FujiFilm X100 Black Edition Now Shipping, Limited to 10,000 Units

Fujifilm has just announced that the company’s Black Edition X100 rangefinder-like camera has become available for purchase. Compared to the regular version, this new X100 arrives in a package containing a genuine leather ever-ready case (black of course), a lens hood, an adapter ring and a protective filter. All these are also accompanied by a card that basically says you have one of the only 10,000 Black Edition X100s available worldwide. In case you aren't that familiar with the Fujifilm X100, you should know that the camera has a 12.3-megapixel sized CMOS image sensor, a Fujifilm EXR processor, a 23mm F2 Fujinon lens, a hybrid viewfinder and a 2.8-inch LCD display. Pricing for the regular version is set at $1,200 (866 EUR), but since...

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AMD Prices FX-4170 and FX-6200 Bulldozer CPUs

Two weeks after it introduced the FX-4170 and FX-6200 processors into its Bulldozer CPU lineup, AMD added the MSRPs of these two chips to its official price list, thus confirming the rumors that suggested these were considerably more expensive than their predecessors. Both the FX-4170 and FX-6200 are a great deal faster than the FX-4100 and the FX-6100 they replace, so when it priced these two chips AMD decided that they should cost $20 more than their predecessors. As a result, the FX-4170 has an MSRP of $135 (about 102 EUR), while the FX-6200 has a recommended price of $165 (roughly 125 EUR). The FX-4170 is a quad-core processor with a base speed of 4.2GHz and a 4.3GHz maximum Turbo, which is quite a departure from AMD’s original FX-4100...

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iOS 5.1 Jailbreakers Between a Rock and a Hard Place

Everyone is talking about the new features delivered in the latest software updates from Apple, and with the new iPad on the scene, it’s hardly a surprise that the security side of these updates has been somewhat overlooked. Fear not. We’re eager to discuss the latest patches included in iOS 5.1, iTunes 10.6, and the new Apple TV 5.0 software, now that everyone has calmed down a bit. iOS 5.1 brings, by far, the most plugs for the latest vulnerabilities discovered in Apple’s mobile operating system powering iPhones, iPads, and iPod touch players everywhere. Around 12 different holes are specifically mentioned in Apple’s support document detailing the security content of iOS 5.1. However, as the advisory shows, there are over...

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Intel Medfield-Based Handset Beats Galaxy Nexus in Benchmark Test

Intel’s Medfield application processor can deliver great performance capabilities inside smartphones, at least this is what recently performed benchmarking tests show.  The Medfield-powered Orange Smartphone was recently subjected to two such tests, Rightware, which spun off from Futuremark only recently, and Vellamo, and showed appealing capabilities.  In Rightware, which measures browser’s performance in JavaScript and HTML rendering, the handset scored 89180, higher than the Apple iPhone 4S with its 87801 score, but lower than the 98272 score that Samsung Galaxy Nexus marked.  In the second test, Vellamo by Qualcomm (a suite of 11 separate benchmarks that test HTML, JavaScript, pixel blending, screen scrolling, sun-spider,...

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CeBIT 2012: LG Showcases Xnote Z330 Ultrabook, Thinner Than a MacBook Air

Introduced in Korea at the end of last year, LG’s thinner than a MacBook Air Xnote Z330 Ultrabook made its appearance at this year’s CeBIT fair, suggesting that the company plans to make its ultra-thin available in other parts of the world. Borrowing more than a few design hints from its Apple-built rival, the Z330 was designed around a 13.3-inch display with a native resolution of 1366x768 pixels. Thanks to the company’s proprietary Shuriken technology, the display is surrounded by a bezel measuring a mere 8mm, which enables the Z330 to sport a bigger screen, while keeping the size of its creation similar to that of a 12-inch notebook model. Taking a look at the insides of LG’s new Xnote, we get to see the same Intel Core i5-2467M or Core...

