General Gaming Article |
- LG Goes Wide with 21:9 Cinematic EA93 Monitor
- HP Unwraps Two Windows 8 Ultrabooks and One Hybrid PC
- Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo Packs Dual 10K Hard Drives
- President Obama's Campaign Trail Led to Brief Q&A Session on Reddit
- Digital Storm's X17E is 17 Inches of Gaming Bang for Under Two Grand
- Samsung Gets Official with Galaxy Note II Phablet, Skips U.S. Market (For Now)
- Wide Load: Toshiba Satellite U845W is First Laptop to Wield 21:9 Display, Now with Windows 8
| LG Goes Wide with 21:9 Cinematic EA93 Monitor Posted: 30 Aug 2012 12:09 PM PDT
LG's EA93 is a 29-inch monitor with an IPS panel. It has a 2560x1080 resolution, same as a typical movie theater screen, and a variety of connectivity options, including Dual DVI-I, HDMI, and DisplayPort. The EA93 also has a built-in USB 3.0 hub. "Through continuous innovation of our IPS monitors, we are raising the user experience to a whole new level for home entertainment and graphic professional use," said J.J. Lee, Executive Vice President and Head of the IT Business Unit at the LG Home Entertainment Company. "The EA93's immersive 21:9 cinematic screen and the EA83's advantages when it comes to advanced graphics applications make these newest monitors compelling additions to our premium IPS monitor line-up." We don't read too much into display quality ratings, but if you're curious, the monitor has a 5ms (GTG) response time, 300 nits brightness, and is purportedly able to display 99 percent of the Adobe RGB color space (contrast ratio isn't listed). No word on when this will ship or for how much. Image Credit: LG Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| HP Unwraps Two Windows 8 Ultrabooks and One Hybrid PC Posted: 30 Aug 2012 11:07 AM PDT
Starting with the hybrid, the Envy x2 features an 11.6-inch touchscreen display, solid state memory, NFC support, 8MP rear-facing camera, HD front-facing camera, Beats Audio, and a keyboard dock. The Envy x2 will ship in time for the holiday shopping season, though no price has yet been announced.
As for the Ultrabook models, the Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 is the smaller of the two with a 14-inch display, backlit keyboard, AMD graphics, Beats Audio, and a 23mm thin profile. The Spectre XT TouchSmart, meanwhile, is a 15.6-inch Ultrabook with a Full HD resolution and IPS display. It boasts an Intel Core processor, mSATA SSD, USB 3.0, HDMI output, GbE LAN, and several other goodies. Like the Envy x2, the Envy TouchSmart Ultrabook 4 will ship during the holidays. The HP SpectreXT TouchSmart will be available in December starting at $1,400. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Western Digital My Book VelociRaptor Duo Packs Dual 10K Hard Drives Posted: 30 Aug 2012 09:00 AM PDT
"The My Book VelociRaptor Duo is the fastest and most reliable high performance consumer storage device on the market today," explains Jody Bradshaw, senior director of WD's consumer storage solutions group. "Creative professionals now have access to a super-charged storage drive that will keep pace with even the most demanding projects. Daisy-chaining multiple My Book VelociRaptor Duo devices together offer even greater speed, more capacity and flexibility." Each of the two drives are 1TB in capacity. According to Western Digital, the drives deliver SSD-like data transfers of up to 400MB/s, allowing you to transfer a 22GB full-length HD movie in just over a minute, or 2,000 5MB pictures in 33 seconds. The caveat? There are two. First is the fact that it uses Thunderbolt, and second is the price -- it carries an MSRP of $900. Ouch. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| President Obama's Campaign Trail Led to Brief Q&A Session on Reddit Posted: 30 Aug 2012 07:11 AM PDT
According to PCWorld, Reddit temporarily buckled under the pressure of the increased activity, though quickly regained composure as the President proceeded to answer 10 questions in the "I am Barack Obama, President of the United States -- AMA" thread. It wasn't entirely a random pitstop, as Obama was in Charlottesville, Virginia at the time, the same city Reddit was founded. During his AMA session, Obama talked about the future of NASA, fundraising, his most difficult decision he's had to make since taking office, his favorite basketball player, and other things, all of which have been reprinted at The Hollywood Reporter. He avoided tougher topics -- you know, like choosing between Star Wars and Star Trek, revealing the color of his toothbrush, and whether or not he could beat Abraham Lincoln in a knife fight, among other Reddit fodder. In the past 18 hours, the Reddit thread has generated nearly 23,000 comments. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Digital Storm's X17E is 17 Inches of Gaming Bang for Under Two Grand Posted: 30 Aug 2012 06:31 AM PDT
