ThermalTake Presents the World’s First Hand-Cooling eSport Mouse

World renowned cooling expert ThermalTake has just announced the world’s first hand cooling mouse, on its official website. This mouse comes with a detachable cooling fan that it’s said to help cool the hand of professional e-sports player.

The company is apparently thinking a lot about professional games and their sweaty hands and now has come up with a rather original idea of helping cooling those skilled palms. The fan is a rather silent version as it only produces around 21.7 decibels of noise despite a maximum rotation speed of 6000 RPM.

The accessory is also removable in order to keep the reputation of true e-sports champions intact. The mouse itself has a rather sensible 6500 dpi sensor and has a range of 5 colors of backlighting and is called BLACK Element Cyclone.

Read more »

PENTAX Launches the K-30 DSLR Photo Camera

Pentax has just announced the K-30 professional digital photo camera, on its official website. This model is a more affordable version of the K-5, but comes with newer capabilities while being dust and weather proofed.

The viewfinder has 100 percent coverage thanks to the pentaprism and the camera comes with a new autofocus system. Filming can now be done in FullHD resolution and the new CMOS APS-C sensor used in this camera has a resolution of 16.3 mega pixels and a size of 23.7 millimeters by 15.7 millimeters. 

The image stabilization is also provided by the sensor and this should make the lens sets come a little bit cheaper. The body of the camera is made out of stainless steel and is covered with reinforced polycarbonate. The price is set at 850 USD. That is around 680 EUR for European outdoor photographers.

Read more »

KINGMAX Launches ED-07 USB 3.0 Flash Drive

Taipei headquartered, well-known memory manufacturer Kingmax has just announced the ED-07 USB memory stick, on its official website. This is a very fast USB 3.0 model that comes in capacities of up to 128 GB.

The new ED-07 USB flash drives from Kingmax use high speed Toggle or ONFI MLC Flash and thus is able to achieve read speeds of up to 170 MB/s and write speeds of 40 MB/s. These are much faster than usual USB 2.0 memory sticks that are so popular right now. The increased write speed is very obvious when trying to copy a non archived directory full of files of various sizes.

When copying large and compact files, the USB  3.0 ED-07 will only appear two or three times faster than a normal USB 2.0 flash drive, but when writing multiple files of different sizes it will really show its superiority. Here are the official key features and specifications:

Features:

• High transfer speed, increasing efficiency of data transfer and storage.
• Cap design with tail-attached function to avoid the loss.
• High quality aluminum alloy case with anodized coating: shining surface and corrosion resistant
• Compliant with CE, FCC, BSMI, RoHs
• 5 years warranty

Specification:

• Available versions 16GB / 32GB / 64GB / 128GB
• Speeds: 
• 128 GB ,64 GB and 32 GB versions: Read: 170MB/s(max.); Write: 40MB/s (max.)
• 16GB version: Read: 135MB/s (max.); Write: 25MB/s (max.)
• Interface: USB 3.0
• Color: Slivery Grey / Water Blue

Read more »

Script: OXID eShop

OXID eShop is a PHP-based e-commerce platform for creating your own online stores. It is a great alternative to other similar e-commerce platforms like Magento, PrestaShop, OpenCart, TomatoCart or osCommerce.

OXID can handle any shop requirements and features, providing full access to a wide range of tools from themes, to plugins and up to marketing and promotion utilities. Of course, all classic shop features are supported, including static pages management, orders, product catalogs, numerous payment gateway integrations, coupons, shipping modules, localizations, users management and SEO tools.

For more advanced features, various commercial versions are available for purchase. A demo for the Professional Edition can be accessed here.

Download OXID eShop Community Edition here.

Read more »

ECS Presents the “NonStop” Motherboard Series

Taiwanese motherboard company ECS has just announced the new “NonStop” motherboard series, on its official website. These motherboards benefit from a special electric discharge protection and are certified by “NonStop” testing for 72 hours.

ECS motherboards have long been known for being affordable and offering “good-enough” reliability. The price advantage offered by the company helped it to achieve sales much greater than any of the traditional motherboard market players. Despite offering much less features and lower reliability, ECS succeeded in a market where innovative manufacturers like EpoX, Abit and DFI have failed. Other players wanted a piece of this low to mid-end motherboard market that ECS was ruling. ASUS motherboard company founded AsRock as a direct ECS competitor.

