Sharp whispers its vital statistics: 15.6in 3840 × 2160 IGZO screen for next MacLap Pro?
Will the next MacBook Pro refresh sport a 4K display, one 4,000-ish pixels wide? If Apple wants to ensure that its flagship laptop does indeed feature such a massive resolution screen, Sharp has just the LCD it needs.
The panel pusher today said it is sending out samples of a 15.6-inch display with a 3840 × 2160 pixel resolution …
'Wacky' Spanish VoD squad launches people-picked online vid service in UK
Bizarrely named video-on-demand service Wuaki.tv – the first part’s pronounced “wacky” – has introduced a new subscription scheme: a selection of movies and TV shows which changes every seven days and is picked by people rather than computers.
Readers over a certain age will be familiar with this kind of notion already. It’s …
Glowing Nook knocked to under 50 quid for Xmas
Barnes & Noble will today knock a tenner off the price of its Nook SimpleTouch Glowlight e-reader, reducing the price to just under £50. It’s the latest move in the US bookseller’s attempts to battle for second place in the British ebook business.
The Nook e-reader’s launch price was £109, but B&N has been selling the device for …
Shopping list for Tesco: Eggs, milk, bread, tablets (the £60 7in Android kind)
It has a silly name, but a surprising price. Tesco’s new seven-inch Android tablet, the Hudl, will cost a mere 60 quid and a stack of Clubcard points. Well, when a Google Nexus 7 will set you back £199, every little helps. Ahem.
The Hudl incorporates a 1440 x 900 LCD, 1.5GHz quad-core CPU, dual-band 802.11n Wi-Fi and Bluetooth 4 …
E-book him! Entire Judge Dredd back catalogue gets iDevice treatment
Dredd fans! Tharg the Mighty has added almost every single 2000AD story the future lawman has passed judgement in - well, apart from the ones that were once banned by m’learned colleagues - to the official iDevice app.
Yes, the Judge Dredd Complete Case Files compendia - which extend to a colossal 20 volumes - are now available …
Is it a bird? Is it a plane? Is it ... Win Phone 8? No, it's APPLE'S iOS 7
Apple's iOS 7 has come some way since its initial preview release and public unveiling back in June at Apple’s Worldwide Developer Conference. Back then the focus was inevitably on the operating system’s new visual styling, and Apple does seem to have taken on board the early criticism of the new look.
The ultra-spindly font …
‘Priceless’ unique Palm ‘FAILEO’ laptop goes under the hammer
It was the product that was almost immediately dubbed the ‘Faileo’. It was announced but never released. And it can now be yours - if you pony up enough cash to beat other bidders to a one-of-a-kind auction item.
Devised by Palm co-founder and chief engineer Jeff Hawkins, the Foleo - to give the gadget its correct handle - was …
Stylus counsel: The rise and fall of the Apple Newton MessagePad
It will forever be remembered as the butt of a-thousand-and-one jokes about its poor handwriting recognition, but Apple’s MessagePad was bold in its conception. Its legacy is ARM’s conquest of the mobile microprocessor world.
The company said on 8 August 1993:
The Newton MessagePad is the first in a family of communications …
Psst.. Wanna Android all-in-one PC? We have the chip tech, says Intel
Intel did its bit for the ongoing “tabletisation” of the desktop PC at its Developer Forum this week: it's encouraging engineers to get cracking on Android-powered “Smart Display” systems to go on sale in 2014.
The chip giant’s pitch is that these 17- to 21-inch devices - basically, huge tablets with a keyboard - will appeal to …
4K-friendly Thunderbolt 2 WILL ship this year, Chipzilla pledges
Chip giant Intel has reiterated its pledge to get a faster version of its Thunderbolt connectivity tech out in time for Christmas and its plethora of high-res vid-streaming kit.
Speaking at Intel Developer Forum this week, Ben Hacker, who does planning for Intel's Client Connectivity Division, said the firm’s Falcon Crest Falcon …
Apple’s iOS 64-bit iUpgrade: Don't expect a 2x performance leap
What are the implications of Apple’s 64-bit ARM A7 processor for the iPhone user who upgrades to the new 5S? Not as many as you might think.
Apple has said the chip is compatible with all the iOS software out there that is still 32-bit. For the moment, at least, that is all third-party programs.
Apple hasn’t said how much RAM …
Seagate parades spinning skinny model to oust flash from fondleslabs... almost
Would you trust a tablet or a smartphone with a hard disk rather than flash storage? Seagate hopes its Ultra Mobile HDD will persuade you to trade rugged but pricey solid-state memory for 30 times more storage space than your average (16GB) tablet sports.
