TriGem’s Little Lloun+ media PC: littler, and Core 2 Duo – Engadget

TriGem, you know, the Korean company behind Averatechere in the US, have just thrown down an update to the Little Lluonmedia PC. Dubbed the Little Lluon+, it’s now slimmer but heftier thanits cuz at 44-mm (1.7-inch) / 3-kg (6.6-pound) and purrs along at amaximum of 31.6dB on down to 25.1dB at a chilled idle. Better yet, it’snow driving Windows Media Center Edition with a 2.0GHz Core 2 Duo T7200and 320GB SATA disk according to Akihabara News. Thing is, we can onlyfind the LCFC11-MO plus model on the TriGem site which sports thelessor 1.73GHz Core Duo T2250 proc — so pass on the link love if yagot it in the comments dear readers. Oh, and we’ll be expecting your LX version for the rest of world any day now Philips, thanks.

Little Lluon small form factor media PC – Engadget

If you’re looking for a small form factormedia PC and don’t want to wait for the rumored Intel-basedMac mini media center, you can always take a look at the LittleLluon, from Korea’s TG Trust. The 4.6-pound PCincludes 512MB of RAM, an AMD Turion ML-32, SD/Memory Stick reader, a TV Tuner and, of course, Windows XP MCE. Ofcourse, you shouldn’t expect to find this outside of Korea, so you may have to settle for something a little bulkier …or wait to see what Apple has under the covers.

technorati tags:media, center

IBM’s speech recognition technology headed for trial use in Iraq – Engadget

Being frequent users of machine translation ourselves, we’re fully aware of the difficulties present in its execution, but IBM
seems to think they’ve got it worked out well enough for some real-life
use in Iraq. Their “Multilingual Automatic Speech-to-Speech
Translator,” AKA Mastor combines speech recognition, machine
translation, and text-to-speech technologies to create a common
translation engine that is apparently independent of languages. The
system develops translation patterns off of regular conversational use
of the languages, and is purportedly as speedy as a human translator –
and provides a text read-out of the conversation to boot. DARPA has had
similar tech in the works for a while,
but now IBM’s Mastor is apparently ready enough for actual use, since
they’re shipping 35 Mastor-equipped ruggedized laptops to Iraq as a
trial run, and will consider even more depending on how these work out.
So far Mastor works for translation between English and Iraqi Arabic,
standard Arabic or Mandarin. The system can run on a laptop or PDA, and
should be making its way to commercial channels such as medicine before
long.

technorati tags:translator, iraq, ibm, mastor

HP researchers patent foot activated user interface – Engadget

Nevermind those fancy thought-based biometric systems and brain controlled computers,
as a clever group of inventors have patented a foot-activated user
interface that can bring mousing abilities to those without hands /
arms (or a suitable amount of dexterity). Three blokes working for HP’s
UK operation have developed a prototype in which humans can use their
feet in order to mimic cursor movements more traditionally handled by
the keyboard’s right-hand man.
A magnetic sensor is affixed to one foot, while a transmitter emitting
“pulsed magnetic signals” is clipped onto the other, and as the
pulsating foot wiggles about, the relative distance and position is
calculated and converted into cursor movements on screen. The designers
have suggested that “twists” could be understood as “right / left
clicks,” while “sliding atop the ground” could be translated as
“dragging and dropping.” Aside from adding newfound utility to disabled
individuals who’d like to get their frag on,
the team has visions of creating the ultimate multitasker by “keeping
the hands free” for handling phone calls and TV dinners while operating
a “wearable computer” with their legs. While the folks at HP kick around the idea of releasing this on the market, we’ll be sharpening our foot-eye coordination skills in tense anticipation.

technorati tags:input, devices, foot, mouse

Apple announces Mac Pro – shipping today – The Unofficial Apple Weblog (TUAW)

“The fastest, most configurable Mac ever” indeed. Today at WWDC 2006 (check out our coverage and the chatcast) Apple introduced the Mac Pro, and it might as well come with a pair of hot pads with all-new features like this:

