Nokia N97 (Computer Phone) Announced Find Full Details

We’re a bit saddened with the news that the Nokia 6260 slide won’t be released in the local market by Nokia Philippines, but upon hearing about this new model, we quickly got over our depression.

We heard about it at the end of last week, but we had no idea just how exciting Nokia’s announcment would be! Christmas has come early this year as Nokia has revealed their brand new N-series handset, the N97 - and we couldn’t have wished for anything better! Take a look at the headline features:

Key Features of the new Nokia N97

• Touch display (3.5″ of it) which slides and tilts to reveal a full QWERTY kepboard plus d-pad for easy navigation.
• 5 Megapixel Camera
• Carl Zeiss integrated optics coupled with a dual LED flash
• A massive 32GB of internal memory with MicrSD support for further memory expansion
• Integrated Assisted GPS
• WiFi and HSDPA
• DVD quality video capture and 16:9 display

The N97 is a cutting edge smartphone that includes support for their OVI service as well as the Nokia Music Store. Nokia have called the N97 “the most advanced mobile computer” and have done well to keep ahead of current mobile phone usability trends. With more and more people using their phones to browse the net, to access email accounts and share photos online we expect that the likes of the N97 will become the most demanded everyday phone. GPS has also become a standard on handsets and more and more people are expecting their phones to have integrated GPS. App developers are also aware of this and the number of cool GPS reliant applications is growing at a phenomenal rate.

Nokia have divulged that the expected release date for the N97 is in the first half of 2009 and is expected to hold a pre-tax price tag of 550 Euros. So if you are wanting to get this handset soon after public release expect to take out a higher tariff package if you want it for free.

The Nokia N97 is the new flagship model from the Finnish company. It comes with a 3.5-inch 640×360 touchscreen display with tactile feedback, 5-megapixel camera with Carl Zeiss glass lens, slide out QWERTY keypad, HSDPA, WiFi, Bluetooth, A-GPS, 32GB internal memory and support for additional storage of up to 16GB via microSD. This marks the continuing evolution of Nokia’s touchscreen phones and the first time an Nseries mobile phone featured a QWERTY keypad. While it does lack DVB-H technology that’s found in the N96, I’m sure most users wouldn’t mind that small sacrificial lamb for the N97’s existing feature set.

Here’s a short promotional video for the N97 to get you even more excited for 2009.

It’s expected to begin shipping in the first half of 2009 with a €550 (roughly P34,500) price tag attached to it excluding tax and subsidies. With its impressive line of features, I’m sure aspiring N96 and 5800 XpressMsuic phone owners will now think twice before making any hasty purchases from now until mid next year.

While there’s still no certainty if it will make it to the local market, I’m pretty optimistic that this one won’t suffer the same fate as the 6260 slide. Let’s just hope that when it does, its price won’t even come close to the SRP of the XPERIA X1 so that more of us can get to enjoy this new beauty.

ATI FirePro V3700, ATI FirePro V3750, ATI FirePro V5700, ATI FirePro V8700 Workstation Graphics Accelerators

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* DisplayPort® output for superior 30-bit image quality1
* Scalable ultra parallel processing architecture with 320 unified shaders
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* Dual Link DVI output for driving ultra high resolution widescreen monitors
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* PCI Express® 2.0 compliant

Maximizing Real-Time Application Interactivity
The unique ultra parallel processing architecture of AMD workstation graphics accelerators maximizes throughput by automatically directing graphics horsepower where it’s needed. Intelligent management of computational resources enables enhanced utilization of the graphics accelerator to enable real-time rendering of complex models and scenes while helping to increase frame rate performance when animating.

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ATI FirePro™ 3D graphics feature full 30-bit display pipeline and support for High Dynamic Range output, producing over one billion colors for the most vibrant visual fidelity1 versus more traditional 24-bit display pipeline, which produces only 16.7 million colors. With DisplayPort® and Dual Link enabled DVI outputs, ATI FirePro 3D workstation graphics cards are capable of generating a multi-monitor desktop of over 5000 pixels wide.



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Seagate announces 12 GB mini, slender hard disk

Scotts Valley (CA) - Perpendicular recording will be a key technology to keep the capacity of hard disks growing in coming years. Seagate isn't wasting time upgrading its products: The company will be shipping a massive 12 GB 1" drive later this year and increase the storage space gap to mainstream flash memory.

2005 was an important year for smaller form factor hard disks as 1.8", 1" and 0.85" devices quickly gained popularity as portable storage products and mass storage solutions in hand held products. But especially the 1" form factor also had to deal with increased competition from flash memory manufacturers: Not only grew the capacity of flash, but also prices dropped by an estimated 50% - which was reason enough for Apple to switch from a hard drive to a flash memory chip in its latest iPod model.

While hard drive manufacturers will not be able to match the speed and the durability of flash memory devices, the strategy has to be a quickly increasing capacity and an evolutionary improvement in all other storage device characteristics. Seagate, the world's largest hard drive manufacturer believes that perpendicular recording technology is the foundation that allows the company to outpace flash. A 160 GB 2.5" perpendicular drive was announced in January and is shipping now; by the third quarter of this year, the technology will come to the firm's smallest hard drive - the ST1 series. The third generation of the drive (ST1.3) increases the current maximum capacity from 8 GB to 12 GB, while decreasing the overall size of the drive by 23% at the same time: The footprint of the drive shrinks from a footprint of 43 mm x 36 mm to 40mm x 30 mm.

According to Rob Pait, Seagate's director for global consumer electronics marketing, the 12 GB drive just indicates what perpendicular recording may be able to do for the industry. "It's just a start where we see the technology going. Storage capacity will be growing quickly, which will be a key differentiator to flash," he told TG Daily. While he was not able to talk about Seagate's business relationship with Apple, he mentioned that the company "certainly would love to have Apple back as a customer." Apple dropped in 2005 the iPod mini, which was equipped with Seagate's 1.8" drives, and replaced it with the iPod nano, which comes with 2 GB and 4 GB flash memory devices.

But there are other features than capacity, in which flash is superior to hard drives - especially their low power consumption and the fact that the absence of moving parts makes flash memory virtually indestructible. According to Pait, the ST1.3 will be improving in both characteristics and try to narrow the gap. For example, increased shock resistance means, that the drive can survive a drop on concrete from about five feet of height. Also, the ST1.3 will consume 30% less power than "other 1" drives on the market," he said.

The ST1.3 will make its way into MP3 players, likely into devices built by Philips and iRiver, and appear during this year's holiday season. Cellphones typically require more time to adapt such technologies and we do not expect 12 GB multimedia phones to surface in 2006, but more likely in 2007.

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If Seagate is able to quickly increase the capacity of its 1" hard drives it certainly will also draw attention from Apple. Considering the fact that the company appears to have entered long term contracts with Flash suppliers such as Samsung, Elpida and Intel/Micron, it is unlikely the segment created by the iPod nano will switch to hard drives anytime soon. But Apple's iPod sales keep growing - the company sold 14 million iPods during the 2005 holiday season - and we wouldn't be too surprised if more iPod products surfaced in coming mont