Sennheiser joins the wireless audio dance
Sennheiser has stepped into the Bluetooth headset arena with its rather stylish MM 200.
It will happily link up to any A2DP-compatible device (a mobile phone being the obvious choice), providing you with wireless stereo enjoyment.
But why would anyone want a set of Bluetooth headphones such as these for their mobile? You've still got wires to unravel when you pull them out of your pocket, along with the added drawback of yet another battery to recharge - the MM 200s are quoted to last up to 11 hours.
In some circumstances Bluetooth headphones such as these might be useful - for example when you've got your phone tucked away in a bag - but we reckon most people would be better off buying a standard, non-powered set of buds.
One feature we expect to be top-notch is sound quality, though. Sennheiser very rarely gets this wrong. Its CX 300 buds are exceptional, as is the PC 350 gaming headset we've got on test at the moment.
Sennheiser's MM 200 is priced at £99.99.
Could quick-charge batteries be suitable for laptops?
Still digesting stuff picked up at IFA in Berlin, including details of the SCiB battery Toshiba announced late last year.
It is said to lose only 10 percent of its capacity after 3000 charge-discharge cycles and has a useful life of 6000 cycles, which means that it should last as long as your machine, according to Toshiba. It is more stable than Li-ion batteries, which have a tendency to explode. Best of all it will charge to 90 percent capacity in less than five minutes.
Toshiba lists applications as electric vehicles of various types, including bicycles, household cordless appliances, UPS systems, and storage for wind and solar generators. Notably absent from this list are notebooks and PDAs, and a glance at the specs shows why.
The basic 2.4v 4200maH SCiB cell measures 6.2 x 9.5 x 1.3 cm and weighs 155g. It could presumably be made smaller and stacked up to be suitable for laptops, but that would reduce its capacity.
I work the power density out at around 65mwH/g. Li-ion batteries from a laptop and camera, picked out at random in our labs, had a nominal power density of around 155mwH/g, This means an SCiB battery would have to be around two-and-a-half times heavier to pack the same power.
However Toshiba's man on the stand said he hoped the batteries would be sold into the laptop market. You could see scenarios in which smaller, less capacious versions could be useful.
Untethered devices in the home would not require huge capacities if they topped up shortly after you docked them; similarly some laptop users might prefer a battery that tops up quickly, even if it does not last so long.
Fancy a trek in Ethiopia?
Computer Aid International, which refurbishes PCs for use in developing countries, is inviting IT professionals and PC enthusiasts to join a fundraising expedition across the remote Simien Mountains in Ethiopia.
Everyone who takes part will kit out an Ethiopian school with 20 PCs, providing around 1,000 children with IT skills to help them find work, access higher education, or start a business.
The nine-day expedition, starting next February 28, will include a five-day trek off the beaten track, plus sight-seeing in Addis Ababa and historic Gonder.
It's open to anyone of "average fitness" for just £199, plus "minimum sponsorship".
See here for details; or email ethiopia@computeraid.org or call Stephen Campbell on 020 8361 5540 for an information pack.
Screen snapped by Dragon
I've just finished a review of Dragon Naturally Speaking 10, the latest version of the dictation product (watch out for it on this site or in nbext month's mag) but I didn't have space to include in the review a good illustration of the point I made in a blog last month, about how command interfaces are actually far more natural than point-and-click and that they are coming back with speech recognition.
It happened that I needed to get a couple of screenshots. I had loaded the software onto my MacBook Air, which I have set up to run either the MacOS or Windows. The Mac keyboard does not have a dedicated Print Screen key, and according to the manual you can use Command-Shift-3 instead. I could not get this to work and after about 15 or 20 minutes messing about I suddenly realised that I had not tried Dragon. I switched on the mic, said "Press Alt-Print Screen", and the job was done.
Toshiba plans 512GB SSDs and takes to the WirelessHD air
Toshiba plans to introduce 256GB and 512GB solid-state SATA II drives next year, with a SATA lll 512GB model following in 2010,according to this roadmap posted at the IFA consumer electronics show in Germany.
PCIe mini card drives will hit 128GB by 2010, with PCIe half-crds hitting 256GB,
The company was also demonstrating WirelessHD links capable of bouncing signals off walls, getting round the fact that the connection is directional. The WirelessHD module, like Panasonic's looks on the large side but it has an elegant silvered antennae unit(above right).
Oled, ebooks, smart surfaces, and an ancient Egyptian PC
BERLIN, August 29, Pictured here is the 31in AMOled screen unveiled by Samsung today, surrounded by 14in models. The screens look very impressive, with vivid colours, but closer inspection of the large one showed what look like a few missing pixels dotted about.
Smaller Oled screens are becoming commonplace, but if one shows up with a defect you have not wasted a large panel. But the pictures on the screens look great, so if companies get the manufacture sorted out we might se them on laptops soon.
There were two interesting examples of smart surfaces at the show. The one on the right is being developed by by the Japanese Institute of Information and Communications techology.
It is covered with a metalling matrix that communicates with the machines using a feeble electrical field that induces a tint current in the base of the machines, which can be in any orientation.
In theory the system can be used to transmit power to devices too, but that is niot being done in this demonstration. Regular PCW users may remember that we reported a similar system developed in Cambridge a while back. Few details about those tiny PCs, I am araid, except that they are available in Japaen and are Atom-powered.