The purpose was to sell affordable mainboards without affecting the brand image of ASUS. AsRock was very successful in sales and has even started manufacturing premium products of its own and this apparently forced ECS to offer more features and reliability. ECS “NonStop” certified products will utilize only 100% solid Apache long-life capacitors. These motherboards also come with a comprehensive electrostatic discharge (ESD) protection called "Thor".

The 100% ESD protection on “NonStop” motherboards is achieved with special circuitry, consisting of multiple extra components. ECS claims that “Thor” follows the toughest NASA guidelines for preventing damage from accidental electrostatic discharges. “NonStop” certified motherboards must go through 72 hours of military grade testing. The suite of tests are called by ECS “SuperMarathon 3x” and it also includes the “Sahara Severe Test.”

This is a 50°C severe environment test which we find most useful as many components are recommended to be used in environmental settings of about 40 degrees Celsius or lower. The problem is that most systems are much hotter on the inside of the case when the room temperature is 40 degrees. A 50 degrees Celsius environmental test is very useful for certifying the reliability of a mainboard. Currently, all ECS mainboards belonging to the Black-series are “NonStop” certified. 

Models complaint to the “NonStop” standard include: X79R-AX, X79R-AX deluxe, A990FXM-A, A990FXM-A Deluxe, A75F-A, H61H2-A2 Deluxe, Z77H2-AX, Z77H2-A2X, and Z77H2-A2X deluxe.

Read more »

Chinese Maker Oppo Unveils World’s Thinnest Smartphone

Today’s smartphones are becoming increasingly powerful and feature-packed, but also tend to be slimmer and lighter than before.

Apple’s iPhone measures 9.3mm in thickness, last year’s bestseller Galaxy S II is 8.45mm, while Motorola’s Droid RAZR goes down to only 7.1mm thin. However, none of these is a match for the new Finder from Oppo, which measures only 6.65mm, thus being the slimmest smartphone in the world. The Chinese mobile phone maker has already offered a glimpse at the upcoming device, showing its powerful and appealing specs and preparing it for the approaching availability. Thus, the device will arrive on shelves with a 1.5 GHz dual core application processor packed inside, complemented by 1GB of RAM.

A 4.3-inch Super AMOLED Plus display should provide users with a great experience when it comes to viewing photos or videos on the go. Moreover, it will sport 16GB of internal memory (no mention of a microSD card slot was made), as well as an 8-megapixel photo snapper on the back, with support for full HD (1080p) video recording. Oppo’s Finder will also feature a 1.3 camera on the front, to offer users the possibility to make video calls while on the go. The front camera is capable of 720p video capture. The smartphone will run under Google’s Android operating system, yet there’s no specific info on what version of the mobile platform will be loaded on it.

Rumor has it that the company will put the new device on pre-orders starting with June 6, with a price tag of 3,999 yuan ($632 / €505) attached to it. At this price and with such capabilities, the world’s thinnest smartphone has all the chances to become a popular device, that’s for sure. Have a look at the video embedded below to see a comparison between the thickness of this handset and that of other high-end smartphones.

Read more »

Thermaltake's Toughpower XT 1275W Platinum Snow Edition PSU

Ever since the 80Plus energy efficiency rating system came into play, PSU makers, in this case Thermaltake, have been in a race to see who could make the least energy-wasting PSUs.

Thermaltake has formally launched a power supply unit called Toughpower XT 1275W Platinum Snow Edition. The name does a reasonable job of saying how much power the PSU provides and how efficient it is. The wattage is, obviously enough - 1,275W - while the energy efficiency is the pretty much the best achievable today. The 80Plus Platinum rating allows for nothing less. For those who want numbers, the 1275W Platinum Snow Edition provides an efficiency of up to 94%.

The Full Bridge and LLC resonance with DC-DC module and interleaved PFC circuit designs are responsible for this, and for the high reliability of the unit. The 100% 105°C Japanese electrolytic and solid capacitors contribute much to the latter as well. “Who says PC system could not be trendy from within? Now, with the availability of Toughpower XT 1275W Platinum Snow Edition, enthusiasts could own a magnificent system with style from the interior,” the company says in its announcement.

