Michael S. Dell is now thinking about changing the way the company markets its computers.

Filed under: Handhelds, Portable Audio, Portable Video, Wearables

We already knew of Intel's 2007 "McCaslin" ultra mobile platform strategy after peeping their pre-show slides: professional UMPCs paired with consumer-oriented MIDs. Still, it's always good to get the official word even if means that Intel must travel all the way to their IDF in Beijing to make it so. As the strategy goes, before 2007 is up we'll see product from Aigo, Asus, Fujitsu, Haier, HTC, and Samsung all based on the Intel A100 and A110 processors -- essentially underclocked Pentium M cores operating at 3W and certainly besting the UMPC underpinnings we saw in 2006. In the first half of 2008 then, Intel tells us to expect their "Menlow" platform of ultra mobile devices. Pumping Intel's 45-nm dual-core "Silverthorn" processor and "Poulsbo" chipset for longer battery life in smaller handheld devices. But if you're chomping at the bit for Intel's vision of the ultra mobile future, well, you'll be waiting around until well after 2008, boy. Intel doesn't expect to break into magical sub-0.5W territory until the naughts are up. Until then, you'll have to deal with mysterious slabs like the new Fujitsu pictured after the break.

[Via Impress]

Continue reading Intel's Ultra Mobile strategy gets official

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Robots

It's the stuff robotic room-cleaner nightmares are made of. According to The Onion, Ken Graney's third-gen Roomba (with Scheduler) is among the first known to have actually shattered iRobot's three prescribed laws of Roombotics:

• Roombots must not suck up jewelry or other valuables, or through inaction, allow valuables to be sucked up.
• Roombots must obey vacuuming orders given to it by humans except when such orders would conflict with the first law.
• Roombots are authorized to protect their own ability to suction dust and debris as long as such protection does not conflict with the first or second law.

The most important set of robotics rules since Isaac Hayesimov's Three Laws, apparently model 4260 actually climbed dresser and sucked up a pair of heirloom cufflinks, as well as keys and a wrist watch. 4260 has also supposedly been known to climb up and down stairs -- even walls -- hide its own virtual walls, and has since being detected gone missing entirely. Graney fears for the worst: that his Roomba knows the source of its households messes, the very human that occupies it -- him. We face a grim, immaculate dystopian future indeed.

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!