In a much more playful vein is the system on the left, an electronic Scrabble board. Each scrabble tile and each position, on the board has an RFID module, so that the state of the board can be relayed to the PC - or to web if you are playing online.
Judging by all the fuss about Scrabulous, and the dispute with the company Hasbro that owns the right to Scrabble, the system could find a big market if it could be made at the right price. It's being developed at the Fraunhofer Institute in Berlin
Pictured on the right
is a picture of Panasonic's Wireless HD modules. I'll be posting another story about the technology tomorrow so I won;t write much about it here.
Walking the halls today reinfocred by first impressions yesterday that screens are getting thinner, more efficient, and bigger, They are also pushing up frame rates. Both Sony and Samsung showed 200Hz screens, refreshing four times faster than the picture they are screening.
The in-between frames are filled in by clever interpolation. Samsung had a demonstration of a 100Hz screen next to a standard model and there was an appreciable difference, though I am not sure you would miss the extra quality if it wasn't there.
Sony is showing the latest version of its ebook reader here but also on show is one called the BeBook from a Dutch company of the same name. It looks rather more elegant that the Iliad, which I reviewed recently, and has a slightly smaller screen that is not touch senstive. It costs £229, which is a little more expensive than the Sony.
Most major vendors are now offering mini-notebooks. One comes from a name from the past, Commodore, the company that produced the much loved Commodore Pet. Or rather from the company that bought the brand Commodore.
As you can see from the picture it looks like a dozen other makes doing the rounds. It has a 10in display and uses a Via C7-M processor, and weighs 1.4Kg.
I have to confess that I have never quite 'got' the craze for modding PCs, though some of the designs can be amusing. The one one the left was entered into a competiton at IFA. The only way yo can tell what it is by peering at the back, where USB ports and drive bays are hidden among the hieroglyphics.
LG X110 netbook includes sat nav
LG's entry into the netbook market, the new X110 range, will include an integrated GPS receiver module as standard for use with satellite navigation software.
The X110, which looks like an MSI WInd but with a keyboard layout more like the Acer Aspire One, will go on sale in late October in the UK. The netbooks will initially be sold through mobile phone outlet Phones4U, including a variety of 3G mobile broadband bundles. Only the Windows XP version will be available.
No pricing information has been released.
Key specs below:
- CPU - Intel ATOM 1.6GHz + 945GSE + ICH7M
- OS - Windows XP Home
- Display - 10-inch WSVGA (1,024x600)
- RAM - 1GB
- HDD - 80GB
- Keyboard - 82 full-size keyboard
- Weight - 1.19kg
- Wireless - WLAN 802.11 b/g , 10/100 Ethernet
WirelessHD sees off UWB for fast links - and oh for an Oled TV!
Vendors have been plugging the green credentials at the IFA consumer electronics show in Berlin, through whether from fear of destroying the planet or under pressure from governments or the market is far from clear. Sharp, Panasonic ad Sony all declared that their latest screens draw less power than previous models.
Sony and Panasonic screens sensing ambient light and adjust the brightness accordingly, saving sometimes 50 percent of the power drain. But as we report today, screens are also getting bigger - the one picture above is 150in.
Also noticeable is that they are using WirelessHD instead of Ultrawideband (UWB) for short-range wireless transfer of high-definition content. Current data rates go up to 4Gbits/sec but the theoretical limit is 25Gbits/sec. Multiple aerials get round the need for lightof-sight opration because the signals bounce of the walls. And of course the 60GHz band is way above the frequencies used for other data links linke Wifi.
Where this leaves UWB is anybody's guess.
Sony's XEL-1 TV (above right and left) looks great though it is very small - about the size of a portable DVD player. No prices are available yet but I guess it will be a long time before we see these screens in notebooks. An advantage of the fact that the Oled pixels generate their own light is that you should be able to switch them off. That means if you are doing something that only uses half the sreen, you don't waste power on the other half.
Cases get cooler as gamers get more power hungry
Coolermaster is best known for its cooling products but it also make systems cases. It has decided to split its product line between those aimed at mainstream users, and those for gamers who tend to have very different requirements.
This chassis (above) the first to be targeted at gamers, is called Sniper and is sold under a new Storm brand - macho names that the company feels will appeal to shoot-'em-up enthusiasts.
The power supply goes at the bottom, which is raised to facilitate cooling, and the space is designed for units draining the equivalent of a two-bar electric fire. There are grommeted apertures near the top rear for water-cooling pipes and the whole chassis is perforated to let in air.
The five drive bays slide out for easy access and a space behind the where the system board would be allows you to push from both sides when clamping on cooling fans. On the top of the box is a knob (right) controlling all the fans on the board, so that when you have finished gaming you can turn them down for less damanding tasks like writing an email.
USB plugs and leads are sited to prevent the peripherals thefts which are apparently common at gamefests.
The whole box, which will cost around £130, depending on the Euro exchange rate, looks big enough to house an entire data centre. But it is the first and smallest of a projected range to allow for biger water cooling systems. Coolermaster reckons gaming machines are going to get more and more power hungry, wuite the opposite to desktops, mobiles and servers for which designers are begining to count every milliwatt.
Free backup utility will create bootable USB drives
Back-up and data-management specialist Paragon has made its latest Drive Backup 9.0 Express software freely available for download. It offers basic backup and recovery tools and the ability to create a bootable flash drive to enable the recovery of entire systems.
