Most computer enthusiasts will be familiar with Cooler Master thanks their long history of designing cool gaming cases for computers and cooling devices. The company also has a line of accessories and peripherals including gaming mice and mouse pads. The company has announced its latest gaming mouse called the Sentinel Advance 2.
The new mouse uses an advanced laser sensor is capable of over 8000 dpi sensitivity. That should be plenty for gamers that like high sensitivity when playing games. The mouse also has an ultralow liftoff distance to provide gamers the ability to perform actions very quickly. When mice are too slow, the cursor ends up flying around the screen.
The mouse is 128 kB of onboard memory for storing profiles and customizable LED colors. It’s also a modular weight system and can be adjusted for DPI settings on the fly. Cooler Master also has an HD RX synthetic mesh mouse pad to go along with new mouse. Pricing and availability will vary depending on the country you live in for the mouse and the mouse pad.
A new part number for the TiVo Premier DVR has turned up on Amazon and other websites. The new part number is TCD746500 it seems the only difference between this and the original is the price and the amount of storage inside. The new TiVo Premier has 500 GB of storage.
The new 500 GB unit sells for $149 compared to the $80 that the original TiVo premiere sold at. However, the original TiVo Premier had a 320 GB hard drive. The extra storage space is enough for about an additional 30 hours of HD programming.
I think that extra cash is certainly worth the upgrade for more storage. No other differences are noted and the new model hasn’t been officially announced. We expect to hear more soon.
It takes two to video calling, and one may not have control over the two devices being used, but remote iPhone controller Galileo is here to better the overall experience.
The Galileo is an iPhone platform that allows panning and tilting of the iDevice (iPhone or iPod) on the other side of the video chat. With infinite 360-degree rotation and 200-degree per second speed, one can always follow the action, whether it’s classroom lecture, baby monitoring, time-lapse photography, or even real estate showcase. The dock also works as a charging station for the device. It can be controlled by iPhone 4 and above, iPad 2 and above, iPod Touch 4th generation, and web browser.
Makers of the Galileo also provides SDK, which would allow integration of the Galileo’s features with other apps or creation of new apps based on these features.
The Galileo is up for funding at Kickstarter, with a target of $100,000 of pledges. As of writing, it has achieved a little more than half of its target, with 27 more days to go.
Owners of the Motorola Xoom can look forward to a special treat soon. According to some reports, the Motorola XOOM WiFi Android tablet will be receiving an update very soon. It looks like some testers have started receiving emails about a new update that is coming.
We have no idea what it is, so it is likely the usual, like fixing bugs and adding some enhancements to the operating system. Probably nothing major. We should know soon enough. After testing, the should be pushed out to the public right after.
Does anyone care to guess what this update is all about? If you are part of the Motorola XOOM testing group, maybe you can let us know. Don’t keep us in suspense.
What is missing from this keyboard? If you guessed the Windows key? Then you are right. This right here is Vaio’s version of the Chromebook.
Pictures and a manual of Sony’s version of the Chromebook was released in the internet this week. The model is part of the Sony VAIO VCC111 Series.
The lack of the Windows key and the “start Chrome OS” on page2 of the manual leads to a viable confirmation that this model will indeed run on Chrome OS.
Here’s a little tour on the Vaio Chromebook:
The left side sports the power jack, HDMI port, microphone jack and headphone jack while the right side holds the SD card reader and two USB 2.0 ports.
A green light on the front indicates when the laptop is on or off. The bottom view shows a removable battery and Chrome recovery method: inserting a pin into the small hole a la wifi resetting.
Here are some other specs deduced from the leaked pictures:
- Processor: Nvidia Tegra 250 T25 1.2GHz ARM based processor
- Screen: 11.6” diagonal, produced by Samsung
- OS: Chrome OS
- Memory: 2GB RAM
- Ports: two USB 2.0, SD card reader, headphone port, microphone port, HDMI
- Wireless: 802.11 b/g/n and Bluetooth
- Storage: SSD – 16GB
Before this announcement, Samsung and Acer were the only Chromebook manufacturers. Now we only have to wait for the official announcement. Ah waiting, always the painstaking part of knowing things in advance.