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Intel Readies 3.1GHz Dual-Core Pentium G870 CPU for Q2 Launch

By the end of the second quarter of this year, Intel is expected to launch a new Pentium processor based on the company’s Sandy Bridge architecture, which will improve upon the specs of its predecessor. The new Intel CPU, called the Pentium G870, was uncovered by Fudzilla, which also provided us with an almost full list of its key specifications. Starting with the release of its first Sandy Bridge Pentium processors, every Pentium CPU introduced by Intel since then has come as a 100MHz higher clocked part when compared to its predecessor. The dual-core Pentium G870 is no exception to this rule and, as CPU-World reports, other than this small speed bump it will most probably be identical with the current G860. What this means is that the...

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Samsung Trademarks Galaxy Thunder, Express, and Accelerate

South Korean mobile phone maker Samsung Electronics is gearing up for the release of new Android-based devices in the United States, new trademark filing shows. The handset vendor has filed trademark request for the Galaxy Thunder, Galaxy Express, and Galaxy Accelerate names, which might be used for new smartphones in the near future.  Rumor has it that these names could be soon attached to the company’s US flavors of Galaxy S III, supposedly the successor of last year’s highly popular Galaxy S II smartphone.  Recently, the company has trademarked some other names that will supposedly be paired with new handsets, but nothing has been officially confirmed on the matter so far.  Additionally, the company trademarked the name...

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CM9 ROM Emerges for Sprint’s Epic 4G Touch

The owners of a Samsung Epic 4G Touch smartphone on Sprint’s airwaves can now install a new unofficial ROM on their devices, this time based on CyanogenMod 9 software.  This means that the ROM will bring along the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system on the mobile phone, so that users could get a taste of the latest advancements Google packed its OS with.  The new ROM comes from XDA-Developers Forum and is currently in an alpha stage of development, which means that users will experience issues with it.  To install it, they will have to get the EL29 version of ClockworkMod Recovery on their devices, and then flash CM9. The installation will fail with other builds, it appears.  Those interested in putting this...

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Gigabyte GA-6PXSV1 LGA 2011 Server Motherboard Makes Appearance

Motherboard maker Gigabyte has recently added a new LGA 2011 server solution to its product portfolio, dubbed the GA-6PXSV1, which was designed in order to be used together with Intel’s latest Xeon E5-1600 series processors. The board is based on the Intel C604 chipset and it sports a single LGA 2011 socket. The first thing that one notices when taking a look at the GA-6PXSV1 is the fact that the board comes equipped with no less than eight DIMM memory sockets. According to Gigabyte, these are compatible with both RDIMM and ECC memory modules and enable the board to support as much as 256GB of 1600MHz memory. Right to the left of the DIMM sockets, Gigabyte has placed the board's expansion slots, which include a pair of PCI Express x16 Gen...

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Raspberry Pi Will Only Ship at the End of March from RS

Not long after the Raspberry Pi foundation revealed its unfortunate manufacturing hiccup, we get a clear idea of when the small PCs will start shipping. We didn't expect to learn about this so soon after the problems revealed by the developers of the Raspberry Pi, but here we are. RS Components, one of the two retailers that have signed on to distribute the credit-card-sized PC, now know when it will start shipping them. Apparently, it hasn't even received the first batch of boards. That will only happen at the end of the month (March, 2012). That means that people who placed pre-orders still have to wait for a few weeks, especially since the deliveries will be carried out on a first-come, first-served basis. “We have never experienced this...

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CeBIT 2012: ASUS PA248Q Monitor with 4-Port USB 3.0 Hub

CeBIT is still underway in Hannover, Germany, and ASUS has various things to show there, such as the unusual PA248Q monitor.  It isn't some special resolution, brightness or other display parameter that makes this thing stand apart from all of the others of its type.  Granted, the IPS panel does give it better viewing angles than most, but we will get to that in due time.  What really makes the ASUS PA248Q unique is its integration of a 4-port USB 3.0 hub.  The universal serial bus is probably there so that media can be played directly off flash drives or external HDDs/SSDs.  That said, the 24-inch IPS panel that we mentioned above enables viewing angles of 1,920 x 1,200 pixels.  Also, the contrast ratio of...

