Building on the success of the X300 ultraportable, Lenovo has now released the T400s, a 14-inch notebook that weighs in at just 1.77kg and is only 21mm thick.

The T400s boasts an LED backlit screen, which significantly reduces power consumption while improving screen brightness and image uniformity. The LED screen is also thinner and lighter than traditionally backlit screens.

Also key to the thinness of this machine is the carbon fibre reinforced Top Cover Roll Cage first introduced on the X300. This thin and rigid chassis helps knock 20% of the weight of the T400s compared to its T400 predecessor.

The notebook is specced with 2.4 or 2.53GHz standard voltage Core 2 Duo processors and offers solid state drives up to 256GB or hard drives up to 250GB. The solid state drive option will add about $600 to $1,000 to the price of the notebook according to Lenovo representative James Arnold.

Other options include a DVD or a Blu-ray burner, but the standard specs are impressive on their own with the inclusion of a USB/eSATA port, a Display Port connection, wi-fi b/g/n, Ethernet, 3G ( or WWAN as Lenovo calls it) and Bluetooth.

Lenovo suggest a battery life of up to six hours with a standard six-cell battery.

Other notable innovations on the T400s are its optimisatoon for VoIP calls, and a rearrangement of the keyboard.

Above the screen, the T400s has twin microphones that sit either side of the webcam. This arrangment is designed to better focus sound pickup on the voice and suppress other external sounds like keyboard typing or ambient noise in an environment.

The webcam also has an increased 2-megapixel resolution and the onbaord speakers are twice as loud as previously. Separate speaker and microphone mute buttons are also provided so you don't make the mistake of muting the speaker and thinking you've turned off the microphone while you discuss money, or the physical attributes of the person at the other end of the call.

On the keyboard, Lenovo has closed up the spaces between keys to prevent biscuit crumbs getting in the cracks, and bumped up the size of the Delete and Escape keys so they're easier to hit.

A textured surface has been added to the touchpad so you know you're on it without having to look, and the touchpad now supports multitouch controls to scroll, pinch and zoom.

One aspect that might not please existing Lenovo users is that the T400s also ushers in a new gneration of desktop docks.

One thing that has not changed is the ThinkPad basic black design.

The T400s will be in the country in about a fortnnight but customers can pre-order now through Lenovo resellers or online at lenovo.com/nz.

Prices start around $3,499.

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 12:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Launched today, Telecom's Music Store gives XT mobile network customers access to over 3.2 million tracks.

Telecom Director of Mobile, Paul Hamburger says the Telecom Music Store makes music on your mobile phone more accessible than ever.

”It is faster to download direct to your mobile phone and because there are no data charges, more affordable to use than any other mobile music service offered currently in New Zealand,„ he says.

The Music Store is free to browse (no data charges), meaning you can check you are downloading the right song before you buy.

Songs cost $1.99 per track and customers can preview a song for up to 30 seconds for free before they choose to purchase it.

The Music Store also has a local flavour with Kiwi artists featuring on the home page.

Among Kiwi artists such as Fat Freddy’s Drop and Kids of 88, American pop sensation, Keri Hilson and hip hop group, the Black Eyed Peas are featured on the music store home page.

The Store includes a ‘What’s Fresh’ zone, the record labels’ top picks of the latest tracks to hit the scene, a ‘What’s Hot’ zone, a top 20 list of Telecom’s best selling songs, as well as high-spec graphics, bios and photos of key artists and albums.

The Store is accessible from TWorld, Telecom’s XT internet portal and is available on the following XT mobiles with more music-store-capable phones to come:

Nokia 3120, Nokia 6120, Nokia 6600, Nokia E71, Samsung F480T, Samsung 5220, LG GM310, Sony Ericsson W705, Samsung S8300T, Sony Ericsson C510a.

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 12:07 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)

Sony has introduced the 200 Hertz BRAVIA Z4500; the first 200 Hertz television available in the New Zealand market.

Motionflow 200 Hz technology doubles the frame rate of standard LCD TVs by using digital signal processing to insert additional frames between existing frames in the video signal.

200Hz is designed to smooth action on screen, so whether a sports fan or movie buff, you get the "clearest, most super-smooth fast-action viewing available in New Zealand".

The BRAVIA 200 Hertz is available now in New Zealand in 40, 46 and 52-inch screen sizes, starting from an RRP of $4,499.95.

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Nokia today announced the Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, a cheaper version of its successful touch phone, the 5800 XpressMusic.

The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic, which also uses a touch interface, will cost €199 ($435) before taxes and subsidies. When the 5800 XpressMusic was announced in October last year it was listed at €279 before taxes and subsidies.

The phone is yet another example of how the line between smartphones and cheaper mid-tier phones is being blurred, according to Ben Wood, analyst at CCS Insight.

