Intel has been on a roll over the last couple of years with a series of great innovations being introduced with their new products that is setting the benchmark for speed, low temperatures and reliability. Now the company is set to unveil a new chip that will offer unprecedented battery life.

Intel has announced three new chips that are squarely aimed at reducing the energy consumption required to run it. Intel is so confident about their new products that the company is predicting laptops to run all day by 2013 based on a single charge or go on connected standby for almost 10 days.

The center of the energy efficiency claims of Intel lies on the Haswell processor, that will be shipped on 2013. This chip will be extending the energy efficiency claims further than any of Intel’s other products. The processor has been specially designed to allow for a Haswell-powered laptop to run for one full day on a single charge. The idle platform power will also be reduced by up to 20 times compared to current designs. Compare this to the Macbook Air that runs for seven hours on a single charge and has a 30 day regular standby.

For those who are confused about what connected standby is – this is a computer state wherein the display is turned off but the device is still connected to the network, which simply means the device is still connected and on, constantly updating email, social media and digital content.

It was only recently that I got exposed to having almost all devices in the house connected together. One laptop functions as a media server. We play music and videos via the laptop and use the HDTV as the monitor. It’s pretty handy, especially with other portable devices being used to access/control the laptop. It’s a pretty good setup, although not quite perfect: we still have kilometers and kilometers of wires.

While it probably won’t solve the entire problem of wires, the recently launched D-Link MainStage^TM for Intel® Wireless Display (DHD-131) just might make things better in any household that has a heavy ‘media consumption”. This WiDi device is a tiny non-descript gadget that will fit in the palm of your hand. If you look at the photo above, it is easy to see just how simple it looks. Honestly, my first thought when I saw it was that it reminded me of a smooth-edged monolith. ¹

This monolith-like gadget does not hold much in terms of mystery, though. What it does has pretty much been announced by D-Link and hyped up even. The MainStage^TM connects to an HDTV via an HDMI cable or an A/V cable. The device then connects to a wireless router, which can then be used to stream media from any laptop. Think 1080p. Think 5.1 surround sound.

With this setup, you have more freedom as to where you place your laptop. This is more practical for those who don’t have much living space and who may not have a dedicated laptop for media purposes; and even if you do have a dedicated laptop, the removal of one set of wires might very well be worth it. One thing’s for sure – the device is worth considering.

This gadget will set you back around USD130. It is currently available in the US and will be released in Canada next month. For those in other parts of the world, you can visit D-Link’s online store.

Via The Digital LIfestyle

1. The kind that was described in Arthur C. Clarke’s Space Odyssey [↩]

There was a time when I thought that 80 GB of hard drive space was more than enough to meet my needs. My good old netbook quickly ran out of space, though, and before I knew it, I found myself shopping around for a portable external drive. With every laptop change, the higher I went with regard to capacity. The need for more space is always there, though, and it seems that nothing but external hard drives will solve the issue. For sure, you have been in similar situations, and you’ll be thrilled to know that Samsung has recently launched a new hard drive for laptops with a whopping 1 terabyte capacity!

The new hard drive follows the industry standard for laptops – 9.5mm 2.5 in form factor, making it usable for practically any laptop. Dubbed Spinpoint M8, the hard drive not only boosts storage capacity, but it also lessens power consumption. Samsung says that it uses 8 percent less power – or thereabouts. More so, the performance of the hard drive is also 7 percent better than its counterparts.

If that is not enough to convince you (I don’t know, they got me at 1 TB), you might also want to know that Samsung makes use of the NoiseGuard technology, which will lessen that annoying sound that your hard drive may have when working hard. And in case you tend to drop your electronics, the Spinpoint M8′s chassis has been designed to improve shock protection.

Samsung is already producing the Spinpoint M8 and says that it will be available worldwide. In the US, the hard drive has been tagged at $129. Not bad at all!

Via

One of the best inventions of man would probably be the printer. Long before printers were invented, writing and copying were done by hand. In the past, monks spent a great amount of time manually creating copies of texts. However, thanks to the brilliant ideas of man, we are now able to conveniently produce massive amounts of text in a short span of time with the invention of the printer. The printer is able to produce hard copies of data that are inputted in the computer.
What is amazing about technology is that by being able to input data first in the computer before creating a hard copy of it, the probability of you making a mistake before printing it out is definitely lessened. With that in mind, you can also save a great amount of time since printing a one-page document is definitely a lot quicker than writing it on paper by hand. In fact, it would only take you seconds to print it out with Canon ink cartridges! One of the cons of having printers is that people rely on it so much – probably too much that people these days are so lazy to manually write on paper anymore. Also, discipline in writing and using paper has diminished greatly, as people can quickly print and easily discard it when there is a problem with it. Having said all that, the pros can definitely outweigh the cons. Convenience is what the modern man aims for and printers definitely have offered that to us.

I have used quite a lot of printers here and there, and I have had some experience with the quality of these printers. The results are different. I tell you. Sometimes one printer can be a joy to work with, and the next moment it’s just a pain. Oh, don’t get me started on my experience in replacing the toners and inkjet cartridges – I’ve spent many hours in college cursing under my breath when in the middle of the night I find that my school papers weren’t going to be printed because the cartridges were empty.

And then, there were the paper jams, and of course printer spooling – all of which happens when I’m in a hurry. What can I say? I consider myself a competent techie, but those printers can confound me really good.

Now I haven’t found the perfect printer for me to use with my laptop, but I’m rolling off a bunch of features that I want to see in future printers. Call it a wish list or a pipe dream.

• Portability – of course, with me running around everywhere and finding solace in whatever coffee shop I first walk into, it’s going to suck when I have to run home to get something printed when my destination is a couple of blocks away. It happened, and it sucks. I want something easy to carry around.
• Speed – I want a printer that spits out printed paper like there’s no tomorrow. I know, I know, printers today are way faster than the ones from the dot-matrix era, but it’s still not fast enough.
• Efficiency – I’ve complained about paper jams and printer spooling over in the first paragraph, and there really isn’t anything more I can add to this.

A few friends have recommended the latest Brother a3 printer, though. You can bet I am going to try that one out.