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Epson To Roll Out Interactive Projector

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Epson is set to launch a new ultra short throw projector that can turn any surface into a communication tablet. The Epson 450Wi is aimed at classrooms and will provide interactive capabilities to students.

According to Epson, this projector integrates interactive functionality in one machine without the constraints or expense of an interactive whiteboard. The 450Wi can project images up to 96-inch in native WXGA, uses an ultra-short throw projector design that claims to eliminate many of the common problems of interactive systems such as an intrusive classroom footprint as well as eye glare, and has a new mount designed for simple wall installations.

“Anchored close to the wall, you can project extra-large, 80″ images from just 2′ away,” says the company.

In addition, the projector works on almost any surface “an existing whiteboard, a flat wall, even a chalkboard with dry-erase paint. Interactive capabilities are built into the projector and not into a board, so virtually any surface will work”. 

Finally, its interactive pen works like a mouse on your PC/Mac. “It is software agnostic and Web 2.0 friendly. Similar to a computer monitor, the open architecture allows users to use, share, and engage with virtually any software, digital media file or e-textbook,” concluded the company.

Kensington Goes For Netbook Market

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Kensington has launched a new range of accessories for netbooks in an effort to strengthen and expand its portfolio. The new line includes a compact mouse, a security lock, and a reversible case.


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According to Kensington, the Netbook mice are fit to scale for the 30 – 90 minute netbook usage model and are available in two variations – wired ($19.95) or wireless ($39.95).

The Kensington Netbook security lock has been modified for netbooks to keep your computer safer than ever. The compressed coil lock is only 78mm long but expands to 1.8m so you can lock your netbook down and keep it safe from straying hands. This security lock has an RRP of $29.95.

Finally, the Kensington Netbook case is reversible and is cushioned to shield your computer from damage whilst on the move. It is available for $19.95.

 

 


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In addition to the new Netbook range, Kensington also has a couple of ‘smart made simple’ products to enhance productivity. The full portfolio is comprised of seven categories:

Control It: A high performance range of mice, presenters, trackballs, keyboards and keypads, which make computers easier to control. Highlights from the range include the SlimBlade Trackball laser mouse which has an RRP of $39.95.

Power It: Rechargeable battery packs power iPods, MP3 players and other mobile devices on the move, without the need for a power source.

Carry It:  Kensington’s Contour range of notebook cases reduces shoulder and back fatigue by up to 35 percent.

Play It: A range of accessories which allow consumers to enjoy and use iPods, iPhones, MP3 players or mobile phones in the car, home or out and about for hours on end without running out of power.

Secure It: Kensington offers a comprehensive range of mobile and desktop locks, which make it easy to keep your computer safe and secure, wherever you are.

Connect It: A range of home and office computing solutions, with one-touch simplicity, including multi-view monitor adaptors, notebook stands and a variety of connectivity devices.

Optimise It: Based on US army research into body measurements, this ergonomic range protects against poor posture, eyestrain and repetitive strain conditions.

See: au.kensington.com

HP Unveils Business Smartphone With GPS

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Hewlett-Packard has today released a 3G smartphone designed to provide users with a complete mobile solution for business users on the go.


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The HP iPAQ 912 Series Business Messenger offers built-in GPS navigation, Microsoft Windows Mobile 6.1 Professional, as well as HP’s Enterprise Mobility Suite.

HP Australia’s Market Development Manager for Handhelds, Eric Chou said,
 “As more of the workforce becomes mobile, customers are demanding greater sophistication and functionality from smartphones. The iPAQ HP 912 not only provides connectivity, productivity tools and GPS navigation, but also supports the business applications that keep on-the-go professionals connected.”

According to HP, the iPAQ 912 Series Business Messenger caters to business needs, offering tri-band UMTS/HSDPA and quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE wireless technology.

 

It also features HP’s Enterprise Mobility Suite that allows easy setup and over-the-air manageability so that businesses can remotely mange, help secure and support mobile devices with ease.

