I’ve seen some large lappies before, but these new Acer Aspire GemStone Blue models take the cake. As you can see here, they feature 18″ displays. What the shameless self-promotion doesn’t talk about is the humongous case and its meaty 9 pound heft. Sure, it sports a Core 2 Duo CPU, up to 4GBs of RAM, space for two hard drives with the max configuration offering twin 320GB units, an nVidia GeForce 9500M or 9650M GS with up to 1280MB of TurboCache (meaning 512MBs of dedicated VRAM and up to 768MBs of shared system RAM), and a plethora of other features generally expected on modern lappies. Prices start at US$3,000, but you can bet that the fully loaded models are quite a bit more.

written by Tyler Regas

Toshiba says the their new 400GB 2.5″ SATA 5400RPM drives will be ready to ship in September. If you’re looking for a 7200RPM drive for your lappy, those will be out next month in 80-320GB capacities. Sorry kids, no pricing, but expect around or under $200 and less for everything, especially if Toshiba intends to remain competitive.

written by Tyler Regas

I am absolutely thrilled! Diddlebug hasn’t been updated in nearly four years, which is amazing. This classic Palm application is one of the single most useful applications ever made for mobile devices ever, and I’m not overstating the facts. The funny thing is that Diddlebug is really nothing more than a drawing program with an alarm system built in. Just draw a picture or write yourself a note, set a countdown timer or a future date and time, and go about your business. When the time comes, it lets you know it. Its also free. Now, how can you beat that!

written by Tyler Regas

I’m still on the fence about the Envy 133 from Voodoo. The biggest killers for me are Vista and its MacBook like specs with MacBook Pro pricing. The one cool thing is that the Envy 133 features an implementation of the Splashtop’s instant-on mode, dubbed the Voodoo IOS. Apparently, you can boot into the IOS in five seconds and from there access trim versions of Skype, Firefox, Pidgin IM, and view your pictures, listen to music, and watch videos and DVDs. If you get tired of the lack of functionality you can take a lunch break to load Windows Vista. Laptop Magazine has complete coverage of this feature, including a video of it in operation.

written by Tyler Regas

Ok. This is just plain sick/kewl/nerd to the extreme. This is a screenshot of Windows 3.1 running in DOSBox on a Nokia N810 Internet Tablet. No, this is not me. I’m honestly not this cool, though I may try to do it some day. There were a couple of interesting bits in the comments on PicasaWeb, the source for the following image. One, there was a lot of interest in this and two, there was a guy whose handle is DosFreak. Wow.

written by Tyler Regas

It seems that when smart people do stupid things, the stupidity of the stupid thing increases in the volumetric value of its stupidness. I like to consider myself a smart person, but I might have to downgrade myself based on what I did this weekend. Of course, since this is teh intarwebs, I’m going to share the extent of my stupidity in the hopes that others might not delve where I’ve gone. So, what did I do on Saturday afternoon which warrants so much personal loathing and this discourse for the public good?

I almost killed my MacBook Pro. Continue reading »

written by Tyler Regas

One of the hottest of the micronic lappies going around is Dell’s hot E, which has been referred to as the Inspiron Mini. Engadget is elucidating that the E will eviscerate the Eee in every eventual market, and with less letters. If the US$299 E ships as indicated, it could have a chilling effect on the rest of the Netbook market, due solely to Dell’s sheer size in the world markets and their marketing power. Personally, I’m looking forward to the device, especially if it does come ship in that slick package and offer a WWAN option which sits alongside Wi-Fi and Bluetooth. Lets just say that my mourning period for the snuffed-before-its-prime Palm Foleo will have ended handily.

written by Tyler Regas

Intel’s gone and introduced the Centrino 2 chipset family and, in its wake, along comes Lenovo pimping their new IdeaPad U330 at the same time. The U330 is clearly aimed at the Apple MacBook market as it sports a 13.3″ glossy widescreen display, a 2GHz Core 2 Duo CPU, 2GBs of DDR3 RAM, 256MBs of discreet VRAM, a 320GB SATA drive, a camera, HDMI output, an unspecified optical drive, and it ships with Vista Home. Feh. There’s no princing details and we don’t have a date yet, but Lenovo is saying it will ship this fall. [Source: Gizmodo]

written by Tyler Regas

According to those tiny pundits over at Lilliputing.com, Fujitsu-Siemens is jumping on board the Netbook train with an 8.9″ Amilo line entry. There are no technical details at this time, but its likely to be an Atom-based system, unless VIA was able to make a strong pitch to the company with two countries and a funny name. Estimated street pricing is around €300-400, though that’s just standard fare and now typical in this space and by no means a guarantee. There’s also no information about regional availability. Ah well.

written by Tyler Regas