Jul 20 2010

Watermelon cooler push cart: perfect for those sultry North Carolina summers

Category: Industry Happenings — admin @ 6:18 am

Crazily enough, the device you’re staring at above — jaw solidly on the floor, we’re sure — is real. As in, you can purchase one for you and yours. So far as we can tell, this here watermelon cart (priced at ¥19,950, or a whopping $231) serves to keep your voluptuous fruit cool when being transported from market to mouth, but everything beyond that is lost in translation. What’s curious, however, is that this seems like a device created and sold exclusively in Japan. If we had to bet, though, we’d say it was originally dreamed up by a farmer in eastern North Carolina — you know, the home of watermelon Cook-Out milkshakes, an official watermelon license plate and roads where chop-top school buses are frequently used as watermelon hauling machines.

Watermelon cooler push cart: perfect for those sultry North Carolina summers originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 20 Jul 2010 05:57:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Jun 30 2010

Documents show that Dell knowingly sold defective computers, misled those needing support

Category: Industry Happenings — admin @ 8:18 am
Documents show that Dell knowingly sold defective computers, misled those needing support

What happens when capacitors go bad, spewing out their tangerine innards like the ones in the photo above? Components die. In the early to mid naughties there was a rash of failures, the so-called “capacitor plague” that affected many manufacturers thanks to millions of bogus units filled with an electrolyte mixture that was a bit off. However, nobody was quite affected like Dell. The company took a $300 million charge in 2005 to cover costs related to the faulty machines that went out with these components, and now we’re getting a better picture of just how bad it was — and continues to be.

According to recently released documents stemming from a three year-old lawsuit, Dell not only knew about the bogus components but some of its employees were actively told to play dumb, one memo sent to customer service reps telling them to “avoid all language indicating the boards were bad or had issues.” Meanwhile, sales teams were still selling funky OptiPlex machines, which during that period had a 97 percent failure rate according to Dell’s own study. (And you thought the Xbox 360 had problems.) With that on the minds of shoppers, plus Throttlegate and some other recent laptop quality issues, we have to think consumer confidence for Dell must be at an all-time low at the moment.

[Image courtesy of Bushtails]

Documents show that Dell knowingly sold defective computers, misled those needing support originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 30 Jun 2010 08:07:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 25 2010

Nokia’s Instant Community lets you socialize with those around you without actually meeting them (video)

Category: Industry Happenings — admin @ 8:17 am
Nokia's Instant Community lets you socialize with those around you without actually meeting them (video)

Talking to people is hard, and talking to strangers? That’s, like, really hard. Nokia has a better way: the Nokia Instant Community. It relies on ad-hoc WiFi connections from (Finnish) smartphones to create dynamic communities into which people can join. Once connected, trendy but introverted festival-goers can chat, exchange photos, and even download each other’s bootlegs of the very show they’re attending! It’s the work of the Nokia Research Center along with Tampere University of Technology, and while it’s just a prototype at this point, you can get the full walkthrough after the break — the full, monotone walkthrough.

Continue reading Nokia’s Instant Community lets you socialize with those around you without actually meeting them (video)

Nokia’s Instant Community lets you socialize with those around you without actually meeting them (video) originally appeared on Engadget on Tue, 25 May 2010 08:01:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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May 24 2010

Intel officially outs Core i3, i5 and i7 ULV processors for those ultra-thin laptops

Category: Industry Happenings — admin @ 11:18 am

We can’t say this one is much of a surprise, but it sure is good to get the official details on Intel’s latest ultra-low voltage Core i3, i5 and i7 processors. Just as we had heard, the new dual-core CPUs will be landing this June, and though they won’t be replacing the current Celeron and Pentium ULVs on the market, they’ll certainly provide a more powerful option for the “ultra-thin” category. All the new 32-nanometer Nehalam chips are said to provide 32 percent better performance than previous ULVs, but a 20 percent power reduction than standard-voltage Core 2010 CPUs. And just like those regular Core 2010 processors, these get the same Turbo Boost and Hyper-threading performance advantages. All the processors have TDPs of 17 watts which is what is enabling the 50 percent improvement in thermal performance. That’s all the technical details Intel shared this morning, but it shouldn’t be long before we up and testing the performance and battery life of these new chips in slim laptops from MSI, Lenovo and Acer. Until then, there’s the full press release after the break.

Continue reading Intel officially outs Core i3, i5 and i7 ULV processors for those ultra-thin laptops

Intel officially outs Core i3, i5 and i7 ULV processors for those ultra-thin laptops originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 24 May 2010 10:59:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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