Thermaltake's PSU has a dual +12V rail design and a 3-mode LED status indicator (S.P.T indicator for Standby/ Power good signal/ Temperature). Active PFC (Power Factor Correction) exists as well, as does 140mm dual ball bearing fan with and Smart Fan Control system that responds to PSU ambient temperature (chooses from fanless, silent and cooling modes). Finally, the company chose a modular cable system, so that owners needn't have more cables cluttering the inside of their cases than necessary. If we were to guess, only in 4-way SLI or CrossFire multi-GPU configurations will all wires have to be used. As for why the name includes the word “Snow.” the reason is clear even from just a look at the product photos: the PSU is painted white all over. The price shouldn't be different from that of the “normal” Platinum edition: $280 / 223.68 Euro.

Read more »

New Photo of LG LS860 Emerges, Specs Confirmed

Sprint is gearing up for the launch of a new LG handset running under Google’s Android operating system, the LG LS860, which has been spotted on the web a few times before.

A new photo with the device is now available, along with some confirmation on the specs and capabilities that it will arrive with. The smartphone, reportedly featuring the codename Cayenne, is expected to arrive on shelves at the wireless carrier in the not too distant future, the guys over at BriefMobile report. Moreover, they’ve got hold of some of the phone’s specifications, which suggest that it will be quite an appealing device when released. The handset is reportedly powered by a Qualcomm MSM8960 chipset, sporting a 1.2GHz dual-core Snapdragon S4 Krait processor, and complemented by 1GB of LPDDR2 RAM.

In addition to this powerful CPU, the handset is said to include a 4-inch WVGA IPS display, complemented by a 5-row QWERTY keyboard, all in a 12.2mm thick body. On the back, it should feature a 5-megapixel photo snapper, with HD video recording capabilities, complemented by a front camera for making video calls. LG LS860 Cayenne will arrive with 8GB of internal storage, most probably with a microSD memory card slot and with a 1700 mAh battery inside. Other specs of the new device include support for Near Field Communications (NFC), and will be able to connect to Sprint’s 4G LTE network. WiFi and Bluetooth capabilities should also be included. 

No info on the Android flavor that this device will run under has emerged, but we might place a safe bet on Ice Cream Sandwich. Apparently, Sprint and LG are preparing the phone for launch in the third quarter of the year. Hopefully, that will happen in early Q3, and not towards the end of the summer.

Read more »

Gigabyte Adds Mini-ITX MSQ77DI Motherboard

There are certain products that IT product makers only provide to other companies, and Gigabyte's MSQ77DI mini-ITX motherboard is one such example.

Rather than selling it to consumers, Gigabyte is shipping it to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs), to be used in white-box all-in-one or standard all-in-one systems. Based on the Intel Q77 chipset, the MSQ77DI has a half-size PCI Express slot (for a Wi-Fi card), a mSATA slot, two SATA 6.0 Gbps ports and a pair of SO-DIMM memory slots (1,600 MHz memory). The back panel includes HDMI (or DisplayPort, according to the specs), two USB 3.0 ports, Gigabit Ethernet, a speaker jack and optical S/PDIF out.

A second version of the board, certain to have HDMI, will be available too, MSB75DI, based on the B75 chipset. Only one SATA 6.0 Gbps port will be available. Regardless of the chipset, OEMs will find pin headers for LVDS and two USB 2.0 ports.

Read more »

A Tiny Stick PC for $74, Android Included (Video)

It was only four days ago that we reported on the existence of a $49 VIA android mini PC and now we get to describe another such item, from Chinese brand rikomagic.

This small device measures 8.8 x 3.5 x 1.2 cm, which is the same as 3.46 x 1.37 x 0.47 inches. Quite a small package for a computer, but we lost the ability to be surprised by things like this because of the Raspberry Pi. Anyway, the new mini PC is called MK802 and relies on an Allwinner 10 processor (1GHz Cortex-A8 CPU), as well as 512 MB of RAM (random access memory). The Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system is loaded on the built-in storage, which is 4 GB NAND Flash.

