The worst part about buying a fancy new gaming keyboard? It’s hard to show the thing off if it never leaves your basement apartment. MSI‘s newly announced GX780 notebook combines a colorful backlit 102-key SteelSeries-designed keyboard with the (relative) portability of an 8.6 pound gaming laptop. The keyboard features 1,000 different color combinations, five lighting modes, 10 key simultaneous input, and a layout the company calls “The Golden Triangle” — trademark pending, we’re sure. The 17.3 inch notebook has some solid non-keyboard specs as well, including GeForce GT555M graphics, a second gen Intel Core i7 processor, and an impressive maximum 16GB of DDR3. No word on pricing or availability, but hopefully the MSRP isn’t as colorful as that keyboard. Full press release after the break.

Continue reading MSI gets a SteelSeries keyboard, builds the GX780 gaming notebook around it

MSI gets a SteelSeries keyboard, builds the GX780 gaming notebook around it originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Apr 2011 11:44:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Student loans are a terrible burden for many people, and the number of delinquencies and defaults on student loans is just rising. If you’re having a hard time keeping up with payments, here are your options for easing that burden. More

Android: PCAutoWaker is an app that instantly wakes your computer as soon as (or even before) you walk in the door, once it connects to your wi-fi network. The app’s Wake-on-LAN feature can actually wake up to 5 PCs on your network. More

Dafen village, a suburb of Shenzhen in China, is believed to be the largest mass producer of oil paintings in the world. But the thousands of artists who rent exterior walls to display and sell the paintings will soon need to find other places to show off their work, as the local government has pledged to ban the practice. Reuters reports that the cleanup is an “effort to brush up the town’s image” before the upcoming Universiade winter sports event.

Artists in Dafen manufacture some 60 percent of the total global trade volume for these reproductions, according to China Daily. Cory visited it himself recently, and published a set of photos on Flickr. Mark wrote about enormous talent of the Dafen village artists in 2008.

Original post:
Authorities ‘cleaning up’ Dafen Village, world capital of cheap oil painting

There is almost no reality-based standard by which clothing is sized and labeled. It’s easy to see in guys’ jeans, but as the New York Times shows in an eye-opening graphic, women have it much, much worse. More

Android: PCAutoWaker is an app that instantly wakes your computer as soon as (or even before) you walk in the door, once it connects to your wi-fi network. The app’s Wake-on-LAN feature can actually wake up to 5 PCs on your network. More

Ubuntu Linux, easily one of the most popular Linux distributions available today, is out with what may be its most significant set of changes to date. 11.04 “Natty Narwhal” has brought with it not just major version jumps for nearly every core app and service, but also a completely revamped Unity interface. More

Europeans have been able to bag this speedy external writer for a few months now, but it’s only just received its Green Card — turning up in the US with a suitcase full of dreams and a price tag of $239.99. A quick check of its CV resume reveals a choice of either USB 3.0 or eSATA connectivity, 12x write speed, and the ability to burn up to 50GB of data on a dual-layer disc. The drive is being pitched as an “all-in-one Blu-ray device” because it also handles 3D playback and has a low vibration system for quieter operation. Admittedly, it only offers half as much storage as BDXL writers, but those burn slower and onto judderingly expensive media. Closer competition comes from Buffalo, which arrived early to the USB 3.0 table, but whose current MediaStation model omits the eSATA option.

Continue reading Plextor PL-LB950UE Blu-ray burner lands in the US with heady mix of USB 3.0 speed and double-layer storage

Plextor PL-LB950UE Blu-ray burner lands in the US with heady mix of USB 3.0 speed and double-layer storage originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Apr 2011 07:42:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Even though I am living in Japan, I have never made it to Nagasaki. But the Huis Ten Bosch theme park might make me go one day: Sharp has created a kind of 360-degree video room inside the park, which surrounds visitors in the front, above, below, and on both sides (“5D”) with a total of 156 AQUOS 60-inch LCD displays.

The park calls itself a “European residential style resort with luxurious hotels”, but I am sure some geeks with no interest in European architecture will be on their way tomorrow when the so-called “5D Miracle Tour” opens (sorry to say, I have no time). Sharp says there will be a front wall, ceiling and floor with 36 monitors each and left and right walls with 24 monitors each, providing an “immersive video experience” on 200 to 300 inches on all sides.

Visitors will be able to view the story of Sirena, the Mermaid (8 minutes).

Excerpt from:
5D Miracle: Sharp 360-degree Video Room Consists of 156 LCDs

Remember Intel’s Larsen Creek SSD? It’s not alone. By the end of the year, it looks like Intel expects to ship five new solid state storage series in total — some of them even speedier than its current SSD 510 Series flagship. We managed to obtain this leaked roadmap listing the potential additions, and we’re afraid to ask how much the new kings of the hill might cost — the “Ramsdale” SSD 720 Series uses up to 400GB of SLC NAND in a PCI Express card form factor, and the “Lyndonville” SSD 710 series with a similar quantity of enterprise-grade MLC flash. There’s also a direct successor to the current top-of-the-line in the “Cherryville” SSD 520 Series, which will stretch all the way up to 480GB and down to 64GB in Q4 of this year, as well as Paint Creek, which seems destined for boot drives with only 80GB and 40GB capacities to choose from. Still, the most intriguing addition might be Larsen Creek after all, which sounds like it’s been purpose-built for caching data from your existing rotational storage. It’s slated to come in both 2.5-inch SATA and mSATA configurations in Q3 and uses SLC NAND, which suggests it won’t run cheap despite the tiny capacity here. We can’t wait to find out for sure.

Intel SSD 720, 710 and 520 Series leak out, Larsen Creek and Paint Creek bring up rear guard originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 28 Apr 2011 05:04:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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