Lenovo to Ship IdeaCentre Q190 Mini Desktop in January for $349

Lenovo claims its newly unveiled IdeaCentre Q190 is the world's smallest full-function desktop PC. Before anyone asks, the answer is no, it can't run Crysis (not in all its glory, anyway), but it does measure a scant 0.86 inches (22mm) wide, which is still big enough to accommodate an Intel Ivy Bridge foundation, Blu-ray drive, up to 8GB of system memory, and up to 1TB of storage flanked by up to 24GB of SSD cache.
The Q190 is positioned as a multimedia powerhouse in a small package, or as a home entertainment hub capable of displaying Full HD graphics and 7.1 surround sound. Other features include HDMI output, S/PDIF connector, 6-in-1 memory card reader, USB 3.0 support, and Windows 8. Look for the Q190 to ship in January 2013 starting at $349.

Lenovo also introduced new C-Series all-in-one (AIO) desktops, nearly half a dozen in all, including the C340, C440, C345, C445, and C540. Up to 3rd generation Intel Core i3 processors and Nvidia GeForce 615 graphics are available on the C340, C440, and C540, while the other two boast up to an AMD E2 dual-core processor with integrated Radeon HD graphics.
The C-Series starts at $479 and will also ship in January 2013.

Android Dominating Surging Smartphone Market

Compared to a year ago, worldwide sales of mobile phones dropped 3.1 percent to 428 million in the third quarter of 2012, but broken down by category, smartphone sales are surging. According to the latest data compiled by Gartner, smartphone sales are up nearly 47 percent from one year ago. Overall, 4 out of every 10 mobile phones shipped is categorized as a smartphone.
"After two consecutive quarter of decline in mobile phone sales, demand has improved in both mature and emerging markets as sales increased sequentially," said Anshul Gupta, principal research analyst at Gartner. "In China, sales of mobile phones grew driven by sales of smartphones, while demand of feature phones remained weak. In mature markets, we finally saw replacement sales pick up with the launch of new devices in the quarter."
This is mostly to the benefit of Google's Android platform, which now holds a 72.4 percent of share of the smartphone market, climbing 19.9 percent from a year ago. In second place is iOS (iPhone), which declined 1.1 percentage points in the same period to 13.9 percent.
After that, it's a scrap the bottom between RIM (5.3 percent), Bada (3 percent), Symbian (2.6 percent), Microsoft (2.4 percent), and all others (0.4 percent).
Image Credit: Flickr (opopododo)

New Darkfall dev diary vid talks art direction, Unholy Wars changes

So Darkfall 1.0 has come and gone, as Aventurine has officially closed the servers in preparation for the Unholy Wars reboot. The firm has also released a five-minute dev diary video featuring creative lead Adam Oikonomopoulos, who talks at length about the game's art direction updates and AV's expanded creative vision.

The video boasts a bunch of fly-through shots that show off Agon's new textures, higher polygon counts, and improved shaders, many of which are a marked improvement over the originals (that date back to the game's genesis in 2002 in some cases).

Oikonomopoulos also mentions that Unholy Wars and the original Darkfall are set "several hundred years apart," which accounts for some of the changes in both the landscape and the game's architecture.

RaiderZ announces launch date with new screens and a video

Since the beta doors opened on October 24th, more folks have been checking out the action of RaiderZ, banding together to engage massive bosses and even using mobs' own limbs as weapons against them. But if you were waiting for launch to jump in and experience the free-form class system and monster transformation ability for yourself, get ready: Perfect World Entertainment has just announced that the free-to-play game will launch on November 20th.

Senior Producer Mark Hill noted that launch was just the beginning. He stated, "We'd like to thank fans for their continued support and also welcome new players to explore the Kingdom of Rendel. This is just the first part of our commitment to provide players with a great experience for years to come."

Want a glimpse of what you can expect next week? Check out the beautiful world and watch a variety of battles in the launch trailer after the break, and enjoy some exclusive images in the gallery below.

[Source: Perfect World Entertainment press release]

Gallery: RaiderZ launch exclusives

RAM Gone Wild: Overclocker Pushes G.Skill TridentX Kit to 3,900MHz

Memory maker G.Skill is laying claim to the "world's fastest RAM" after an overclocker goosed the company's TridentX Extreme Performance memory kit to 1,950MHz (3,900MHz effective). Whether you want to qualify that as the world's fastest RAM is up to you (and clearly G.Skill does), but it is a new memory frequency world record, so there are some well deserved bragging rights to go around.
Overclocker "Christian Ney" achieved the world record just a few days after another overclocker, "HiCookie," first broke the record with the same kit. HiCookie achieved 1,677MHz (3,354MHz effective) using a Gigabyte Z77X-UD4H motherboard and Intel Core i7 3770K processor.
Christian Ney trumped HiCookie's frequency using an AMD system with a Gigabyte GA-A75-UD4H motherboard and A8-3870K processor. In both cases, a healthy dose of liquid nitrogen was required to keep everything cool.

"Despite being the world's fastest RAM manufacturer, G.Skill will continue to strive for first-class quality at competitive pricing to the market," said Bill Wang, VP at G.Skill.
Gee, good to know G.Skill isn't hanging its hat up and calling it quits.

A (spoiler-free) jaunt through Guild Wars 2's Lost Shores

Guild Wars 2's Lost Shores update is just around the corner -- that is, if you can consider nighttime to be a corner. What I'm trying to say is that Lost Shores goes live tomorrow. We brought you a content primer a couple of days ago to give you the basics of what's going on. Now it's time to take a closer look at what's to come.

Skip on below the cut for a spoiler-free look at the Lost Shores content. I mean, reasonably spoiler-free. I'm going to tell you that the karka are involved and that there's a dungeon where you fight things. We can't really have much of a conversation elsewise, but what I'm not going to do is give away any big finales or gotcha moments. Now that we understand each other, let's get going.

Gallery: Lost Shores hands-on

On the Surface, Microsoft's "Kludgey" Tablet is Hardly Competition, Says HP

Microsoft's hardware partners continue to take potshots at the company's Surface tablet. Last week, Acer warned Microsoft that delving into hardware is like "hard rice and "is not so easy to eat" (no joke, though something may have been lost in translation), and now HP is piling on the criticism, calling Surface a "slow" and "kludgey" solution. HP credited the press for hyping up a tablet that otherwise isn't very competitive.
"I'd hardly call Surface competition," Todd Bradley, head of HP's PC business, told IDG Enterprise in an interview, according to CiteWorld.com. "[Reason] one, very limited distribution. It tends to be slow and a little kludgey as you use it. It's expensive. Holistically, the press has made a bigger deal out of Surface than what the world has chosen to believe."
HP's last real attempt at the consumer tablet market was the ill-fated TouchPad, a promising webOS tablet that was perhaps priced too high to woo buyers away from the iPad. These days, HP is more focused on enterprise slates, and that isn't about to change.
"We're not entering the consumer tablet fray any time soon," Bradley added. "We'll be doing something next year, but you won't see a consumer tablet from HP before Christmas. You'll see convertibles that are focused on how you use the device, keyboard, clamshell."
Bradley also expressed interest in getting into the highly competive phone business, but hasn't yet formulated a strategy.