Cameras Nikon D5100 DSLR surfaces with 16.2 megapixel sensor, 1080p video recording

Been waiting for a new Nikon DSLR to slide in under that magical $1,000 mark? Then we've got some good news for you, as Digital Home Thoughts has now let slip some official details and pictures of Nikon's new prosumer D5100 model. This one steps things up to a D7000-matching 16.2 megapixels from the 12 megapixel D5000, and boasts a 3-inch articulated display (side-mounted this time), 1080p video recording at both 30 and 24 fps (with autofocus!), ISO settings from 100 to 6,400, and an 18-105mm lens included in the kit (no body-only option available just yet, it seems). What's more, Nikon's also releasing a new ME-1 microphone alongside the camera to let you take full advantage of those video recording capabilities -- check it out after the break. Look for this one to set you back $899.95 for the kit, with the mic running $159.95. Those are Canadian prices according to Digital Home Thoughts, though we'd expect US pricing to be the same.

AMD ships 32nm quad-core Llano APU, expects systems 'later this quarter'

Whoa, Nelly! AMD, a company that has struggled to nail its ship dates in years past, has just pulled the ultimate 180. If you'll recall, we heard last month that its quad-core Llano APU was on track for a Q3 2011 release, but now, we've word straight from the equine's mouth that the action will be going down far sooner. In fact, AMD's Singapore plant just celebrated the first shipment of the company's 32nm Llano A-series APUs, complete with discrete-level graphics and a promise to change the way we think about netbook / nettop / ultraportable performance. Of course, just because these chips are headed out to OEM partners doesn't mean that they'll be gracing the pages of your favorite PC maker tomorrow; Chief Financial Officer and Interim CEO Thomas Seifert notes that AMD is looking forward to seeing Llano-based machines during this quarter, but given that Q2 just got going, we may be waiting awhile still. Nothing like a little Zacate to tide you over in the meantime, right?

Radeon HD 6790 sneaks in at under $150

As sure as snow in winter or sun in summer, AMD has yet another refresh to its graphics card portfolio this spring. The Radeon HD 6790 is only a couple of misplaced digits away from the far more illustrious HD 6970, but you should be able to tell the two apart by another, altogether more significant spec: the new mid-tier card retails at $149. Predictably, its performance offers no threat to AMD's single-GPU flagship, but the 6790's 840MHz graphics and shader clock speeds plus 1GB of GDDR5 running at an effective 4.2GHz data rate don't seem like anything to sniff at either. Reviewers agreed that it's AMD's slightly delayed answer to NVIDIA's GTX 460, and with the latter card exiting retail availability to make room for the (oddly enough) less powerful GTX 550 Ti, AMD's new solution looks set to be the better choice at the shared $149 price point. Alas, being limited to 800 Stream processors and 16 ROPs does expose the HD 6790 to being cannibalized by AMD's own Radeon HD 6850 (which can be had for sub-$150 if you're tolerant of rebates) and that turns out to be exactly what happens. A solid card, then, but one that would require an even lower price dip to make economic sense. Benchmarks await below.

Nanogenerators produce electricity by squeezing your fingers together, while you dance

Science

Nanogenerators produce electricity by squeezing your fingers together, while you dance

By Sam Sheffer posted Mar 31st 2011 8:23PM

It's been a while since we last heard about nanogeneratos -- you know, those insanely tiny fibers that could potentially be woven into your hoodie to juice up your smartphone. Dr. Zhong Lin Wang of the Georgia Institute of Technology has reported that he and his team of Einsteins constructed nanogenerators with enough energy to potentially power LCDs, LEDs and laser diodes by moving your various limbs. These micro-powerhouses -- 1 / 500 the width of a single hair strand -- are embedded with piezoelectric zinc oxide atoms and can generate electrical charges when flexed or strained. Wang and his team of researchers shoved a collection of their nanogenerators into a chip 1 / 4 the size of a stamp, stacked five of them on top of one another and can pinch the stack between their fingers to generate the output of two standard AA batteries -- around 1.5 volts. Although it's not much, we're super excited at this point in development -- imagine how convenient to charge your phone in your pocket sans the bulky battery add-ons. And that's only one application of this technology. Yea, we know.

IBM products aim to speed up, automate virtualization

IBM is aiming to make it easier for enterprises to manage their virtualized environments, with new features in the Tivoli Provisioning Manager and other software products.

IBM is rolling out a beta program for new software that it claims can dramatically reduce the amount of time it takes to provision new virtual machines. The software can deploy a single VM in seconds, dozens in a few minutes and hundreds or thousands in under an hour, according to an IBM press release.

