Lenovo has posted an order page for the IdeaPad S10 mini-notebook. For $429 you can get a laptop with a 10.2 inch display, 512MB of RAM, an 80GB HDD, a 3 cell battery, and a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU. And as one Engadget reader points out, you can apparently knock 15% off the price with the coupon code USPIDEAPAD15.

While you can add software and hardware (like a wireless router) to your order, there does not seem to be an option to upgrade the RAM, get a 6 cell battery, or change the hard drive to an SSD. Perhaps these options will be available later. Oh, and if you want a red or white unit, you’ll have to pay an extra $10. The $429 price only applies to the black model.

That's, like, $365. Sweet. Right, so if you don't already have a secksy little nettop, you can get one of these. Or you can wait for dual-core, I know that's what I'm doing.

In any case, here's a link to some Ideapad Porn.

Like it?
Get it here.

At this time, it is unknown whether HP will be using the Nano processors for upcoming notebooks or netbooks. However, regarding the recent rumors of a second version of HP's small-sized netbooks, the Nano CPUs, provided by VIA could actually land in one of HP's upcoming Mini Note PC models.
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According to VIA's comments, a first-tier notebook vendor is expected to roll out a new Nano-powered portable computer system sometime in October this year. Regarding the C7-M processor that is featured on HP's 2133 Mini-Note PC, it looks like a total of 500.000 have already been shipped from VIA to the American system vendor. This is an indication of HP's expectations for this year as far as its netbook business goes.

While there's totally the chance that these will only be for HP's upcoming cheapo Mini Notes, that would be a brain-dead move. Besides, Newegg just knocked $130 off the cool Mini Note, setting the price below MSRP (finally). I mean, they might even have ordered enough for all of their upcoming nettops.

Let's hope that it's a sign of really powerful Mini Notes to come...

Raon Digital (http://www.raondigital.com) unveiled the world's first mini notebook 'EVERUN NOTE' equipped with dual CPU(AMD Turion) in Korea market.

Weighing 742g, the EVERUN NOTE features a 7-inch LCD screen with 1,024*600 resolution, 1.3M webcam, Bluetooth connectivity, and electronic dictionary function. Running on Windows XP Home Edition, it can has various storage space ranging from 12GB SSD to 80GB HDD.

The EVERUN NOTE is expected to be available in early September in Korea as well as North America.

Make no mistake, a 1.2GHz dual core Turion will stomp the teeth out of a 1.6GHz Atom, even the upcoming dual core 330. And seeing that it's got the vastly superior 690E graphics chipset, this little miracle'll easily beat out Via's best embedded graphics.

I have wanted an Eee-alike since they started making the rounds, but single-core's hard to swallow, and the only real champ I've been inclined to buy, the HP 2133 Mini Note, has been price-gouged since it hit the shelves (I'm talking about the one with the 7,200 RPM hard drive, the others aren't worth it). On top of that, since it's got real hardware under the hood, you won't be limited to XP or some custom--boring--flavor of Linux.

EVERUN NOTE, you're worth waiting for.

One of the topics discussed at our roundtable with Sony at E3 (besides their dislike for paying for features and their 20/20 hindsight as to what went wrong with the PS3's development) was piracy. Piracy was half the reason SCEA's Jack Tretton gave to why the PSP is not living up to its promise as a powerhouse portable console, with the other half being the straight-shooting admission that PSP owners didn't want to pay for ports of PS2 games. So what can you loyal fans do when developers aren't putting out the type of content worth playing? Homebrew, the magical world of quasi-legal third-party PSP software including web apps, radio apps, Super Nintendo/NES emulators and ripped PS1 games. I'm going to show you how to get your PSP to do all this and more.

Well it can't really be piracy if you actually own the SNES games to begin with, right?

