Shuttle are renowned for their small desktop PC’s. They aren’t known for being extremely cheap (or well made), but it is time for the tides to change with the official release of the KPC series of budget PC’s.
For a starting price of $US299, you get the K 4500 (there is supposed to be a Celeron version for $US199, but who cares about that?). Its insides include an Intel Core 2 Duo E2140, 1GB of RAM, 160GB HDD (limited time offer), Gigabit Ethernet, integrated graphics (Intel GMA 950) and “INTEGRATED 5.1 CHANNEL AUDIO W/DIGITAL PORTS”. With those specs, it will run the included Foresight Linux a treat (it’s a OS).
Yes, it is one of the new generation budget Linux machines, and you do seem to lose a lot of options in the process. The machine has no DVD drive or a space to put one. It only has 1 HDD bay. It only has 1 spare PCI slot, giving you no options for a better graphics option. To top it off, it isn’t really that small a PC, being around the same size as a fully featured Shuttle PC.
It won’t be a very good media PC. It will make an awful NAS box. It will make a pointless LAN gaming PC. On the other hand it will be a fantastic web surfing (or hosting) machine. Your mother will think its cute as she send her 3 emails a year (that all end with send to 10 other people for abundance). If they add a PCI-E slot, I will be on it faster then fat people at a free buffet.
For more info, click over to the lovely Engadget.
I’ve been negative about technology for the last couple of days, but that is all set to change with MSI announcing the Wind. It is MSI’s competitor to the EeePC, with a few small differences.
It will feature a 10-inch display, a inch and a bit larger then the upcoming EeePC. It will use Atom architecture, and though the tests have shown it isn’t lightning, I’m confident the battery tests will be impressive. It will feature a 2.5-inch HDD, meaning the user should be able to put any size drive they want in there, as long as it fits. OS wise it features other Windows or Linux.
Some people are saying that “those features are for a notebook not a UMPC”, but the EeePC is a notebook.If the EeePC could do the same thing it would be an even more attractive package. If you consider what you gain, especially with an expected 7 hour battery life, the Wind will be more complete for the mobile user.
The price range is pretty crazy, with it being as low as $US450 and going to around $US1000. It really excites me to imagine a device that I could charge and use for a whole day without needed a second battery. No date as yet, but expect a rant when the product is released and reviewed.
For more info, hit up Gizmodo.
If you have been a budget video card purchaser, it has been fantastic for you of late, with all the prices flying south. To make matters even harder for you (to choose the card you want that is), ATI have officially announced their 3450, 3470 and 3650 GPU. For the power user, there isn’t much to see here, with full PCIe 2.0 compliant, support for DirectX 10.1 and fabricated on a 55nm process (use less power and stay cooler). All the cards are under $US100, so expect to get what you pay for.
For a ton more info, jump over to The Inquirer.
Tata, and Indian outfit, has finally announced the final name for their extremely budget car, price at a minuscule $US2500. The name, which everyone has seen before, will be Nano. Unveiled at the 2008 Delhi Motor Show, the Nano showed featured a 33 horsepower 624cc two-cylinder gasoline engine (diesel option coming) and stepless CVT transmission or 5-speed manual transmission.
The car is super basic with no power steering and the instrument panel consisting of only a speedometer, a fuel gauge and an oil light. It doesn’t skimp on safety or the environment, being designed to pass all international side offset and side crash tests as well as Euro 4 emissions tests. Efficiency wise, it will be capable of getting 100kms off 5 litres, putting it next to current hybrid cars.
Tata expect to sell 500,000 of these guys, and at the price and for what it can do, it isn’t impossible. Expect to see them hitting shelves in the second half of 2008.
For more info, click over to PaulTan.org
Want a cheap video camera and brand name doesn’t matter? Why not try a Exemode DV580HD? This little guy supports 720P, which slides on down to its 32mb inbuilt or SDHC memory card slot (16 or 32 GB coming soon). It features an 8 megapixel CCD for taking shots but unfortunately doesn’t come with any optical zoom. Michael Bay won’t be using it to film Transformers 2, but for $US220 what do you expect?
For more info, click over to the Akihabara News Site.
It wasn’t long ago, in the scheme of things, that ATI released their HD 2000 series of video cards that brought in a budget DirectX 10 era, and now that have pushed a new product to the budget buyer, the HD 3800 series.
The series will come in 2 flavors, the HD 3850 and 3870, which main difference’s are DDR3 on the 3850 and DDR4 on the 3870. Otherwise, both cards support full 10.1, are built on the - world’s first - 55nm manufacture process, 666 million transistors, run on PCI Express 2.0 and the list just goes on. There is a million things to read about it, and there is no better place to read it then at the Reg Hardware Website.
Now to what the rest of us are after, the benchmarks. It is hard to say currently (different on every site), even though it is no limit to the amount of reviews already found around the net, but currently it sits around the HD 2900 series mark. Not bad when you consider the cards are going to sell for around the $US150-200 range.
It seems that AMDATI have gone all out on this offering, and it looks like it could do well. We will have to wait and see what NVidia have lying in wait before we give it the crown, but I personally have to say that this would be the next video card I put in my system.
For more info, click over to the Engadget Blog, or for a list of reviews, go to the DailyTech Website.
Everyone wants their HD (High Definition) video camera, but if you are still using an analogue hi8 camera of old, which you picked up in a repair shop for $50, then Aiptek may give you back some of your street cred (like you had any). The Aiptek A-HD 720P may not give you the most high quality of video, but to get HD for under $US150 can’t be a bad thing at all.
What you do get for that price is a CMOS run 5 Megapixel camcorder, with the ability to video at 720P (1280 x 720). It features 2.4″ swivel LCD, HDTV component output, re deye reduction, SD Slot (no tapes or HDD sorry), 2X digital zoom (yucky) and can be charged through USB (and AC adapter). It records in H.264 Video @30fps and can apparently work as a PVR (personal video recorder), making it capable of connecting to TV/VCR/DVD player to record video, pictures and audio.
It isn’t the end all of budget video cameras, and I would seriously recommend spending a little more cash and getting something a hell of a lot better. I must say though, with Christmas coming up, a $150 stocking filler for the kids may come in handy (because they will break it the next day).
For more info, click over to the ChipChick Blog.
Not everyone can afford iPods and ZEN’s. For those people who eat cat food just to survive and sleep in old newspapers, there is the Delstar DS2209. It doesn’t have an impressive name or a impressive design, but it does have the features and price to back it up.
It hits at $US30, which is ok, but then there are a few things you have to take into account. The first being the inbuilt 1GB of store, the second the SD expansion slot. On top of the ability to store a lot of music with a few SD cards, it also has a FM radio and voice recorder. One nice little feature a lot of players have removed, is the fold out USB adapter, making it a great thumb drive as well.
It isn’t going to dethrone any of the big players in the game of digital audio (and even more considering the introduction of playing video in pretty much every new player), but for 30 bucks you won’t mind so much when you stack and smash it into a million plastic pieces. To bad it is as ugly as sin!
For more info, click over to the Crave Blog.