Technology

Without a doubt, the MacBook Air is quite a fast portable computing system, but it seems that OWC is keen on pushing its capabilities even further, with the help of their brand-new high-capacity SSD unit. Those of you not really familiar with OWC’s line of work should know that the company’s specialized on developing after-market solutions for Apple systems, and that’s exactly the case with their latest creation, the Mercury Aura Pro Express 6G 480GB SSD unit. As the company revealed at Macworld 2012, their new storage unit combines... 

Intel has really managed to take the world by surprise with its ultrabook platform, but it seems that AMD is not quite keen on allowing its rival to dominate the ultra-mobile segment, the company prepping its own APU-based contender, known for now as “Ultrathin”. In fact, it seems that the new platform from AMD will be built around the company’s Trinity APUs (accelerated processing unit), whose impressive computing capabilities were recently demonstrated at CES 2012. Sources close to the matter indicate that the products built... 

By now, it has pretty much become clear for everyone that extreme portability, doubled by a very good computing power, will become the standard on the future, this being the reason why hardware developers are doing their best in order to come up with some very competitive products. And, in fact, that’s also the case with Texas Instruments, who’ve demoed at CES 2012 a brand-new OMAP 5 Android 4.0 reference design (or “development platform”), designed to offer the world a glimpse at the level of power this hardware architecture will... 

Over the past couple of years, Creative, via ZiiLabs, its subsidiary, has focused on developing some pretty interesting hardware for multimedia applications, that that’s exactly the case with their latest impressive announcement, the company unveiling  the 100-core ZMS-40 StemCell Media processor. As the company reveals, their latest processor has been designed to meet the increasing computational needs of Android tablets and other multimedia devices, and combines 96 of ZiiLABS’ StemCell media processing cores with four 1.5GHz ARM... 

Since SSDs represent one of the key components enabling the high level of performance delivered by Intel-powered ultraboooks, OCZ has decided to release a new high-speed storage product targeting specifically this segment, namely the Deneva 2 series of mSATA SSDs.  As some of you might know, Intel has some very strict requirements regarding the parts that can be used within its ultrabook platform, but according to OCZ, its two Deneva 2 30 and 60GB SSDs have been tested with Intel Smart Response Technology and have passed the performance benchmarks. Plus,... 

While Intel’s been talking for quite some time now about its Cedar Trail platform, it seems that the company has finally decided to go official with its new Atom lineup right as 2011 draws to an end, and 2012 gets ready to start fresh (with CES and its bonanza of new product launches, of course). The new family comprises four new part numbers, namely two targeting specifically portable systems (netbooks, to be precise), while the other two are meant to power nettops or various other types of multimedia-oriented systems. And, to be perfectly... 

While fuel-cell technology has not yet reached its full maturity, it’s getting there at a very fast pace, given the fact that the range of applications for these very efficient power-generating modules is rapidly increasing. And although we typically expect fuel-cells to be used mostly for electric vehicles or backup power generators, it seems that one of the grandest IT innovators of them all (Cupertino-based Apple) is seriously considering employing fuel-cells for its future portable systems, according to a recent patent filling. As AppleInsider... 

As some of you might know by now, one of the most interesting additions to the latest-generation Apple computer systems is represented by the Thunderbolt interface, that offers not only some pretty impressive data transfer rates, but also a higher level of versatility, since it can also be used for outputing audio and video, beside data. The respective technology was co-developed by Intel and Apple, the latter managing to get the exclusive rights to its use, as least for the time being. However, things are about to change, since, according to a... 

Although most of the more memory demanding applications out there can still do just fine with only 4GB of RAM, it’s quite clear that, on the future, both desktop and notebook PCs will require a lot more random access memory during normal operation. For this reason, Japanese company Buffalo has developed and officially released a couple of 8GB DDR3 RAM modules, targeting both market segments mentioned above. And while the desktop model is not really our area of interest, the notebook model is really noteworthy, as the 204-pin SO-DIMM memory... 

Since the ultrabooks are one of the biggest hits of late 2011, despite just a handful of models being currently available on the market, it shouldn’t really come as a surprise the fact that we’ll see plenty of interesting additions to this segment in early 2012, with CES 2012 most likely being the stage for a lot of new product launches. In fact, it seems that beside the traditional ultrabook form factor, we’ll also start to see some variations in terms of design, such as some convertible models, as VR-Zone reports. This would...