Sony VAIO S Series laptops announced

Sony’s VAIO laptops is a well established range over the years, and for good reason, too. They’ve proved to be stylish and technologically advanced, although some people might feel that when it comes to value for money, it isn’t quite there just yet. Well, this has not stopped the Japanese company from rolling out newer models, and one of their latest efforts would be the Sony VAIO S Series.

The VAIO S Series laptop will merge for the first time portability, performance and power in a thinner, lighter design that is perfect for everyone, never mind if you are a student or a business traveler. It intends to break down the previous perceived wall of being aloof by offering users more personalized options and flexibility in order to suit their lifestyle.

Some S Series models will boast elegant design in burnished brown, jet black or platinum silver with magnesium and aluminum materials, while toting a built-in lithium polymer battery which will work in tandem with the advanced large-capacity optional sheet battery, letting you remain mobile without the need for a power outlet for up to 16 hours – this applies to models without a hard drive inside, but rather, relying on a solid state drive configuration instead. Intelligent charging also lets you juice up the optional sheet battery separately, attaching it to the system without shutting down for maximum flexibility. Sounds neat, no?

This 13.3-inch S Series will measure a mere 0.95″ in thickness, tipping the scales with 3.8 pounds on a standard battery. It will be powered by the second generation Intel Core i7 processor, carry an AMD Radeon HD 6630 1GB Hybrid Graphics card on select models with 1GB VRAM, a dual channel solid state drive with RAID 0 technology option, one-touch VAIO, ASSIST and WEB buttons, an integrated webcam that works great even in low light conditions thanks to its Exmor sensor, an LED backlit keyboard so that you can work late into the night, and face tracking technology.

Prices start from $1,350 upwards depending on what you want to throw inside, while the optional sheet battery will cost you another $150.

Google Wallet introduced, and PayPal is upset

Google has recently announced their new mobile payment system with Google Wallet. It is a free Android Android App that will arrive sometime this summer that will allow users to make payments for products and/or services.

Google Wallet, which is open platform software, was officially unveiled at a massive event a few days ago. This deal has been in the works for a while, and a lot of big companies like MasterCard, Citi, Sprint, and First Data have invested in it. In order to encourage more growth an usage of this unique program, Google Wallet is going to encourage a lot of deals like discounts, promotions, loyalty rewards, and the like.

It sounds like a terrific deal for consumers, but you know who isn’t happy about it? PayPal. Yeah, they are suing Google, accusing Google Wallet’s project leader, Osama Bedier, of “feeding confidential PayPal information to Google so that it can develop the NFC mobile payment system”.

Apparently, PayPal and Google were trying to make a deal so that users could pay the Android Market via PayPal. However, it Google has their own mobile payment system, that seems like that deal is off. Something tells me that we are going to hear a lot about this in the near and far future.

However, if you need some serious open payment payment system, you’ll need to wait. I wish I had a more exact date.

Sharp AQUOS smartphone doesn’t look like one

When you talk about smartphones, most of us would think that they involve a rather generous touchscreen of sorts, not to mention a candybar form factor (with the exception of a rare few which comes with a slider QWERTY keyboard) as well as all the trappings like Wi-Fi connectivity, 3G support at the very least, and a microUSB memory card slot amidst others.

Well, Sharp has just introduced the AQUOS phone to folks living in the Land of the Rising Sun, where it intends to deliver plenty of enjoyment to users courtesy of a high-quality graphics engine and the ability to hook up to AQUOS LCD TVs. The latter is definitely a no-brainer – after all, why let your phone connect to TVs from your rivals when you can take advantage of this situation to sell more TVs of your own? Sharp will also leverage on their own proprietary technology to differentiate itself in the smartphone market, and intends to develop a ‘global smartphone’ which will also be sold in China.

The AQUOS phone will come with a high-quality graphics engine, and can connect to other AV equipment and wireless networks. When it is linked to an AQUOS LCD TV via HDMI, you will be able to share your favorite videos and games with others when it comes to viewing, not to mention Internet HD videos and additional content. Not only that, with the expected proliferation of equipment that have been certified for the DLNA (Digital Living Network Alliance) home network standard, you are able to do much more – including watching content from AQUOS TVs or Blu-ray Disc recorders wirelessly on your AQUOS smartphone.

The entertainment bandwagon does not stop there, as another feature would be a high-quality graphics engine that incorporates the image-reproducing know-how Sharp has amassed via its AQUOS LCD TVs. This engine will boast of image sharpening technology that delivers extremely naturally renderings of the borders and contours of images, and color adjustment technology, which adjusts color intensity and brightness.

No idea on pricing as at press time though.

Samsung and Toshiba both have flexible screen displays on display

I think that we all know that the future is going to be bendable displays, and two big companies, Samsung and Toshiba, have their screens in the spotlight recently.

I’ll start with the one from Toshiba, pictured here to the left. It measures at about 3 inches on the diagonal, and it is only 0.1 mm thin. It was made with an oxide semiconductor TFT to a plastic substrate at 200 degrees Celsius. This makes it light at one gram, and it can also retain image quality over a long period of time.