Without jumping into that discussion, I have a stack of PS1 games that I can't wait to play through again. I can only hope that Final Fantasy Tactics, which I now own three copies of, works better as a ROM than as the stupid--but with undeniably pretty cutscenes--PSP version. It being dumbed down and all. And "not being able to find good PS1 games" is about the weakest excuse for piracy ever. I mean, at least make something up about unnatural love between you and jewel cases. That's gross, but then people will probably condone it just to not hear any details.

Like many, I was utterly bewildered by Nintendo's E3 2008 press conference. The missing "core" game announcement was disappointing, but not quite as unsettling as the unshakable notion that I was ultimately wrong about Nintendo's intentions towards gamers who've stuck with it since the beginning.

And as I walked out, I had the concentrated sense that as a longtime Nintendo fan, I was being forgotten, or at best, misunderstood.

With an hour to burn at its E3 conference, Nintendo offered up Wii Sports Resort, Wii Music, Animal Crossing: City Folk and just a few others, plus a swift mention of Grand Theft Auto: Chinatown Wars on DS to get those pesky 18-24 year-old males out of the way. See? We've got something for everyone.

What's troubling isn't that the title for hardcore gamers never materialized--it's that Nintendo thought it had.

More about bad Nintendo. There are a handful of titles that are the epitome of the slide that Nintendo seems oblivious to having taken. Take Final Fantasy Tactics Advance. Square took one of their most arduously detailed, completely adult games--nevermind the fact that you can ride chickens into battle, you're fighting a corrupt, doctrine-bound church that has torn a depressed, war-sickened nation in two, from the perspective of a bastard dauphin. That's some cool stuff right there. What did they give us?

A game where you're an elementary-school student who finds a magic book and gets suckered into a mystical wonderland that he hates, even though his gimpy little brother is like, normal, and also, they're both freaking god-kings! The sequel, at the very least, minimized this, so instead, you're a loner kid who finds the book and likes where he ends up.

I've already seen The Never-Ending Story, I just want to play Ramza slaughtering more angels.

And have you played The World Ends With You? It's like, got enough emo to stop the clotting. You can play the game and cut all day, so you can pain and only die on the inside. I like the game, it's fun to play, but I keep subconsciously slashing my wrists with the stylus.

The R4 allows easy software piracy by fitting right into the DS's cartridge slot. Data is stored on a Micro SD and downloaded from websites via a flash drive, and the R4 has a small slot that the Micro SD card goes into. In a statement released today, Nintendo announced that these R4 devices "allow illegal uploading from the internet", adding that "it is causing severe damage to our company and software makers, and this is something that we cannot possibly overlook." In conclusion, Nintendo adds that such devices hurts the growth of the entire game industry and steps must be taken regarding the legality of R4 carts. It's important to note that this legal injunction is for Japan only.

Nintendo is worried that they don't have their growed-up audience anymore and they're rallying against independent development? Piracy, yeah, bad. But come on, some people don't want to wait for Chrono Trigger to port, they want real games now. And it's really hard to stomach the soulless asininity of the kid-flavored games in order to tap some fresh gameplay. I don't want to catch them all, damn it. I just want to simultaneously game and watch House. Is that so weird?

Although the Eee is my favorite laptop for traveling, its Xandros-based Linux distribution is getting crufty and beginning to show its age. I was unable to install Firefox 3 on it, for instance, because it lacks a current version of the GTK+ toolkit. In preparation for OSCON, I decided to infuse my Eee with new life by installing Ubuntu 8.04. I used a community-driven derivative called Ubuntu Eee that is designed specifically for Eee laptops. It has nearly full hardware compatibility right out of the box, including support for suspend/resume, sound, and the built-in webcam.

If only it were so easy to install any Linux distro on hardware intended to run a Linux distro... Ubiquitous Ubuntu is actually not a straight-forward affair, and it's always nice to have help, even if it's so few steps.

I still like the Mini Note better. When are we gonna get some dual-core nettops? I'm just not willing to jump on the bandwagon until then, it seems. I have this desire to not wait, give up, and go get more coffee while the machine resizes a picture for the news. Maybe that's wrong of me; I also like my coffee cold. Bizarre.