Other features include: 

  • Bluetooth and Wi-Fi 
  • Alphanumeric QWERTY thumb keyboard 
  • 5-way navigation scroll wheel 
  • 3-megapixel camera; 
  • Touch-screen display
  • Built-in Cyberon Voice Commander and HP Voice Reply

Availability and Pricing

The HP iPAQ 912 Series Business Messenger has an RRP of $799 and is available now.

See: www.hp.com.au

Hitachi Widescreen Projector For Boardrooms

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Hitachi has released a 3000 ANSI lumens widescreen projector aimed at businesses and education facilities.


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The CP-WX410 features a true 1280 x 800 colour pixels and 16:10 widescreen image, making it compatible with industry standard laptop displays. This HD-ready LCD projector also has a new Hybrid filter designed to be used for over 4000 hours in normal usage.

Hitachi Australia’s Product Manager, Digital Presentation Solutions, Bill Christoforou said “The CP-WX410 is one of our most impressive projectors to date. By combining convenient widescreen and HD-ready capabilities with its portability, our latest LCD projector delivers extremely high performance within both business and educational environments.”

 “The CP-WX410 introduces high quality widescreen abilities along with a compatible size for portability. Hitachi can now offer the Australian projector industry a full range of products that match current and future market trends,” added Bill.

The CP-WX410 also features an improved Security Bar, preventing theft when mounted on the ceiling or used on a cart-top. It also allows for projection onto a variety of surfaces including blackboard, whiteboard and greenboard modes, ensuring optimum visibility.

Hitachi has also announced that it is an official contributor of Sydney Festival 2010 and has donated six LCD projectors. These will be utilised in the foyer of the Seymour Centre for the duration of the renowned festival and will greatly enhance the festival goers’ experience, as the space is transformed into an ecliptic mix of films, advertisements and moving images in high contrast image and exceptional colour reproduction. 
The models donated were three portable/installation LCD data projector (two CPX450s and CPX4020) and three larger installation LCD data projectors (CPX809, CPX615, and CPX705). 
Malcolm Moir, Head of Business Development, Sydney Festival said: “Our production and design colleagues feel the addition of the Hitachi projectors will give us the opportunity to greatly enhance the foyer environment of the Seymour Centre by allowing festival goers to utilise the equipment in a number of different ways, such as being able to access the Internet.”
Dipak Kumar, General Manager, Digital Technology Solutions Group Hitachi Australia comments, “It is a privilege to be involved with Sydney Festival in this way, the high calibre of technology will help to ensure the highest levels of audience enjoyment. Hitachi is pleased to provide projectors that are of the highest quality and performance to a great event that will be appreciated by audiences, residents and tourists.”
The Hitachi LCD projectors will be used in the Seymour Centre foyer for the duration of Sydney Festival (6 January – 31 January)

Ericsson Router Shares Mobile Broadband

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Forget about USB dongles for your wireless broadband, the Ericsson W35 allows you to connect multiple devices via Ethernet and/or Wi-Fi simultaneously, share a printer or storage device, make calls, and even receive fax.


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This mobile broadband router is perfect for users who are always on the go, renters, or for households that lack fixed line infrastructure. The Ericsson W35 provides voice, fax and high speed internet using the mobile phone networks and utilises the 2G/3G mobile network.

The W35 is easy to set up: all a user needs to do is to put a SIM card into the slot located on the left side of the router,  connect it to a PC (via Ethernet) for the initial configuration, and/or hook up a telephone to receive and make calls. Typing in mbr or 192.168.1.1 on Internet Explorer will take you to the main interface. From there you can see an overview of the system, view traffic statistics, turn the Wireless LAN on/off, share storage device and printers, and view event logs.

As soon as that is done, users can connect devices via Ethernet (up to four) and/or Wi-Fi, call anyone using the phone connected, and share storage devices and printers.