As for the Samsung foldable AMOLED display, there is a picture of that after the jump. It has two panels with a closing radius of about 1 mm which means that they “practically touch when closed, yet show no visible crease when opened”. In fact, the developers performed about 100,000 folding and unfolding motions, and it decreases in brightness of 6 percent, which was not that visible.

There is no word when either of these flexible displays will ever make it to the folding hands of the general consumer, but I would probably say in the “near future”. After all, don’t we want to live in an era where displays are as simple as overhead transparency sheets? I’ll let the future decide the answer to that one.

Scary Tech

Some of you probably have those biometric readers on your laptops to scan your thumb, but some of you might want more security than that.

I suppose that Eye-dentification is the way to go, as no two irises are exactly alike. This particular Hoyos Eyelock Iris scanner hooks up to the computer via USB.

It looks like that this is designed to rest on the desktop, and I am guessing that you’ll probably have to lean over in order to get a reading. Hopefully, no one will use those contact lenses that you see in movies to trick eye scanners. I would imagine that these are harder to fool than fingerprint scanners.

There is another advantage to the Hoyos Eyelock USB Iris scanner in comparison to biometric scanners. The Hoyos makes it very difficult to get a false positive. Of course, you could just get a password, unless you are very forgetful.

For some reason, I don’t have a price on this guy, but you can check out their website if you want some more information. According to Hoyos, this will be a “paradigm shift” in personal identity protection. I don’t know about that, but I do know that I never see the word “paradigm” without seeing the word “shift”.

TubeTilla Pro HD v 4.2

 

This is one of the coolest programs to hit the recent market. The 
TubeTilla Pro HD v 4.2 is a very intriguing software when I first read about it I was kind of caught off guard by what it was claiming to do. You know "If it's too good to be true" things. It claimed that I could copy URL's of videos and music and convert them into any other format I wanted."FOR REAL???"  So I checked it out. I paid the 40 bucks and downloaded it.  My first  thing I wanted to do was to see if I could actually copy the video URL's and convert them to MP3 format and then download them to my phone or iPod. My biggest issue concerning music now is that I moved to San Antonio last year from Houston. I found out that there are no Urban adult stations in this city. Translation: No soul music or Jazz. So to compensate for the lack of music I had to rely on MP3  Satellite or Just CD's. So I went to find my favorite Michael Jackson song on YouTube copied the URL and pasted it in TubeTilla. After a few minutes In had that song in an FLV file waiting to be converted. The next step was to convert the file. It gave me a choice of MP3, MP4, WMV, iPod (qqpe quick time MOV),  PSP video, cell phone, or an Xvid format. I'm happy to say that not only   was I able to convert the music to my Phone and iPod, but I was allso able to convert the files and burn them to regular CD format. Now I have a limitless supply of music and videos from YouTube that I can enjoy in any format for any media player. I thought that was real cool.
    The only drawback that I have with this software is that in order to find, download, and then convert each file takes time and the process is a little lengthly. So make sure when you are composing your different files that you have a few hours to dedicate to this. But I  Feel it's worth the trade off. 


Check it out I highly recommend you do.

New HP Pavilion consumer desktop PCs announced

HP, the world’s top PC manufacturer, is back with a brand new announcement concerning a newer range of consumer desktop computers that will come in sophisticated designs – after all, who would want to have boring rectangular looking machines on their desks that seems like a relic from the past? No sir, HP is beyond that, having invested time and money in decent design without sacrificing on the kind of technology within.

Offering clean lines, soft forms and contrasting materials, the redesigned HP Pavilion desktops are able to live up to today’s style and preferences, looking comfortable regardless of whether it is on a dorm-room desk or stashed away in a media cabinet somewhere. There is a glossy (can you say fingerprint magnet?) black front panel that has been layered over a metallic base, adding depth and dimension to the new towers, while sliding front panels will keep your ports and drives hidden away until required, giving off a polished, clean appearance.

There will be several models that offer a valet tray that has been integrated into the top of the PC and will come equipped with USB ports to make it easy to access, considering how so many modern day devices rely on USB ports as an alternative charging experience.

Among the new machines in the HP Pavilion consumer desktop family would be the HP Pavilion p7 series PCs that delivers generous hard drive space, premium graphics, and built-in support for multichannel surround sound. Touted to be out this Wednesday from $299.99 onwards, it will also arrive at select US retailers later this June.

As for the HP Pavilion Slimline s5 series PCs, those are less than 50% the size of conventional PC towers, albeit not losing any of their configurability in order to deliver maximum storage and processors so that it can support even the most demanding multitaskers. Out this June 15th from $329.99 onwards, we will now move on to the HP HPE h8 series PCs that come with up to three internal hard drives, a choice between AMD Phenom or Intel Core i7 processors, high-end NVIDIA or ATI graphics, and the ability to support multiple displays. Pricing will start from $599.99 upwards from this Wednesday onwards.

Time to make that upgrade, no?

Press Release