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LG To Release Android Tablet This Year

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In addition to the Optimus, LG has confirmed that it will launch two more Google Android phones as well as a thin and light Android tablet in the next coming months.According to the company, the new Optimus Series will be comprised of devices running on the popular Android operating system. The various smartphones and tablet devices will range from entry to premium level with various form factors to meet the diverse needs of all customers.

The two android-powered smartphones in the pipeline for the Australian market – LG Optimus One with Google and LG Optimus Chic – will run on Android Platform 2.2 (Froyo).
 
LG said that the Optimus One with Google offers the latest in Google mobile features and connects seamlessly to the world according to Google. “Its convenient user interface and diverse multimedia options ensure a mobile environment that makes this device one of the easiest to use on the market,” said the company.
 
The LG Optimus Chic is aimed at fashion aficionados with its ‘tasteful design’ incorporating soft and smooth lines.
 
Finally, LG will be introducing its first tablet device later this year. Running on the Android Platform, LG claims that the tablet will deliver ‘vastly superior performance while still managing to be thinner and lighter than competing devices.’

Epson To Roll Out Interactive Projector

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Epson is set to launch a new ultra short throw projector that can turn any surface into a communication tablet. The Epson 450Wi is aimed at classrooms and will provide interactive capabilities to students.

According to Epson, this projector integrates interactive functionality in one machine without the constraints or expense of an interactive whiteboard. The 450Wi can project images up to 96-inch in native WXGA, uses an ultra-short throw projector design that claims to eliminate many of the common problems of interactive systems such as an intrusive classroom footprint as well as eye glare, and has a new mount designed for simple wall installations.

“Anchored close to the wall, you can project extra-large, 80″ images from just 2′ away,” says the company.

In addition, the projector works on almost any surface “an existing whiteboard, a flat wall, even a chalkboard with dry-erase paint. Interactive capabilities are built into the projector and not into a board, so virtually any surface will work”. 

Finally, its interactive pen works like a mouse on your PC/Mac. “It is software agnostic and Web 2.0 friendly. Similar to a computer monitor, the open architecture allows users to use, share, and engage with virtually any software, digital media file or e-textbook,” concluded the company.

Telstra To Offer 24-Month Handset Warranty

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Telstra announced that will now offer 24-month warranties for mobile handsets supplied with its 2 year service contracts. However, users who sign up for an iPhone plan will still only get a year’s warranty.The decision follows discussions with the Australian Competition and Consumer Commission.

ACCC Chairman, Graeme Samuel said, “Telstra has decided to do what’s right and fair for consumers, and has been negotiating with manufacturers to bring in warranty periods that last for the length of a consumer’s contract.”

” In the EU, most consumer goods sold come with a minimum 24 month warranty… Just because the manufacturer’s warranty period is up, it does not mean that consumers can be hung out to dry if they are left with a faulty product and ongoing service contract,” continued Samuel.

Although nearly all major handset manufacturers have agreed to honour full warranties, the ACCC continues to have concerns in relation to warranty issues with the Apple iPhone.

Kensington Goes For Netbook Market

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Kensington has launched a new range of accessories for netbooks in an effort to strengthen and expand its portfolio. The new line includes a compact mouse, a security lock, and a reversible case.


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According to Kensington, the Netbook mice are fit to scale for the 30 – 90 minute netbook usage model and are available in two variations – wired ($19.95) or wireless ($39.95).

The Kensington Netbook security lock has been modified for netbooks to keep your computer safer than ever. The compressed coil lock is only 78mm long but expands to 1.8m so you can lock your netbook down and keep it safe from straying hands. This security lock has an RRP of $29.95.

Finally, the Kensington Netbook case is reversible and is cushioned to shield your computer from damage whilst on the move. It is available for $19.95.

 

 


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In addition to the new Netbook range, Kensington also has a couple of ‘smart made simple’ products to enhance productivity. The full portfolio is comprised of seven categories:

Control It: A high performance range of mice, presenters, trackballs, keyboards and keypads, which make computers easier to control. Highlights from the range include the SlimBlade Trackball laser mouse which has an RRP of $39.95.

Power It: Rechargeable battery packs power iPods, MP3 players and other mobile devices on the move, without the need for a power source.

Carry It:  Kensington’s Contour range of notebook cases reduces shoulder and back fatigue by up to 35 percent.

Play It: A range of accessories which allow consumers to enjoy and use iPods, iPhones, MP3 players or mobile phones in the car, home or out and about for hours on end without running out of power.

Secure It: Kensington offers a comprehensive range of mobile and desktop locks, which make it easy to keep your computer safe and secure, wherever you are.

Connect It: A range of home and office computing solutions, with one-touch simplicity, including multi-view monitor adaptors, notebook stands and a variety of connectivity devices.

