Dell launches new Vostro V131 in Core i3, i5 and ULV variants

Dell is upping the design ante with their new business centric Vostro V131 notebook, and have done away with the boring and uninspiring design cues of yesteryear by injecting a healthy dose of color. Hailed as one of the lightest and thinnest products in the Dell Vostro portfolio, the V131 is available in Intel Core i3, Core i5 and even ULV Celeron 847 variants so there will definitely be one to suit your needs.

“We designed the Vostro V131 to deliver fast, uninterrupted multitasking for today’s business challenges. The result is a feature-rich laptop for mobile professionals who want full performance to support their technology demands without sacrificing design and portability. In addition, theV131 offers services and software solutions that improve productivity and data security.”-- Varinderjit Singh, Dell’s Managing Director for Consumer & Commercial, Malaysia & Singapore

The Vostro V131 also comes with additional trimmings like USB 3.0 ports, WWAN connectivity and a finger print scanner for all you paranoid androids out there. The Core i3 variant will retail from RM2099 and is available for purchase via the official Dell Malaysia website at www.dell.com.my. The Core i5 variant will be available in the coming weeks.

Article From: Lowyat 

Selected Intel Core-i3 and Pentium Receive Upgrade via Software

 

If your machine are running on one of these Intel processors - 3.1GHz Core i3-2102, 2.1GHz Core i3-2312M and 2.6GHz Pentium-G622, then you might want to pay attention to this news. Intel has recently released a software update that enables you to upgrade these processors that are able to bump up their performance in the range of 10 to 23 percent.

In general, this is how much each of the processors gained after the update:  

Unfortunately, the upgrade is not actually free as you need an upgrade card before you can perform the update. The upgrade card contains a code that the software update requires in order to apply the update to these processors. Nevertheless, if you are planning to purchase a new computer that is powered by either one of these processors, you might want to ask your OEM about the upgrade card.

Article From: Lowyat 

Firefox 6.0 Hits The Web, Earlier Than Scheduled

Originally scheduled for August 16 release, the latest Mozilla Firefox Internet browser has been unleashed to the web. For the mean time, it is only downloadable via Mozilla's FTP server but it is expected to be available everywhere very soon.


While the browser's welcome page might said “Firefox Beta” as well as some possibilities that Mozilla might push a number of updates to the browser before its actual wide public release, the installers are indeed the"final" build of Firefox 6.0. In general, the new browser does not offer any UI changes but still, it contains a number of performance fixes including up to 20 percent improvements in speed compared than Firefox 5.0.


Hit on these links to download the latest Firefox Internet browser, according to your operating system: [Windows] [Linux] [Mac].


[Source: Tweak Town]
Article From: Lowyat

Intel Sandy Bridge-E Priced, To Come Without Stock Cooler?

Think Intel are done with their Sandy Bridge-based products? Nope, not yet. There are a number of new Sandy Bridge processors coming to market in fourth quarter of this year or early 2012 but these processors are relatively different from previous releases. Named as Sandy Bridge-E, they are targeted for enthusiasts that requires an huge amount of firepower for their applications.

The Sandy Bridge-E processors will be led by the six-core 3.30GHz Intel Core i7-3960X that features Turbo Boost speed of 3.90GHz, 15MB of L3 cache and fully unlocked multiplier which made it suitable for extreme overclocking. As marked by the X on its name, this processor will also carry the Extreme Edition label on its box.

Together with it is another six-core processor, the 3.20GHz Core i7-3930K with Turbo Boost speed of 3.80GHz, 12MB of L3 cache and limited unlocked multiplier as well as the quad-core 3.60GHz Core i7-3820 with Turbo Boost of 3.90GHz and 10MB of L3 cache. Unlike its two big brothers though, the i7-3820 multiplier are locked. In addition to that, all three processors will feature the new LGA 2011 socket and Intel X79 chipset.

According to one source, these processors will be priced at around RM 2998 (USD 999), RM 1750 (USD 583) and RM 882 (USD 294) respectively. These procesors will also not come with stock coolers as per other Intel processors but instead, users have to purchase aftermarket coolers or separate Intel-branded coolers that are designed for Sandy Bridge-E processors. That might looks like a weird move by Intel but since enthusiasts usually prefer aftermarket coolers anyway, it does seems quite logical.

[Source: VR-Zone - 1 - 2. Image: Legit Reviews]
Article From: Lowyat 

Seagate ships 1 millionth Momentus XT; proves that hybrid drives sell

The adoption rate of SSDs to date might not be as high as hardware makers would have hoped due to the sheer cost of the devices, but it seems that hybrid drives – the half SSD, half HDD variant – are doing pretty fine.

We recently received word from Seagate that they have just shipped their 1 millionth solid state hybrid drive, which is an impressive feat that they attribute to some clever cost-saving engineering and strategic partnerships with computer makers such as Alienware, ASUS, Dell, Sony and Toshiba to ship machines with Momentus XT drives on board.

