New Motorola Android phone on Verizon the Devour

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(AP) -- Verizon Wireless has a second handset from Motorola Inc. that uses Google Inc.'s Android software: The Devour.

Much like the Motorola Droid, which debuted to much fanfare in November, the Devour has a touch screen that slides away to reveal a keyboard. The screen is slightly smaller, however. Verizon said Wednesday the phone would be on sale in March, but did not say what it would cost.

The Devour also features Motoblur, a software package from Motorola that displays e-mails and content from such sites as Twitter and Verizon also sells a smaller, keyboard-less Android phone made by HTC Corp., the Droid Eris.

Men want gadgets for Valentine's Day

Most men would prefer to receive a gadget rather than candy or flowers from their partners on Valentine's Day, a poll reports.

The poll was conducted by IOGEAR, a connectivity manufacturer.

Of the 607 male and female respondents, 61 percent of men said that tech gear would be their gift of choice, yet only 19 percent have ever received an IT gizmo on Valentine's Day. Surprisingly, the poll found that an increasing number of women, 23 percent, would rather receive a tech toy than bouquets or sweets on Valentine's Day.

The online survey also revealed consumers' dream tech presents this Feb. 14, including GPS systems, Bluetooth cell-phone headsets, portable music players and flat-screen TVs.

"Our poll shows that gadgets are now the way to a man's heart," said Miranda Su, vice president of sales and marketing at IOGEAR Inc. "With affordable, convenient tech tools now available and in demand, gift giving becomes a lot easier. Males and females alike are hoping to get an mp3 player over a dozen roses or heart-shaped chocolate."

Copyright 2006 by United Press International

Module eases wireless laptop service

A Belgian company has developed a wireless laptop module that connects to standard cell towers and is not limited to the proximity of WiFi hot spots.

Option NV said this week that its GTM351E includes a PCI card that should make wireless Internet activity an easier proposition for users who currently have to hunt around for a hot spot before they can log on.

The card is installed on the unit's motherboard and can handle third-generation HSDPA (High Speed Downlink Packet Access) technology and as well as the UMTS (Universal Mobile Telecommunications Service) that is widely used in Asia.

The first GTM351E modules will ship early next year and begin making it to consumers some time afterward.

"The business model between operators and IT manufacturers for commercializing embedded wireless modules is still in its early stages," Option CEO Jan Callewaert said in a statement. "We'll see a further maturing of this market in 2006."

Copyright 2005 by United Press International

Le Seigneur des Anneaux Online devient free-to-play

Après un peu plus de trois années d'existence en tant que MMORPG à abonnement payant classique, Le Seigneur des Anneaux Online se prépare à devenir totalement free-to-play cet automne.

Sans invoquer de difficultés particulières justifiant ce changement de modèle économique, Warner (qui possède les droits sur les jeux prenant place dans l'univers de Tolkien) et Codemasters (exploitant de LSDAO en Europe) assurent vouloir élargir le public du jeu en proposant un accès "à la carte" au titre de Turbine.

Plusieurs formules devraient être proposées, sans être tout à fait bien définies pour l'instant. Le jeu sera accessible à tous gratuitement jusqu'au niveau maximal de 50 mais il faudra ensuite payer pour acquérir "des milliers d'objets et de packs d'extension, de contenu Premium, d'emplacements de personnages supplémentaires, de potions, d'éléments de personnalisation de personnage et bien plus encore". Ce dernier sera intégré et les achats se feront en "points Turbine" à acheter ou à gagner dans le jeu.

Un abonnement "VIP" sera également proposé, lequel proposera un accès prioritaire au jeu, 5 slots de personnages et une somme mensuelle de points Turbine à dépenser à loisir dans la boutique Premium. Les caractéristiques des différents type comptes qui seront proposés lors du passage en free-to-play sont détaillés sur cette page dédiée du site officiel.

La grande interrogation reste les compensations qui seront offertes aux joueurs ayant acheté le jeu et ses extensions jusqu'à aujourd'hui. Nul doute que tout cela devrait se préciser dans les mois à venir.

