Voodoo’s new Envy 133 will be the thinnest laptop on the market at 0.7″. It matches Intel’s most holy Metro concept laptop, and with good reason: Says Voodoo, the Envy 133 was “developed using the smallest available Intel Centrino technology and elements from an innovative Intel reference design.” This means that, when it goes on sale, the Envy will bump the MacBook Air—at 18mm thick in the middle—off the throne. Before you jump to the comment box, YES, there HAVE been even thinner notebooks, though none with this little compromise in power.
I almost don’t care what’s inside Voodoo’s Omen desktop, beyond the usual gaming PC bombast —quad radiator and liquid cooling with integrated copper pipes to stave thermonuclear meltdown for extreme overclocking—because this is the best-looking made-to-order gaming desktop I’ve ever seen. It looks like a clean, efficient killing machine, not a disco-in-a-box. (Okay, there is a built-in seven-inch LCD auxiliary display that adds the necessary over-the-top flourish for obscene gaming PCs.) You can party it up with custom lights and paint, but I urge otherwise. But, if you can afford the US$20,000 for the top of the line model, I’m two social classes away from judging you. Update: Full spec sheet below shows what US$20k will buy you.
HP overhauled its feature-packed consumer DV notebooks, the familiar black-and-silver ID getting a “magic chrome” enhancement: otherwise invisible controls light-up when touched. It’s the first new look for the Pavilion line since 2006. The entire line features HD tuners, Blu-ray drives, webcams, fingerprint readers and built-in 3G internet. Here’s a closer look at the line, as well as a newest TX tablet PC and the XB4, the laptop dock equivalent of Batman’s utility belt.
The Pavilion dv4 is the baby of the bunch at 14.1″. It has a maximum 320GB hard drive and 3 USB ports. Base price is $800 for an AMD processor or $1000 for Intel, and they’ll be on sale in September.
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LCD monitors are generally pretty convenient, but many graphic design and video professionals can’t rely on LCDs alone because they just aren’t colour accurate enough for finesse jobs. So they end up double checking images in clunky CRT monitors. HP is addressing this issue with their DreamcColor display. An LED-backlit 24-inch widescreen monitor, the DreamColor features 30-bit imaging with a over billion colours. That’s 64 times the standard LCD colour gamut…at a price that’s only about 10 times the standard LCD (US$3,499). A side-by-side against a mortal monitor after the jump, but will you really be able to tell the difference with that piece of crap you’re using?
Canon Japan today unveils the EOS Digital Rebel XS, a little brother to the critically praised Rebel XSi DSLR camera. This is good news for everyone but Nikon. When I reviewed the Canon XSi, the only thing that saddened me was its price tag, US$200 more than the Nikon D60, but with enough performance to merit the step up. The XS can do almost everything the XSi can do, with a few trade-offs for what sounds like a US$200 price drop. Update: DETAILED spec comparison chart below. AU: Locally this will be the EOS 1000D and succeed the 400D. It will hit shelved in late July for an RRP that is still yet to be determined, although there is an event on July 1 that should announce all that stuff. I’ll keep you posted.
Yes, this is another iPhone post, but embrace it with true love, because it means two things: one, no more damn “iPhone to be available in [insert name of some weird country here] ” articles ever again (stop writing to us, Canada.) And two: you get to see We Are the World one more time. It also means a third new thing: the use of multiple carriers in many countries, an strategy change that may signal a move away from exclusivity in the future.
The Gadget: Case-mate’s Clear Armour film for the iPhone, iPod touch, iPod classic (80GB and 160GB) or BlackBerry Curve protects against scratches using a military-grade Scotchgard film from 3M.
In an otherwise surprise-free keynote today, one without booms or “one more thing”s, one bit of news stood out: White made a quiet return to the iPod family. Sure, it never fully left Apple—remaining the default colour for earbuds, plugs, power bricks, AirPort products and the cheapest MacBooks—but we were finally getting used to a world without white iPods. Does this mean after nine short months put out to the pastures, white is already retro-cool again?
