AMD Reveals More Info About 17W Trinity Ultra-Low Voltage APUs

AMD has recently unveiled some new information about the company’s upcoming ultra-low voltage APUs, based on the Trinity architecture, which were specially designed to be used in ultra-thin laptops. This is the first time the Sunnyvale-based chip maker will introduce ULV accelerated processing units based on a high-performance architecture. As some of you may know from the company’s CES presentation, these ULV Trinity APUs will have a TDP of just 17 Watts, but according to the company they will deliver all the performance of last year's 35W Llano parts. Furthermore the 17W chips will also include some new technologies that weren’t available in the Llano architecture, such as the AVX and AES-NI instruction sets. Sadly, details regarding the...

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AMD’s Dual-Core Trinity’s APUs Could Arrive in Q3 2012

Besides the quad-core Trinity APUs to be introduced in June/July of this year, AMD’s next-gen desktop processor lineup will also include two dual-core chips, the A6-5400K and A4-5300, which will apparently be released during the third quarter of 2012. Both of these APUs will include a single Piledriver module and will fit inside a 65 Watt thermal envelope. Just as its naming implies, the A6-5400K is the more powerful chip of the two as this comes packing a 192 shader Radeon HD 7540D on-board graphics core and a dual-channel DDR3-1866 memory controller. In comparison, the A4-5300 has to make do with a Radeon HD 7480D integrated GPU with just 128 streaming processors, while the DDR3 memory speed is limited at 1600MHz.  Furthermore, the...

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New Samsung Galaxy S III Concept Phone Emerges

Soon, mobile phone users around the world will be able to purchase a new flagship Android device coming from Samsung.  Supposedly called Galaxy S III, the new device will be released as the successor of last year’s Galaxy S II smartphone, and should pack top-of-the-line technology inside.  Nothing has been made official on the new device as of yet, but Samsung is expected to make it official in the very near future, maybe before the end of this month.  Although unofficial, some specs on Galaxy S III have already made it to the web, and enthusiasts have found them inspiring.  Thus, concept devices based on these leaked hardware specs have emerged, also complemented by the vision of their designers.  One new such...

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HIS Radeon HD 7970 IceQ X² Graphics Cards Are Now Official

Earlier this week we found out that HIS was working on a new Radeon HD 7970 custom design that was going to be based on an updated version of the company’s IceQ cooler, which now utilizes two fans instead of one. Just a few hours ago, HIS made this new design official, with the release of the HIS HD 7970 IceQ X² and HIS HD IceQ X² Turbo graphics card models. The two solutions are basically identical except for their operating clock speeds, as the vanilla model sticks to AMD’s reference 950MHz core and 1,375MHz (5.5GHz data rate) clock speeds, while the Turbo model comes factory overclocked. As a result, the GPU is now working at 1,050MHz, while the VRAM has a 1,400MHz (5.6GHz effective) operating frequency. The two fans used by HIS’...

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Script: AutoMOD

What the default phpBB forum installation lacks is a mod (plugin, extension) manager that works out of the box. To fill this glaring whole in their forum software, the phpBB Team is offering AutoMOD, a small extension that provides a GUI for installing, activating and managing phpBB mods. To install, download and uninstall the AutoMOD files. Then copy them in your phpBB3 root folder, overwriting the older files. To finish the AutoMOD installation, navigate to "http://forumURL.com/install” and follow the final steps. After finishing these last steps, navigate to the phpBB forum admin panel where you'll notice a new tab at the right side of the admin menu, named  “AUTOMOD.” There you'll find the interface shown in the picture above, which...

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Nokia Announces Preview of New Store Client for Series 40

Finnish handset vendor Nokia might be moving to Windows Phone on the smartphone market, but it is still focused on enhancing the capabilities of its Series 40 devices, to make them more appealing to users.  Thus, the company has just announced the availability of a preview flavor of the Store client for S40 touch-and-type devices, namely version 3.24.0.  The new preview iteration of the mobile application was made available for Series 40 devices such as Nokia Asha 300, Nokia Asha 303, Nokia C2-02, Nokia C2-03, Nokia C2-06, Nokia C3-01, Nokia C3-01 Gold Edition, and Nokia X3-02. The owners of any of the said S40 touch-and-type devices will benefit from new features in the Store client, including application updates, search history,...

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Google’s Nexus Tablet Almost Confirmed at $149

Google and Asus are reportedly in the final stages of having a Nexus tablet PC released to the market, the latest reports on the web suggest.  Apparently, the device is a “done deal,” and Google is finalizing the latest details on it, such as the $149-199 target price tag. Although incredibly cheap, the new device will offer great quality to all users.  However, one should not look for incredibly great performance capabilities with this device. To ensure that the tablet will be only $149, Google had to take the originally rumored quad-core application processor out of the equation.  The Android-powered Nexus tablet might pack a dual-core Snapdragon application processor from Qualcomm, rumor has it.  One thing that hasn’t...