Dennis Quan, director of the IBM Tivoli China Development Laboratory, was vague about how the software achieves those speeds, saying that it uses a number of techniques including streaming the image.

The software can boost efficiency in organizations where IT people might otherwise spend many minutes or even an hour to get a single VM provisioned, he said.

But the benefits can extend further, he said. One reason companies move to the cloud is because it allows organizations to use only the computing resources they need.

"That idea also assumes that when they're done with those resources they are returned to the cloud so they can be used by others," Quan said. However, sometimes groups are reluctant to give up resources even if they aren't using them because of the time it can take to get those resources back later.

"If you get to the point where you tell users they can get their resources back in seconds to minutes, then the users don't worry about not getting it back quickly if they give it up now," Quan said. The software can also help improve agility for businesses that may want to be able to make changes quickly, he said.

IBM also announced Tuesday that Tivoli Provisioning Manager now supports image federation and deployment across heterogenous infrastructure.

"It's the ability to support different hardware hypervisor platforms from a single management system," Quan said. An enterprise can use VMware, PowerVM and Xen hypervisors and manage them from the same console, he said.

IBM is also announcing that it will launch a beta program "imminently" for new software that extends service management capabilities to hybrid clouds. Users will be able to monitor and provision services that may be hosted internally or on public clouds. Financial services and public sector organizations are among those most interested in keeping important data on internal systems while offloading less mission-critical apps to public clouds, Quan said.

Quan did not share the list of public cloud services that would initially be supported but said that it would be able to tie in many services and would refine the list through the course of the beta program.

The company is also announcing new virtualization support in its Tivoli Storage Manager. The product lets users efficiently manage storage requirements, data recovery and data protection across machines, Quan said. "It gives you better control over your environment and enforces a more uniform policy," he said.

The new features and products may be good news for CFOs, but may not exactly be welcome by IT departments. By automating management and speeding up provisioning times, IT departments require fewer administrators, Quan said.

Intel details new Atom N570 processor

Intel on Tuesday provided further details about its Atom N570 chip and said netbooks with the processor will ship later this month.

The dual-core processor runs at 1.66GHz and includes 1MB of L2 cache. It draws 8.5 watts of power and supports DDR3 memory, Intel said in a blog entry.

Asustek Computer, Samsung and Lenovo will ship netbooks with the Atom N570 processor later this month, Intel said. Some laptops are being shown at the CeBit trade show going on in Hanover, Germany.

Netbooks running on the chip will deliver a battery life similar to that of systems running on single-core Atom processors, Intel said. The battery life of netbooks depends on features, screen size and applications. Some netbooks can deliver between eight and 12 hours of battery life on basic activities such as Web browsing. But applications that demand a lot of processing power, such as high-definition graphics, can drain battery life quickly.

The chip was first announced on Monday with SeaMicro's SM10000-64 low-power server, which includes 256 Atom N570 processors. The chip includes server-friendly features such as 64-bit extensions and multithreading, in which each core is capable of running two threads simultaneously to boost application performance. All desktop, laptop and server chips based on Intel's newer Sandy Bridge microarchitecture and its predecessor, Westmere, are capable of running multiple threads per core.

There is a growing interest in using netbook chips such as Atom in low-power servers. However, netbook shipments are getting clobbered by tablets, which are competing for consumer dollars. Intel is also working on an Atom chip for tablets, which is code-named Oak Trail.

AMD Fusion pentru acasă

În cadrul CES-ului din Las Vegas desfăşurat în ianuarie, AMD anunţa platforma Fusion, o familie de unităţi de procesare accelerată (APU) care includ într-un singur cip tehno­logie multicore CPU şi grafică compa­tibilă DirectX11 cu performanţe la nivel de grafică discretă.

Este răspunsul AMD la tandemul Nvidia ION - Intel Atom, prima tehno­logie care a transfor­mat netbook-urile în echipamente pentru divertisment multimedia HD. Tot la CES erau anunţate porta­bile care se bazează pe Fusion de la majoritatea integra­torilor cunoscuţi. Contrar tuturor aşteptărilor, primii care au adus în România un laptop bazat pe această platformă sunt cei de la Sony, prin modelul Vaio YB.