Lets just say Square-Enix recognizes how much meat there is on the carcass that is Final Fantasy VII. This title has received more direct sequels, prequels, side stories and general fansterbation than any other title in the series. I won't go into the quality of these titles, but they are out there. Now there is a rumor that says the Squeenix may be bringing the title to XBL and the PSN.

This all likely started as the result of the statement hinting at a "big FFVII-related announcement" that will come at next month's DKΣ3713 event. 'Inside sources' (I love how important that makes someone sound) stated that not only will the original be available through the Playstation store as a PS1 original download there will "definitely" be a remake or spin-off announced. I don't know where the XBLA release fits into this but that's the rumor anyway.

I wouldn't mind playing through this again. I don't remember how it ended. Does Cloud kill Sephiroth or just woo her? What about Jenova? She get some Zach-dupe lovin'?

It would actually be screwed up if they don't re-build the game from the bottom up. I'm not talking typos, either, and I don't care if they continue to use the same 12-polygon models for everyone, but the thing had better be widescreen, 1080p, with re-mastered backgrounds. Actually, some extra polys wouldn't hurt.

Dollars to doughnuts, though, Barret will exude less T-derived 'sploit. I mean blaxploit.

Curious as to just how the Netflix functionality is going to work on the Xbox 360 when it's added this fall? Major Nelson just posted a video of him going through it, showing off just how it's going to work. Essentially, it looks exactly like the interface on the Roku Netflix box.

You can't search through the entire Netflix database, instead needing to add movies you want to watch to your instant queue. It's a bit annoying, but as you can add as many movies you want to the queue, not that big a deal. If you own an Xbox 360 and bought a Roku box, however, get that thing to eBay ASAP, as you won't be using it anymore come this fall.

I've been using a Roku for some time now, and my review in brief is: there are a lot of other options out there. I mean, it's pretty cool if you're alright with the idea of a home theater being a TV and a DVD player. It'll fit right in. But if you don't really think that there should be any difference between you TV and a gaming workstation, well, save the hundred bucks and use it to buy movies you won't get on Netflix this decade.

the above image the result of the search terms "a third wheel" which roku is about to be, yeah, pretty much. and it's dark knight themed! go see it already! it's almost less full of bat-love than that photo

I'm on vacation with family in Orlando, FL right now, but I just wanted to write a quick post to share my thoughts so far on the iPhone 3G, which I purchased last week.

The phone I upgraded from was a Treo 650 (without the data plan), and I switched to the world of Mac a little over 6 months ago, so syncing never went quite as smoothly after that. Even with Missing Sync, it was a pain to sync my phone because it would take ~30 minutes every time. With the iPhone I can finally keep my mail, contacts, and calendars in sync, quickly and easily (and it does a few other things, of course). I'd been holding out to buy an iPod until the iPhone 3G came out because I didn't want to spend $500 on an iPod sans phone capabilities, and it was worth the wait.

We all know what the iPod does well, so here are a few things that haven't been so great:

1) MobileMe issues - I think Apple underestimated the load that would be placed on the MobileMe servers, and things didn't go very smoothly at first. Push wasn't really working in any direction, and I'm not even talking about the widely reported 15-minutes that it takes to push things from your computer. Even with a manual sync, or after several sets of 15 minutes, contacts added on the computer weren't showing up on MobileMe. I also had an issue where I put a number with an extension and it never showed up at all - presumably because it was in an unacceptable format, but there was no warning or error message to tell me so.

2) No Video and No MMS - I knew the iPhone lacked Video and MMS functionality before I bought it, but I've found myself missing it sorely. My Treo didn't have video MMS but it did have videos, and it did let me send photos from my phone to other phones. It wouldn't bother me so much if there was a logical reason why these weren't included. Surely, this is a software issue and not a hardware one. Maybe the hardware isn't up to snuff for videos, but I'd be surprised. Hopefully someone is developing an application to add this stuff. In the meantime, I've been using the free app AirMe to upload photos from my iPhone straight to my Flickr account (check out my photos from Disney World here). Unfortunately, I have to take the photos within the AirMe app to actually upload them, and it still doesn't let me send photos to other peoples phones, but at least it lets me send the photos in some form straight from my phone.

