Tag: north-america

Acer’s latest Chromebook offers 10 hours of battery for $250

Acer has been releasing Chromebooks balancing speed with affordability. The company introduced its latest Chromebook 11 at CES as a fanless, small-form laptop with touch and non-touch screens that boasts up 10 hours of battery life. While Acer didn’t release exact specs for the models — we only know they’ll sport the ‘latest Intel Celeron processors, ‘ for example — but did note they’ll come with 4GB of memory and either 16GB or 32GB of eMMC storage. The laptops will have a pair of USB 3.1 Type-C and two USB 3.0 ports as well as a MicroSD card reader. Its 11.6-inch IPS 1366 x 768 pixel display comes in either touch or non-touch variants, though it’s unclear how much the difference will affect the price (previous Acer Chromebooks saw a $50 bump for a touchscreen). It will also have support for the Google Play store and get access to Android apps. We do know that those lower-performance options have dropped the Chromebook 11’s starting price to $250, which is slightly cheaper than the rugged Chromebook C771 that Acer introduced for students last August. But it does have double the RAM of the most recent Chromebook 15 that the company released in October, making it much more capable of multitasking through Google’s Chrome app suite. If you’re looking for an affordable solution with a decent battery life, Acer’s Chromebook 11 will hit Europe, the Middle East and Africa in March and reach North America in April. Click here to catch up on the latest news from CES 2018.

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Acer’s latest Chromebook offers 10 hours of battery for $250

AT&T’s international data plans are now a little more reasonable

AT&T’s international data roaming packs just became slightly more practical… slightly. The carrier has updated its Passport packages to give you 1GB of data and unlimited texting in a one-time $60 purchase, and 3GB for $120. That’s a lot more headroom than before (these prices previously got you a miserly 300MB and 800MB respectively), and might make the difference between Instagramming your trip as it happens versus waiting until you return to your hotel. They can certainly be more affordable than an International Day Pass if you’re staying for a couple of weeks. With that in mind, you’re still going to have to ration data compared to how you use it back at home. Also, be sure not to run over — It costs $50 for each extra gigabyte you need. Calls to any country cost 35 cents per minute. How does it compare to other carriers? It depends on what you need. Verizon isn’t exactly generous with monthly international data: you’re only paying $25 per month outside of North America, but that gets you just 100MB with overages of $25 for every additional 100MB block. You’re better off paying for a day pass, then. T-Mobile offers unlimited free data out of the gate, but only at 128Kbps; you’ll need a One Plus plan to move to a still-paltry 256Kbps, and LTE speeds are only available in Canada and Mexico . Sprint also takes the free-but-slow approach outside of North America unless you pay for a pass, although you can spring for weekly passes (usually $25 per week) that represent better bargains. In short, AT&T’s newer Passport packs make the most sense if you have an extended stay, want fast data and want to keep your own phone number. Otherwise, you may want to opt for day passes, another carrier or (if you have an unlocked phone) a service that offers local data where you’re traveling. Source: AT&T

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AT&T’s international data plans are now a little more reasonable

AMC will install room-scale VR in theaters by 2019

Movie theater chain AMC is committing to virtual reality in a big way. The company has announced a $10 million investment (as part of a $20 million investment round) in Dreamscape Immersive, a VR storytelling studio with a focus on room-scale installations and real-time motion tracking. AMC plans to put six VR stations in its multiplexes in North America and the UK over the next year and a half, according to a press release. That number is key: Unlike things like the John Wick VR experience, or the ones made for Interstellar or Alien: Covenant , Dreamscape’s are social in nature, supporting up to six “players” at a time. The Verge reports that the installation spaces will be 16′ x 16′ walkable spaces with a railing around the perimeter. Haptic floors, fans and scents can be implemented if the experience calls for them. Users will wear a VR headset, a backpack computer and a few sensors for motion tracking. The result is life-size avatars that act and react in real-time with your body’s movements. Info about what those experiences could be isn’t available, but half of AMC’s investment is earmarked specifically for making them. And, with the likes of directors Gore Verbinski and Steven Spielberg, composer Hans Zimmer and former Disney Imagineering chief Bruce Vaughn calling the shots, maybe they’ll be a bit more memorable than crappy tie-ins we’ve seen before. Source: PR Newswire

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AMC will install room-scale VR in theaters by 2019