Optimise It: Based on US army research into body measurements, this ergonomic range protects against poor posture, eyestrain and repetitive strain conditions.

See: au.kensington.com

Smaller Computers On The Way Says Intel

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Intel claims that it has made advances in its chipset technologies that users will soon be able to have smaller and smarter computers.


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According to Intel, future Intel Atom, Core and Xeon processors and System on Chip (SoC) products will make computers smaller, smarter, more capable and easier to use. For example, among a number of other innovations on tap, Intel will integrate graphics into some of its future chip products for the first time ever.

Intel Architecture Group’s Executive Vice President and General Manager, Sean Maloney said, “Over the past 40 years, the opportunities enabled by Moore’s Law have gone beyond just impressive performance increases. The rapidly increasing number of transistors and processor instructions we add have made possible the integration of more and more capabilities and features within our processors. This has driven an incredible amount of innovation throughout the industry, with the real winners being the consumers, gamers and businesses which buy these Intel-based computers.”

In his Intel Developer Forum keynote, Maloney demonstrated a Westmere-based PC that showed a marked increase in responsiveness on simple, everyday tasks such as Web-surfing with multiple windows open.

Moreover, Westmere is Intel’s first 32nm processor, and is the first-ever Intel processor to integrate graphics die right into the processor’s package. As well as supporting Intel Turbo Boost technology and Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, Westmere adds new Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) instructions for faster encryption and decryption. Westmere is on track with wafers already moving through factory floors for planned fourth-quarter revenue production.

 

After Westmere, Intel’s chip integration will continue with 32nm processors codenamed “Sandy Bridge.” Sandy Bridge features Intel’s sixth-generation graphics cores on the same die or silicon real estate as the processor core, and will include acceleration for floating point, video and processor intensive software most often found in media applications. Maloney showed a Sandy Bridge-based system running a range of video and 3-D software to demonstrate the health of a far-future product line at its early stage.

Maloney demonstrated early silicon based on the “Larrabee” architecture, the codename for a family of future graphics-centric co-processors. He also confirmed that key developers have received development systems.

With the first product due next year, Larrabee takes the programmability of Intel Architecture and dramatically extends its parallel processing capabilities. This flexible programmability and the ability to take advantage of available developers, software and design tools give programmers the freedom to realise the benefits of fully programmable rendering and thus easily implement a variety of 3-D graphics pipelines such as rasterisation, volumetric rendering or ray tracing.

Combined, PC users will experience stunning visual experiences on Intel-based PCs that incorporate this product. Maloney went on to demonstrate a real-time ray-traced version of the popular game “Quake Wars: Enemy Territory” running on Larrabee and Intel’s next-generation enthusiast gaming processor, codenamed “Gulftown,” which will carry the Core brand. While Larrabee silicon will initially appear in discrete graphics cards, the Larrabee architecture will eventually be integrated into the processor along with other technologies.

 

Maloney also provided attendees with a preview of Intel’s next-generation intelligent server processor, codenamed Westmere-EP, and Intel’s commitment to the high-end of the server market with its Xeon and Itanium processor families. Maloney discussed the unprecedented generational improvement that the forthcoming “Nehalem-EX” server processor will deliver, with performance improvements even greater than what the current Intel Xeon 5500 Series provided versus Intel’s previous chip generation.

Maloney described the convergence of compute, networking and storage in the data centre, sharing the company’s vision of a converged data centre IO fabric led by Intel 10GbE solutions. Intel also has a number of joint efforts with other industry leaders to deliver optimised platforms, systems, technologies and solutions to address the “hyper-scale” data centre environments of the Internet and cloud services trend.

Maloney disclosed a new ultra-low-voltage Intel Xeon 3000 series processor featuring a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of only 30 watts. To complement the broad range of dense and power-optimised platform offerings, Intel also demonstrated publicly for the first time a single-socket “micro server” reference system which will help enable micro server innovation and future specification.

Maloney also described the just-disclosed “Jasper Forest” family of embedded processors as an example of extending the company’s popular Nehalem microarchitecture to new markets. Available early next year, Jasper Forest is designed for purpose-built storage, communications, military and aerospace applications, and will offer a new level of integration to save precious board space and power for these dense environments.

Finally, Maloney announced a new PC management tool using Intel vPro technology. Keyboard Video Mouse (KVM) Remote Control enables IT personnel to investigate issues exactly as the user sees them, resulting in faster diagnosis, fewer desk side visits and added cost savings.

Hitachi Widescreen Projector For Boardrooms

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Hitachi has released a 3000 ANSI lumens widescreen projector aimed at businesses and education facilities.


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The CP-WX410 features a true 1280 x 800 colour pixels and 16:10 widescreen image, making it compatible with industry standard laptop displays. This HD-ready LCD projector also has a new Hybrid filter designed to be used for over 4000 hours in normal usage.

