Finally a long awaited Apple iPad has been unveiled, but is it all it cracked out to be?  Well lets first take a quick look at what it has, and then we can look at what it lacks.  Then you cam make your own decision weather this device is for you or not.

• The device is half-inch thick and weighs at 1.5 pounds
• 9.7-inch capacitive touchscreen IPS LCD display
• Custom 1GHz Apple “A4″ chip
• 10-hour battery life and a month of standby
• Will come in flavors of 16, 32, and 64GB
• 30-pin Dock connector
• speaker
• microphone
• Bluetooth
• 802.11n WiFi
• 3G (optional) Service through ATT Wireless
• accelerometer and a compass

Just like iPhone and iTouch, the iPad is managed by iTunes.  As promissed, it can run (most) iPhone apps ether in pixel-for-pixel or or pixel-doubled fullscreen mode.  As mentioned above, 3G version of iPad will run on AT&T network, and can be had with one of the new data plans, 250MB for $14.99 or an unlimited plan for $29.99 a month (contract-free), so you can activate and cancel whenever you want.  There are no details on the international service just yet.

The iPad will come at different pricing, $499 for 16GB, 32GB for $599, and $699 64GB.  A 3G option will set you back another $130,  so the most expensive model (64GB / 3G) will cost you $829.  The WiFi-only model will ship in 60 days, and the 3G models will come in 90.

Now for things that everyone would have liked to see but are missing:

• There’s no multitasking.  this a a huge disappointment!
• No built in camera. Which means No video conferencing.
• iPhone OS 3.2 (why?)
• No Flash support! What aret hey thinking about???
• No memory slot for any kind of external expansion.

Well we gave you the details on what it has and what it lacks (some major lacking there), but at the end of the day it is up to you to decide whether this device is for you.  Let us know what you think.

Source:  GDGT, Engadget

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Looks like Lenovo wants a share of the Windows Home Server market and is releasing the IdeaCenter D400 for the home audience.  This blog has many pictures of this nice device, which shows the typical Lenovo Thinkpad color scheme of black, orange and red.  It’s already available in Asia, and it seem to be only a matter of time before it will be sold here in US.

 ”Having a little dig around the web uncovers additional information from a number of Chinese websites. The D400 was released over in Asia on August 5th, and as you can see from the shots below looks similar in many ways to Acer’s Aspire easyStore Home Server with four hot swappable drive bays housed in a black plastic, cube shaped chassis.”

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A new SuperSpeed Universal Serial Bus (USB), known as USB 3.0, is about ready for commercial rollout as the next-generation USB interface.

Here are the spec comparecment of all USB flavors:

USB 3.0 - transfer rate of 4.8Gbps

USB 2.0 – transfer rate of 480Mbps

USB 1.0 – Full Speed 12Mbitps

USB 1.0 – Low Speed 1.5Mbps

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Here are a few pics of it, but you can find many more on this Site.

[View with PicLens]

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If you are hardcore PC enthusiast and in the market for a new motherboard, you should check out and evaluation of the DFI UT X58-T3eH8 at HardOCP. From their tests, it looks like DFI UT X58-T3eH8 has turned into quite the popular board with overclockers in the community.

Read a Complete Review at Hard OCP

Here are some details on the bord:

CPU

• LGA 1366 socket for Intel® Core™ i7 processors
• Intel® QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology – point-to-point interface that connects to X58; providing a dynamically scalable interconnect for increased bandwidth, lower latency and stability
• Integrated Memory Controller (IMC) supports 3 channels of DDR3
• Intel Hyper-Threading Technology delivers 8-threaded performance
• 8-phase digital PWM provides stable voltage to the CPU

Chipset

• Intel chipset
• Northbridge: Intel X58 Express chipset
• Southbridge: Intel ICH10R
• QPI
• System bus – 4.8GT/s to 6.4GT/s

System Memory

• Six 240-pin DDR3 DIMM sockets
• DDR3 800/1066/1333/1600(O.C.) MHz DIMMs
• Triple-channel memory architecture
• Supports up to 24GB system memory
• Delivers up to 43.2GB/s bandwidth
• Unbuffered x8/x16, non-ECC and ECC, up to 4Gb DDR3 devices
• Windows® 32-bit operating system is unable to accurately detect more than 4GB system memory. Therefore, if you are using this operating system, we strongly recommend that you install a less than 3GB system memory.