 


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Up front, users can find six indicators: signal quality, voice mail, computer (which means that it is impossible to establish a connection to the mobile network), wireless LAN, globe (lights up if an Internet connection is established), and telephone (lights up when a connected telephone is off-hook). The standby button at the bottom of the front shows a steady blue when the W35 has finished the start-up procedure.

Although not as fast as the recently launched Telstra Wireless Broadband Router, the Ericsson W35 still provides decent broadband speeds. During our test, the W35 produced download speeds of up to 4.3Mb/s and upload speeds of up to 1.13 Mb/s (using speedtest.net and connecting to the Sydney server).

The W35 is available now for $517, with accessories such as a battery pack ($67.32) and antenna cables ($16.50) sold separately. See the Powertec website (www.powertec.com.au) for more information on the product.

Smaller Computers On The Way Says Intel

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Intel claims that it has made advances in its chipset technologies that users will soon be able to have smaller and smarter computers.


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According to Intel, future Intel Atom, Core and Xeon processors and System on Chip (SoC) products will make computers smaller, smarter, more capable and easier to use. For example, among a number of other innovations on tap, Intel will integrate graphics into some of its future chip products for the first time ever.

Intel Architecture Group’s Executive Vice President and General Manager, Sean Maloney said, “Over the past 40 years, the opportunities enabled by Moore’s Law have gone beyond just impressive performance increases. The rapidly increasing number of transistors and processor instructions we add have made possible the integration of more and more capabilities and features within our processors. This has driven an incredible amount of innovation throughout the industry, with the real winners being the consumers, gamers and businesses which buy these Intel-based computers.”

In his Intel Developer Forum keynote, Maloney demonstrated a Westmere-based PC that showed a marked increase in responsiveness on simple, everyday tasks such as Web-surfing with multiple windows open.

Moreover, Westmere is Intel’s first 32nm processor, and is the first-ever Intel processor to integrate graphics die right into the processor’s package. As well as supporting Intel Turbo Boost technology and Intel Hyper-Threading Technology, Westmere adds new Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) instructions for faster encryption and decryption. Westmere is on track with wafers already moving through factory floors for planned fourth-quarter revenue production.

 

After Westmere, Intel’s chip integration will continue with 32nm processors codenamed “Sandy Bridge.” Sandy Bridge features Intel’s sixth-generation graphics cores on the same die or silicon real estate as the processor core, and will include acceleration for floating point, video and processor intensive software most often found in media applications. Maloney showed a Sandy Bridge-based system running a range of video and 3-D software to demonstrate the health of a far-future product line at its early stage.

Maloney demonstrated early silicon based on the “Larrabee” architecture, the codename for a family of future graphics-centric co-processors. He also confirmed that key developers have received development systems.

With the first product due next year, Larrabee takes the programmability of Intel Architecture and dramatically extends its parallel processing capabilities. This flexible programmability and the ability to take advantage of available developers, software and design tools give programmers the freedom to realise the benefits of fully programmable rendering and thus easily implement a variety of 3-D graphics pipelines such as rasterisation, volumetric rendering or ray tracing.

Combined, PC users will experience stunning visual experiences on Intel-based PCs that incorporate this product. Maloney went on to demonstrate a real-time ray-traced version of the popular game “Quake Wars: Enemy Territory” running on Larrabee and Intel’s next-generation enthusiast gaming processor, codenamed “Gulftown,” which will carry the Core brand. While Larrabee silicon will initially appear in discrete graphics cards, the Larrabee architecture will eventually be integrated into the processor along with other technologies.

 

Maloney also provided attendees with a preview of Intel’s next-generation intelligent server processor, codenamed Westmere-EP, and Intel’s commitment to the high-end of the server market with its Xeon and Itanium processor families. Maloney discussed the unprecedented generational improvement that the forthcoming “Nehalem-EX” server processor will deliver, with performance improvements even greater than what the current Intel Xeon 5500 Series provided versus Intel’s previous chip generation.