The X17E is Digital Storm's flagship 17-inch gamer, and customers have the option of splurging on either an AMD Radeon HD 7970M or Nvidia GeForce GTX 680M GPU. It has a 1920x1080 resolution, support for up to 32GB of memory, USB 3.0 ports, eSATA, 9-in-1 memory card reader, Blu-ray drive, backlit keyboard with different lighting zones and up to seven color options, and other goodies. Pricing will start at $1,753 when the X17E goes on sale in September. Digital Storm says it will also sell a Signature Edition SKU that features a custom paint job, distinctive branding, and special packaging. |
| Samsung Gets Official with Galaxy Note II Phablet, Skips U.S. Market (For Now) Posted: 30 Aug 2012 05:45 AM PDT
The Galaxy Note II will be available in October in major European, Asian, and Middle East markets, with no mention of a U.S. launch in the press release. Word on the Web is that it will land on U.S. shores before the year is over, though exactly when is a mystery. A quad-core Exynos processor clocked at 1.6GHz will drive the slightly larger 5.5-inch Super AMOLED display (up from 5.3 inches in the first Galaxy Note) with a 720p resolution. There will be 16GB, 32GB, and 64GB models, all of which are expandable via a microSD card slot. It will also have an 8MP rear-facing camera, 1.9MP front-facing camera with HD recording, support for Samsung's S Pen stylus, 4G LTE connectivity, 3,100 mAh battery, and Android 4.1 Jelly Bean. Follow Paul on Google+, Twitter, and Facebook
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| Wide Load: Toshiba Satellite U845W is First Laptop to Wield 21:9 Display, Now with Windows 8 Posted: 30 Aug 2012 05:14 AM PDT
Unfortunately, Toshiba isn't swapping out the panel for a touch-friendly replacement to take advantage of Windows 8's "Modern UI Style," though the company claims the ultra-wide design is "ideal for snapping Windows 8 style apps to the classic desktop." It also has a sizable ClickPad with Windows 8 gestures support. Taking advantage of the additional real estate, Toshiba includes a split screen utility with pre-configured and custom viewpoint grids that support multiple windows in Desktop mode. Try doing that on a traditional Ultrabook. Display technology aside, the U845W features Ivy Bridge-based Core i5 and i7 processor options, 500GB hard drive + 32GB SSD cache (or 256GB SSD), 6GB of DDR3-1600 memory, Harman Kardon stereo speakers, three USB 3.0 ports, HDMI output, 1.3MP webcam, memory card slot, and various other bits. |
We don't know if it's something in Germany's water supply or what, but ultra-wide 21:9 cinematic displays seem to be a popular thing to showcase in recent days. To wit, Toshiba's been 
Regardless of how you feel about Windows 8 and its tile-based user interface, you have to hand it to Microsoft for ensuring its launch partners are on board with the new operating system. Hewlett-Packard certainly is, as it's one of several companies announcing new products ahead of Windows 8's debut in October. HP today 
Which would you rather have, raw speed or redundancy? That's the delightful decision buyers of Western Digital's new My Book VelociRaptor Duo external storage device will face if investing in what WD calls the fastest My Book ever. The dual storage backup device bites at backup chores with a pair of speedy 10,000 RPM VelociRaptor hard drives, which you can configure in RAID 0 for speed or RAID 1 for protection. Plus, you can daisy chain multiple My Books for even more performance.
For the past three and a half years, President Obama has been to foreign locales and all over the United States. As he fights to keep his job in the upcoming election, his travels took him to a new destination, a pitstop on Reddit as he embarks on his campaign trail. If you couldn't access Reddit for a short while yesterday, it's because users flocked to the site to participate in his AMA (Ask Me Anything) session.
There was a time not that long ago when you couldn't touch a high-end laptop without spending a fortune, let alone a gaming grade notebook by a boutique builder. Now you can, as evidenced by Digital Storm's X17E, a 17-inch laptop built for gamers on an artist's budget. Pricing starts at $1,753, though you can go all out and pony up for an Intel Core i7 3920XM processor overclocked to 4.5GHz, among other upgrade options.
It's incredibly tough to keep a product launch under wraps with the Internet serving as the ultimate spoiler. Samsung can attest to this after seeing its Galaxy Note II plans leaked to the Web ahead of its offical launch. Be that as it may, all a company can do is forge ahead with business as usual, as Samsung did by 
For whatever reason, Ultrabook makers have been infatuated with 1,366x768 and 1,600x900 screen resolutions, rarely experimenting with anything higher, regardless of display size. That isn't true of Toshiba, which earlier this month launched its Satellite U845W, purportedly the world's first laptop to play with an ultra-wide 21:9 cinematic aspect ratio (1,792x768). Come October 26, the U845W will get a Windows 8 makeover, Toshiba announced today.| You are subscribed to email updates from Maximum PC - All Articles To stop receiving these emails, you may unsubscribe now. | Email delivery powered by Google |
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