Seagate claims the skinny, 96g 500GB UM HDD offers the same “power, …
Bin half-baked Raspberry Pi hubs, says Pimoroni: Try our upper-crust kit
Raspberry Pi accessory specialist Pimoroni reckons it has the answer to one of the tiny ARM-based computer’s signal limitations: too few USB ports for all the add-ons you might want to hook up to it.
Pi users have dealt with only having a pair of USB 2.0 ports - there's only one on the cheapest, the Model A Pi - by connecting a …
Smartwatch news: Sleek-but-vaporous timepiece promised by... NISSAN?
Watch out, Apple. Step aside, Samsung. Push off, Pebble. Here comes the latest contender in the smartwatch wrist-grab: er, Nissan.
The car maker today pledged to be the first company to tie a smartwatch into a car’s telematics and entertainment systems.
Nissan Nismo Watch Nissan’s Nismo Watch concept:
Designed “specifically …
Panasonic whips out MONSTER fondleslab for serious S&M sessions
Panasonic’s monster tablet – an 18-inch big boy with a 4K Ultra HD display – will come to market in November, the Japanese colossus has promised. The price? A beefy £3,335.
The tablet now known as the Toughpad 4K UT-MB5 was first shown off, kind of, in January at the Consumer Electronics Show (CES). Panasonic said it would “ …
It's the software, stupid: Samsung Galaxy Gear smartwatch bags big apps
Samsung is not a great innovator, yet it’s certainly one of the world’s greatest imitators.
Although it follows other companies into booming markets with me-too products, it remembers to add a little more sparkle to its offerings so that it not merely to catches up with its rivals, it eventually pushes past them.
That’s what …
Xbox One launch date REVEALED - and it's on the 360's birthday
Xbox buffs can get their mitts on Microsoft’s new console, the One, on 22 November - eight years on from the Xbox 360’s arrival in the US. The console went into “full production” this week, Microsoft claimed today.
It will hit the streets in 13 countries to begin with, including the US, UK, Canada and Australia.
The initial …
Barnes & Noble knock Nook slate down to £79
Barnes & Noble has knocked a further 20 quid off the price of its Nook HD and HD+ tablets as it continues to try to shift existing stocks of the gadgets.
Originally introduced in September 2012, the 7-inch and 9-inch Nook tablets were priced at launch at £159 for a 16GB HD and £226 for the same-capacity HD+. Both tablets, …
HDMI 2.0 spec arrives ... 1.0 years late
Eleven years on from the commencement of work on the first version of the telly connectivity standard, the minds behind the High Definition Multimedia Interface – HDMI to you and me – have taken the wraps off release 2.0 a year later than originally anticipated.
At one level, HDMI 2.0 is essentially about nothing more than …
WD outs 'Mini Me' Red label NAS drives
WD has taken the wraps off its first 2.5-inch hard drive designed for network storage roles, NAS nuts in need of a more compact connected storage box – and, crucially, teensy drives to put in it – will be pleased to hear.
Part of WD’s NAS-centric Red series, the notebook form-factor drives come in 750GB and 1TB capacities. Both …
Myst: 20 years of point-and-click adventuring
For many years it was the best-selling computer game ever – at least until The Sims turned up. It created a whole new gaming genre, and it was a major help in getting a new computer storage format established. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, we're talking about Myst.
Myst debuted on the Mac back in September 1993 after two years in …
Nintendo is FLATLY UNHINGED: New 2DS is a handful of game
Nintendo has abolished hinges and autostereoscopic 3D displays to create a new handheld console called the 2DS.
Keen to kick smartphones and tablets off the mobile gaming throne, Ninty has revealed a portable games device that doesn’t sport a clamshell casing and looks a bit like a fondleslab.
It does feature all the usual DS …
Do not adjust your eyes: This Kobo ten-incher has a 2560 x 1600 resolution
Kobo has got in ahead of rival Amazon’s anticipated Kindle refresh to update its own line of reading-centric fondleslabs and e-readers: among them is a ten-incher with a monster 2560 x 1600 resolution - that's bigger than many a desktop monitor here in Vulture Central.
This is the Arc 10HD tablet - ‘Arc’ being Kobo’s brand for …
Three axes data-roaming fees in SEVEN countries
Mobe operator Three has abolished roaming charges. Well, in seven countries, at least, and only on calls and texts sent homeward bound.
All Three customers who travel to Australia, Austria, Denmark, Hong Kong, Italy, the Republic of Ireland or Sweden will be able to make calls to Blighty, send texts to the UK and – crucially – …
Pimoroni PiGlow: Rainbow LED swirls for the Raspberry Pi
Pimoroni is without doubt one of the most colourful companies to have come to market in support of the growing community of Raspberry Pi fans. The firm shot to fame last year when it released Pibow, one of the first cases for the Pi.