Maloney described the convergence of compute, networking and storage in the data centre, sharing the company’s vision of a converged data centre IO fabric led by Intel 10GbE solutions. Intel also has a number of joint efforts with other industry leaders to deliver optimised platforms, systems, technologies and solutions to address the “hyper-scale” data centre environments of the Internet and cloud services trend.

Maloney disclosed a new ultra-low-voltage Intel Xeon 3000 series processor featuring a TDP (Thermal Design Power) of only 30 watts. To complement the broad range of dense and power-optimised platform offerings, Intel also demonstrated publicly for the first time a single-socket “micro server” reference system which will help enable micro server innovation and future specification.

Maloney also described the just-disclosed “Jasper Forest” family of embedded processors as an example of extending the company’s popular Nehalem microarchitecture to new markets. Available early next year, Jasper Forest is designed for purpose-built storage, communications, military and aerospace applications, and will offer a new level of integration to save precious board space and power for these dense environments.

Finally, Maloney announced a new PC management tool using Intel vPro technology. Keyboard Video Mouse (KVM) Remote Control enables IT personnel to investigate issues exactly as the user sees them, resulting in faster diagnosis, fewer desk side visits and added cost savings.

LG Bags Three Gfk Awards

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LG was awarded the GfK No.1 Award in three categories (Home Theatre Systems, DVD Players, and Microwave Ovens) by leading market researcher GfK Retail and Technology.

The award is based on units sold for the 12 month period from January – December 2008 and is only given to brands in general distribution.

Stan Bilinski, Senior Category Marketing Manager, LG Electronics said, “To be awarded No 1 in three separate categories by GfK is a great achievement for LG and we are pleased to receive such highly acclaimed recognition in both the Audio Visual and Cooking categories”.

“2009 is set to be a big year for LG especially for Audio Visual and Cooking appliances. We are due to launch new products throughout the year in both categories that will continue to show LG’s commitment to leadership and innovation” he added.

See: www.lge.com.au

First Review: Light Toshiba Notebook For Business Travellers

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Toshiba has just launched an ultra-portable notebook designed for the mobile professional. The A600 is a dead ringer for the company’s R500, but is equipped with the latest software and services to simplify your computing experience.


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The build and design is similar to Toshiba’s Portege R500, making the A600 a lightweight but tough notebook. It weighs from 1.46kg and is only 30mm thick, which is good for business travellers looking for a portable notebook that can last for hours on end.

The unit hosts the volume wheel, headphone and microphone jack, USB port, e-SATA/USB combo port, D-Sub out, and AC port on the left side, while a DVD drive, ExpressCard slot, Wireless on/off switch, SD card reader, USB, and Ethernet port are found on the opposite side.

Opening the lid reveals the trackpad with a fingerprint reader in between the mouse buttons, system indicators (DC-in, Power, Battery, HDD, SD/SDHC card, Wireless), built-in microphone, keyboard, Display and Toshiba Assist button on the upper right hand side of the unit, and a web camera sitting on top of the screen.

 


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The A600 uses Intel’s Core 2 Duo U9400 processor running at 1.4Ghz, has two gigabytes of RAM, a 250GB hard drive, and runs on Windows Vista Business (SP1). It also comes with a suite of Toshiba’s ‘support’ programs that will help users maintain and troubleshoot their computer.

Various programs are pre-installed on the device which includes Adobe Acrobat 9, Windows Live OneCare, Google Desktop, Google Earth, Microsoft Office, Microsoft SQL Server 2005, Picasa2, Recovery Disc Creator, Truesuite Access Manager (for Fingerprint), Toshiba DVD Player, and various Toshiba Utilities that simplify computing.

The Toshiba Utilities include Cooling Performance Diagnostics, HWSetup (to configure your computer), Password Utility, PC Diagnostic Tool, PC Health Monitor, Restart Flash Cards, SD Boot and Format Utility, Security Assist, Face Recognition, Wireless Key Logon, USB Sleep and Charge, and Zooming Utility.

