Hardware posts

Mikio Katayama, Sharp’s president, is a man not in the business of making weak-assed claims, touting Sharp’s upcoming e-reader as a rival for the iPad. Considering the iPad is much more than an e-reader (okay, not that much more), such a claim would seem ludicrous. But Katayama’s bold as hell. Katayama likes things extra-spicy. Likes shaking things up. But while we puzzle over Katayama’s confidence, the Sharp e-reader is still turning out to be a pretty interesting device. Out later this year, the device will employ a colour display and utilize the new XMDF file format for e-books, which allows…

Sometimes, I like to think I’ll be famous for something, some day. In fact, on a good day, I firmly believe it. I pound my fist on my desk and declare knowingly that there’s nothing but sweet life ahead. I think, sometimes, we all have that feeling of invincibility. That we’ll overcome any obstacle. That we’ll be celebrated. That we’ll be seen. So, really, I don’t think Acer chairman JT Wang is entirely batsh*t for making the claim that by the time the tablet market has ‘stabilized’, Apple’s share of it will have plunged from 100% (okay, not really 100%, but not far off) to 20-30%. JT is a firm believer…

You never really sit and think that there could be someone out there, actually keeping track of the internet. That there’s a man – or, more likely, collection of men, and by all rights probably some women, too – sitting around, crunching numbers and tabulating all the internets of the world. If there is such an entity, it is undeniably IMS Research, who have been tracking the installed base of internet-ready equipment for some time. So what’s the big news? According to IMS, the internet will see its five billionth device plugged in sometime this month – I would presume, of course, that their projection…

Think your car is pretty fast? Well why not try going from stopped to 100 MPH and back stopped in about four seconds? Well your car probably fails that test. But that could be a reality if you were cruising in a Formula 1 race car. Unfortunately, you probably won’t ever sit in the seat of an F1 car; however, we might just have the next best thing. It’s called the BRD 06 Full Car Motion Simulator, and you’ll need an entire living room (or two) worth of space just to fit this bad boy in your home. It measures in at approximately 16 x 6 feet, weighs nearly 1,500 pounds, and features enough carbon fiber to make your…

Apple has been fighting hard against the jailbreak community for years now. Every update Apple dishes out feels like its a direct punch to the kidney to those wishing to install third-party applications to their device. Another heavyweight, Motorola,  is taking large steps to lock down their new devices as well. Efuse Chip The new Motorola Droid X which touts impressive specs such as a 1ghz processor, 4.3” high resolutions screen, an 8 MP camera, and an impressive HDMI output up to 720p. It is currently running the latest version of Android (2.1), with the understanding that when Froyo (2.2)…

Dell is so cute. Remember that totally handy OS guide they posted about how to choose between Windows and Ubuntu? This is the same kind of cute. In a bid to compete with Apple, Dell is amidst an ‘Apples to Apples’ campaign which sees its Studio line go head to head with none other than the MacBook Pro. Both are powered by the Intel Core I7, and Dell’s 15″ model is $950 bucks, compared to the Macbook Pro 15-inch’s $2199 tag. Seems like a steal for comparable power. But Dell’s not being entirely honest, not only conveniently omitting the fact that Dell’s I7 is a 1.73GHz chip (next to Apple’s 2.66GHz), but also…

Blackberry is hoping to get all up in the iPad’s business with a new tablet device being released in November, claim a fuzzy source of “two people familiar with RIM’s plans”. The device will be roughly the same dimensions as the current iPad. The name of the device will be Blackpad, and will feature a full touchscreen and a slideout QWERTY keyboard for typing e-mails, which, let’s face it, would be a nice addition to the current iPad. The Blackpad is just one of many tablet devices slated for later this year and in early 2011 to try to grab some of the market share away from Apple’s iPad….

Oh, hi there. You okay? You look a little red. Y’know what, that’s probably the burning desire you have to know about everything Apple released yesterday that wasn’t a trackpad. You look bloody awful. Here, let me tell you about this stuff so you can cool down a bit, yeah? Yeah. Let’s go over the key features. The New iMac $1299+ A dual- or quad-core Intel Core i3, i5, or i7 now rocks out with its socks out, meaning the Core 2 Duo is now relegated only to the Mac Mini. Graphics are now discrete, which means dedicated memory on its own card. The screens have adopted the iPad’s IPS technology, giving the iMac…

Maybe you’ve heard of Harrison Krix. But you probably haven’t, so let me give it to you straight: this man is awesome. A prop designer based in Atlanta, Krix’s work speaks for itself. And frankly, no one will ever be able to say he isn’t one of the biggest Daft Punk fans currently among the human population of Earth. Taking 17 months out of his life to develop the ultimate homage, Krix has built an Arduino-powered working replica of Guy-Manuel de Homem-Christo’s trademark blinky-shiny LED helmet. If you’d like to know how to make your own, simply watch the video and, as Krix himself advises, “don’t…

You may be reading this on an iPad. Take a moment, and step back, and look at that thing. Just for a moment. Really look at it. All chunky, and huge. iPad? More like… like, i…Big…dumb. iDumb. Yeah. Smart, attractive people who are in the know are waiting it out for the smaller, sleeker, sexier model, aren’t we, guys? Guys? According to Digitimes, Apple could be gearing up to expand its iPad line to include not only the standard 9.7-inch behemoth, but 5.6- and 7-inch models as well. And it could be doing so by Christmas 2G’s+10. The Digitmes source reported that Apple had “recently placed new…