Filed under: Laptops

Sure, you probably caught a brief glimpse of the X300’s innards earlier this morning, but the photos waiting for you in the read link below are what we nerds really crave. Some lucky cat in Los Angeles managed to wrap his paws around Lenovo’s forthcoming machine, and rather than booting it up and keeping it a secret, he whipped out the pliers and went to work. You know the drill — tap that link below for all the guts ‘n bolts you can handle.

[Thanks, Loran M.]

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Filed under: Features, Misc. Gadgets

Ariel Waldman contributes Movie Gadget Friday, where she highlights the lovable and lame gadgets from the world of cinema.

Last time on Movie Gadget Friday, we entered the 8th dimension with The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai, but this week, we’re setting the dial back to the 1978 version of the Seventh Millenia in the original Battlestar Galactica. Filled with feathered 70’s haircuts, insect Ovion aliens, and, of course, Cylons, the movie is an underrated, campy classic.

Muffit II Robo-Daggit
Created as a robotic replacement to a daggit, Muffit II is a life-size, artificial intelligence prototype developed by Dr. Wilker on the Battlestar Galactica. Muffit II has an integrated visual response system, designed to help train the robotic daggit. By scanning a picture of a person into its circuits, Muffit II actively responds and interacts with them. The out-of-the-box system is able to handle basic moves such as sitting and wiggling its ears. However, with time, the robo-daggit can learn to be smart, performing such tasks as disarming Cylons by biting them in the leg while humans try to escape rapid fire. We’re patiently awaiting a Muffit II vs. Roboquad throw down challenge. More after the break.

Continue reading Movie Gadget Friday: Battlestar Galactica (1978)

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Filed under: Gaming

Good news for folks with a GeForce 8 GPU and lots of questions about how the recent Ageia acquisition would affect them: your current card will be receiving PhysX support. When NVIDIA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang was questioned in a recent conference call, he noted that the firm was currently “working towards the physics-engine-to-CUDA port,” and it could be delivered as “a software update” to every card that’s CUDA-enabled (read: all of the GeForce 8 GPUs). Sadly, the bigwig still wouldn’t say when to expect the release of the first PhysX port, but we really can’t imagine it taking too awfully long now.

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Filed under: Displays

Ugh, we were already sick of digital photo frames — and now it looks those now-discontinued virus-ridden Insignia units from Best Buy and several other models produced in China were carrying a much nastier trojan that we’d originally heard. According to an analyst form Computer Associates, the trojan, called Mocmex, is able to block more than 100 types of security and anti-virus software from killing it, and bypasses the Windows firewall to download files from remote locations, spreading them randomly over your hard drive and any portable storage device you plug into your PC — like, for example, a digital photo frame. The trojan is apparently set to only steal gaming passwords at present, but CA says it’s capable of stealing nearly any information on your machine, and thinks it might be a test for a much worse virus yet to come. Infected frames have come from Sam’s Club, Target and Costco, in addition to Best Buy, so we’d say to avoid picking one up until this mess gets sorted out — or, you know, forever.

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Filed under: Features, HDTV, Home Entertainment

Yeah, the Apple TV (take 2) update took a bit longer than promised to actually arrive on the scene, but now that it’s available for existing ATV owners to chew on, we’re interested in hearing from its toughest critics. Rumors of Apple finally enabling some sort of HD movie / television show download service had been making the rounds for what seemed like ages, and after months of waiting for a move to be made, take 2 made its debut under the shadow of the MacBook Air.

Aside from finally offering up 1080p support and giving users the ability to rent HD flicks (though only some with Dolby Digital 5.1), the v2.0 upgrade changed up the look and added in Flickr integration. Granted, the innards here have remained the same, but we’re not just interested in finding out what you adore / detest about the newest update. Oh no — we’re also curious to know how you think the existing hardware is handling its new duties. Has anything slowed down? Are you still (or were you ever) satisfied with the port assortment? Have you found yourself itching to downgrade? We know, software updates as substantial as this one hardly ever never leave everyone happy, and while we’ve done some sizing up of our own in regard to HD quality, how would you like to see things tweaked for take 3?

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