• Two 2.66GHz Dual-Core Intel Xeon “Woodcrest” processors
• 4MB shared L2 cache per processor
• 1.33GHz dual independent frontside buses
• 1GB memory (667MHz DDR2 fully-buffered DIMM ECC)
• NVIDIA GeForce 7300 GT graphics with 256MB memory
• 250GB Serial ATA 3Gb/s 7200-rpm hard drive1
• 16x double-layer SuperDrive (DVD+R DL/DVD±RW/CD-RW)

And the fun doesn’t stop there. You can stuff up to 16GB of RAM inthese beasts now, along with 2TB of storage. With over 1,000,000available BTO configurations, we wouldn’t be surprised if customershave a hard time simply deciding on which Mac Pro they want to throw down their credit cards for.

Also notable: gone are the two or three configuration options from the PowerMacMac Pro’s page in the store. It simply offers the base configuration,which now starts at $2499, and beckons you to click ‘configure’. Justtry not getting lost in options on your way to the checkout.

And now, time for some pr0n. The folks over at PowerMax just got an early shipment of one of those fancy new Mac Prosfrom Apple, so they naturally ripped open the box and gutted thecomputer. Looks like fun, but don’t take our word for it, hit the readlink to head on over and peep those hugemongous heatsinks for yourself.

Mac Pro taken apart!

By Powermax

08/08/2006 10:40 PST

Here’s the box…

Not much has changed here, obviously…

The accessories…

Looks like we are back to the standard power plug, which should be good news for a lot of users.

Here’s the back…

Nice dual gigabit ethernet ports, and the business end of a smokin’ graphics card.

The new front ports

Two drive bays…

Two drive bays open…

The optical drive…

It’s a Sony.

The fan unit…

The fan unit again

Fans removed!

The processor lair!

The processor lair, closer in

The truly gigantic heat sink

Sinks in place

The processor

Yet another shot of the processor location

For some scale…

The drive sleds…

The stock hard disk…

Seagate 7200rpm 250GB

Tha mo-bo

The PCI slots…

Independent power cords…

The RAM riser card being removed

RAM must be installed in pairs on the new riser cards. Each Mac Procomes with two riser cards. Note the oversized heat sinks for the newRAM. Each RAM stick has a small processor which generates aconsiderable amount of heat.

Sliding in the RAM riser…

The RAM riser card ready to go back into its slot, illustrating how it slides in on rails.

The RAM riser cards…

There is an enormous amount of room for RAM in this system, up to 16GB if desired.

Riser cards in the case…

The RAM label

The RAM heat sinks

The sinks are almost the size of some processor heat sinks.

The optical drive sleds

The hard drive lock light glows orange

All 4 hard drive trays lock into place when the back latch isclosed, indicated by the orange indicator. All 4 trays are included.Also, note the power supply is now found at the top of the unit, seenin the upper right of the photo.

Unlocking the hard drives…

Same picture as above, but hard drives are unlocked.

The beauty within

Internal PCI-E slots shown with the high-end NVIDIA Quadro FX 4500with 512MB of GDDR3 SDRAM, and two dual-link DVI ports. Notes from thefield indicate that the new machine’s video cards are non-SLIcompliant.

The side case open

technorati tags:mac, pro, macpro, wwdc, osx

Apple to recall 1.8 million Sony-made batteries – Engadget

As of today, Dell isn’t the only major victim of Sony’s exploding battery fiasco.
(Well, if you don’t count the millions of consumers potentially in
danger — and who does?) Apple has just recalled 1.8 million iBook and
PowerBook laptop batteries, 1.1 million of those in the US and 700,000
abroad. They’ve had their fair share of recalls already, including the
unrelated MacBook Pro battery recall just last month, and another Powerbook/iBook recall
last year, but this one really takes the proverbial cake. Apple says
they’ve received nine reports of overheating, with two incidents of
minor burning and a few claims of “minor” property damage. The laptop
models include the 12-inch iBook G4, 12-inch PowerBook G4 and 15-inch
PowerBook G4, and the recall includes computers sold from October 2003
through August 2006. So unless you’re looking for the next hot pic of a
laptop inferno,
we suppose you’d better head on over to the official recall site and
peep your battery serial number for the official word on your
particular model.