USB 3.2 doubles your connection speeds with the same port

Your future computer or phone will be capable of stupidly fast transfer speeds. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group unveiled the USB 3.2 specification that effectively doubles the current USB 3.1 spec by adding an extra lane. As such, it will allow for two lanes of 5 Gbps for USB 3.0, yielding 10 Gbps, or two lanes of 10 Gbps for 20 Gbps with USB 3.1. As a bonus, the “superspeed” USB-C cable you’re currently using already has the capability for dual-lane operation built in. By way of example, the group says that a USB 3.2 host connected to a USB 3.2 storage device will be capable of 2GB/s transfer over a “superspeed” certified USB 3.1 cable. “When we introduced USB Type-C to the market, we intended to assure that USB Type-C cables and connectors certified for SuperSpeed USB or SuperSpeed USB 10 Gbps would, as produced, support higher performance USB as newer generations of USB 3.0 were developed, ” said USB 3.0 Promoter Group Chairman Brad Saunders. You should take those Thunderbolt-like numbers with a grain of salt, however. USB 3.0 or 3.1 devices (which confusingly use USB-C cables) rarely come close to their certified speeds. For instance, WIrecutter found that the fastest USB 3.0 flash drive, the Extreme CZ80, could read and write at 254 MB/s and 170 MB/s, tops — half of what USB 3.0 is capable of. (Some USB 3.1 superspeed SSD drives can saturate a USB 3.0 connection, however.) Still, flash storage is advancing rapidly, thanks to 64-layer and higher tech from Toshiba , Intel, Samsung and WD, and those kind of speeds are handy if you’re editing RAW or 4K video. The USB 3.0 Promoter Group (with Apple, HP, Intel, Microsoft and others as members) says that the 3.2 spec will be finalized by the end of 2017, so don’t expect to see any devices until then. In the meantime, we’ll hear more about it in September this year in North America during the USB Developer Days. Source: USB 3.0 Promoter Group

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USB 3.2 doubles your connection speeds with the same port

NVIDIA’s new top-end graphics card is the $1,200 Titan X

If you recently bought a $599 NVIDIA GTX 1080 in order to have the fastest rig around, I have bad news. NVIDIA has revealed the latest Titan X , a graphics card with 12GB of GDDR5X memory and 3, 584 cores running at 1.53 GHZ, yielding an absurd 11 teraflops of performance. That easily bests the 8.9 teraflops of the GTX 1080, which itself put the last-gen Titan X to shame . You probably won’t feel too bad, however, when we tell you that the new card has a price tag of $1, 200, double that of its now-second-best sibling. The Titan X has 12 billion transistors and runs at 250W, meaning it burns around 40 percent more power than the GTX 1080. It carries DisplayPort 1.4, HDMI 2.0b and DL-DVI ports, though the company hasn’t yet detailed the configuration. NVIDIA has now unveiled four cards (the GTX 1060 , 1070 , 1080 and Titan X) in just over two months, which is a pretty frenetic launch rate. To hammer home the point about brute horsepower, NDIVIDA CEO Jen-Hsun Huang did a surprise unveil of the Titan X at a meetup of artificial intelligence experts at Stanford University. That’s fitting, because it’s starting to blur the line between its gaming cards and Tesla GPU accelerators used for deep learning in servers and supercomputers. The card will go on sale August 2nd in North America and Europe for $1, 200, but only on NVIDIA’s site and via “select system builders.” Source: NVIDIA

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NVIDIA’s new top-end graphics card is the $1,200 Titan X

Honda unveils first hybrid motor without heavy rare earth metals

Honda pledged to reduce its use of rare earth metals a decade ago, and the automaker took another step towards that goal this week. It unveiled its new hybrid motor that was co-developed alongside Daido Steel, another Japan-based company. The new motor doesn’t use heavy rare earth metals like dysprosium and terbium, instead relying on magnets from Daido Steel that cost 10 percent less and weigh 8 percent lighter than the previous components. In fact, the automaker is the first to develop a hybrid motor that doesn’t use the heavy metals. Honda says the new engines will reduce its reliance on the pricey rare earth metals that are primarily supplied by China. The new hybrid motors will make their debut in the compact Freed minivan this fall, a vehicle that’s already on the road in Asia. Honda also noted during the announcement that not only would cutting out the rare earth metals save money, but it would also reduce the potential for price fluctuations on the materials it uses to build the engines. The new motors don’t nix rare earth elements entirely though, as the new version still has neodymium which is found in North America, Australia and China. Source: Reuters

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Honda unveils first hybrid motor without heavy rare earth metals