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Spire SkyMax Chills NVIDIA and AMD Graphics Cards

Showing that it hasn't decided to slack off, Spire has officially announced the SkyMax VGA cooler, one that should already be available, in China at least.  Graphics cards have their own coolers, but some people want to change them anyway, to make their models run more silently or just get ventilated better.  Spire believes that its SkyMax is just the thing people need, as long as their video adapter works on 180 W or less.  It relies on five copper heatpipes to bring the heat from the GPU to the fin array, though said pipes don't make direct contact with the chip.  The heatsink itself boasts an open design, which means that whatever air the fans throw at, it goes on to wash over the rest of the graphics card.  That...

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CeBIT 2012: Intel H77 Powered Gigabyte H77M-D3H Micro-ATX Board Makes Its Appearance

Besides the Intel Z77 powered solutions we have seen so far, Gigabyte’s Ivy Bridge motherboard lineup also includes a series of H77 Express models, such as the micro-ATX GA-H77M-D3H the company had on display at its CeBIT booth this year. The H77 chipset includes many features of the Z77 PCH, but it lacks the PCI Express flexibility offered by its older brother. More specifically, the H77 chipset can’t split the 16 PCIe Gen 3.0 lanes available in Intel’s Ivy Bridge processors into dual x8 links, so this PCH isn’t compatible with CrossFireX or SLI setups. This means that even though Gigabyte installed two PCI Express x16 slots in the H77M-D3H, only the first one of these can work at x16 speeds, while the latter is limited at PCIe x4. The...

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Intel Ivy Bridge CPUs to Launch on April 29, More Models on June 3

The rumored April 29 release of Intel’s next-gen 22nm Ivy Bridge processors was apparently confirmed by a recently leaked company slide which also mentions that a second batch of third generation Core chips will arrive on June 3, 2012. The initial release will cover the third-generation Core i5 and Core i7 desktop products with prices ranging from $184 to $332 (141 to 254 EUR), and Core i7 mobile chips. On June 3, Intel will out a new series of Ivy Bridge CPUs that have lower power requirements, as well as the Q77 and Q75 motherboard chipsets. According to the same slide leaked by Donanim Haber, the last batch of next-gen 22nm processors is scheduled for the summer of 2012, when Intel will introduce a series of new SKUs in the entry-level...

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The New iPad Is All Battery Inside

Knowing that the iPad 2 boasts a 25-watt-hour battery that already takes up three quarters of the space inside its chassis, one has to wonder how much room can the new iPad’s 42.5-watt-hour battery take? The lot, according to Jordan Kahn of 9to5mac, who easily deducted that the rechargeable lithium-polymer battery with 70 percent more capacity will cover almost the entire surface area of the new tablet computer. Apple increased the size of the battery mainly to cope with the much more powerful A5X processor that outputs crisp graphics onto a Retina display made up of a whopping 3.1 million pixels. That’s not all though. The battery also needs to provide 10 hours of “wireless productivity” in accordance with Apple’s marketing materials. 3G...

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CeBIT 2012: Single Slot AMD Radeon HD 7850 Showcased by AFOX

Virtually unknown outside of Asia, AFOX, a Hong Kong-based graphics card maker, showcased during this year’s CeBIT fair an innovative Radeon HD 7850 model that occupies a single slot inside the systems case. AFOX’s latest creation, which is called the AF7850-1024D5S1, is based on a redesigned PCB that makes the card slightly longer than the reference HD 7850 design. This is covered by a long plastic shroud which carries AMD’s and AFOX’s logos. The cooling system comprises a large aluminum heatsink with tightly-packed fins, while the heat is drawn from the GPU via a copper plate. Air is flown through the aluminum channels by a large diameter blower type fan which sits at the front of the graphics card. While VR-Zone hasn't provided us with...

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Raspberry Pi Delayed Because of Component Mix-Up

All the hype raised around the Raspberry Pi single-board, credit card-sized PC continues to rise, but not all is well on the company's side.  The Raspberry Pi Foundation actually ran into a small manufacturing problem that has already pushed back the start of shipments.  Long story short, the factory used non-magnetic Internet jacks in the PCs instead of magnetic ones.  That means that none of the Raspberry Pi made so far, save for those produced after the discovery, have network support.  Hopefully, the “slight delay” will be negligible, especially after how successful the first batch of orders was.  The retailers distributing the Linux PCs may have been partially at fault for not accurately estimating the demand,...

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