites and to handheld devices becomes more commonplace, storage capacity requirements will only continue to increase. Hitachi’s latest terabyte drive delivers the performance and capacity required for today’s increasingly mobile digital lifestyle.

The new 7,200 RPM, 3.5-inch drives are available in a range of capacities from 160GB to 1TB. The drives are built using Hitachi’s proven and patented perpendicular magnetic recording (PMR) heads and disks, delivering a maximum of 375GB of storage per disk with a high level of reliability.

“Hitachi pioneered the industry’s first terabyte hard drive, so we are pleased to see how the market for high capacity desktop and laptop drives has grown substantially in the past year,” said Larry Swezey, director, Consumer and Commercial HDD Marketing and Strategy, Hitachi Global Storage Technologies. “Now through the application of Hitachi’s advanced head, media and channel technologies, we can bring to market a terabyte drive using only three disks that has advanced performance and best-in-class power consumption. This will allow us to take the next step in making terabyte technology available and affordable in the personal storage, consumer electronics, desktop and enterprise segments.”

By applying Hitachi’s seventh-generation power management technology and innovations pioneered on the popular 2.5-inch Travelstar line of mobile hard drives, the Deskstar 7K1000.B delivers best-in-class power management and thermal emissions to help manufacturers meet or exceed energy compliance targets.

Power consumption has become an important factor in technology purchase decisions, with an increasing number of consumers now actively seeking out products that are ENERGY STAR compliant. The ENERGY STAR 4.0 specifications released by the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are recognized worldwide as a way to identify energy-efficient PCs and other computer equipment. PCs that meet the ENERGY STAR 4.0 criteria are expected to become increasingly popular by consumer and commercial customers for years to come. Some corporations are choosing to purchase ENERGY STAR PCs as part of their “green” initiatives. The low power characteristics of the Deskstar 7K1000.B hard drive contribute to a reduction in overall system power requirements, which helps PC manufacturers achieve ENERGY STAR ratings.

“With rising energy costs, power concerns are likely to migrate from the datacenter to compute hardware that is spread across an entire organization, including desktop PCs,” according to John Rydning, IDC's research director for hard disk drives. “Hitachi is doing its part to enable more power efficient PCs by reducing the power consumption of the hard drive, as demonstrated with its newest one terabyte drive designed especially for desktop PC applications.”

The Deskstar 7K1000.B also features optional Bulk Data Encryption (BDE) for hard drive-level data security. Previously, data on a hard drive could be protected either through software-based encryption or a system-level password. However, hard drive-level encryption provides improved performance and a higher level of security than any of the previously available options.

When employing bulk data encryption, data is scrambled using a key as it is being written to the disk and then descrambled with the key as it is retrieved. Thus, data encryption at the hard-drive level represents a more sophisticated approach of securing users’ data and is generally considered to be virtually impenetrable. The Deskstar 7K1000.B uses an Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) that has been certified by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) to deliver the strongest commercially available data security protection. Only hard drives that have received this certification are eligible to be used by the U.S. government for national security applications.

Hitachi also announced today the Deskstar E7K1000, a drive designed for business critical storage systems where a combination of power, reliability and performance is of critical importance. The drives ship with a 32MB buffer, five-year warranty, 1.2 million hour Mean Time Between Failure (MTBF) and Rotational Vibration Safeguard (RVS) technology for robust performance in multi-drive environments. The Deskstar E7K1000 has the same low power characteristics and optional encryption technology as its desktop-class counterpart, but was specifically designed for use in nearline storage for deep data archival and other high density storage environments.

The new Deskstar drives feature a SATA 3Gb/s interface, which supports important features such as hot-swap capability for very high availability, Native Command Queuing (NCQ) for enhanced performance and staggered spin-up for power savings.

The Deskstar 7K1000.B and Deskstar E7K1000 will ship to customers worldwide in July.

Source: Hitachi

Intel makes more inroads in mobile market with new phones

Further demonstrating its resolve to expand beyond the personal computer market, Intel Corp. on Monday announced that three more new smartphones incorporating its microprocessors will be introduced in other countries this year.

The smartphone makers are Orange, Lava International and ZTE. Intel CEO Paul Otellini, who made the announcement at the

Just last month, Intel disclosed at the

But he added that chipmakers using an alternative semiconductor design from British firm ARM - which are used in the vast majority of smartphones - also are improving their products. Given that stiff competition, some analysts contend Intel could have a tough time making a significant dent in the phone market.

Yves Maitre, Orange senior vice president of mobile multimedia and devices, said its Intel-powered smartphone will be available in the United Kingdom and France later this summer. Lava's smartphone will be available in India in the second quarter of this year, said Vishal Sehgal, that company's co-founder and board director. And ZTE will offer Intel chips in smartphones and tablets in China the second half of this year.

Although none of the phones are being offered for sale in the United States at this time, the deals are significant for Intel, according to spokesman Bill Calder.

Noting that China is the world's biggest cell-phone market and that sales of smartphones are rocketing in India, he said, "People sometimes forget that the U.S. is not the center of the universe when it comes to phones."

Energy Star For Servers

The EPA's discussions with computing-equipment makers and data centeroperators has shown "compelling evidence of the need for this specification. Butthe certification isn't a foregone conclusion: "In the coming months, EPA willconduct an analysis to determine whether such a specification for servers isviable, given current market dynamics, the availability and performance ofenergy-efficient designs and the potential energy savings. Hot processors, powersupplies, memory chips and other components raise utility bills, strainelectricity distribution systems and overtax air-conditioning. President GeorgeW. Bush signed a bill that urges Americans to buy energy-efficient servers, andthe Department of Energy has begun trying to get involved in helping companiesbecome more energy-efficient.

The energy problem has triggered new avenues of research in the industry.Advanced Micro Devices and Intel are focusing on building chips with moreprocessing cores rather than a higher clock frequency and correspondingly higherpower consumption. IBM's next-generation Power6 processor has power managementabilities that let it drop down to a 100-watt level. Sun Microsystems has beentouting the energy efficiency of its UltraSparc T1 "Niagara"-based servers formore than a year. And Dell launched an energy-efficient server line in December.

D-Link Wireless Internet Photo Frame Now Compatible With Photobucket

The D-LinkWireless Internet Photo Frame, which allows you to display and share photos as well asInternet content, is now compatible with Photobucket, a popular standalone photo and video-sharing site.

Users can managedigital photosand alsostream Internet contentsuch asnews, weather, sports, trivia, and Really Simple Syndication (RSS) feeds directly to the 10-inch D-LinkDSM-210 without the need to connect with a PC.

New users can sign up for a free Photobucket account at http://photobucket.com/ to upload and share photos, create group albums, design scrapbooks and even slideshows. Users can then manage their D-Link Internet Photo Frame, including adding their Photobucket account, at internetphotoframe.com.

Source: D-Link

Dianping.com, China's Yelp, raises over $60 million to bolster mobile development

Dianping.com, a Chinese daily deals and local reviews site similar to Yelp, has raised over USD $60 million in new funding. The latest round of investment funds did not raise as much as the last ($100 million), nonetheless it proves that investors are seeing a lot of potential in Dianping.

According to Dianping’s second quarter report, the Chinese deals and reviews site had 48 million active monthly users, over 20 million reviews, and coverage of over 1.5 million local businesses in about 2,300 Chinese cities. On the mobile platform, the company claims that more than 33 million unique users use its app.

The Shanghai-based Dianping has managed to capture the attention of large investment firms like Sequoia Capital, Lightspeed Venture, and Trust Bridge Partners. According to Tech In Asia, Dianping intends to use its latest round of funds to bolster its mobile business and general business development.