The box, made in Pimoroni’s Sheffield HQ, is a perspex affair formed from layers of laser-sliced …
Samsung to bring 55-inch MONSTER curvy-telly to the UK
If you have a bob or two going free – well, the best part of at least $9,000 – Samsung will now sell you its monumental curved OLED TV, previously only available in the US and Asia.
The 54.6-inch screen, dubbed the S9C, is gently bent for what Samsung claims is a more cinematic viewing experience, though telly hardware pundits …
Acorn’s would-be ZX Spectrum killer, the Electron, is 30
The Sinclair Spectrum made the Acorn Electron inevitable.
In June 1982, less than two months after Sinclair had unveiled the Spectrum - which had still not shipped, of course, even though Sinclair had promised the first Spectrums would be in punters’ hands by the end of May - Acorn co-founder Hermann Hauser was heard talking …
MYSTERY of Guardian mobos and graphics cards which 'held Snowden files'
The Guardian’s picture of the computers it claims to have smashed in order to placate the British government over the Snowden affair has been called into question over both what it shows - and what it doesn’t.
Guardian editor Alan Rusbridger yesterday revealed that GCHQ operatives last month paid the paper a visit in order to …
UK micro pioneer Chris Shelton: The mind behind the Nascom-1
Chris Shelton is not well known today, yet the British microcomputer industry would have been a very much poorer place without him.
Never as famous as Sir Clive Sinclair, with whom he worked in the past; Acorn’s Chris Curry, Herman Hauser, Steve Furber and Sophie Wilson; or even Tangerine and Oric’s Paul Johnson. Nonetheless, …
Devolo dLAN 500 AV Wireless Plus: Triple-tech connectivity for the home
I currently use a cheap - 10 quid from eBay - Cisco four-port 10/100Mbps switch to feed the various devices in my living room that require a wired Ethernet connection to the network. The switch connects to the router, which happens to be one floor up and at the other end of my flat, by way of a 500Mbps powerline link.
I’ve not …
Mars, bringer of WAR: Quatermass and the Pit
“When I wrote the Quatermass stories, I couldn’t help drawing on the forces and the fears that affected people in the 1950s,” wrote Quatermass creator Nigel Kneale in 1996.
His inspiration for Professor Bernard Quatermass’ third appearance on television had been the Notting Hill race riots that struck the London suburb during …
Leap Motion Controller: Hands up for PC air gestures. That's the spirit
Can such a small, silver and black gadget deliver all it promises? Talk to the device’s creator, Leap Motion, and it’s clear that plenty is indeed being pledged. The tiny box - at 79 x 30 x 10mm, it’s barely bigger than a disposable lighter - is called the Controller and it will help “break down the barriers between humans and …
Mass Sony DVR seppuku riddle: Freeview EPG update fingered
There’s still no word from Sony to indicate when it will fix a glitch that put many of its hard-drive-equipped Freeview video recorders out of action this weekend.
The problem affects Sony’s HXD series of digital video recorders (DVRs) located across the length and breadth of Britain. Many owners arrived home on Friday evening …
Smartwatch makers: You need apps to beat Apple
Smartwatch maker Metawatch has just updated its firmware to version 1.4.0, rolling out a number of bug fixes and tweaks but, most obviously, adding three further watchfaces. These can be previewed and selected using a new version of the firm’s iOS and Android apps, which were posted earlier this week. Both Windows and Mac OS …
It's all in the wrist: How to write apps for the Pebble smartwatch
Pebble didn’t invent the smartwatch, but it has done more than most to bring the product category to the attention of World+Dog, largely thanks to its hugely successful and well-reported Kickstarter funding campaign.
Not only is Pebble’s smartwatch - also called Pebble - the only product of its kind, but it remains one of the …
Unreal: Epic’s would-be Doom... er... Quake killer
The summer months of 1998 have gone down in history as the period in which Larry Page and Sergey Brin took their PageRank web search engine technology and formally founded a company around it. They called it Google.
Microsoft had just launched the internet-centric Windows 98. This writer had started working full-time for a web- …
Apple MacBook Air 13-inch 2013: All’s well that Haswell
El Reg’s review of the latest 13-inch MacBook Air comes in two parts: here, I take a look at one of the build-to-order configurations offered by Apple, which upgrades the standard 1.3GHz Intel Core i5 processor, 4GB of 1066MHZ mobile DDR3 RAM, 128GB solid-state drive specification to a 1.7GHz Core i7 machine with 8GB of RAM and …
Ciseco Pi-Lite: Make a Raspberry Pi trip light fantastic with 126 LEDs
Not so long ago, a hardware hacker called Jimmie Rodgers decided to solder 126 LEDs onto a small circuit board that could be plugged into the Arduino microcontroller kit. He dubbed it the LoL Shield: LoL for "lots of LEDs", and shield because that’s that’s what Arduino add-ons are called.