"It's definitely for people who can't afford an iPhone, and that is not a negative thing by the way. There are people who want that experience, but can't justify the expense of an iPhone," said Wood.

The 5530 XpressMusic has a 2.9-inch widescreen display and comes with a 4GB memory card for storage. Users can surf the web using GPRS or wi-fi data connections.

The lack of 3G support is all about keeping costs down, according to Wood.

The user interface includes what Nokia calls a "people carousel." It provides access to up to 20 contacts -- which are represented using thumbnail images -- and their communications history including emails, phone calls, photos or other social media updates.

Nokia sold 2.6 million of its 5800 XpressMusic during the first quarter, making the smartphone one of the highlights of an otherwise gloomy quarter, so it comes as no surprise that the company wants to build on that as it tries to turn around its fortunes.

The Nokia 5530 XpressMusic will start shipping during the third quarter.

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 11:35 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

The new PIXMA Pro9500 Mark II Photo Printer features ten pigment-based ink colours - photo black, matte black, grey, cyan, magenta, yellow, photo cyan, photo magenta, red and green - allowing users the benefit of a wide colour gamut for colour prints, as well as three levels of black for true black-and-white photographs.

The printer’s matte black, photo black and grey inks reduce metamerism and provide high-density blacks and truly neutral monochrome prints. Metamerism is an effect in some printed black-and-white images where composite grey inks (achieved with combinations of cyan, magenta and yellow ink) make image areas appear a different colour hue under different lighting conditions (such as sunlight, fluorescent light and incandescent light). This aberration is due to the differences in spectral reflectance properties of each of the composite colours.

Software
A new Easy Photo Print Pro feature incorporated into the PIXMA Pro models is Canon’s Ambient Light Correction technology, which helps reduce the perceived colour difference caused by different light conditions between printing and viewing or display environments. Compatible with Windows Vista, Ambient Light Correction allows users to optimise print colour for the lighting conditions under which the final print will be shown. Through the software, users can adjust colour to various levels of lighting conditions from daylight at 6500K to a warm white fluorescent lamp at 3000K.

The Pro9500 MK II is available now and retails for $1,599.

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 2:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

A Taiwanese organisation has developed a netbook based on Google's Android platform that can also switch into Microsoft's Windows operating system to run certain programs.

The netbook has a detachable touchscreen that contains the microprocessor used to run Android and can operate independently for its eight to ten hours of battery life. A reference design of the device was displayed at the Computex exhibition in Taipei by the government-funded Institute for Information Industry. The institute is looking for a Taiwanese company to manufacture and market the product, a representative said.

The netbook runs on Android, but automatically pushes it to the two sides of the screen and opens Windows XP when a user launches a program like Microsoft Word that runs on x86 chip architecture.

The machine's x86 chip, a 1.6 GHz Via C7, is located beneath the keyboard and can be accessed remotely by wi-fi or mobile broadband if the detached tablet needs to run an x86 program. It has a 7.6-inch screen and uses a 533 MHz Samsung chip with an Arm core to run Android. WiMax has also been tested on the netbook and could be included, said the representative.

It would cost a manufacturer around an extra US$50 to make the device compared to a standard netbook, he said.

The double OS model makes sense for users who want the power-saving and mobility of a netbook, but also want higher performance for video watching and other multimedia tasks, he said.
Owen Fletcher (IDG News Service)

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 11:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)

One of the world's largest contract PC makers expects to begin shipping its first laptop based on Qualcomm's Snapdragon microprocessor later this year, it said today.

Inventec, a Taiwanese company that makes laptops on behalf of several of the world's best-known PC brand names, is developing up to four Snapdragon laptop models for customers, said Mark Hirsch [cq], vice president for marketing at the company.

The Snapdragon processor is based on the Arm microprocessor core and will compete with Intel's Atom, which currently powers most available netbooks. The chip should offer battery life of up to 6 hours, a physically smaller body and better integration with 3G networks, though it doesn't support the mainstream Windows operating system.

Inventec's latest reference design, running the Millos Linux operating system on a 10.1 inch screen, will be displayed by Qualcomm this week at Computex in Taipei. The laptop, intended to demonstrate the possibilities of the platform but not be a commercial product, uses a 1GHz Snapdragon CPU. It features a 1,024 x 600 pixel resolution screen, a 64GB flash disk and integrated 3G wireless. It weighs about 800 grams.

The laptop is similar to many netbooks, but Qualcomm has coined the term "smartbook" to distinguish its ultra-portable laptops from others.

Many laptop makers are considering using Android, the Google-developed operating system, in such machines. One advantage Android may have over Linux is the sizable marketing power that Google could bring to its promotion.

Inventec is experimenting with the operating system but development work remains to be done before it can be used in such machines, Hirsch said.

"It has tremendous potential, it just may not have been realised yet," he said.

Owen Fletcher

Posted by Ted Gibbons at 11:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)