• 25Jun

    Texas Instruments Blaze tablet development platform coming in August

    Texas Instruments’ OMAP4 Blaze platform uses an ARM Cortex A9-based chipset which is capable of handling HD video. It also features support for WiFi, Bluetooth, GPS, FM radio, and cellular data. In other words, it has everything you need to develop a nice healthy smartphone… or a tablet.

    SVTronics will start offering a Texas Instruments Blaze tablet development device in August. The tablet is aimed at developers, not the general public. But it looks pretty interesting, with a 1GHz OMPA4430 CPU, 10.3 inch, 1024 x 768 pixel multitouch display, 1GB of RAM, 32GB of flash storage, and 2 USB ports and HDMI output.

    There’s also an accelerometer, gyroscope, temperature sensor, ambient light sensor, and proximity and pressure sensors. The tablet has a memory card slot, SIM card slot, a headset jack, and a miniPCIe slot for a modem — the tablet can support 3G, LTE, or other wireless technologies.

    There’s a 5MP camera module that can be connected externally.

    The tablet has an aluminum frame and measures 10.5″ x 8.3″ x 1.1″. It has a 4100mAh single-cell battery.

  • 24Jun

    $74 USD iPad clone from Shenzhen Lianhua

    Shenzhen Lianhua Electronics company showed a dirt cheap Android powered iPad clone, which is only priced around 500 Yuan (about $74 USD). With such a price you really shouldn’t expect too much from it. It features a 400MHZ VIA 8505 chip that’s based on ARM9, a 7-inch 800×480 display, 128MB RAM, 2GB flash storage, Android 1.7.2 OS. It gets a 30 pin port, and a 30 pin hub, on which there are two USB port and a Ethernet port that enables you connect to Internet through cable when Wi-Fi is not available.

  • 22Jun

    Tranquil PC introduces a Core i3-powered nettop

    Nettops may have started out as the spiritual cousin of netbooks, with low power processors, tiny cases, and low price tags. But you know what piece never really fit? That underpowered CPU. Because let’s face it, nobody really buys a mini-desktop because they want it to be able to do less. They just want it to cost less, and take up less space — maybe with some energy savings thrown in for good measure. And that’s why the Tranquil PC iXL is such an interesting looking machine.

    This mini-laptop isn’t much larger than an ASRock ION nettop. But instead of an Intel Atom processor, this little guy has a 2.93GHz Intel Core i3-530 CPU. The computer still manages to use just over 30W of power while idle. While that’s high by netbook/nettop standards, it still makes this little computer more comparable with a laptop than a typical PC in terms of power consumption.

    The Tranquil PC iXL also has DVI, HDMI eSATA, and USB ports, as well as an optical drive bay for a DVD or Blu-Ray drive. There are 2 DDR3 memory slots and a hard drive bay.

    Prices start at £389, or about $576 US which seems reasonable — until you realize that the price doesn’t include RAM, a hard drive, operating system, or Blu-Ray drive (It does, however, include a DVD drive). Adding 1GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive, and Windows 7 Home Premium brought the price up to $812.

    Still, while the price could be lower, I appreciate that companies are starting to put out small form factor computers that you could use as home theater PCs, low end gaming rigs, or workhorse computers.

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