3) Battery Life - Once upon a time, my Treo 650 would last for 4-5 days easily on a single charge. I don't think I'll be getting more than 2 days out of my iPhone, and I've actually run it down from a full charge in a single day for a couple days in a row. Granted, I'm playing with it more than I normally would, downloading lots of apps, etc... but still.

Once I'm back from vacation, I'll do an in-depth review of the iPhone 3G and I'll definitely be doing some write-ups on accessories and apps as well.

Because this is a video and all the text is in Foreign, I've used the reference Uncyclopedia to fill in anyone who arguably didn't have a childhood and has no experience with this genre-defining title:

The Chrono Trigger was developed in 1998 A.D. by the Kennedys. The Chrono Trigger's purpose was to be able to go back in time and change the results of a single assassination attempt. Unfortunately, while most of the Kennedys wanted to bring back JFK, Ted Kennedy was obsessed with preventing that drunk driving accident, and someone's nephew wanted to bring back the Dead Kennedys. In 1999 A.D., the Chrono Trigger was stolen by Karl Rove, who used it to bring about the apocalyptic reign of Lavos, a time-travelling alien creature.

The Chrono Trigger ended up at the End of Time, where the protagonists face the awkward decision of saving Abraham Lincoln, Oscar Wilde, Benazir Bhutto, Aeris, or one of the protagonists.

But now comes word that it isn’t just wildlife that can go extinct. The element gallium is in very short supply and the world may well run out of it in just a few years. Indium is threatened too, says Armin Reller, a materials chemist at Germany’s University of Augsburg. He estimates that our planet’s stock of indium will last no more than another decade. All the hafnium will be gone by 2017 also, and another twenty years will see the extinction of zinc. Even copper is an endangered item, since worldwide demand for it is likely to exceed available supplies by the end of the present century.

Running out of oil, yes. We’ve all been concerned about that for many years and everyone anticipates a time when the world’s underground petroleum reserves will have been pumped dry. But oil is just an organic substance that was created by natural biological processes; we know that we have a lot of it, but we’re using it up very rapidly, no more is being created, and someday it’ll be gone. The disappearance of elements, though—that’s a different matter. I was taught long ago that the ninety-two elements found in nature are the essential building blocks of the universe. Take one away—or three, or six—and won’t the essential structure of things suffer a potent blow? Somehow I feel that there’s a powerful difference between running out of oil, or killing off all the dodos, and having elements go extinct.

Yeah, this probably means a couple decades of technological dark ages, but the science fiction reader in me knows that we'll a) figure out how to deal without these elements and b) learn how to make them. Not to mention improvements in refining and recycling. Like with sweet, dark crude, we won't start using alternatives 'till it's used up. So pitch that 1st-gen iPhone and get a new one! Yours is all scuffed, anyway.

You're doing it for the advancement of science, you crazy fanboy, you.

Sub-notebooks are revolutionising the way we look at portable connectivity. Gone are the days, it seems, where you paid a pretty penny for a ridiculously small and lightweight piece of hardware. Nowadays £300 will get you a cool mini-notebook in iPod white and still leave you with change to spare.

We've previously looked at Asus' 8.9" Eee PC 900 and the HP 2133 Mini-note, but now MSI is releasing it's first attempt to crack the sub-notebook market. The MSI Wind - make fart jokes at your peril.

Despite the fact that MSI told bit-tech it tried its absolute hardest to get the Wind to reach the £300 mark, what we've ended up with is closer to the £329 mark for the XP model instead. That's not exactly a budget killing sum - it's still cheaper than the HP - but it's still more than Asus' ubiquitous Eee PC 901.

