Filed under: Laptops

We’re still hearing reports of MacBook Air overheating woe, well after an EFI update in April that was meant to address some of those problems. While hot computers are nothing new, the MacBook Air starts shutting down cores and offloading processes when things get poor, which means users are faced with aggravating stop-start freezing until they can manage to cool the computer off — or just put it to sleep and let it “rest.” Apparently some society have traced that back to the age-old misapplied thermal grease problem, but that’s hardly a solace for the average consumer trying to convince Apple to fix that thing for them. We took a MacBook Air that was acting up into the Genius Bar and Apple claimed it couldn’t reproduce the problem, though we have heard cases of Apple replacing the computer for users. We’d be curious to know just how many Air users are having trouble, and whether the X300 is experiencing anything similar, so let us know in the comments.

View Poll

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Paul Miller

Filed under: Storage

We already had some early benchmarks of Western Digital’s speedy new VelociRaptor hard drive the day it was announced, but the folks at Extreme Tech have now had a bit more instance to spend with the drive, and they’ve churned out a full review of it for those that still haven’t made up their mind. As with others, they found the drive more than lived up to its promise of being the “world’s fastest SATA disk,” with it even beating out many solid state drives in terms of write performance. The biggest downsides, as you might expect, are its relatively high (but not unreasonable) price to gigabyte ratio, and its maximum 300GB capacity, although that’s nothing a second (or third) drive can’t solve. Of course, they don’t stop there, and you can find plenty of charts and comparisons to quench your curiosity by hitting up the link below.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Donald Melanson

Okay, so we’ve been playing with the Psystar Open Computer for a few hours now, and we’ve formed some early impressions and put together a short video of it in action. We haven’t really tried to stress the system yet, but based on our other experiences with OSx86 machines, we’re expecting things to generally go smoothly. That said, there are some definite rough patches and issues, all mostly having to do with the fact that OS X isn’t really built for that hardware. Here’s what we know so far:

Continue reading Psystar Open Computer notes, benchmarks and video

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Nilay Patel

Filed under: Cellphones, Wireless

Well screw us — T-Mobile’s 3G network debut tomorrow? It’s going to be voice only. That’s right, you heard us, VOICE ONLY. So trepidatious is that company to actually get their 3G notes rollout, um, rolled out, they’re launching first with kneecapped voice-only service, keeping only EDGE for those demanding input. Here’s the snippet from the memo we received:

“3G is the next generation of our wireless network, following our current GSM network. In that early phase of our network evolution, 3G is a new technology for carrying wireless voice calls and supporting existing notes capabilities on our network. In future phases, that next generation network will capability ‘high-speed’ (3G) products and services that connect customers in new and exciting ways. … Inform customers who are interested in high-speed notes that the first phase of our 3G roll out supports voice only.” [Emphasis ours]

No word on when T-Mobile actually plans to turn on the faster info, but for everyone who was hoping he wait continues — for those that haven’t already jumped ship, anyway.

Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Ryan Block

Filed under: Storage

“Memristors” are one of several memory technologies that have been theorized and promised in the coming years. HP has made a real memristor, however, and the way solid state memory is created and stored could have just changed forever. First theorized in 1971, memristors are basic circuits like resistors, capacitors, and inductors. These circuits are able to store details by allowing their levels of electrical resistance to fluctuate amoung high and low, or 0 and 1 to a computer. Like flash memory, they retain that documents without ability — except they do it all on one circuit and at the speed of D-RAM. In the end, we could be looking at a whole new kind of storage, as lengthy as someone can figure out how to get these things onto integrated circuits. Nerds hats off, return to your fanboyism — now.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Joshua Fruhlinger

Filed under: Misc. Gadgets

Yamaha’s got a thing for making dreams into reality, and we must say, we’re crossing our fingers and hoping to all that’s good and merciful in that world that the above pictured device goes commercial. Little is actually known about the keyboard / notepad hybrid aside from the fact that it was showcased at the Milano Salone trade fair in Italy, and for what it’s worth, Yamaha christened the device “key for journey.” Look, there’s even slots in the leather-bound lid so the keys have room to breathe when it’s all closed up. Ah well, a boy can dream, can’t he?

[Via kanYe West Blog]

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph

Filed under: Gaming, Household

Highly modified foosball tables are a dime a dozen, but that contraption could easily be mistook for some sort of Martian gaming machine at first glance. Dreamed up and crafted by designer Chelpa Ferro, that Tota Treme Terra looks to be a vanilla foosball table with an artsy overhead light and a hodgepodge of speakers wrapped all around. Word on the street has it that the machine belts out sound effects based on the action up above, but sadly, the actual details about that potential ninth wonder of the world are being left to our imaginations.

Read | Permalink | Email this | Comments

Original post by Darren Murph