Thread: Anandtech News

Gateway has updated its NV series of mainstream notebooks, including a new model featuring integrated WiMax connectivity. The entire line has been updated with more attractive aesthetics, improved performance and better value. The NV59C66U is first to be available, and grabs the headlines with its Intel Centrino 6250 Wireless card providing it with 802.16e WiMax and conventional 802.11b/g/n WiFi support. While this model is available now for $700, the rest of the updated range will be available in the coming weeks starting at $480.



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Acer is announcing an updated range of netbooks, including their first to use the dual-core Intel Atom N550 processor, the Acer Aspire One AOD255. The same model will also be available with a single core Atom N450. Also released are the Acer Aspire One AO521 and AO721, which use AMD Athlon II Neo K125 processors and ATI Radeon 4225 HD graphics for a mobile multimedia experience. All models will be available later this month, with the single- and dual-core Atom models selling for $270 and $330 respectively. The AMD models will sell for $350 and $430 respectively.



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This morning NVIDIA is announcing the rest of its Fermi-based Quadro family: the Quadro 2000 and the Quadro 600. Based on the GF106 and GF108 GPUs respectively, the 2000 and the 600 flesh out NVIDIA’s Quadro line for the mid-range and entry markets, focusing on Quadro’s traditional strengths in the professional graphics & CAD markets, and more recently on CUDA-accelerated professional applications. For these applications the new Fermi based Quadros should provide significantly more compute and geometry capabilities than the FX-series Quadros they replace.

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Samsung has a Galaxy S device on basically every major carrier in the US. T-Mobile has the Vibrant, AT&T has the Captivate, Sprint has the Epic 4G, and Verizon has the Fascinate. Each variety is the same at the core, but with subtly different extras.

The Fascinate finds itself on the opposite end of the spectrum from the Epic 4G we recently reviewed. It's superbly thin and light, barely edged out by the iPhone 4. There's no physical keyboard but you still get the brilliant Super AMOLED touchscreen. And of course the fastest Android experience on 2.1 thanks to the Samsung Hummingbird SoC.

There's much more to the Fascinate though than its thickness (or lack thereof). Read on for our full review!



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Although Seagate was first to market with an external 3TB drive, it wasn’t without issues. In our testing of the 3TB GoFlex Desk we found that under continuous usage the drive got very hot - we measured temperatures as high as 69C after only a few hours of file copies. Ultimately we concluded that the chassis simply wasn’t suited for the drive Seagate supplied. Today, we have an alternative.

Western Digital is announcing an updated lineup of USB 3.0 enabled external hard drives: the My Passport Essential, My Passport Essential SE and My Book Essential. The specs are below:

Western Digital External USB 3.0 Drive Comparison Drive Internal Drive Interface Capacities Pricing My Passport Essential 2.5" USB 3.0 500GB $99.99 My Passport Essential SE 2.5" USB 3.0 750GB, 1TB $129.99, $169.99 My Book Essential 3.5" USB 3.0 1TB - 3TB $129.99 - $249.99 The 3TB My Book Essential is priced identically to Seagate’s 3TB GoFlex Desk, however the Seagate drive having been out in the market for longer is now available at lower prices. The bigger question is whether or not the My Book Essential chassis can keep WD’s 3TB drive running cooler than the GoFlex Desk.

Internally the 3TB My Book Essential uses a WD Caviar Green drive. We'll see a standalone drive available "shortly" according to WD. I'm guessing as a green drive it probably spins at 5400RPM, which should help tremendously with heat. We’ve asked Western Digital for a review sample and we’ll post our findings as soon as we can get our hands on one.

You can check out pics of all three new USB 3.0 drives in our gallery here.



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What's this? The long awaited specs for Intel's third generation SSD? Indeed.

Internally it’s called the Postville Refresh (the X25-M G2 carried the Postville codename), but externally it carries the same X25-M brand we’ve seen since 2008. The new drive uses 25nm IMFT Flash, which means we should get roughly twice the capacity at the same price. While Intel is sampling 25nm MLC NAND today it's unclear whether or not we'll see drives available this year. I've heard that there's still a lot of tuning that needs to be done on the 25nm process before we get to production quality NAND. The third generation drives will be available somewhere in the Q4 2010 - Q1 2011 timeframe in capacities ranging from 40GB (X25-V) all the way up to 600GB.

Read on for the full specs!



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If you are in the IT field, you have no doubt heard a lot of great things about ZFS, the file system originally introduced by Sun in 2004. After doing quite a bit of research we decided to embark on a build of a ZFS storage platform that we could use to replace our existing SAN infrastructure at our hosting company. We will go in depth talking about how ZFS works, what components we chose for our build, and the performance that we were able to achieve compared to our legacy Promise iSCSI SAN. Read on to find out more about what we encountered and what we ended up with.

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Gateway has launched three new ultra-slim LED-backlit displays. The new displays are part of two new lines - the FHX series which will be available in 21.5” and 24” form factors, and the FHD series which is available just as a 23” model. All three come with 1920x1080 resolution and a (dynamic) contrast ratio of up to 12,000,000:1. All three displays will be available this month starting at $190 for the 21.5” model and $250 for the two larger models.



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Last month we had our first look at AMD's latest Danube platform with a quad-core P920 processor in the Toshiba A660D. After we posted that review, Toshiba asked us if we'd be interested in reviewing their Intel version of the notebook, with the upgrade to NVIDIA's 3D Vision coming along for the ride. Never one to turn down a review opportunity, particularly for a technological curiosity like mobile 3D Vision, we readily agreed. So today, we have a faster, significantly more expensive version of the A66x chassis, with 3D Blu-ray support and a 120Hz LCD.

There's plenty to look at, but before we get to the review and benchmarks let's make it clear: Toshiba is billing this as a 3D multimedia laptop as opposed to a 3D gaming laptop. We'll see exactly why later in the review, but it's probably no surprise to state right now that the GTS 350M GPU driving the graphics isn't intended to do the heavy lifting involved in 3D Vision. It's still plenty fast for regular gaming, however, and with the marketing push behind 3D—3D movies, 3D HDTVs, 3D cameras, and 3D laptops—we're certainly interested to see how compelling the A665-3DV is when it comes to providing visual depth. Is this the next frontier or another gimmick? Let's find out.



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It’s the fastest Mac you can buy and it's a desktop. These days, the Mac Pro is basically the un-Mac. But it's fast and nothing beats the flexibility of a desktop. If you need a lot of cores, it's actually Apple's most price competitive system on the market. We take a look at the Westmere update to the Mac Pro, read on.



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