Well, this is until we found the Linux version of the Wind on sale for a tidy £291.25. At this price it's very much a bargain.

I may soon find myself going the UMPC route. My laptop, faithful friend that it is, just isn't... small enough. I want a lappy that I can shove into my kick-ass Indiana Jones MkVII Gas Mask Bag. And AMD, thank you for my rockin' OGIO messenger, I've used it daily for a year now, but it's not... canvas movie memorabilia. So there you have it.

But don't worry, AMD. Your flag might still fly, if MSI ever gets off their collective ass and puts to market the fabled GX400, but I still haven't tried to Stream My Game.

The imaging side of the D700 is pretty much the same as the D3; it shares the acclaimed 12.1MP full frame ('FX') sensor and has the same processing engine, so we would presume output to be almost identical. The main differences (aside from being considerably smaller) are physical; there's a different shutter (good for 150,000 exposures rather than 300,000 on the D3), different viewfinder prism (with 95% coverage) and a slower burst rate. You also lose the rear LCD info panel (there's no room for it) and one of the D3's two CF card slots, but you do get a couple of extra features to soften the blow slightly; most notably a self-cleaning sensor and a built-in flash. We'll look a little more in-depth at the differences between the D3 and D700 in a moment.

The D700 joins the D3 as a fully-fledged 'professional' model; it has the same tank-like build quality (though we're sure the pop-up flash will cause a few raised eyebrows), and gets you the full pro service from Nikon. And the pricing (around $2999) reflects this; anyone hoping for an 'affordable' semi-pro full frame Nikon SLR will have to wait until the cost of producing such large sensors falls considerably.

Huh, three grand? Can't you get, like, two Canon 5Ds for that kind of scratch? Meh, I can't judge, I don't have the requisite experience, and you'll still be able to get two D700s for the cost of a 1Ds Mark III; in any case, I can say for certain that Nikon'll sell these no matter what.

They're kinda like the Apple of digital cameras like that.

Bring Your Box of e-Junk to Office Depot @ ExtremeTech

Here is how the program works. Customers will choose from three available recycling boxes, sizes Small ($5), Medium ($10), and Large ($15), pack it with as many acceptable items as will fit, and take it to the nearest Office Depot store. From there the old tech trash will travel to a reprocessing facility and be turned into "tomorrow's resources."

There's gold in them thar cell phones @ Reuters

It's called "urban mining", scavenging through the scrap metal in old electronic products in search of such gems as iridium and gold, and it is a growth industry around the world as metal prices skyrocket.

I mean, their name is practically "the Office Despot". And all this time you thought you were being clever.

On the other hand, I've got mad junk floor to ceiling in my office. Assuming I get my act together, I'll totally take advantage of it. God knows I've tried eBay, but it's pretty hard to sell an office's worth of crap after it gets blasted into magic smoke by thundersnow.

Adobe’s goal has always been to establish its own UI as a cross-platform, third alternative to both Mac and Windows native UIs. In the process, Adobe has not been shy to invent new UI conventions that clash with native UI patterns.

Many reasons have been floated for why Flash isn’t a good match for the iPhone: it’s slow, it hogs CPU cycles, it drains the battery, it crashes too often, it’s not optimized for Mac OS X and so on. As obvious as these reasons may be, even if all those technical issues could be solved tomorrow, there would still remain a huge divide between Adobe and Apple on the iPhone: who controls the UI?

From my observations and discussions with many consumers, interface seems to be one of the driving forces behind the decision of many of today's Apple "switchers". The iPhone has been the perfect gateway drug for many folks to get in on the Apple design trend, and the writer of this article seems to think this is one of the top reasons that Apple is keeping Flash off of the iPhone for the time being.

Apple has put tons of work into setting up developers with the tools to create applications for the iPhone that harness most of the device's capabilities in a visually convergent manner. The UI conventions are in place, and Apple may not want anyone messing with their cellular Messiah's pretty face. I can't say that I blame them since I am still smitten with the iPhone interface experience after a year of ownership, but you have to hope that they open it up for something as important (like it or not) to web design as Flash.

