Inspiron 17 is equipped with a 17.3-inch screen with a resolution of 1600x900 pixels and a 16:9. The display is also LED backlit so that users can benefit from a better visual experience. Apart from that they can choose from a number of Intel processors, up to a 2.4-GHz Core 2 Duo, with basic configurations starting price of U.S. $499, U.S. $649 and U.S. $799.
The basic price for the Inspiron 17 is $499, which will provide users with a dual core 2GHz Pentium processor, 2GB RAM, a 160GB hard drive, an Intel X4500HD graphics chip, high-definition audio, a Dell wireless 802.11g half mini -map and a 4-cell lithium battery. In order to improve performance and add features in the system, users can select up to 4 GB of memory, larger capacity 500 GB hard drive, Blu-ray, a 6-cell battery and a 256MB Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics card.
Dell also promises a 9-cell battery for the orders in early August, while later in September, the Inspiron 17 will be available with a 512MB graphics card and a 1080p screen. All systems are equipped with Windows Vista operating system and have the support of at least 1-year warranty.
Sunday, July 19, 2009
Dell intros new Inspiron 17 laptop
Corsair intros new Extreme SSD Series
Corsair has recently updated its range of high performance Solid State Drives with the introduction of a new Extreme Series line. According to the company, its new family of high-end SSDs will be available in storage capacities of 32, 64 and 128GB. According to Corsair, the new line of SSDs designed using the new Indilinx Barefoot controller to storage with performance of up to 240MB / s read and 170MB / s write. This places Corsair latest offer some of the highest performance SSD solutions on the market."The combination of Indilinx Barefoot controller, Samsung flash memory and 64 MB of onboard cache gives blisters, stutter-free performance, eliminating bottlenecks that traditional mechanical hard drives," says Jim Carlton, VP Marketing at Corsair. "The New Extreme Series SSDs are ideal for use as primarily operates in computers and laptops, and RAID 0 configurations in high-performance computers for enthusiasts who want extreme performance."
The new Corsair Extreme SSD series is built with a mixture of the Samsung MLC NAND Flash memory and the new Indilinx Barefoot controller, which allows a maximum reading speed of 240MB / s and write speed up to 170MB / s. In addition, the new discs with the end-user upgrade firmware that makes it possible to provide support to the next TRIM command in Windows 7. The upgrade will be made available via their own website.
Despite the fact that Corsair does not have full information on the prices of the new series, Slash Gear reports that these devices are already available for the same price as U.S. $413.99 U.S. $249.99 and U.S. $125.99 for the X128, x64 and x32 models, respectively.
Saturday, June 27, 2009
Google Rules Mobile Search -- for Now
Popular search engine Google not only dominates the web game but has taken to lead the mobile search domain globally as well, a report from Web browser company Opera said recently.
In its State of the Mobile Web report, Opera said Google continues to assert itself as a leader in mobile search in areas such as Southeast Asia, although competitors Yandex and Baidu continue to stake claim of Russia and China.
Meanwhile, mobile search continues to grow in areas such as India and Nigeria, where search portal page views account for 16.3% and 26.6% of mobile traffic in the two countries respectively.
"Searching the Web via a mobile device presents an enormous opportunity for both search engines and consumers," said Jon von Tetzchner, CEO, Opera. "Almost all search engines are moving forward to offer relevant and timely information based on location. Yet, consumers prefer services from the search engines they already know and use."
In the Philippines where mobile penetration clocks in at a strong 90% of the population, adoption of Opera's popular mobile browser, the Opera Mini, continues to see growth as it registered a 353% climb from previous years averaging 705 page views per user, making it the number 3 country in terms of usage.
On popular sites visited by Filipinos, Friendster enjoys a safe lead in the country, but popular search networking giant Facebook continues to ease in, even taking the lead in neighboring country Indonesia.
As in previous years, Nokia handsets enjoy a safe place at the top in terms of preferred mobile phone brand, followed by Sony Ericsson
News Sites Falter as Traffic Spikes After Jackson's Death
Michael Jackson's death on Thursday caused a spike in visits to news Web sites that affected the performance and availability of some of the biggest ones, according to Web monitoring company Keynote Systems.
Between 6 p.m. and 8 p.m. U.S. Eastern Time, the availability for the news sites from ABC, CBS and the LA Times dropped to almost 10 percent, meaning that about nine out of 10 visitors couldn't get the sites to load.