Amazon rolled out a big update for their Kindle app for Android and iOS, which now includes support for audio and video as well. Users can now view ebooks with embedded audio and video, thanks to the Kindle Format 8 support. This new format was previously only available exclusively to Kindle’s Fire tablet, which took advantage of the colour screen. Given the fact that a larger chunk of users use the app on other tablets, rather than the Fire, Amazon have decided to add support for the app as well. The format is based completely on HTML 5, which allows for rich multimedia content to be embedded in the ebooks.
Just got better!
Just a week back, Amazon released an update for Kindle, in order to support the new Retina Display on the new iPad. The new update also brings with it some bug fixes and a new feature for the Android version of the app, called ‘Send to Kindle’. The latter allows users to send documents to a user defined e-mail address and have them synced to their Kindle account. Due to the addition of Format 8 support, this opens up a whole new category of ebooks that users can download on their phones and tablets, which was previously not possible. Supported formats, include Microsoft Word (doc, docx) , HTML, RTF, JPEG, Kindle Format (MOBI, AZW), GIF, PNG, BMP and PDF. The update gives users access to over 1,000 children’s books as well as comic books like Batman, Superman, etc. In order to offer a good value prospect for their Kindle Fire tablet, Amazon ported over 400 magazines and newspapers, back in November 2011 and the only way to get them was to get the Fire tablet. Amazon has now realized that creating a niche segment in a world dominated by iOS and Android devices won’t hold much longer and the only way to reach out to the masses was to support other devices as well, which is what they’ve now done.
The competition in the newly formed market segment for tablet computers, i.e. low-cost tablet computers is all set to intensify, as yet another manufacturer has introduced their low-cost wares in the market. WishTel, "a young and dynamic company" have introduced to the market, their low-cost tablet duo with their price tags falling between Rs.4,000 and Rs.5,500. WishTel’s Ira and Ira Thing have been introduced to the market, and understandably, it is being touted to compete with the others in the space, which also include newcomers, like Zync tablet and the i-Tab by Intex Technologies. Quite understandably, WishTel’s Ira Thing, which offers users a capacitive touchscreen on a 7-inch display comes with the price tag of Rs.5,500, while a resistive touchscreen-armed Ira tablet will cost the user Rs.4,000.
Interestingly, WishTel IRA line-up of tablet intends to go the Aakash way, i.e. its makers aim to bring quality education to the masses at affordable rates. Quoting from Wishtel's official website, "IRA has been designed as per specifications from IIT Rajasthan as a part of their low cost computing devices project, under the National Mission on Education through ICT and sponsored by the Ministry of Human Resource. It's ability to innovate and deliver efficiently has made it one of the most competitive players to build products as per customer requirements. Its journey from building proto-types to commercial models has been very exciting and today, Wishtel with its associates possesses in-depth expertise and experience with real time embedded systems and development tools. Thus building an ecosystem of highly integrated hardware and software for Tablet PCs and multimedia boxes."
WishTel’s Ira Thing boasts of the following specifications:
- OS: Google Android 2.2
- Display: 7-inch capacitive touchscreen
- Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g
- USB 2.0 High Speed
- 3G video calling support
- Supports 720p HD video playing
- IE, Media Player, Photo Viewer, Office, MSN, Skype, IREAD, GAME
- Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, MSN Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Maps
- External Microphone, 3.5mm earphone jack
- Battery: 2800 mAh.7V Built-in Li-poly battery
While WishTel’s Ira tablet boasts of the following specifications:
- OS: Google Android 2.2
- Display: 7-inch resistive touchscreen
- Wi-Fi: 802.11 b/g
- USB 2.0 High Speed
- 3G video calling support
- Supports 720p HD video playing
- IE, Media Player, Photo Viewer, Office, MSN, Skype, IREAD, GAME
- Facebook, Twitter, Orkut, MSN Talk, Yahoo! Messenger, Google Maps
- External Microphone, 3.5mm earphone jack
- Battery: 2800 mAh.7V Built-in Li-poly battery
Reports have also been suggesting that WishTel have been in the running for bidding for the second round of the Aakash tablet, after they lost the first round to Datawind. Quoting WishTel's Chief Executive Officer, Milind Shah, the report adds that, "We are eagerly waiting for the same, given an opportunity we are getting ready for this project, it is a very ambitious project. Between ourself and Datawind, price for device was competitive, we lost out on deliverables in terms of service support, maintenance, logistics, taxes and other things. For the device, we were lower against Datawind by 10 cents, or 8 cents to be precise."