What's more, an USB port is present, for connecting a keyboard or a mouse. It wouldn't do not to have any means of controlling the PC after all. Besides the above, for establishing the connection to a TV or monitor, an HDMI port was made part of the contraption. All in all, the MK802 is the sort of thing that will be able to turn any TV or monitor into a Smart TV with full PC capabilities. Sure, there won't be any way to play games, but web browsing will work just fine, as will Android apps and the like.

Other specifications that the Chinese company decided to include in the mini PC are support for 2.4G wireless keyboards, Wireless 802.11b/g/n, WAPI (Ralink8188), a memory card slot (Micro TF 2-32GB) and a nice collection of codecs. For those seeking a list, there are both audio (AAC, AAC+, eAAC+, AMR-NB, AMR-WB, QCP, MP3, WMA, WAV, MIDI, M4A) and video codecs (WMV, ASF, MP4, 3GP, 3G2M4V, AVI, MJPEG, RV10, DivX, VC-1, MPEG-2, MPEG-4, H.263, H.264, 1280 x 720P HD 30 fps, 1080P/720 x 480 D1 30fps). Pre-orders can be made here and it won't take more than $74 to place one (59 Euro). Shipments will begin on June 10.

Read more »

Galaxy S III Reportedly Gets Delayed

Galaxy S III, the latest flagship Android handset from South Korean phone maker Samsung, might have been delayed from the original launch date of May 29th, recent reports suggest.

The push back reportedly affects the Pebble Blue flavor of the smartphone, and has been caused by a delay in shipments from the supplier. Galaxy S III was made available for pre-order in various markets around the world a few weeks back, and some of those who reserved the blue flavor report that they had already been informed that the handset would arrive later than expected. Rumor has it that a set of pebble blue battery covers of the high-end smartphone were defective, and that Samsung had to destroy them. If so, it does not come as a surprise that the release was affected, yet the handset vendor hasn’t provided an official statement on the matter so far.

It’s yet uncertain whether the delay will affect all markets, but a Scandinavian user told Reddit that he did receive an email announcing the push back. Apparently, the supplier put all Galaxy S III shipments in Scandinavia on hold, without offering a new launch date for the handset. Here’s what the said email reportedly reads:

"Dear customer, Thank you ordered a Samsung Galaxy S III Blue Pebble of us. We are sorry to announce that we will not deliver it on release date, which is on 29/5. This is because the supplier has suddenly stopped all deliveries of the blue mobile.

This applies to all retailers and operators in Scandinavia, and is not something that only affects CDON.COM . We have tried to maintain a dialogue with the Samsung, but without success. Samsung says that the preliminary shipping date is week 22, but this is unfortunately not something that we are yet to confirm.

CDON.COM will compensate all affected customers by sending out a free coupon for the license to Samsung Navigator (value of 599 €). We would again like to emphasize that there are some blue models to Scandinavia before the release, nor any dealer or any operator. We apologize for the inconvenience. Sincerely CDON.CO"

While this message is a confirmation of the possible push back of Galaxy S III in Scandinavia, it appears that other markets might be affected as well. According to Phandroid, online retailer Negri Electronics announced them that their supplier hadn’t shipped the promised international Galaxy S III units so far, and that the initial launch date might be missed. Reportedly, the retailer announced that the Blue version of the phone was expected to hit shelves before the White version, which should have landed on June 1st, but no new release date was provided. Negri Electronics reportedly said the following:

"To many, being first is a necessity. To us, it is a requirement. While we do not have great news for our customers, we still anticipate to be the first to carry the Galaxy S III, but the date has been set to the 29th.

Our supplier originally gave us a firm date of arrival for the 25th, but has failed to follow through with the promise- putting us in a compromising position with our reputation and name. We anticipate having the Blue, 16GB Galaxy S III before the White. At this time we are not trying to assume a delay from Samsung; but the White is expected to arrive June 1st."

The international version of Galaxy S III was set to hit shelves on May 29th -30th in many countries around the world, while being followed by a LTE-enabled flavor in June, for markets such as the US, South Korea, Japan and more.

Read more »