Starting at 5:30 p.m., the average download speed for news sites tracked by Keynote went from less than four seconds to almost 9 seconds, and their average availability dropped from almost 100 percent to 86 percent, the company said. News sites monitored by Keynote returned to normal performance and availability levels by 9:15 p.m.
Other news sites that experienced problems included AOL, MSNBC, NBC, the San Francisco Chronicle and Yahoo News, according to Keynote.
However, in a subsequent statement late Friday evening, Keynote noted that the slowdowns were caused primarily by external providers of interactive images and ads to the news sites. An example was the news site of ABC, which served up its internal content without delay but got dragged down by its external providers, Keynote said.
In these situations, depending on how a Web site is designed or how end users' browsers are configured, Web pages can display immediately their internal content, leaving blank sections for the delayed external content or, at the other extreme, the pages will not be displayed until all components are ready to be rendered, according to Keynote.
"Ongoing end-to-end load testing and performance measurement benchmarking are essential to being prepared for unexpected news events. News sites should require third party content companies, such as ad networks, to certify the capacity of their networks, perform regular load tests from around the globe, and have strong Service Level Agreements in place," Keynote said in its statement Friday evening.
Meanwhile, Reuters' home page had a period of "significant slowdown" between around 6 p.m. to 7 p.m., according to Web monitoring company Pingdom.
Web monitoring company Gomez also noticed performance problems in the news sites it tracks, a spokeswoman said via e-mail Friday. At around 6 p.m. on Thursday, the average response time in Gomez's online media Web performance benchmark rose to 25 seconds, up from 11 seconds at the same time the day the previous day, she said.
Another high-profile news site that malfunctioned on Thursday was Google News, which interpreted the sharp spike in Jackson-related search queries as an automated attack. "As a result, for about 25 minutes yesterday, when some people searched Google News they saw a 'We're sorry' page before finding the articles they were looking for," Google said in an official blog on Friday. In general, Google saw a "volcanic" spike in Jackson-related search queries on Thursday, when more than 50 of the top-100 searches were related to him, a Google spokeswoman said via e-mail.
Akamai's Net Usage Index for global news sites traffic surged at around 6 p.m. and hit a peak of 4.24 million visitors per minute at 6:26 p.m.
The usage spike also put a strain on online communication tools, like AOL's AIM instant messaging system, which went offline for about 40 minutes on Thursday.
"At AOL our AIM instant messaging service was undergoing a previously scheduled software update which should normally prove routine. It proved not to be. There was a significant increase in traffic due to [Michael Jackson's] news and AIM was down for approximately 40 minutes this afternoon," the company said in a statement.
Micro-blogging site Twitter disabled for several hours a search feature in its homepage, although the company didn't respond to a request for comment as to whether this was caused by a Jackson-related surge in usage.
At Yahoo, the article headlined "Michael Jackson rushed to hospital" got the most hits of any other story ever posted on the company's home page with 800,000 clicks within 10 minutes. "Also, the news area on our front page experienced five times the amount of traffic it normally receives," Yahoo said in an official blog.
Yahoo News broke its record of unique visitors with 16.4 million; the previous record was 15.1 million visitors U.S. election day last year. In Yahoo Music, 21,000 people left comments on a blog post about Jackson, while more than 4,000 images related to the music star have been posted on Flickr in the past day, the company said
Facebook, the world's most popular social-networking site, experienced an increase across its core actions, like the posting of messages, notes and links on member profiles, a spokeswoman said via e-mail.
"Status updates in particular saw an increase of more than 3x the amount than usual within an hour of the MJ news breaking and remained well above our usual numbers for several hours," the spokeswoman said.
Jackson died unexpectedly at age 50 from a heart attack in Los Angeles as he was reportedly getting ready to launch a comeback. One of the biggest stars in pop music history, on par with icons like Elvis Presley and the Beatles, Jackson saw his star fade in the 1990s. One of the most successful recording artists of the 1970s and 1980s, Jackson later became more well known for scandals including accusations of child molestation and controversies over his multiple facial plastic surgeries.
Palm Pre App Catalog Hits 1 Million Downloads
nding mobile software channel, the Pre App Catalog, which already boasts a number of great applications. Earlier this week, Medialets, a mobile advertising and analytics firm, released App Catalog metrics that suggest Palm's new app store hit the 1M downloads mark on June 24, just 18 days after its launch. Palm Pre App Catalog Total App Downloads Since Launch, via Medialets. (See "Eight Top Free Downloads for Palm Pre.")That's impressive when you consider the fact that those millions application downloads can be attributed to just 150,000 Pres sold. That's an average of more than six app-downloads per device and 33,333 thousand total downloads per application, according to Medialets, with a download-low of 2,400 and a high of 114,000.