· Site officiel du Seigneur des Anneaux Online free-to-play

DFI Changed X48-T3R PCB Layout

DFI has changed the PCB layout of LANParty UT X48-T3R board as the 2nd and3rd PCIe slots are too near to each other. You can do a comparison between theold layout and this new one. DFI wll show the MP version with the new layoutand ThermalRight heatpipe cooler at CeBIT.

EPoX EP-5NVA+ SLi Board Specs

EPoX is going to unveil their Intel SLI solution based on thenForce 4 SLI Intel Edition chipset (C19 + MCP04) next week on April 6th. Hereare some pics and specs of their 5NVA+ SLI board.

CPU Socket:
Socket LGA775 for Intel® Celeron D® 3xx series, Intel® Pentium 4® 5xx/6xxseries, P4EE up to 3.8+GHz
Support 533/800/1066 MHz front-side bus
Support Intel® EM64T 64-bit Computing platform
Support Intel 05B or 05A Platform Compatibility Guide

Chipset:
NVIDIA nForce4 SLi Intel Edition (C19) + MCP04

System Memory:
Four 240-pin DDR2 SDRAM DIMM sockets for maximum 8GB system memory
Support 1.8v DDR2-400/533/667 DIMMs with dual channel architecture
Support single-sided or double-sided, non-ECC DIMMs with 256Mb/512Mb/1Gb devices

Expansion Slots:
Two PCI connectors compliant with PCI v2.3
Two PCI-Express (x1) connectors compliant with PCI Express 1.0a
Two PCI Express (x16) connectors compliant with PCI Express 1.0a to support SLitechnology
One Express Card connector compliant with PCI Express 1.0a

IDE:
Two IDE interface (up to 2 IDE devices) with UDMA-33, ATA-66/100 support fromembedded IDE controller

USB:
Ten USB connectors compliant with USB2.0 from embedded USB controller (4connectors at rear panel)

S-ATA RAID:
Four S-ATA –2 ports with up to 300MB/s bandwidth from MCP04 with RAID 0,1support with Hot-Plug support

1394a:
Two 1394a ports with up to 400Mbps bandwidth from onboard VT6307 1394acontroller

LAN:
1Gb Ethernet from onboard Vitesse VSC8201RX Gigabit Ethernet PHY.

Audio:
Selectable 2, 6 or 8-CH audio from ALC880 Azalia compliant CODEC with 20-bit ADCand 24-bit DAC
Support Aux-In, CD-In, S/PDIF-in and S/PDIF-out
Optical & Coaxial S/PDIF-out available on rear panel
Support Jack detection for fool-proof audio device installation

I/O:
Onboard Winbond W83627THF(E) LPC bus I/O controller
Legacy peripheral interface for PS/2 keyboard & mouse, FDD, Parallel, TwoSerial, Game and IrDA (v1.0 compliant)
Hardware Monitoring for fan speed monitoring, CPU/System temperature andThermoStick temperature.
Intelligent fan speed control for CPU-fan (PWM) and Chassis-fan (DC) for quietoperation

BIOS:
4Mb Flash EEPROM with Award Plug&Play BIOS
Support ACPI S3 (Suspend To RAM) mode in ACPI compliant O/S
Support EZ Boot for fast bootable device selection
Support Magic Health for system hardware status report during system boot-up

Special Features:
Support KBPO (Keyboard Power ON) function
Support Wake-On-LAN by PME
Support USB resume in S3
Onboard Post-Port LED display
Support Asynchronous clocking mode between FSB and PCI/PCI-E

PowerBIOS for excellent overclocking features:
Programmable FSB and PCI Clock output frequency with 1MHz fine tuning
Support BIOS adjustable CPU multiplier, FSB clock, PCI-E x16 clock, DIMMfrequency
Support BIOS adjustable CPU Core voltage, Chipset voltage, DIMM voltage settings

Powerful utilities for Windows:
USDM (Unified System Diagnostic Manager) for system hardware monitoring
Magic Flash for BIOS update without requiring DOS flash utility and bootablediskette
Magic Screen for personal bootup screen design

Form Factor:
305mm x 245mm x 40mm, ATX Size

Accessories
User’s manual
1 IDE cable & 1 FDD cables;
2 S-ATA data and power cables;
CD for drivers, utilities and bundle software

Audio connection:
For 2-channel mode; stereo Line-out (Lime), stereo Line-In (Light blue) and Mic-In(Pink)
For 6-channel mode; Front stereo-out (Lime), Rear stereo-out (Light blue),Center and Sub-woofer (Pink)
For 8-channel mode; stereo Line-In (Light blue), Mic-In (Pink), Front stereo-out(Lime), Rear stereo-out (Black), Center and Sub-woofer (Orange) and Sidestereo-out (Gray)

ECS Makes A75 Motherboards Official; ATX amp; micro-ATX models detailed

With just days to go before desktop Llanos official release, ECS has announced its A75 motherboard lineup. Currently, there are two micro-ATX boards and a single ATX model.