Hitachi Australia’s Product Manager, Digital Presentation Solutions, Bill Christoforou said “The CP-WX410 is one of our most impressive projectors to date. By combining convenient widescreen and HD-ready capabilities with its portability, our latest LCD projector delivers extremely high performance within both business and educational environments.”

 “The CP-WX410 introduces high quality widescreen abilities along with a compatible size for portability. Hitachi can now offer the Australian projector industry a full range of products that match current and future market trends,” added Bill.

The CP-WX410 also features an improved Security Bar, preventing theft when mounted on the ceiling or used on a cart-top. It also allows for projection onto a variety of surfaces including blackboard, whiteboard and greenboard modes, ensuring optimum visibility.

Hitachi has also announced that it is an official contributor of Sydney Festival 2010 and has donated six LCD projectors. These will be utilised in the foyer of the Seymour Centre for the duration of the renowned festival and will greatly enhance the festival goers’ experience, as the space is transformed into an ecliptic mix of films, advertisements and moving images in high contrast image and exceptional colour reproduction. 
The models donated were three portable/installation LCD data projector (two CPX450s and CPX4020) and three larger installation LCD data projectors (CPX809, CPX615, and CPX705). 
Malcolm Moir, Head of Business Development, Sydney Festival said: “Our production and design colleagues feel the addition of the Hitachi projectors will give us the opportunity to greatly enhance the foyer environment of the Seymour Centre by allowing festival goers to utilise the equipment in a number of different ways, such as being able to access the Internet.”
Dipak Kumar, General Manager, Digital Technology Solutions Group Hitachi Australia comments, “It is a privilege to be involved with Sydney Festival in this way, the high calibre of technology will help to ensure the highest levels of audience enjoyment. Hitachi is pleased to provide projectors that are of the highest quality and performance to a great event that will be appreciated by audiences, residents and tourists.”
The Hitachi LCD projectors will be used in the Seymour Centre foyer for the duration of Sydney Festival (6 January – 31 January)

Intel Flash-Based Drives For Servers

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Intel has begun shipping its solid-state drive (SSD) aimed at server, workstation and storage systems.


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Unlike hard drives that contain moving parts, the Intel X-25E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive features a 50nm single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory technology.

According to Intel, systems equipped with these drives will not suffer from the performance bottlenecks associated with conventional drives, can reduce infrastructure, cooling and energy costs, and untimately ‘lower total cost of ownership for enterprise application by more than five times.’
 
Intel Server Platforms Group’s General Manager, Kirk Skaugen said, “Hard disk drive performance has not kept pace with Moore’s Law. Intel’s high-performance SSDs unleash the full performance of the latest Intel Xeon processor-based systems while increasing reliability and lowering the total cost of ownership for a broad range of server and storage workloads.”

 

The Intel X25-E claims to increases server, workstation and storage system performance by 100 times over hard disk drives as measured in Input/Output Per Second (IOPS). A storage model which includes SSDs can also lower energy costs by up to five times, an added benefit for businesses focused on electricity savings.
 
The product was designed for intense computing workloads which benefit primarily from high random read and write performance, as measured in IOPS. Key technical performance specifications of the 32 GB Intel X-25E SATA SSD include 35,000 IOPS (4KB Random Read), 3,300 IOPS (4KB Random Write) and 75 microsecond read latency. This performance, combined with low active power of 2.4 watts, delivers up to 14,000 IOPS per watt for optimal performance/power output.

The product also achieves up to 250 megabytes per second (MB/s) sequential read speeds and up to 170 MB/s sequential write speeds, all in a compact 2.5-inch form factor.
 
Pricing and Availability

The 32GB capacity drive is in production and priced at US$695 for quantities up to 1,000. The 64GB version is expected to sample in the fourth quarter with production estimated for the first quarter of 2009.

See: www.intel.com/go/ssd

Aldi Turns Blu With Medion Offering

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Users who want to watch high definition movies while on the go should go to their nearest Aldi store in the next couple of weeks. This supermarket chain is about to offer a Blu-ray notebook that not only has noteworthy specifications, but also sports a price tag that is hard to beat. The Smarthouse Team takes a look at the MD97310 from Medion…


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The Medion MD97310 sports the same piano black exterior (still prone to fingerprints), keyboard layout, and brushed aluminium interior as the MD96940 (to hyperlink) we reviewed in April, although this 17-incher is packed with better specifications.

The MD97310 uses an Intel Core 2 duo T5800 processor running at 2.0Ghz, has 4GB of RAM, and uses Nvidia’s GeForce 8600M GS graphics card with 512MB GDDR2 memory. It also comes with a 320GB hard drive (Partitioned to Boot (271GB) and Recover (26GB)) for storing games, music, movies, and important documents.

