We've got some solid numbers on the battery life of Microsoft's Zune portable media player now. With pretty much nothing but music playing (that's no LCD backlight, no wireless, no volume adjustment, no switching songs manually, etc.), the Zune will give you about 14 hours of battery life for audio. Turn on the wireless and that goes down to 13 hours, which is still pretty good. As a comparison, the 5.5G iPod has the same rated battery life of 14 hours for the 30GB version, while the 80GB version runs for 20 hours.
Video playback will have a battery life of 4 hours. It's just slightly higher than the 30GB iPod's 3.5 hours, but significantly lower than the 80GB version at 6.5 hours. Whether or not the 4 hours is with or without wireless is unknown.
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Sony's BDP-S1, a Blu-ray player that was supposed to come out a while ago, has been delayed yet again. The first delay rescheduled the launch to August, the second changed it to the end of October (a few days from now, actually), and the latest news from Sony is that the player won't be available until the beginning of December.
The delay is probably due to problems procuring enough Blu-ray drives, since there is a huge shortage of the blue laser diode required. Add to that the 500,000 PS3s that are supposed to be shipping in a few weeks, and Sony has a serious problem. And, considering the recent issues Sony has had with all of those laptop batteries, they're probably worried about other things.
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Microsoft has released the version 7 of Internet Explorer, five years after its last full version update. At its core, IE7 basically has all those things that made Firefox popular. Tabbed browsing lets you keep numerous webpages open in the same browser window, and in addition to the abilities of Firefox, IE7 features a faster way to view all of your tabs in a thumbnail format, which is definitely a neat feature.
Plenty of new security features is a main focus of IE7. The new Internet Explorer has a phishing filter to help you determine when a site isn't what it pretends to be. It also disables most ActiveX plugins, allowing only those that are known to be safe. These security features and a whole lot more make IE7 a lot safer than IE6 (it remains to be seen how it compares to Firefox).
IE7 is available to anyone running a Windows XP PC; support for other operating systems will be provided in the future.
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Can't decide between Blu-ray and HD-DVD? It's not an easy decision; they're pretty much identical. Unfortunatly, you'll have to get both to be sure you can play any movie you want to buy. But not anymore: VidaBox has released the first combination Blu-ray/HD-DVD media PC. Nothing fancy, just a media PC with Blu-ray and HD-DVD drives.
Pricing leads to a different conclusion though. At $3499 for a VidaBox LUX (the lower model) or $4399 for a VidaBox MAX, you'd think they came with built-in big-screen displays. Unfortunately, that's all you get for such a large sum of money. Personally I think you'd be better off waiting until either one standard beats out the other or someone makes a hybrid player, rather than a media PC, that can play both formats.
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Intel has announced that its upcoming Santa Rosa platform for Centrino processors will feature a new technology, codenamed Robson, that utilizes flash memory as an additional cache available to the processor for faster access to often-used data. The Santa Rosa platform is expected to launch in the second quarter of 2007.
Initially, mobile chipsets will have 1GB of integrated NAND flash memory, but soon after vendors will have the option of putting in only 512MB to cut costs. Both will be integrated directly into the chipset. A desktop version of Robson (known as Snowgrass) is planned, but the feature is more useful on laptops, where hard drives are slower and power consumption is a big issue.
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A few new iPod Video devices have been found to have a trojan affecting Windows PCs. The trojan, Troj/Bdoor-DIJ, is a virus that allows a hacker to remotely access and obtain control of your system remotely. Apple has openly admitted the problem and posted a support article on its website about the issue. The article explains the problem and provides links to free trials of software that can remove the trojan and instructions to clean the trojan through iTunes 7.
Naturally, Apple couldn't resist blaming Microsoft for the problem: "As you might imagine, we are upset at Windows for not being more hardy
against such viruses, and even more upset with ourselves for not
catching it." Microsoft was quick to respond, saying, "It's not a matter of which platform the virus originated [on]. The fact
that it's found on the portable player means that there's an issue with how the
quality checks, specifically the content check, was done." We should start seeing rockets flying in a couple of days.
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If you own a Zen MicroPhoto or Zen Vision:M portable media player, you might want to reconsider upgrading that firmware. Creative has announced that, due to increasing pressure from the RIAA (really, does anyone like them at all?), media players released in the future will not have the ability to record FM radio. In addition, they released a firmware upgrade for the Zen MicroPhoto and Vision:M models that disables the FM recording abilities of the players, along with adding a couple of minor fixes.
It appears that the RIAA is after companies that are just trying to do business, too, not only the people downloading music illegally. Earlier this year the RIAA sued XM Satellite Radio for allowing its customers to record satellite radio and save it on their players (there is no way to move this music to the computer, so it really is stuck on the player). Anyone else think this whole music rights thing has gotten out of hand?
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If you thought the only way to improve an in-car GPS was to make it look nicer, get ready for this. Honda is offering a couple of added features on its new navigation systems. The first is a live weather update service (for those who subscribe to Honda's InterNavi Premium Club in Japan) that tells you about weather conditions at your current location or your destination, updated once every ten minutes. It can also give you updates about driving conditions that can affect the route you take (such as flooded roads, snow, etc.).
And, as if we didn't have enough ways to network with others, there's also a new Social Networking Service, or SNS, available. The new service enter your own comments about a particular location and, of course, read what others have said about a location. Again, this is available only to subscribers.
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Is driving starting to get too hard with all that email you have to check on the road? Or maybe all those cars around you don't understand how important it is to call your friend right away. Whatever the case, Siemens' VDO Traffic Sign Recognition System should keep you from getting tickets because you weren't paying attention--that way, you can save your money for when you run that red light.
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Here's an interesting gadget: how would you like to have a watch that can predict ovulation up to five days in advance? (I guess this question applies to women only.) It's one more way for women trying to either have a baby or avoid one to increase their chances of success.
The OV-Watch detects chlorine ions that are secreted by skin. The watch measures the levels of chlorine ions, and determines when ovulation will occur based on peaks in the chlorine ion level. The watch is now FDA-approved available for about $100.
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Now I've seen some pretty creative ideas, but for some reason I really like this one. Put a SkyCeiling (by The Sky Factory) in your home and you can bring the sky to any ceiling or a landscape to any wall. There are two types of SkyCeilings. The Luminous SkyCeiling provides backlighting to the image, and the Ambient SkyCeiling uses the existing light in your room. There are plenty of options to choose from, or you can have one customized to work perfectly with the environment you want it in.
Just keep in mind that these are still pictures, not displays that you can change. So choose your image carefully, because the sky is going to look the same for a very long time.
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