Expansion Slots

• 3 PCI Express (Gen 2) x16 slots
• 2-way CrossFire at x16/x16 transfer rate lanes; or
• 3-way SLI at x16/x8/x8 transfer rate lanes
• 1 PCI Express x4 slot
• 2 PCI slots

BIOS

• Award BIOS
• 8Mbit SPI flash memory
• CMOS Reloaded
• Graphics

Multiple GPUs (Graphics Processing Unit)

• 3 graphics cards in 3-way SLI or Quad CrossFireX configuration

Audio

• Bernstein audio module
• Realtek ALC889 8-channel High Definition Audio CODEC
• Center/subwoofer, rear R/L and side R/L jacks
• Line-in, line-out (front R/L) and mic-in jacks
• 2 coaxial RCA S/PDIF-in/out jacks
• 1 optical S/PDIF connector
• 1 CD-in connector
• 1 front audio connector
• 108dB Signal-to-Noise ratio (SNR) playback (DAC) quality and 104dB SNR recording (ADC) quality

LAN

• Marvell 88E8052 and Marvell 88E8053 PCIE Gigabit LAN controllers with Teaming technology
• Fully compliant to IEEE 802.3 (10BASE-T), 802.3u (100BASE-TX) and 802.3ab (1000BASE-T) standards

Storage

• Intel ICH10R chip
• Intel Matrix Storage technology
• Supports up to 6 SATA devices
• SATA speed up to 3Gb/s
• RAID 0, RAID 1, RAID 0+1 and RAID 5
• JMicron JMB363 PCI Express to SATA and PATA host controller
• Supports up to 2 UltraDMA 100Mbps IDE devices
• Supports 2 SATA devices
• SATA speed up to 3Gb/s
• RAID 0 and RAID 1
• IEEE 1394
• VIA VT6308P
• Supports two 100/200/400 Mb/sec IEEE 1394a ports

Rear Panel I/O

• 1 Mini-DIN-6 PS/2 mouse port
• 1 Mini-DIN-6 PS/2 keyboard port
• 1 IEEE 1394 port
• 6 USB 2.0 ports
• 2 RJ45 LAN ports
• Internal I/O
• 3 connectors for 6 additional external USB 2.0 ports
• 1 connector for an external COM port
• 1 connector for an IEEE 1394 port
• 1 connector for the Bernstein audio module
• 1 IrDA connector and 1 CIR connector
• 8 Serial ATA connectors
• 1 40-pin IDE connector and 1 floppy connector
• 1 24-pin ATX power connector
• 1 8-pin 12V power connector
• 2 4-pin 5V/12V power connectors (FDD type)
• 1 front panel connector
• 8 fan connectors
• 1 diagnostic LED
• EZ touch switches (power switch and reset switch)

Power Management

• ACPI and OS Directed Power Management
• ACPI STR (Suspend to RAM) function
• Wake-On-PS/2 / Wake-On-USB Keyboard/Mouse
• Wake-On-LAN and Wake-On-Ring
• RTC timer to power-on the system
• AC power failure recovery

Hardware Monitor

• Monitors CPU/system/Northbridge temperature and overheat alarm
• Monitors Vcore/Vdimm/Vnb/VCC5/12V/V5sb/Vbat voltages
• Monitors the speed of the cooling fans
• CPU Overheat Protection function monitors CPU temperature and fan during system boot-up – automatic shutdown upon system overheat

PCB

• 6 layers, ATX form factor;
• 24.5cm (9.64″) x 30.5cm (12″)
• If you are hardcore PC enthusiast and in the market for a new motherboard, you should check out and evaluation of the DFI UT X58-T3eH8 at HardOCP. From their tests, it looks like DFI UT X58-T3eH8 has turned into quite the popular board with overclockers in the community.

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IBM has an idea (not the original one) to water-cook their supercomputers and recycle some of the heat to warm up the university where the systems are housed.

Many hardcore PC owners have been doing this for years, well maybe not recycling the heat part but my water-cooling system definitely served the double purpose as a room heater

Going green is definitely a trend now, and everyone is doing it so thumbs up to IBM.

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Here is a cool video:

3D Computer Interface from Free Flow on Vimeo.

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