Ciseco Pi-Lite LoL Shield for RPi: …
Hanslope Park: Home of Britain’s ‘real-life Q division’
Hanslope Park sits just outside the small, quiet North Buckinghamshire village of Hanslope. I grew up there, and the Park and its occupants would always be mentioned by conversing grown-ups in suddenly hushed tones. Who might be listening? Other villagers were quietly pointed out with the words: “You see him? He works at the …
Love in an elevator.... testing mast: The National Lift Tower
The Tower rises above the flat plain of the Nene valley near Northampton - for centuries home of Britain’s shoe industry, but these days better known as the home town of 11th Doctor Matt Smith, comics auteur Alan Moore and El Reg operations manager Matt Proud - like some kind of latter-day Barad Dûr or Orthanc.
The sinister …
El Reg encounters mObi: R2-D2 for retailers
Say hello to mObi, a metre-tall retail-friendly robot that, if developer Bossa Nova Robotics has its way, will be hovering up and down supermarket aisles the world over, checking stock, guiding disoriented punters to the baked beans, and reducing even further the number of employment opportunities open to surly Gen Y-ers.
Bossa …
30 years on: Remembering the Memotech MTX 500
Memotech liked to advertise its MTX 500 and 512 microcomputers with a picture of a speeding black Porsche, but the machines, which made their first public appearance 30 years ago this month, while undoubtedly quick off the mark soon slammed hard into an unforeseen wall thrown up by a sudden, severe change in market conditions. …
MSX: The Japanese are coming! The Japanese are coming!
MSX: three initials that struck fear into the heart of Britain’s nascent home computer industry. The Japanese were coming, and the UK’s technology pioneers were anxious about what that might mean. Far Eastern firms like Sony, JVC, Sanyo and Pioneer had put paid to Britain’s mass-market hi-fi makers, and others had killed the …
Acer Iconia A1-810: The Android tab longing for eight-inch Apple action
The Iconia A1-810 is, of course, an iPad Mini clone. How else could Acer, after years of offering slates with 16:9 widescreen panels, have suddenly hit on the idea that punters want a 4:3 tablet - “the right aspect ratio”, an Acer exec eagerly told me - without being inspired by Cupertino’s latest?
Acer Iconia A1-810 Mini me- …
Review: Beagleboard Beaglebone Black
It's nice to see that the broader community of Arduino, Raspberry Pi and Beagleboard Beaglebone users is a friendly and seemingly mature one.
Each of these board computers has its own adherents, but few of them seem to feel the need to engage in the kind of hair-pulling and name-calling that defined the Windows versus Mac spat …
The toy of tech: The Mattel Aquarius 30 years on
Once described by Creative Computing journalist David Ahl as “a machine so cheesy, they should have supplied rubber gloves to wear while using it”, the Mattel Aquarius was launched in the UK - and went on sale in the States - 30 years ago this month.
Ahl, writing up a list in September 1985 of the worst computers to date, went …
Jack Vance: Science fiction’s master of magic, mischief and sex
I was on holiday in the Mediterranean, finishing the third book in Jack Vance’s Cadwal Chronicles trilogy, when I heard of his death at the age of 96. Vance hadn’t written any major works for a few years, but readers and writers of science fiction will be nonetheless poorer for his passing on 26 May, 2013.
The first Vance novel …
Thirty-five years ago today: Space Invaders conquer the Earth
Tomohiro Nishikado already had a string of almost a dozen arcade games under his belt when he started on what was to become the best remembered - certainly the most played - game he was ever to create: Space Invaders, released in Japan 35 years ago this month.
Nishikado was an engineer who had joined vending machine company …
Inside Intel's Haswell: What do 1.4 BEELLION transistors get you?
Intel’s Haswell processor architecture - formally called the fourth-generation Intel Core architecture, which is what the chip giant prefers we call it - has been in development for at least five years. Here's everything you need to know right now.
It first appeared on the company’s product roadmap in the summer of 2008 merely …
If you've bought DRM'd film files from Acetrax, here's the bad news
Sky will next month shut down Acetrax, a website that streams movies and offers downloads of DRM-encrypted films to paying punters.
The closure has highlighted yet again one of the many flaws inherent in Digital Rights Management (DRM) technology.
In this case, users must go through the hassle of downloading all of their …