We previously previewed the A75F-A, which belongs to the enthusiast-oriented Black Deluxe series. The A75F-M has similar features but only has one PCIe x16 slot. The A75F-M2 will be the cheapest model, possessing only two DIMM slots and 6-channel audio.

ModelChipsetSupported CPUSpecificationForm FactorA75F-A (Black Deluxe)AMD Hudson D3AMD A-series APU4xDDR3, 4xUSB 3.0, 5xSATA 6.0Gb/s, 1xeSATA 6.0Gb/s, 1xPCIex16, HDMI/DVI/D-Sub 8-Ch HD Audio with S/PDIFATXA75F-M4xDDR3, 4xUSB 3.0, 6xSATA 6.0Gb/s, 1xPCIex16, HDMI/DVI/D-Sub, 8-Ch HD Audio with S/PDIFMicro-ATXA75F-M22xDDR3, 4xUSB 3.0, 6xSATA 6.0 Gb/s, 1PCIex16, HDMI/DVI(Optional)/D-Sub, 6-Ch HD Audio

In addition to the standard A75 repertoire of SATA 6Gbps and USB 3.0, ECS is also advertising their unique applications which include EZ Charger, eDLU, eBLU and MIB III.

See the full press release below:

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ECS Presents A75 Series, the Latest AMD FusionTM APU Platform to Color Your Vision.

Taipei, Taiwan, June, 2011 – Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) introduces the latest AMD based motherboard series – ECS Black Deluxe A75F-A, and ECS mainstream series A75F-M and A75F-M2 motherboards. ECS A75 series motherboards powered by AMD Hudson D3 chipset support the latest AMD A series APU.

One More Black Deluxe Member, A75F-A

As one of the ECS Black Deluxe series, ECS A75F-A has passed 50? burn test, presenting high quality and unbelievable durability. ECS Black Deluxe A75F-A also equips with complete expansion slots from PCI Express 2nd generation x16, x4 to PCI 1st generation for users to enlarge the power of yours computers with every possibility. To match the amazing graphics power of APU, ECS A75F-A has full video output options: HDMI/DVI/D-Sub with optical audio output for you to enjoy the ultimate entertainment moment.

The High Speed Transportation Era

ECS Black Deluxe A75F-A, A75F-M and A75F-M2 all support the latest AMD A series APU with AMD Hudson D3 chipset and AMD FM-1 socket. With native USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gb/s powered by AMD Hudson D3 chipset, ECS A75 series represents the official arrival of new age of high transportation speed, and that USB 3.0 and SATA 6.0Gb/s have also officially become the basic equipment for every computer.

The Latest AMD FusionTM A Series APU Platform

Supporting the latest AMD FusionTM A series APU means that ECS A75 series has great graphics ability to support DirectX 11, UVD 3 and all provide at least two outputs of HDMI and D-Sub(VGA). ECS A75 series motherboards all supply ECS unique applications: EZ Charger/eDLU/eBLU/MIB III for users to experience the convenient using environment. Last but not least, all A75 series motherboards have anti-static (ESD) protect, ensure the durability of your computer to keep your motherboard safe from electrostatic damage.

About ECS

The Elitegroup Computer Systems (ECS) has been a pioneer in designing and manufacturing computer motherboards since 1987. Today, the motherboard maker also designs and manufactures desktop PCs, notebooks, servers, motherboards, video cards, wireless solutions and handheld devices for distributors worldwide. Headquartered in Taiwan with operations in North America, Europe and China, Korea and Japan, ECS also has ISO 9001 and ISO 14001 certified manufacturing facilities in China.

For more information, please visit ECS at www.ecs.com.tw.

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