Vaio YB este de fapt un Y la o scară redusă, cu dimensiunea ecranului micşorată de la 13,3 inchi la 11,6 inchi. Aspectul său este unul îngrijit care respiră acea eleganţă simplă tipică portabilelor Vaio, cu materiale şi finisaje de calitate, de aici poate şi preţul peste media pieţei. Nu este nici prea sobru, nici prea modern, astfel că se adresează atât tinerilor dinamici şi activi, cât şi celor trecuţi de o anumită vârstă, mai preten­ţioşi şi mai selectivi.

Platforma AMD Fusion care echi­pează acest mini-laptop combină un procesor low-voltage la 1,6 Ghz cu o placă grafică puternică Radeon 6310. Procesorul, alături de memoria RAM de 2GB, poate asigura o func­ţionare corectă în programele de bază pe care le-am utiliza: navigare pe internet, me­sa­­gerie instant, vizualizare sau editare do­cumente office cu un nivel de com­ple­xitate minim/mediu sau oricare alte programe care nu-l stresează prea tare, limitele sale superioare fiind uşor de atins. Dacă utilizaţi frecvent programe solicitante, de genul celor de editare grafică foto sau video la un nivel avansat sau al jocurilor de ultimă generaţie, nu acesta este echipamentul pe care îl căutaţi. Din punctul de vedere al perfor­manţelor sale îşi poate dovedi utilitatea mai degrabă într-un mediu casnic, fiind o posibilă unealtă de studiu pentru elevi sau studenţi sau pe post de un al doilea sistem, portabil. Este uşor, compact şi are destulă putere pentru ceea ce am avea de făcut în condiţii de portabilitate, foarte util în vacanţe. Por­ta­bilitatea este asigurată şi de auto­nomia de aproape 4 ore, în condiţiile în care a fost acceso­rizat cu un mouse fără fir, a fost conectat la reţeaua wireless, iar luminozitatea ecranului era aproape de maxim.

Dar să nu uităm că ne poate asigura din plin şi suportul pentru vizualizarea materialelor video la rezoluţii full HD, acestea rulând foarte bine în progra­mele cu suport pentru accelerare gra­fică. Totul se datorează plăcii AMD Radeon HD 6310, una care manevrează fără efort şi fără blocări conţinut video HD sau jocuri cu o complexitate medie. Poate fi utilizat şi în postură de player multimedia, portul HDMI fiind perfect pentru redarea imaginilor pe un tele­vizor cu diagonală mare. Capacită­ţile sale de divertisment nu sunt susţinute şi de sistemul audio, unul cu speakere mici, conform legilor firii, pe măsura dimensiunilor sale compacte. Aşa că este nevoie de conectarea la boxe mai performante.

Pentru transferul da­telor din reţea avem la dispoziţie cele mai performante tehnologii la ora actuală pe laptopuri - Ethernet Gigabit şi Wireless de tip N. Remarcăm şi pre­zenţa a 3 porturi USB 2.0, de ajuns pentru a conecta simultan un mouse wireless, un hard disk extern şi o imprimantă.

Ecranul de 11.6 inchi afişează o rezoluţie perfectă pentru dimensiunile sale de 1366x768 pixeli. Caracterele şi ima­ginile afişate pe ecran pot fi vizua­lizate confortabil, nu sunt nici prea mici, nici prea mari, nu obosesc ochii. Imaginile sunt clare, luminoase, cu o coloristică vibrantă. Am remarcat faptul ca finisajul lucios nu are reflexii deran­jante în lumina naturală. Tastatura asi­gură din plin suportul pentru redac­tarea fluentă şi rapidă, tastele excelent spaţiate şi feedbackul la apăsare fiind elemente plăcute la utilizare. Touchpad-ul răspunde excelent la comenzile tactile, dar cele două butonaşe sunt puţin cam rigide.

www.imidoresc.ro

Caracteristici tehnice

Ecran: 11,6 inchi ( 29,5 cm)

cu o rezoluţie de 1366x768 pixeli

CPU: 1.6-GHz AMD E-350

Placă Grafică: AMD Radeon HD 6310

Stocare: 320 GB

Memorie: RAM: 2GB

Conectică: Ethernet gigabit; WLAN 802.11b/g/n; Bluetooth(r) 2.1

Altele: Hi-Speed USB 2.0 (x3); 1 xHDMI out; MOTION EYE(r) digital camera

Dimensiuni: 202.8 x 25 x 290 mm

Greutate: 1.46 Kg

SO: Windows 7 Home Premium

Preţ: 2200 lei

Pro

- Poate rula materiale video full HD

- Portabilitatea, este uşor şi compact

- Construcţie de calitate

Contra

- Preţul peste media clasei