$75 Laptop in the Pipeline?

We have spoken before about the laudable One Per Child () , which aims to costing $100 to children in poor countries and which indirectly spawned the recent of cheap mini , like the Eee , Elonex one et al. Well. has now unveiled a mock-up of a future model, which could sell for as little as $75.

There’s no need to get too excited, the $100 target for the XO1 still hasn’t been achieved (it’s closer to $200…), but like its the XO-2, has some interesting features. These include dual and haptic (pressure) sensitive screens, both daylight (and indoor) viewable. Read More »

Find Your Loved Ones with Intel’s Technology

Undoubtedly, we are heading towards a future that resembles what you might have seen in countless Sci-Fi movies. It’s clear that this is happening because tends to advance at a very high paced rate. Speaking of which, , the leading manufacturer of processors, is working on a search that it hopes will improve the of our search. The company also intends to bring it to its future multimedia platforms.

The is being developed at labs in the US and China and is said to cut down frame-by-frame, and then use image and face recognition applications in order to recognize faces, objects, , locations and movements. According to , the frames are aftwerwards patched together in order to allow search. Read More »

Flippin Good Camcorder?

Here’s a quick heads-up on the next craze, probably… It’s called Flip , from Pure and on the other side of the pond they’ve sold a million of them in the past few weeks. It’s a tiny pocket , around the size of a , so far so ordinary, but it has a couple of tricks up its sleeve. First it’s cheap, prices in the US start at around $99 or roughly £50. It has a built-in , so there’s no faffing around with cables, when you want to watch and download your to your or . Flip stores around an hour’s worth of at quite reasonable , and you can upload directly to You Tube or edit the . comes from a couple of AA and it has a built-in 1.5-inch screen. Read More »

Dell Goes Green

Like car manufacturers maker’s boastings used to be all about price and but the times they are a-changing and market leader is now talking up the future efficiency of its products. is aiming for a 25 percent reduction in consumption on its and machines by 2010 – compared with today’s models – and leading the way will be a new range of ultra small machines, previewed recently at a Los Angeles environmental conference. According to CNET News the tiny uses a new mini ITX form factor , codenamed Eklo, which results in a unit box that is around 80 percent smaller than current desktops and uses 70 percent less .

Laptops Aloud

It’s not long until the holiday season begins and with the widespread of in hotels and airports, and Hotspots all over the place I’m guessing that a lot of you will be taking your with you on your travels this year. The only trouble is they’re so nickable, all it takes is a momentary distraction, and it’s gone. Well, this little freeware isn’t going to stop you doing something daft, but if might just alert you to the fact that someone is interfering with it, and if it does get pinched, they won’t be able get at the data stored on it, at least not easily. Read More »

Intel Six-Pack

It’s called and it’s ’s latest Six- (count-em…) chip. Now why on earth anyone would want a six- chip remains to be seen, dial- have hardly set the computing world alight. It’s all very well having multiple cores, but without the fancy to take advantage of the extra you might as well not bother. Nevertheless, there’s clearly a market for such devices way above the heads of us mere mortals, at the top end of the market, in graphics in particular and will there to help at the back end of this year, and with around 1.9 billion buzzing away inside, it’s bound to do whatever it does really quickly!

Assault on Batteries

batteriesThis kindly looking old gentleman could be your next best friend, if you are thinking about buying an , , or indeed anything powered by ion . His name is Peter Roth and he’s the lead at Sandia Laboratories in Albuquerque. His team is part of a government funded called and it is focusing on Ion , which have a bit of a reputation for popping and bursting into flames. So far it’s only been a bit of a nuisance for owners, with a handful of fried machines and no serious injuries or damage, but imagine what could happen when you get hundreds of them packed tightly together in an . Read More »

Sunny Side Up, Again

solarOne day I will check my archives but I suspect that I have been writing about the imminent arrival of low cost, flexible photovoltaic solar cells for at least the past 20 years. The idea seems simple enough. Instead of making solar cells out of and fragile silicon and glass and in the using more than they’ll ever generate in their useful lives develop a that turns light into and coat or print it onto other materials.

Well, here’s another one, and I’m no longer holding my breath, but as usual it all sounds very promising. Konarka, the company behind the has come up with a flexible ‘ ’ film using printing techniques. Read More »