New Technology 4 U

A group of Chinese consumers filed a complaint  against HP laptops, to ‘The General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine’, China’s product-quality agency claiming that Hewlett-Packard Co. discriminated against them in its handling of a problem with faulty graphics components in some of its  Laptops.

According to Laweach, a non-profit website that has gathered these Chinese consumers together, some of HP’s laptop computers sold after 2007 have problems of screen splash or overheating. The website said that these problems were caused by a video card made by Nvidia, a chip manufacturer who once admitted to defects in some of its video card products.

The Chinese consumers said though HP had offered to extend the maintenance period for some types of laptop computers, this was not an effective solution for them. They said that HP was also publicly discriminating against Chinese consumers by offering them a maintenance service different from that provided to consumers in the United States.

More than 170 consumers made complaints to China’s General Administration of Quality Supervision, Inspection and Quarantine.
The consumers claim that HP failed to offer them the same extended warranty that it gave to U.S. customers in response to a problem that emerged more than two years ago involving graphics chips in laptop PCs.

The Chinese consumers request compensation, a public apology and a recall of the affected computers.

On Wednesday Spanish police collaborated with the FBI to smash the world’s biggest network of virus-infected computers, which hijacked over 13 million PCs, stealing credit card details and other data, and arrested three people who ran the operation.

The men were suspected of running the Mariposa botnet, named after the Spanish word for butterfly, Spain’s Civil Guard said on Tuesday.

Mariposa had infected machines in 190 countries in homes, government agencies, schools, over half of the world’s 1,000 largest companies and at least 40 big financial institutions. “It was so nasty, continue reading…

Apple now charges $1.99 per episode for standard resolution and $2.99 for a high-definition episode. Those are very high prices for content that is free over the air or with a cable subscription and that can be viewed only on PCs, iPods and iPhones.

But with the March release of the iPad, Apple is hoping that reasonably priced content plus the iPad’s huge, high-resolution screen will make paying for TV content more compelling.

The Apple Store Experience

The Wall Street Journal reported that Apple met with at least one network last week to discuss the 99-cent pricing model. Apple is trying to “ignite the video part of iTunes,” a source said. Apple had originally been trying to strike subscription deals with TV networks and producers, but those efforts have stalled.

Will 99-cent TV shows drive adoption of the iPad? “That in itself probably won’t drive a lot of sales,” said Greg Sterling, principal analyst with Sterling Market Intelligence. Sterling believes the conventional wisdom that consumer disinterest in the iPad will dissipate when the device actually appears.

continue reading…

$550 Apple iPad Tablet Computer Releasted at March: Apple brings out its iPad tablet computer in late March, but other companies are already preparing a new batch of tablets running Windows. Judging by a model that’s already out, the $550 Archos 9, the Windows tablets have a rough road ahead.

Windows just doesn’t seem at home when squeezed into this 1.8-pound slab, with a touch-sensitive screen that is 8.9 inches on the diagonal. It’s sluggish, and the controls aren’t adapted to the size of the screen or the fact that there’s no real keyboard or mouse.

On-screen keyboards kept popping up in the wrong places, blocking the fields where I wanted to enter text and the buttons I wanted to push. I struggled to hit the little “x” in the corner of the window to close it, so I had to fall back on guiding the mouse cursor with a small touch pad that’s built into the tablet’s frame.

It’s also a bad idea to couple a touch screen with a slow computer. When I pressed an on-screen button, I found myself wondering whether the computer had failed to register the press or whether it was just working on reacting. I kept jabbing at the screen like I was poking at a lazy dog, just to be on the safe side.

Archos 9 is lethargic because it runs Windows 7 on a processor that’s even slower than those used in netbooks — those slow, small laptops. How slow is it? Windows rates computers from 1.0 to 7.9 based on how fast the hardware is, and places the Archos 9 at a 1.3 — the lowest I’ve seen. It takes nearly two minutes to boot up. TV shows on Hulu.com stutter so badly they’re like slide shows with a soundtrack.

It’s a little disconcerting that the Windows tablet experience is so poor, nine years after Microsoft made a big push for its Tablet PC version of Windows XP. Clearly, Microsoft hasn’t really adapted Windows properly for this type of device.

continue reading…

When it comes to keeping its future devices secret, Apple is a master at it. Just take a look at all the hype surrounding their rumored tablet PC and new iPhone for 2010, if you are to believe all that you read then the iSlate as it is known will be launched in March, and a new iPhone will launch in April or May.

There are so many questions left unanswered, and we hope that Apple will answer all of them at their press event on January 27. The Apple Tablet PC will either be called the iSlate or iPad; we reckon the former sounds better.

Then there is the 2010 iPhone, we are not certain if this new phone will just be called “iPhone 4G”. The smart money is that 4G will be included, not because it will offer 4G support, but because it is the 4th generation of iPhone from Apple.

Recently a new spy gadget has been introduced, known as the Super Slim Video Pen 2. This latest gadget is capable of capturing high definition video at a resolution of 1,280 x 960 pixels at a frame rate of 30fps and can also capture images stored in JPEG format. This new pen measures 14cm in length and weighs just 30g which is really cool as a spy gadget. The HD Spy Pen internal memory can handle up to 1.5 hours of recorded video, and can be extend its limit by adding a microSD card up to 16GB in capacity. To start spying using this latest gadget, user just needs to press a button on top of the pen and that’s it. After capturing your video you can now transfer the files to your PC by connecting the pen via USB into your computer. This spy gadget is available in Japan with a price of $65.

Seagate has introduced its new 500GB HDD named BlackArmor PS110 boasting the latest USB 3.0 specifications and comes along with USB 3.0 Kit which includes a PC express card so that your existing laptops could be equipped with enhanced USB 3.0, the speed increase is phenomenal when compared to USB 2.0 based devices, as you can now transfer a 25GB high definition movie in just 4 minutes compared to 14 minutes with USB 2.0.
continue reading…

MSI has recently released a media streamer that is designed to be used with your HDTV. Known as the MSI Movie Station HD100, the gadget delivers Full HD video to your HDTV in 1080p and supports HDMI, Component and Composite connections.

You can also choose to connect the device to your PC via WiFi or Ethernet. The device also has two USB 2.0 ports, so you can play your videos direct from a USB flash drive or an external hard drive. The MSI Movie Station HD100 will be available in Germany for about $142. Unfortunately, there is no info on when we will see the MSI Movie Station HD100 in the US and UK.