HP Offers AMD Processors on New Notebook Lineup

HP today introduced a new consumer notebook lineup that offers customers a choice of processor technology, award-winning support and value beyond the competition.
Select HP Pavilion and Compaq Presario consumer notebook PCs will, for the first time, include the option of AMD Turion 64 mobile technology. AMD's latest mobile processor technology delivers 32-bit performance today and can run tomorrow's 64-bit applications, in addition to offering enhanced virus protection.

As with the company's consumer desktop PCs, HP consumer notebooks come with a full year of support, significantly longer than some competitors' 90-day offerings.

Offering more complete customer support is one way HP provides consumers with the best customer experience possible. In fact, the Customer Respect Group, an international research and consulting firm, recently awarded HP top honors in a study of how well high-tech companies treat their customers online. HP was the only company to earn an "Excellent" rating in both privacy and email responsiveness. The study showed HP's one-hour email response time was particularly impressive considering the significant challenges noted for much of the high-tech industry.

HP updated its consumer notebooks in the categories of: thin and light, value, entertainment and desktop replacement. Specific series include:

-- The award-winning HP Pavilion dv1000 Entertainment Notebook PC
-- HP Pavilion ze2000 Series Notebook PC - available with AMD Turion 64 mobile technology
-- HP Pavilion zv6000 Series Entertainment Notebook PC
-- HP Pavilion dv4000 Series Notebook PC
-- HP Pavilion zd8000 Series Notebook PC
-- Compaq Presario M2000 Series Notebook PC - available with AMD Turion 64 mobile technology
-- Compaq Presario R4000 Series Notebook PC
-- Compaq Presario V4000 Series Notebook PC
-- Compaq Presario V2000 Series Notebook PC - available with AMD Turion 64 mobile technology

Detailed information on available configurations and features, including the AMD Turion 64 mobile technology processor, is available at www.hp.com/notebooks .

Configure-to-order models of select new notebooks are available now direct from HP. The entire lineup is expected to be available later this month. HP offers a one-year limited warranty for notebooks that includes technical support, parts and labor as part of its HP Total Care portfolio of services.

ARM asks Khronos for OpenCL nod for Midgard GPU

(Phys.org) -- ARM wastes no time taking every opportunity to prove its reputation as "GPU computing" kingpins. GPU computing is seen as having a bright future, where the computational performance of the GPU, which was historically used for graphics, is harnessed to augment the main processor. The result is improved performance and energy efficiency. Earlier this week, ARM announced that its Mali-T604 graphics processing unit was submitted for OpenCL 1.1 Full Profile conformance to the standards overseer, Khronos Group.

This is seen as a significant step in advancing the future of mobile ARM is a Promoter Member of Khronos and has representatives participating in OpenCL and other working groups.

Fujitsu launches 'easy-easy' seniors' phone

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Japan's Fujitsu launched a new mobile telephone for the elderly on Wednesday, its latest "Raku-Raku" or "easy-easy" model, with a large, crisp display and one-touch Internet access.

Users of the phone, designed in Japan for telecom giant NTT, have access to a special website with travel and gourmet information tailored to the needs of senior citizens, as well as news, weather and transport details.

The waterproof clamshell model also features an application called "Naoko Takahashi's Walking Clinic", named after an Olympic gold medalist and former marathon runner, which analyses the user's stride.

The phone boasts an 8.1-megapixel "smart camera" that can take pictures automatically when it detects that the subjects are smiling, and sounds an alarm when a finger obscures the lens.

Fujitsu's previous Raku-Raku phones have sold more than 17.8 million units since 2001 in Japan, a rapidly greying society with one of the world's longest life expectancies and lowest birth rates.

Japan.

Epson Develops A6-Size Electronic Paper with World's Highest Resolution Using Plastic Substrate

Seiko Epson Corp. has successfully developed A6-size (7.1 inches on the diagonal) electronic paper using a plastic substrate. Drawing on Epson's original SUFTLA technology, the new electronic paper achieves Quad-XGA resolution (1536 x 2048 pixels) – the world's highest – and shows the potential for increasing screen size. The development was announced on June 9 at the Society for Information Display (SID) international symposium held in San Francisco.

Epson has long been working to develop and manufacture low-power-consumption, space-saving electronic devices. At the cutting edge of these efforts, R&D has focused on thin, light and flexible devices that can be reshaped as needed, and that can become the technology that drives electronic equipment for a ubiquitous networked society. In the course of such development, Epson has amassed a range of proprietary technologies including low temperature polysilicon thin film transistors (LTPS-TFT) and SUFTLA, which enables the transfer of TFT circuits to flexible substrates.

As outlined below, the new electronic paper draws on a number of original Epson technologies and has a range of features suited to portable displays.

1. World's highest resolution
LTPS-TFT formed on a plastic substrate using SUFTLA technology gives this electronic paper Quad-XGA resolution – the highest in the world. This ensures that even the smallest letters on a portable display are fully visible.

