Filed under: Laptops

We’ve been waiting for Dell to pop a Penryn chip inside one of its laptops — so far it’s been HP and Toshiba sitting pretty with some of the few Penryn laptop offerings in existence — but we didn’t think it’d come for free. Dell is pushing Penryn on consumers with an upgrade to the existing XPS M1330 line, which is a far sight smaller than what HP and Toshiba intro’d Penryn in, but the best news is that if you build out the AUD$2,000 model (which includes 4GB of RAM and other perks) you get a free “upgarde” [sic] to the Core 2 Duo T9300 processor, at least for today. As you might’ve guessed from that currency, this deal is only in Australia so far, but new Dell products and deals usually start there and end up in the States whenever the international date line swings around.

[Thanks, Rupert]

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

For those of you who’ve recently dropped some dough on a new Fujifilm Z10fd or Z100fd, you’ve got some firmware to update. The company issued a couple of fixes today which tweak minor features on the cameras — though we’re sure a few folks will be happy to get them. The updates boost the startup speed in both models when using xD cards, enable camera-to-computer transfer with higher capacity media in the Z10fd, and adjust the underwater white balance on the Z100fd. Hit the read links, and begin your magical journey to freshness.

[Via Digital Photography Review]

Read – FinePix Z10fd Firmware (camera control software) Update Ver.1.01
Read – FinePix Z100fd Firmware (camera control software) Update Ver.1.01

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In the surest sign yet that HD-DVD is going for all out price slashing in its attempts to claw back the hi-def initiative, Amazon in the US has dropped the price of the Xbox HD drive to a mere $80. That’s forty round pounds!

£40 for a decent hi-def drive ain’t half bad, right? Well, add to that six free HD-DVDs and you’re looking at the best bargain on the web.

Seeing as discs are shifting for $25 in the US, it works out that HD-DVD is losing out to the tune of $70 to keep the format alive.

We’re all for a spot of price cutting, but it strikes us that things really are starting to get desperate in the battle for your hi-def virginity.

Still, at this price, you can probably afford to back both sides and tidy up when it comes to the inevitable sell off when HD-DVD loses out for good.

We’ve been on the phone to Microsoft and Amazon about whether this deal extends to the UK, but have had no word as yet. As soon as we hear, you’ll be the first to know.

We were already pretty enamoured by 3 and PC World’s latest discount offering, giving users who sign up for the network’s mobile broadband £350 off a lappie.

Now though, it’s got even better, with the pair confirming that the MacBook Air is included in the deal. The discount is £250, so 100 nicker less than it could be, but it does bring Apple’s size zero newbie down to £1,050.

Although it makes the Air the deal’s flasgship gadget, although we still reckon the Vaio AR51J at £499 is a great deal and definitely not to be sniffed at. After all, it packs in a Blu-Ray drive and looks the business.

We’re hoping that PC World adds more lappies in the future. How about the imminent MacBook Pros guys?

Web savvy (read hopelessly addicted) punters, including our good selves, have got accounts on every IM service and VoIP network they can get their techie hands on these days.

Which is why we’re pretty bowled over by Fring, which unites all your accounts on your mobile, whether they’re trusty Skype, Google Talk, MSN Messenger or their very own VoIP brew.

It’s a free app that you can snag online, from the link down below, uniting all your contacts in one place and letting you see who’s online, what account they’re using and how strong the signal is where they are.

It all means you can make cheap calls using your cell, as long as your data charges aren’t exorbitant or you’re using WiFi.

Best of all though, you can fire over documents and images using P2P transfer rather than sluggish MMS. So it’s handy for high-powered business types too.

There’s support for some 450 blowers. You can check if yours is supported over on the official site, either by typing in the name or looking for an image of the model you’re packing.