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OLPCs' XO Laptop Ships, Uruguay Gets It First

After months of work, the One Laptop per Child (OLPC) nonprofit organization is ready to send out the newest XO children's laptop, XO 1.75. As one of the countries most involved with OLPC's efforts to provide all children with learning opportunities, Uruguay will be the country to receive the first batch. About 60,000 of the XO 1.75 will be shipped, all of them featuring the ARM Armada 610 processor from Marvel, the Sugar learning environment and a power consumption of 4W (200 milliwatts when idle). The organization's official website has all the relevant information. You can find it here. "We salute Plan Ceibal for its leadership in providing all Uruguayan children access to a modern education," said Rodrigo Arboleda, chairman and CEO of...

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Extensive Office 15 Technical Preview Screenshots Available

In January, Microsoft kicked off the technical preview availability of the upcoming Office 15 application, allowing only a small number of people to get a taste of the new features and capabilities packed with it.  Office 15 is the next version of Microsoft’s productivity suite, and it should arrive on Windows 8 with enhancements for the use on touch-enabled devices.  We have already encountered a long series of rumors on what the suite might have to offer to users, and now we can get a better glimpse at it.  Paul Thurrott from WinSupersite has managed to grab one copy of the Office 15 Technical Preview release, and published a series of screenshots to detail some of the main features in the new release.  One thing that...

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Slim MacBook Pros Now in Production, Sources Say

Sources at Apple’s supply chain partners are telling DigiTimes that Apple has revised its MacBook Pro line to include a slimmer chassis with no optical drive. By removing the optical disc drive, Apple will release 13- and 15-inch laptops that retain their Pro-status with higher specs than the MacBook Air, the sources said. Specifically, the enhancements will occur in the CPU and storage departments, according to the Taiwanese trade publication. Production is said to have already begun, with Apple planning to ship 100,000-150,000 units per month initially, and later 900,000 per month. This is not the first time DigiTimes reports on Apple’s plans to put the MacBook Pro on a diet by removing the disc-reading unit, which is regarded as an obvious...

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Apple's New iPad Is Not Very Recyclable

Sims Recycling Solutions, the world’s largest electrical and electronics recovery and recycling company, says the new Apple iPad is not a friend of the environment. Sims Recycling is the world's largest electronics recycling company, handling over 475,000 tonnes of e-waste annually in over 50 locations worldwide. The company offers repair, refurbishment and recycling services for electronic and electrical goods. They handle everything from desktop computers, laptops, and televisions, to monitors and mobile devices. They’re also good pals with the people at iFixit, a technically savvy bunch who’ve just recently torn down the latest Apple iPad. They make it their job to fix things like the elusive tablet PC so, naturally, they had to peek...

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Windows Phone Tango Custom ROMs Emerge

Last month, at the Mobile World Congress in Barcelona, Spain, Microsoft and its partners announced a range of handsets running under a new flavor of Windows Phone, codenamed Tango.  The new platform release came with support for lower hardware configurations, thus bringing the Windows Phone OS in the hands of more people out there.  Today, we learn that the first custom ROMs built on the Windows Phone 7.5 Tango platform are available for download.  At the moment, only two devices are supported, namely the HTC HD2 (which was launched a few years ago with Windows Mobile 6.5 on board) and the Samsung Omnia 7 (one of the first new Windows phones). The owners of any of these smartphones interested in getting a taste of a fully unlocked...

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HIS Makes Two New Radeon HD 7950 IceQ Graphics Cards Official

HIS, one of AMD’s closest add-in board partners, has just announced the release of two new IceQ graphics cards based on the Radeon HD 7950 design, including one factory overclocked model with a 900MHz GPU clock. Both of these cards use a cooling system developed in-house by HIS, which is called the IceQ and relies on a single blower fan placed at the rear of the card. This is used to push air through a small, but dense aluminum channel array, which draws the heat away from the GPU thanks to a pair of 6mm thick and two 8mm thick nickel-plated copper heatpipes. This powerful cooling assembly enabled HIS to increase the operating frequency of the iTurbo model to 900MHz, 100MHz more than AMD’s recommended clock for the HD 7950. The memory works...