2. High contrast guaranteeing high-quality display
With a contrast ratio of 10:1, the new technology achieves the same levels of visibility as images printed on ordinary paper.

3. Narrow border and simple interface
Forming peripheral drive circuits with LTPS-TFT creates a simple structure with very few external terminals, that result in a borderless flexible display, even with the drive circuits included.

4. Low power consumption
Data display does not require power – a memory function ensures that information does not disappear even if the power is turned off. Maximum drive voltage even for editing information is just 6 volts, showing that the display itself consumes very little power.

5. Larger screen
The expanded screen size, from around 2 inches in existing models to A6 size (7.1 inches on the diagonal), is evidence of potential for even bigger screens in the future.

Epson will examine the potential of a range of applications for the technology and conduct further research and development with a view to its practical use.

Source: Seiko Epson

Intel Launches High-Performance 90-nm Multi-Level-Cell Nor Flash Memory

Intel today announced it is shipping in volume the industry’s first 90-nanometer multi-level cell (MLC) NOR flash memory device. The new Intel StrataFlash Cellular Memory (M18) delivers faster performance, higher density and lower power consumption than the previous 130nm version to meet the increasing demand for feature-rich cell phones equipped with cameras, color screens, Web browsing and video.

“Flash memory is one of the driving technologies in enabling the next generation of cell phone applications,” said Darin Billerbeck, vice president and general manager, Intel Flash Products Group. “The M18 delivers to cellular designers the unique combination of performance, density and low power required for today’s phones. Moreover, the M18 is built on Intel’s reliable and cost-effective fifth generation MLC technology and 90nm process lithography.”

The M18 offers the fastest read speeds in the industry, enabling the new flash memory to operate at the same bus frequency as next-generation cellular chipsets – up to 133MHz. This speeds user application execution because the interaction between the chipset and memory operation is faster than in the 130nm version. With write speeds of up to 0.5MB/second, the M18 supports 3MP (mega pixel) cameras and MPEG4 video. OEMs benefit from lower production costs that result from factory programming speeds of up to three times faster than prior 130-nm versions.

The M18 consumes one-third the energy to program and about half the energy to erase than prior generation products, and offers the new Deep Power Down operation mode, all for improved battery life. The M18 also increases the NOR flash density reach, with single chip solutions of 256 Mb and 512 Mb and standard stacked package solutions up to 1 Gb. Intel’s industry-leading standard stacks combine NOR and RAM in multiple bus architectures, and improve OEM time-to-market and supply-line flexibility.

Intel is working across the cellular ecosystem to help customers reduce integration time, increase performance and optimize reference design platforms. According to Billerbeck, Intel has worked with leading cellular chipset vendors such as ADI, Philips, Infineon and MediaTek in addition to such operating system vendors as Symbian and MontaVista to help ensure their products are ready for the 90nm M18 product family. Intel has design wins with eight cellular OEMs, including NEC and Sony Ericsson.

Source: Intel

Early Microsoft Office 15 screenshots are out

Some screenshots have appeared online of Microsofts Office 15 productivity suite following a Technical Preview release that was provided to a number of businesses and partners last month. All applications within are designed to run as standard on Windows 7 or 8 with the ribbon interface that we saw introduced in Office 2007 making its return yet again.

However, things have been changed up extensively this time around with more of a Metro oriented twist to the interface. For one, the ribbon will now be collapsed by default and things like the gradients, panels and dividing lines which were common place previously appear to be mostly removed; all in Microsofts efforts to make Metro a less cluttered, cleaner experience.

Another new feature of Microsofts next-gen Office suite is the ability to broadcast select documents online. This is more or less an expansion of the "Broadcast Slide Show" feature in Powerpoint 2010 where all other Office applications have a similar functionality referred to as "Present Online". The function ties in with Windows Live where your documents are broadcasted.

While its still got fair ways to go before release (theres a public beta due out in the summer which is expected to have most of the new Office 15 features implemented), it looks like the next instalment of Office will be giving us some more real-estate to work with, thanks to its minimalistic layout that should integrate quite well with the Metro UI.

For the remaining screenshots, head over to the source folks.

Source: The Verge

ElcomSoft Breaks iPhone iOS4 Encryption

...press release of the company states:

"ElcomSoft Co. Ltd. enables enhanced and near-instant forensic access to encrypted information stored in iPhone devices, and updates Elcomsoft Phone Password Breaker with tools that can access protected file system dumps extracted from iPhone devices, even if the data is hardware encrypted by iOS 4.While iPhone backups store a lot of information about the usage of an iPhone device, they dont have everything. Forensic wise, dumping the contents of the physical device is the only proper way to handle an investigation. A decrypted dump of the file system can be analyzed by certified, highly advanced forensic tools."You should not be worried about your datas safety though, unless you are planning to do something illegal and getting arrested. As it is clearly mentioned in the press release, a forensics expert needs to get a hold of the device itself in order to retrieve any data.Source : ElcomSoft Press Release