Since SSDs cost at least 10 times more than regular HDDs, hybrid drives like the Momentus XT from Seagate manage to stay affordable by combining NAND flash with a traditional HDD, and effectively does what any SSD/HDD combo would – keep large files on the HDD portion, and frequently used files on the NAND partition.

To find out more about the Momentus XT from Seagate, hit up the official Seagate website at www.seagate.com.

Article From: Lowyat 

AMD Fusion A-Series APUs For Desktop Are Now In The Market

When AMD first released its brand new Accelerated Processor Unit (APU) products which combines CPU and GPU into one single processor, the initial line-up – C-Series and E-Series – were focused on low-power PC and budget market. Only now, the more powerful and more capable APU have started to arrive into the market in the form of AMD Fusion A-Series APUs that was previously codenamed as “Llano”.

Following the release of AMD Fusion A-Series APUs for mobile last month, the first batch of the new AMD Fusion A-Series APUs for desktop has just arrived into the market in two different flavors: the A8-3850 and A6-3650. As both are quad-core processor with thermal design power of 100W, they can be differentiated through their CPU and GPU clock speed together with the type and amount of Radeon graphics cores within them; as listed below:

The new AMD Fusion A8-3850 and A6-3650 APUs are priced at around RM 407 and RM 346 respectively. Contact you favorite retailer to find out more about them or visit www.amd.com. 

Article From: Lowyat

Mac OS X Lion Coming On The 14th, MacBook Air Soon After.

According to the good people over at TUAW, their sources have received word that Apple is planning to pull all nighters on July 13th in their retail stores. Usually when Apple pulls this sort of thing, it could only mean one thing, a new product release the next day. If the timeline is to be believed, it looks like Mac OS X 10.7 Lion will be released to the general public on the 14th July via the Mac App Store. Why the overnighter then if it wont be available in store? Apparently Apple is upgrading the machines in store to make sure Lion runs smoothly on them.

It looks like soon after the launch of Lion, Apple is looking to refresh the MacBook Air shortly after, quite possibly within a week. According to Appleinsider, the hardware was ready to go but Apple held them back wanting to wait to ship them with Lion pre-installed.

OS X Lion will be available for US$29.99 from the Mac App Store, if you don't have fast internet, you're out of luck so far. Go bug someone with Unifi to let you leech off their connection for a few hours.

(Source: TUAW)

Article From: Lowyat

LG E2360 dual-monitor setup adventure

Desktop real estate space is becoming an increasingly difficult topic to understand. On one hand, you have disciples of the old school who believe in fully utilizing desktop space, and insist on filling up every inch of empty space with an icon. Then you have the newer generation of zen hippies who believe that minimalism is key to getting into heaven, and that more than three icons on a desktop is a punishable sin. You also have the social media / Wall Street archetypes that run applications which are so big they require a screen of their own just to run in the background.

Review: Alienware M14x Gaming Laptop

Well, hello there… looks like we have met again, Alienware. Previously, we have reviewed two Alienware – the M17x in 2009 and the M11x in 2010; so, now it is time for the new M14x to be under the spotlight.

As per any given Alienware-branded entity out there, the M14x is one serious mean machine which goes beyond its physical design. Being one of two new Alienware laptops – M18x being the other one, not locally available for now – that were released in April 2011, the laptop comes equipped with second generation Intel Core i7 processors together with an Optimus-enabled NVIDIA GeForce GT 555M GPU. It is also equipped with a couple of other fierce hardware such as the options of either 7200RPM hard drive or a solid state drive as well as 1600MHz DDR3 RAM options up to 8GB.

So, how does the combination of these high performance hardware fares under our tests? Jump in to find out.

Logitech launches big sounds with the Z906 500-watt monster

Creating a worthy successor is never an easy task, and when you have a gargantuan reputation to live up to, the job only gets tougher. Logitech launched the Z906 surround speaker system earlier today, the successor to the highly acclaimed Logitech Z-5500 digital 5.1 speaker system, and after cranking it up for a couple of demo tunes, we’re happy to report that the engineers behind it have done their heritage proud.

Offering a massive 500 watts (RMS) of kidney jiggling power, the Z906 is THX certified and jammed packed with audio bad assery. The press release says that it’s powerful enough to shake your house, which is a claim that isn’t too far-fetched thanks to a 165 watt ported side-firing subwoofer. But since you’re more likely to be using it in your living room or bed room rather than to power up a feng tao joint, the crystal clear mids and trebles from the five 67 watt satellites, the on-board DTS / Dolby Digital 5.1 decoder, and the six audio inputs help it blend in perfectly with your existing entertainment system and is well equipped to churn out some mind blowing aural pleasure.

Story continues after the jump.