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Leica M10 Full-Frame Camera May Be Revealed on May 10

In a little less than two months from now, Leica may uncover a new M-series full-frame camera dubbed the Leica M10, according to some rumors that reached the web just a few hours ago. The rumors are fueled by a series of invitations sent out by the company to an event that is supposed to take place May 10-11 in Berlin, Germany. In the invitation received by Steve Huff, Leica mentions that the event will host “a whole range of product launches.”  The M10 name isn’t specified anywhere in its text, but Huff believes that new M-series and X-Series cameras will be part of the event. According to Huff, a Leica representative told him at some point in the past that the company planned to release new M- and X- line cameras every two to three...

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Lenovo IdeaPad Y480 14-Inch Ivy Bridge Notebook Visits the FCC

Unveiled by the company during this year’s CES fair, Lenovo’s IdeaPad Y480 notebook powered by Intel’s upcoming Ivy Bridge processors just paid a quick visit to the FCC to receive WiFi certification for its US launch. The notebook, which made a brief appearance on Amazon last week, is based on Intel’s third generation Core processors. Lenovo’s laptop was designed to run the 64-bit version of the Windows 7 Home Premium operating system, and sports a 14-inch display. At its heart there stands the Intel Core i7-3610QM processor that packs four computing cores clocked at 2.3GHz (3.3GHz maximum Turbo Boost speed), support for Intel’s Hyper-Threading technology and an on-die Intel HD 4000 graphics core. However, for the version listed by Amazon...

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“Unprinting” Technology Erases Text from Paper

Paper printing is an intrinsic part of life, all those tons of used paper go to waste eventually and there is always the need for more blank sheets in case someone wants to print something else. A team of researchers from the University of Cambridge in England may just have a solution to this problem, at least as far as black text is concerned. Essentially, they managed to create a so-called “unprinting” technology, which erases ink without damaging the paper. To offer some context, a paper printer uses a laser to give “pixels” on a piece of paper a positive charge. That causes negatively-charged toner particles to stick to those regions, leaving it to a heat source to fuse the toner and the paper. The “unprinting” technology is quite different...

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MSI R7970 Lightning Graphics Card Breaks Boundaries

If you thought AMD's Radeon HD 7970 graphics card was strong, you might not believe what Micro-Star International did to it.  The product is getting customized by more or less every one of AMD's OEMs, so MSI is really only following the natural course.  It still deserves props for one-upping Sapphire though, since the latter's Radeon HD 7970 OC Edition, while powerful, lags behind the R7970 Lightning.  Indeed, MSI's product is called R7970 Lightning and has a faster clock speed for the 28nm graphics processing unit (GPUs).  The same goes for the 3 GB of GDDR5 VRAM, though the boost is not as pronounced.  For those who want numbers, the GPU works at 1,070 MHz instead of the reference 925 MHz, while the memory has...

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FBI Asks Google to Provide Data Stored on Locked Android Phone

A federal judge agreed to give the FBI a warrant which forces Google to turn over the information stored on an Android smartphone seized by authorities as part of an investigation. The company is willing to oblige. Somewhat similar to the case in which a fraudster was ordered by a court to decrypt a laptop that might have contained incriminating data, the FBI now requests Google’s help to obtain email accounts, web history, GPS tracking data, and text messages from the phone of a man suspected of violating his parole conditions. Ars Technica informs that Dante Dears was imprisoned in 2005 for drug dealing and human trafficking and, after being released a couple of times, he returned to his old habits. On the last occasion, the FBI found...

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Rugged Sony Camera Can Be Operated Underwater

If you're in the market for a small, tough camera that can go where few dared to go before, the Sony Bloggie Sport may be just the thing for you. We have to say that the name alone doesn't do the item justice, or at least doesn't comprise its entire worth, so to speak. After all, “Bloggie Sport” doesn't exactly scream “tough”, “hardy” or “impervious.” In fact, not even looking at it is enough to figure out just why this item is better than all the rest. Fortunately, Sony made sure to publish a blog entry about it, and even showed a video rundown of its features. The Bloggie Sport is, in essence, a rugged photo and video camera, or camcorder as such things are sometimes called. By rugged we mean that it is capable of surviving through...

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Teardown Reveals Full iPad 3 Specs

As avid readers will remember, iFixit flew over to Australia this week to grab one of the first new iPads going on sale this Friday. They bought one, improvised an “operating table” on site, and took the thing apart. (Regardless of Apple’s choice for the name of “the new iPad”, it’s probably best not to clutter the headline this time around and just call it what it is - the third iPad. Or, as we’ve been calling it for over a year now, the iPad 3.) With that out of the way, iFixit has mercilessly torn down Apple’s new tablet PC to discuss all the technical details behind its beautiful Retina display. They’ve been able to confirm stuff like: The device uses a dual-core Apple A5X processor with integrated quad-core graphics (no surprise there). A...

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