It's even more notable with some additional context. For example, the Palm Pre/webOS software developer's kit (SDK), dubbed Mojo, which provides developers with the tools necessary to create webOS apps, isn't even publically available yet. Developers using the Mojo SDK are participants in Palm's "early access program," and have likely signed away all sorts of freedoms in exchange for access to the tools. In other words, developers using the Mojo SDK for Pre are currently doing so according to a set of (strict) Palm rules.
Palm plans to release the SDK by the end of summer, but until then, it's up to the company who can and who cannot build Pre apps for distribution via App Catalog. Also developers who sign Palm's Mojo SDK non-disclosure agreement (NDS) can't talk about the SDK to anyone. They can't share feedback or best practices.
Furthermore, the App Catalog itself is still in "beta" testing stages, and as such, developers aren't yet allowed to charge for applications, according to Ed Finkler, creator of the popular Spaz Twitter application, which is available in Palm's App Catalog.
Finkler's currently offering Spaz for free via App Catalog, but he plans to eventually charge a small fee--from $1 to $3--to compensate folks who have contributed to Spaz, which is an open-source project. (Finkler will also make all pertinent Spaz for Pre source code available online, so it'll be free to those crafty enough to circumvent App Catalog.)
Such SDK and pricing restraints make it difficult, if not impossible, for independent developers like Finkler--who isn't funded by some large corporate entity--to sink time and resources into a Pre app because he and his fellow Spaz contributors aren't monetarily compensated in any way...yet.
As such, it doesn't currently make sense to compare App Catalog progress with the success of other major mobile software stores like the iTunes App Store or BlackBerry App World. But that didn't stop Medialets from doing so. From the company:
"[C]omparing at the 1 million mark, the average Palm Pre user had downloaded 26x the number of apps that iPhone users had, and the average app in the App Catalog experienced 16x the number of downloads that apps in the App Store had experienced."
Again, this is a bit like comparing Apple to oranges. But the Palm Pre App Catalog is off to an impressive start any way you look at it. And this is just the beginning. Wait until the Mojo SDK is available to anyone who wants it. Developers will then (hopefully) starting sharing best practices and lessons learned. They'll be able to price apps in any way they please.
And new webOS devices, which will also presumably run App Catalog software, are on the near horizon.
All of these factors and more will surely draw more developers to the platform. The quality of applications will increase as more and more competing offerings make their ways into App Catalog. And Pre users will have access to a more robust ecosystem and webOS experience, which will in turn draw new users.
To sum that all up: The future's so bright for Palm's App Catalog, I'm putting on my Ray-Bans right now.
New Role Urged for ICANN
The RIRs have followed the European Union's demand, proposed by European Commissioner Viviane Reding last month, for the ending of the collaboration agreement between ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce.
The RIRs, responsible for IP address allocation within geographic regions, have put out a joint statement saying that it was time for the U.S. government to pull out of control of the Internet: he Internet Domain Name System (DNS) is currently managed by ICANN and the U.S. Department of Commerce under an agreement set to expire on 30 September.
Axel Pawlik, managing director of European RIR, RIPE NCC, told Techworld that there was no cohesion between the EU call and the RIRs' position. "We didn't confer with each other, we seen several ideas from the EU, some of which that we thought we were good, but there's no question of this being coordinated in any way.
Pawlik stressed that all the RIRs -- including the north American registry, ARIN, were in full agreement on this issue. He also made it plain that the RIRs had no complaints about the way that ICANN was run, merely the problems that Internet governance structure caused.
"It's purely a political issue," he said. "We have an excellent opinion of ICANN based on the way that it runs things, but it's the political dimension can cause problems," he said.
The RIRs said that the existing Governmental Advisory Committee (GAC) should be given great power. "It's purely advisory at the moment," said Pawlik, "there are some countries -- notably China -- that don't get involved but the GAC could be taken more seriously, giving stakeholders a greater say." He also said that European Commissioner Reding's idea of a G-12 for Internet governance was an interesting idea "but we'd still be arguing as to who the 12 countries would be in 50 years' time."
However, Pawlik is realistic enough to know that the U.S. is not going to give up control of ICANN lightly. "They asked for comments and we've made our views known," he said. "But even with the change of administration, I can't see them loosening that control," he added.