News Bits: Toshiba P100-ST9472, Samsung PMR Notebook Drives, Dell Enters Second Life

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Toshiba P100 gaming notebook now available with Core 2 Duo

November 14^th - Toshiba today announced the latest edition to its high-performance gaming notebook lineup, the P100-ST9472, which features the Intel Core 2 Duo processor.

Only available from ToshibaDirect.com, the P100-ST9472 features a 17&quot; WSXGA+ display, Intel Centrino Duo Mobile Technology, and the ultra-powerful Nvidia GeForce Go7900GTX graphics card with 512MB GDDR3 dedicated memory. The ST9472 has a &quot;Sunlight Copper&quot; lid and has an estimated price of $2,899.

Product Link

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Dell to Sell PCs in Second Life Virtual World

No, we don't mean the Buddhist after life, but rather the online game and virtual world of Second Life. Dell will allow Second Life residents to purchase virtual PCs and will also allow them to order new PCs that will be delivered to the first life world (aka the real world).

Second Life is a virtual world that lets people create digital representations of themselves. As a resident you can interact with other people, exchange real dollars for Linden Dollars used in the game to buy things (such as a Dell now). There are now 1.39 million residents in Second Life, up from a million just a month ago.

According to Ro Parra, Dell senior vice president, &quot;We want to be where people are gathering.&quot; Second Life has 1.39 million residents as of Tuesday morning, with 533,825 having logged on in the last 60 days. Just a month ago, Second Life welcomed its millionth resident.

Dell Island in Second Life features a factory room, where residents can configure their real and/or virtual PCs, as well as a walkthrough model of a Dell XPS 710 PC and a mockup of Michael Dell's University of Texas at Austin dorm room, where the company was founded.

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Second Life Website

Samsung introduces new 2.5&quot; hard drives featuring PMR technology

November 14^th - Samsung Electronics today introduced its M80 SATA and M80 series 2.5&quot; notebook hard drives, which feature capacities up to 160GB and Perpendicular Magnetic Recording (PMR) Technology.

The M80 SATA series is comprised of the 80GB HM080HI, the 120GB HM120II and 160GB HM160JI, and the M80 series includes the 80GB HM080HC, the 120GB HM120IC and the 160GB HM160JC.

The M80 (SATA) drives are the first drives Samsung has offered that feature PMR technology. Both drives also feature free-fall sensors, which park the drive's head and turn the hard drive off in a fall. The M80 SATA and M80 series have an 8MB cache and 5,400RPM rotational speed. Fluid Dynamic Bearing motors ensure a quiet operation.

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Acer and Asustek take almost 15% of global notebook market in Q3 2006

The combined shipments of Acer- and Asustek-branded notebooks in Q3 2006 totaled 3.174 million units, which is 14.9 percent of the global Q3 notebook shipments of 21.3 million units. Along with Lenovo, Chinese notebooks accounted for 22.8 percent of global notebook shipments in Q3.

Japanese notebooks captured 23.2 percent global notebook market share in Q3. They will face increasing competition from Chinese and US vendors.

Asus and Acer are projected to hold 20% of the market share in 2008.

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Asustek to market own-brand notebooks in Japan in Q4

Four notebook vendors in Japan will begin to market Asustek's own-brand notebooks in the Japanese market in Q4. The four distributors are Bic Camera, Yodobashi Camera, Sofmap and Tsukumo.

Asustek notebook models that will be available in the Japanese market include the leather-bound S6 and the Lamborghini series, which are expected to do well in Japan thanks to their design and quality. The S6 will retail for 279,800 yen (US$2,378), and the Lamborghini 399,800 (US$3,398).

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Firefox 1.5.0.8 released

For those of you still using Firefox 1.5, the 1.5.0.8 update is now available. It mainly fixes bugs in the browser. Mozilla plans to support Firefox 1.5 through April 2007, but strongly encourages all users to download its latest Firefox 2.0 browser.

Firefox 1.5.0.8 Update

Mozilla Firefox 2.0

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PC Perspective reviews Asus Lamborghini VX1 notebook

PC Perspective reviewed the Asus Lamborghini VX1 notebook, featuring the Intel Core 2 Duo processor. Review Link.

Exploding laptop video on YouTube

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Here is a video of a staged demonstration of a lithium-ion battery fire in a generic notebook computer. The battery was artificially forced into an unstable state, but the initial battery cell reaction and the on-going chain reactions are real.

Special thanks to NBR forum moderator Tim for submitting this link.

 

man that was the coolest thing I saw! I want to make a exploding laptop!, too bad they couldn't of had the thing running windows when it happened, I would like to see how long it would of lasted before it crashed!

 

Yeah that video is very cool. I would think that the battery exploding the first time would have turned off windows.
Tim

 

WOW that is crazy

 

I was thinking "Dell on Second Life?" until I noticed that video. Now I know why reports called it "fireworks-like". Crazy. The explosion is much more energetic than I had imagined.

Thanks Chaz & Tim!

 

Wait a minute....is Dell going to have live Dell Agents walking around in Second Life or something? What happens when a large colorful dragon like me stops by? I don't exactly fit in amongst a bunch of humans. Would I scare the Dell Agents away? Lol, that would be a pretty neat way to purchase, but the novelty of it would wear off quickly I think. Computers are expensive so I don't know if I'd feel comfortable using Second Life for that..but I sure would looooooooove to bear my teeth and growl at some idiot representative like the ones many of us have dealt with when we have to make "Dell-hell tech support calls". Maybe I could pour ketchup on a sales agent and threaten to eat them if they don't lower the price? Hmmmm...fun fun

And for the exploding laptop.....I suddenly want to take the battery out of this thing, permanently.

 

You can have dragons in Second Life? Weird. I played that game (well, it's not really a game I know) today for the first time to check it out. Pretty fascinating, I can see how people can get lost in it. I think I'll stick to meeting people and interacting in the real world though, lord knows I'm antisocial enough with the amount of time I spend in front of a computer in solitude.

 

I'm going to stay far away from Second Life. I know how easy it is a lose one's life to something like that. Sounds so simular to another online addiction of mine.

That explosion video is nuts. It makes me rethink why people were getting so uptight about getting laptops on airplanes. I'm kind of staring down my Dell now... wondering...

 

I bought the Samsung HM160JI last week. On this occasion Samsung hasn't committed the usual act of announcing the product 6 months before it is available. I put a quick review at http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=87810 .

John

 

It's kinda funny when the VX1 review refers VX1 as a 15.4"..

 

Thanks for that cool video! It also learned a few things about it: my Dell X1 will just explode 6 times (6-cell battery)

Chaz, when do you think that the PMR 7200 rpm 16-MB cache harddisk will come? That would be a nice upgrade!

Charlie

 

First half of 2007:
http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=3322
200GB 7,200RPM - sounds like a very tempting upgrade, although I can't imagine the price will be reasonable.

 

Yes you can. All you have to do is build them over top the default human avatar you're given. You can use the custom shapes tools to accomplish this. Here's an example:

http://www.deviantart.com/deviation/41326082/

I never finished mine because I never got into SL for some reason. For me it looked like a glorified chat program with a simple modeling tool. Athough I can understand why so many people like it, it just never caught on for me.