technorati tags:battery, recall, lithium, ion

AMEX Digital launches M505-BDR Blu-ray recording HTPC – Engadget

We’ve known this Blu-ray-equipped media center PC was on the horizon,
and now AMEX Digital is finally dropping the pimped-out M505-BDR in
Europe with even crazier specs than we originally thought. Aside from
sporting that swank single-layer Blu-ray burner — which not only plays
Blu-ray titles, but also upscales normal ‘ole DVDs to “stunning 1080p”
resolution — the M505 apparently houses an unidentified Intel Core 2
Duo processor on the Intel 945P Express chipset, 4GB of DDR2 RAM, 1.5TB
of SATA disk space, and a UK-friendly dual hybrid analog / digital DVB-T
TV tuner. This beast also rocks Gigabit LAN, 802.11b/g WiFi, a FireWire
connector, 8.1 channel HD audio, and, of course, an HDMI port that
doesn’t bother to tout its HDCP compliancy (or lack thereof). This
Windows Media Center 2005-powered machine delivers that crystal clear
HD video via the ATI X1600 graphics card, and AMEX even throws in a
“multi-function” remote to control the action from your oh-so-comfy
loveseat. The drool-worthy device is set to be released to European
markets on August 28th at a cost of near $2,000 — but considering the
lofty prices for standalone Blu-ray burners and players
alike, we’d say this looks like a bargain; and don’t forget the free
Blu-ray title (apparently of your choice) that comes with the purchase,
perhaps sending fence-sitters squarely into the “buyers” camp.

Palm Treo 700wx for Sprint in the wild – Engadget

The 700wx looks to be trickling into Sprint retail locations as we speak, and it seems everything we’ve been told
about the device so far has been spot-on: it really is bound for
Sprint, the addition of the “x” to the name is legit, and it rocks
double the RAM (much to the chagrin of plain ol’ 700w
users everywhere), though we weren’t necessarily expecting the big,
scary floating head on the box. Still no solid word on an official
availability date, but stores who’ve received them have apparently been
instructed to keep them under lock and key until Sprint proper starts
offering them, meaning the previously-reported August 27 date for
business customers still seems perfectly plausible. Now if you’ll
excuse us, we have a Treo 750 rumor mill to attend to.

technorati tags:700wx, sprint

Shuttle XPC SD37P2 supports Intel’s Core 2 Duo – Engadget

It was only a matter of time before we could stuff a shiny new Intel
Core 2 Duo processor into an SFF box, and although its a little late to the party,
Shuttle has unveiled the SD37P2 barebones case and labeled it the
“world’s fastest SFF PC,” even though it doesn’t actually come with a
CPU. Nevertheless, the relatively standard looking black case rocks the
Intel 975x Express chipset supporting the Core 2 Duo, Core 2 Duo
Extreme, Pentium Extreme, and Pentium D. With a FSB of 1,066MHz,
support for 8GB of DDR2 RAM, and dual PCIe (x16) slots sporting ATI CrossFire
technology , you could actually make a halfway decent gaming machine
out of this. The obligatory built-in Gigabit Ethernet and 7.1 channel
HD audio is included, and the design engineers gave you plenty of
reasons to utilize all your off-the-wall USB-powered toys
by tossing in 10 USB ports. The SilentX 400 watt PSU, dual FireWire
connectors, and support for three internal hard drives rounds out the
fairly solid offering — but as usual, Shuttle
likes to throw a premium on their little boxes, and by slapping a €419
($537) pricetag on this barebones kit, we’d probably suggest finding a
less costly destination for your Core 2 Duo.