(image courtesy of the iPhone blog as a result of a google search for "adobe iphone")

Canon has announced the EOS 1000D, a new entry-level DSLR that slots into the model lineup beneath the 450D. The 10 megapixel digital camera, known as the Digital Rebel XS in the US, takes many of the new features of its big brother and presents them in a lighter, less expensive format that Canon hopes will re-shape the market in the same way as the first Rebel (300D) did. No word yet from Canon US about their intentions.

The Rebel XS shares many of the same features and specs with the Rebel XTi, with a couple of things thrown in that the Rebel XSi has (LiveView, Digic III, SD/SDHC memory cards...). One might speculate that the launch of this camera means the XTi will no longer be manufactured. The price point is going to be about $200 less than that of the XSi, which will probably disappoint those who were hoping for something from Canon that really competes with the cheapest entry-level DSLRs.

Although we just experienced a hectic period with many introductions, Olympus introduced, rather unexpectedly, their new digital SLR sibling; the Olympus E-420. The latest Olympus E-420 is clearly based on the E-410 that was introduced last year, but has undergone some obvious changes when it comes to the inner parts of the camera. Almost immediately after the introduction, we received a full production model in combination with the standard ZUIKO Digital zoom lens (14-42mm) and a beautiful super compact lens, the 25mm pancake f/2.8 lens.

This counts as a great entry-level setup. If you came across my first DSLR article, and you thought any of that interested you, you can pick up this little wonder, with a zoom or a sweet pancake lens for less than $700. I am constantly resisting the allure of pancakedom, although if you're a Pentax-type, this press release might make it a moot issue.

There is a middle step: Entry Level DSLR + The Kit Lens. Yeah, it's crap, from a $500 lens' perspective. It's absolutely better than point-and-shoots, though, and the whole thing can be had for way less than you might expect. If you're sure that you're not going to go glass-wild and melt the stripes off your credit cards, and that you can avoid dropping the fat stacks on more, faster, and brighter, it's not a bad choice at all. You can learn how to shoot manual, and you can fall back on auto. And the photos will be better.

So yeah, there you have it. Plus, with that tiny little lens on, it's super cute. Ahem. And manly. Just think of it as concentrated.

Sacks recounted going to the bathroom immediately after having surgery on his eye, which was still covered in surgical dressing. When he closed his other eye, he could still see the sink before him, as if his damaged eye was not only healthy but capable of seeing through the bandages. This phenomena took even more bizarre forms: Sacks would watch someone walking towards him, close his good eye, and continue to see them walking, as if his brain was playing a loop -- and when he opened his eye, they would disappear, having long since walked past.

My closest experience to this kind of hallucination is a phenomenon that occurs when I am about to wake up. I feel like my eyes are open and that I can see around my room, but I can't move any part of my body -- it feels like I am paralyzed. I always get an overwhelming sense of dread, as if a stranger is in my room, but I never actually see anything. I consciously try to start moving my body, and after 30 or 45 seconds, I wake up completely. It's the most terrifying experience I have ever been involved in, and it happens about once a month.

The fear is probably rooted in my understanding of ninjas and my fear of clowns. Consciously, I probably assume that since I cannot see the intruder, it must be a ninja. Subconsciously, I fear that this ninja must also be a clown...a big, scary, sweaty, painted, red-nosed, inordinately large-shoed, sharp-fanged... enough of that. This thought process cannot end well.

The "space beer," to be test-brewed by Sapporo Breweries Ltd., will come in a pilot edition of 100 bottles to be ready in November, company spokeswoman Momoko Matsumura said.

The beer will be made with barley, to be harvested this weekend, descended from seeds that spent five months in 2006 aboard the international space station.

Apparently there's no difference between the space beer and regular beer, but that doesn't matter. If I had the option to but Miller Lite or Miller Intergalactic Lite, the choice would always be the same. Such is the life of a devoted geek.