Acer's AMD powered Ferrari 1200 Ultraportable

Acer, the third largest vendor in the global PC market has presented the Ferrari 1200 ultraportable laptop yesterday, A year since Acer's Ferrari 1100 ultraportable was released.

The Ferrari 1200 sports an elegant LED-backlit 12.1-inch panel, a carbon fiber cover, a unique ventilation design that "echoes the exhaust pipes of F1 cars" and an "anodized-metal touchpad that resembles the brake and acceleration pedals of a Ferrari car."

You'll also get a bundled BT wireless mouse, an optional Xpress VoIP phone, WiFi module, an AMD Turion X2 Ultra CPU, up to 4GB of DDR2 RAM, a SATA HDD and a fingerprint reader.

Canon Powershot A480

Canon is withdrawing powershot A470 and replacing it with A480. The 10 megapixel A480 is 25% smaller that A470 and features a 3.3x optical zoom with up to 4x digital zoom, 2.5-inch LCD screen, and a DIGIC III processor. It will be available in four different colours, red, blue, black, and silver.

The A480 includes a new simplified button layout for ease of use. With dedicated buttons for zoom, mode and playback and an improved User Interface, it’s as easy to operate as it is to carry.

I am bit skeptical about the powershot range as the models in this range has faltered with the problem of CCD after usage of 1.5 to 2 years.

Specifications:

Sensor	• 1/2.3 " Type CCD • 10.0 million effective pixels
Image Processor	DIGIC III with iSAPS technology
Image sizes	• 3648 x 2736 • 2816 x 2112 • 2272 x 1704 • 1600 x 1200 • 640 x 480 • 3648 x 2048 • 320 x 240
Movie clips	• 640 x 480 @ 20fps • 320 x 240 @ 30fps
File formats	• JPEG (EXIF 2.2) • AVI [Motion JPEG compression] • WAVE audio (mono)
Lens	• 3.3x optical zoom • 37 – 122mm (35mm equivalent) • 6.6 - 21.6 mm • f/3.0 - f/5.8
Digital zoom	Up to 4x
Focus	TTL autofocus
AF area modes	• AiAF (Face Detection/5-point) • 1-point AF (fixed centre or Face Select and Track)
AF assist lamp	Yes
Closest focus distance	1cm from front of lens (Super Macro mode)
Metering	• Evaluative (linked to Face Detection AF frame) • Centre-weighted average • Spot (centre)
ISO sensitivity	AUTO, High ISO Auto (incorporating Motion Detection Technology), 80, 100, 200, 400, 800, 1600
Exposure compensation	+/- 2 EV in 1/3 stop increments
Shutter speed	• 1/60 - 1/2000 sec (factory default) • 15 - 1/2000 sec (total range - varies by shooting mode)
Aperture	f/3.0 - f/5.8
Scene modes	Auto, P, Special Scene (Portrait, Night Snapshot, Kids & Pets, Indoor, Sunset, Foliage, Snow, Beach, Fireworks, Aquarium, Long Shutter, Super Macro), Movie
White balance	Auto (including Face Detection WB), Daylight, Cloudy, Tungsten, Fluorescent, Fluorescent H, Custom
Self timer	2 or 10 sec, custom
Continuous shooting	Approx. 0.8 shots/sec (until the memory card is full)
Image parameters	My Colors (My Colors Off, Vivid, Neutral, Sepia, Black & White, Custom Color (limited))
Flash	• Auto, Manual Flash On / Off, Slow sync, red eye reduction • Range: 30cm - 3.0m (wide), 2.0m (tele)
LCD monitor	• 2.5” TFT • approx. 115,000 dots
Connectivity	• USB (Mini-B, MTP, PTP) • AV out (PAL/NTSC))
Print compliance	• EXIF Print • DPOF 1.1
Storage	• SD, SDHC, MMC, MMCplus, HC MMCplus. • 32MB memory card supplied
Power	• 2x Size-AA Alkaline or NiMH Batteries (Alkalines supplied) • Optional, AC Adapter Kit ACK800
Weight (no batt)	140 g
Dimensions	92 x 62 x 31 mm

Windows 7 performs better than XP and Vista

Windows 7 beta is already outperforming Windows XP and Vista in some informal real-world tasks like boot up, shut down, file maneuvers, installations and other common tasks. ZDNet's Adrian Kingsley-Hughes tested the OS on two test systems, an AMD Phenom 9700 setup and an Intel Pentium Dual-Core E2200 number (with ATI and NVIDIA graphics, respectively).

See the results

Read the full report in details at http://blogs.zdnet.com/hardware/?p=3236

Samsung Yepp YP-P3

Samsung Yepp YP-P3 PMP is on the way. Looks like it's getting an official launch in Korea just ahead of CES.

The Samsung Yepp YP-P3 even has a built-in speaker for those who do not always like to use a headset. 2009 proves to be a very exciting year for PMP and touchscreen devices of all kinds with every new device we hear about.

Specs are :

• 3-inch, 480 x 272 touchscreen as the P2, but with added haptic feedback and
• a new Flash-based UI with customizable widgets,
  
• Bluetooth with A2DP,
  
• the usual codec support for MP3, WMA, AAC, OGG, FLAC audio, AVI/SVI MPEG4., WMV, H.264/AVC videos and JPEG, BMP images. and
  
• a 30-hour audio playback battery life.
  

No US prices yet, but the Koreans out there should look to have scrounged together 239,000 won ($177) for the 4GB, 279,000 won ($207) for 8GB, and 329,000 won ($244) for the 16GB model by the time these ship in early January.

Toshiba Launches Industry's First 512GB Solid State Drive

Toshiba Corp. announced the expansion of their line up of NAND-flash-based solid state drives (SSD) with the industry's first 2.5-inch 512-gigabyte SSD and a broad family of fast read/write SSDs based on 43 nanometer (nm) Multi-Level Cell NAND. The new drives provide a high level of performance and endurance for use in notebook computers, gaming and home entertainment systems, and will be showcased at International CES 2009 in Las Vegas, Nevada from January 8 - 11, 2009.

In addition to the 2.5-inch, 512GB drive, the 43nm NAND SSD family also includes capacities of 64GB, 128GB, and 256GB, offered in 1.8-inch or 2.5-inch drive enclosures or as SSD Flash Modules. Samples of the new drives will be available in the first quarter of 2009, with mass production in the second quarter.

Toshiba's second-generation SSDs bring increased capacity and performance for notebook computers. They utilize an advanced MLC controller, which is also compatible with further advanced processes, that achieves higher read/write speeds, parallel data transfers and wear leveling to optimize performance, reliability and endurance. The drives enable improved system responsiveness with a maximum sequential read speed of 240MB per second (MBps)(2) and maximum sequential write speed of 200MBps enabling an improvement in overall computing experience, and faster boot and application loading times. The drives also offer AES data encryption to prevent unauthorized data access.