The unit has an abundance of ports. The notebook comes with a 4-in-1 card reader, three different input and output jacks (microphone, headphone, and S/PDIF), an ExpressCard slot, an Ethernet port, a DVI-out port, an HDMI-out port, and four USB ports for optimum connectivity. The unit also has draft-N Wi-Fi built-in, giving users fast wireless connection anytime. The unit also comes with BD drive that plays Blu-ray discs, but more on that later.

 


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Opening the lid reveals a 17-inch WXGA screen with a maximum resolution of 1440×900 (16:10 cinema format), a 1.3-megapixel webcamera, a tactile keyboard with dedicated number keys, and a built-in microphone. What’s missing from this notebook is a set of dedicated multimedia hotkeys for easy access to Windows Media Player.

Medion has pre-installed Windows Vista Home Premium on the system and has included a suite of software for added home and office productivity. Programs include a trial version of Bullguard, Corel MediaOne and Draw Essential Edition 3, CyberLink YouCam, Google Desktop, Cyberlink Suite (MediaShow, PowerDirector, PowerDVD 8, PowerProducer), Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007 (Trial), Microsoft Works, and Nero 8 Essentials.

 The unit’s built-in Blu-Ray drive allowed us to watch Blu-Ray movies on both our notebook’s screen (1440×900) as well as on our 46-inch LCD TV (Toshiba) via HDMI (1920×1080 resolution was possible). Our Blu-Ray copy of Close Encounters of the Third Kind loaded in 27 seconds (after loading the CyberLink DVD software) or 45 seconds to load from Windows. There were no dramas streaming content from the unit to the screen, although we encountered minor slowdowns and hiccups at times (around 2-3 instances where it just stopped to load).

 

While the unit cannot run hardcore games like Crysis, it can still handle recent games (like Command and Conquer: Red Alert 3) without any problems. The MD97310 got a score of 2540 in our 3DMark06 test and a Windows Vista overall rating of 4.7.

The unit lasted for 118 minutes in our DVD playback test, which is just about average for a 17-inch notebook. This would roughly equate to 3 to 4 hours of use when set to ‘economy’ mode. Despite having a subwoofer built-in, the audio quality is not worth writing home about, although it still gets the job done. If you want to have the best audio quality, then we recommend users to use the S/PDIF out port.

Medion’s MD97310 is a beefy notebook that brings high-definition content to your screen with its Blu-Ray drive. It may not be the best looking notebook around, but for $1,499, we think that it wouldn’t matter considering just what this notebook can offer. This new notebook will hit Aldi stores on November 20, 2008.

See page over for product specifications and final rating.

 

Medion Akoya MD97310 Specifications:

– Intel Core 2 Duo T5800 running at 2.0GHz.
– Nvidia GeForce 8600M GS with 512MB dedicated memory
– 320GB HDD
– 17-inch screen with maximum resolution of 1440×900 (16:10 cinema format)
– Wireless 802.11 b/g/n
– 4GB memory
– DVI and HDMI audio/video out
– 1.3-megapixel camera with built-in microphone
– Blu-Ray drive with DVD/CD writer
– Comprehensive software included (BullGuard, Corel MediaOne, Corel Draw Essential Edition 3, CyberLink YouCam, Google Desktop, CyberLink Suite (MediaShow, PowerDirector, PowerDVD 8, PowerProducer), Microsoft Office Home and Student 2007, Microsoft Works, Nero 8 Essentials)
– 6-channel audio out (Analogue + S/P-DIF)
– 4 in 1 Memory Card Reader (SD/MMC/MS/MS Pro)
– Speakers with built-in subwoofer
– Ethernet
– Windows Vista Home Premium With Service Pack 1

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Medion Akoya MD97310 | $1,499 |  | www.aldi.com/au or www.medion.com.au

For: Noteworthy specifications; Built-in Blu-Ray drive; Abundance of software; Battery life
Against: Piano finish prone to fingerprints; No multimedia hotkeys; Occasional hiccups with Blu-ray player when hooked up to HDTV; Cannot handle ‘hardcore’ games; Gets really hot
Conclusion: Enter the world of Blu-ray with Medion’s new notebook.

LG Bags Three Gfk Awards

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LG was awarded the GfK No.1 Award in three categories (Home Theatre Systems, DVD Players, and Microwave Ovens) by leading market researcher GfK Retail and Technology.

The award is based on units sold for the 12 month period from January – December 2008 and is only given to brands in general distribution.

Stan Bilinski, Senior Category Marketing Manager, LG Electronics said, “To be awarded No 1 in three separate categories by GfK is a great achievement for LG and we are pleased to receive such highly acclaimed recognition in both the Audio Visual and Cooking categories”.

“2009 is set to be a big year for LG especially for Audio Visual and Cooking appliances. We are due to launch new products throughout the year in both categories that will continue to show LG’s commitment to leadership and innovation” he added.

See: www.lge.com.au