First Rugged Laptop by DELL

Dell has unveiled its first fully ruggedized laptop, the Latitude XFR D630. The rugged laptop, intended for government and commercial customers, is available in the U.S. and starts at $3,899. The Latitude XFR D630 meets MIL-STD 810F standards from the Department of Defense for products that operate in extreme temperatures, moisture and altitude. The system shares common images and components with Dell's current line of Latitude laptops to greatly simplify deployment and maintenance."The Latitude XFR D630 represents a tectonic shift towards simplicity in the ruggedized laptop space," said Brett McAnally, director, Dell Product Group. "We are taking a multi-dimensional approach that focuses on simplified deployment, service and durability without sacrificing performance. Major competitors focus their efforts on 'rugged' only."The Latitude XFR D630 also features outdoor readable screen at 500 nits, integrated resistive touch technology to easily interface with the system, shock isolated mounting to help protect hard drive, LCD and core electronic elements, dual locking butterfly mechanisms for easy access to components and a sealed keyboard designed to withstand driving rain and dust.Source

New NFS and Skate Announcements Soon....!!!!

At EA’s "Meet the Makers" event held in Singapore yesterday I had a chance to talk to John Doyle from EA’s Black Box studios, Vancouver, Canada. In case you didn’t know, Doyle and his team are the people behind both the Need for Speed series as well as last year’s Skate.hen asked about the new Need for Speed game (pardon the horrible Photoshop job), Doyle told me that EA would be making a formal announcement in the next 3-4 months. Even though he didn’t quite come out and say it, he was hinting at the fact that they may go back to the whole Most Wanted-ish sandbox style of gameplay (finally!)Also expect a brand new game mechanic since Doyle claims that every NFS game out there brings something new to the table. Undergound had the whole tuner scene happening, Most Wanted was just plain awesome, Carbon had Autoscultping and Canyon Duels, while Pro Street was... uhh, crap?Prying any sort of information from these guys is a Herculean task and no matter how many questions I bounced at him he just kept smiling at me, probably wishing I would shut the f**k up. Anyway, before I moved on to another producer, I asked him what plans he had for Skate since (a) it was very well received; and (b) there’s no way in hell EA’s letting a successful game get away that easily. Once again, he gave me that smug smile and said that the guys back at Black Box would kill him if he said anything. But there was something about his smile that said "Yes we’re working on one but I can’t talk about it or they’ll kill my family". So yeah, I’m guessing we can expect a "formal announcement" in the near future.Source

Nvidia GeForce 9800GX2 at CeBit 08

At CeBit 08, Nvidia has launched its GeForce 9800GX2 dual-GPU card; supposedly the one card to beat them all...

The GeForce 9800GX2 is powered by the 8800GT's G92 graphics chips with 256 stream processors in all, and comes with 1GB of GDDR3 onboard memory. The card sports two DVI output ports, and also has a HDMI interface. With two cards working as one, the 9800GX2 already runs in SLI mode without any special hardware and after a previous attempt at Quad SLI (that failed), we're sure Nvidia is leaving no stone unturned to get this one up and running.

And while the Nvidia 9800GX2 might be claimed to be the most powerful of them all, we'd rather reserve our comments for our Reviews team to check it out for themselves.

HP Pavilion dv2800t Artist Edition

Hewlett Packard (HP) has unveiled its new Pavilion dv2800t Artist Edition notebook series. HP claims the name of the series has got much to do with the fact that it's a new design created by young people, for young people.

The first of its kind, the Pavilion dv2800t sports a 14.1-inches wide-screen, and is fitted with the latest Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo Penryn 45nm processor. Hewlett Packard (HP) has unveiled its new Pavilion dv2800t Artist Edition notebook series. HP claims the name of the series has got much to do with the fact that it's a new design created by young people, for young people.

The first of its kind, the Pavilion dv2800t sports a 14.1-inches wide-screen, and is fitted with the latest Intel Centrino Core 2 Duo Penryn 45nm processor.Source

Gigabyte Unveils UMPC at CeBit 08

At CeBit 08, Gigabyte has unveiled its new "M700" ultra-mobile PC (UMPC).

The "M700" UMPC is powered by a 1.2MHz C7-M Via CPU (central processing unit), and will run Windows Vista Home Premium, among other featues. It is fitted with 2GB RAM (most of which will be occupied by Vista we guess), 7-inches touch-screen with 1024 x 600 pixels resolution, and hard disk capacity of 40GB or 60GB as required. The UMPC gives the regular QWERTY keyboard a miss.

All of around 1.43 pounds, the UMPC comes with dual Web cams to communicate with friends; GPS; plus a WiMAX-capable ExpressCard.

No details yet on pricing and availability.Source