 

Toshiba also included an HDD Protection software (and accelerator) that parks your HDD head to a safe position whenever it detects vibration or shocks. It is pre-set to level 3 (high) and is so sensitive, even the slightest movement will park the HDD head. It gets annoying at times, especially when you just want to move your notebook to another side of your desk. So the best solution is to probably lower the settings when using the notebook to avoid the annoying ‘HDD has been parked’ pop-up.

The screen, which had a maximum resolution of 1280×800, was bright, had a wide viewing angle, and was not prone to glare. The speaker located on the upper-left hand side of the unit (near the hinge) can get loud but will not provide you with the best audio quality. It is better for users to connect the

The A600 lasted for 165 minutes in our DVD test (with volume and brightness set to maximum), and lasted for almost five hours in our productivity test when set to power saving mode.

Overall, the Toshiba A600 is a portable notebook that can give you the computing power you need to create worksheets and word documents while on the go. The only thing we did not like about this unit is its price tag. It will have an RRP of $2,530 (including GST), which seems a little steep, especially now that we are going through tough economic times.

See page over for product specifications and final rating.

 

Toshiba Portege A600 Features:

Intel Core 2 Duo @1.40Ghz
2GB RAM
Windows Vista Business (with Service Pack 1)
Mobile Intel GMA (Graphics Media Accelerator) Driver 4500MHD
HDD: 250GB
Display: 12.1-inch WXGA TFT High Brightness with LED Backlight
Battery Life: Up to 7.5 hours
Wireless: Bluetooth, Wireless Lan (802.11a/g/n)
Webcamera and speaker built-in

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Toshiba Portege A600 | $2,530 |  | www.toshiba.com.au

For: Solid build; Lightweight profile; Various software and support; Good battery life
Against: Asking price is a little steep; Not really a powerful unit
Conclusion: Productivity on the go with Toshiba notebook

Intel Flash-Based Drives For Servers

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Intel has begun shipping its solid-state drive (SSD) aimed at server, workstation and storage systems.


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Unlike hard drives that contain moving parts, the Intel X-25E Extreme SATA Solid-State Drive features a 50nm single-level cell (SLC) NAND flash memory technology.

According to Intel, systems equipped with these drives will not suffer from the performance bottlenecks associated with conventional drives, can reduce infrastructure, cooling and energy costs, and untimately ‘lower total cost of ownership for enterprise application by more than five times.’
 
Intel Server Platforms Group’s General Manager, Kirk Skaugen said, “Hard disk drive performance has not kept pace with Moore’s Law. Intel’s high-performance SSDs unleash the full performance of the latest Intel Xeon processor-based systems while increasing reliability and lowering the total cost of ownership for a broad range of server and storage workloads.”

 

The Intel X25-E claims to increases server, workstation and storage system performance by 100 times over hard disk drives as measured in Input/Output Per Second (IOPS). A storage model which includes SSDs can also lower energy costs by up to five times, an added benefit for businesses focused on electricity savings.
 
The product was designed for intense computing workloads which benefit primarily from high random read and write performance, as measured in IOPS. Key technical performance specifications of the 32 GB Intel X-25E SATA SSD include 35,000 IOPS (4KB Random Read), 3,300 IOPS (4KB Random Write) and 75 microsecond read latency. This performance, combined with low active power of 2.4 watts, delivers up to 14,000 IOPS per watt for optimal performance/power output.

The product also achieves up to 250 megabytes per second (MB/s) sequential read speeds and up to 170 MB/s sequential write speeds, all in a compact 2.5-inch form factor.
 
Pricing and Availability

The 32GB capacity drive is in production and priced at US$695 for quantities up to 1,000. The 64GB version is expected to sample in the fourth quarter with production estimated for the first quarter of 2009.

See: www.intel.com/go/ssd