700p tethered data hack sticks it to the man – Engadget Mobile

Proceed with caution, intrepid readers, but we’ve come across a hack for your brand new Treo 700p
that supposedly makes it nigh impossible for your carrier to
distinguish tethered data from on-device usage. Call us the Robin Hoods
of the tech world if you will, but we know how Sprint and Verizon
charge for tethering, and we don’t like it one bit. Again, this
involves some hackery, so turn back now if you can’t stand the thought
of bricking 400-odd dollars of gear that still has that new-Palm smell.
Otherwise, go forth and, uh, let us know what your bill looks like next
month, m’kay?

Beefed-up Treo 700w for Sprint on September 3? – Engadget Mobile

It’s been no secret that Sprint customers could expect their very own Treo 700wonce Verizon’s exclusivity clause ran its course, but until now, wehaven’t had a date on when it’d all go down. Well, things are finallystarting to come into focus, and if the rumor mill’s aim is true itlooks like it’ll drop on August 27 for business customers and September3 for us lay folk. But here’s the real scoop: folks arewhispering that the device Sprint will bring to market is a souped-up700w re-dubbed the “700wx,” rocking twice the RAM (amid other tweaks).So far this is all unconfirmed, but given the 700w’s paltry 32MB of thestuff, it seems like a reasonable change — and it shouldn’t take longto get this all confirmed with the rumored release date looming near.

The Boy Genius Report: Exclusive Cingular Treo 750 Pics – Engadget Mobile

Field report tidbits from Engadget’s mobile insider, the Boy Genius.

We have to say, the Boy Genius is damned good. Ok, now that thatsout of the way, Engadget Mobile would like present to you exclusivepictures of a Cingular-branded Treo 750. Yeah, that’s right, that’s theTreo Lennon, and as we found out before from BG,is coming to Cingy. Yes it has UMTS. Yes it has HSPDA. And no, itdoesn’t have a front facing camera for video calling — sorry, we’regonna have to live with it. More pics after the break!

More shots of a Treo sans antenna – Engadget Mobile

What week would be complete without the obligatory cameraphone shots of a Treo without an external antenna? Seriously, between this and the 700p,it seems like Palm either doesn’t collect NDAs, doesn’t care whenthey’re violated, or is guilty of perpetrating some of the mostwell-publicized viral campaigns in history. Anyhoo, here ya go. What’snotable here is that we can see the SD slot has moved to the handset’sright side. Follow the break for more shots, though if you’re notconvinced by now that the device is stone-cold real, we’re not surewhat will.

[Thanks, Andrew]

Palm “Lennon” and “Nitro” in the flesh? – Engadget Mobile

Alright, dear readers, proceed with caution. It’s with a healthy dose
of skepticism that we present to you some slightly clearer pictures
(allegedly straight off Cingular’s site) of Palm’s “Lennon” and “Nitro”
GSM devices that our resident rumor MC, The Boy Genius, scooped for ustrack record
is any indication, we can look forward to plenty more leaked shots in
the near future to keep us occupied before (hopefully) a late-2006
release.

Palm’s Ultralight Wireless Headset – Engadget Mobile

Looks like the folks over at Palm aren’t trying to fool anyone with their new Treo accessory; the Ultralight Wireless Headset is a faintly disguised Plantronics
645. The inclusion of DSP solidified the notion that this was indeed
the Plantronics 645 underneath and not the 640; but clarity isn’t the
only thing going for it, other noteworthy aspects of the Ultralight are
its sleek metal carrying case, the ability to charge it using your
Treo’s AC adapter, and even, um, a Palm-branded call/end button. Palm
users can chat in comfort while sporting the new headset; it weighs
just 9 grams, merely half of Palm’s Compact Wireless Headset. Treo
owners looking for a matching headset , look no further — but at
$129.99 direct from Palm, it’ll cost ya.
not long ago. Now, we’ll plainly admit that these look pretty much like
what we’d expect them to look like — but these would also be fairly
trivial ‘Shops to throw together based off the 700w and 700p. Either
way, if Palm’s