Leopard O.S.

Filed under: Desktops, Peripherals

We had a hunch that this spat between HP and Acer wouldn’t just fade away into the sunset, and sure enough, HP is on the receiving end of the latest scuffle. Most recently, Acer has filed patent counterclaims against HP in the US District Court for the Western District of Wisconsin and with the US International Trade Commission, alleging that HP “infringed on patents related to personal computers, servers and peripheral devices.” Unfortunately, that’s about the extent of it, but Acer did go on to state that it would “take all necessary steps to protect and enforce its patented technologies.” If the gloves weren’t already off, we’d say they are now.

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Filed under: GPS

Ingram Micro’s V7 subsidiary looks to have recently kicked out another pair of budget-priced GPS units, with its new NAV730 and NAV740 model each keeping things under $300 while still maintaining some fairly decent specs. On the slightly higher-end, the $299 NAV740 boasts a 4.3-inch WQVGA touchscreen, along with text-to-speech capabilities, the usual range of PMP functions, and maps of the US with 11 million POIs pre-loaded on the included 2GB SD cards (other maps are also available depending on where you buy it). If that’s more than you need, the $199 NAV730 will still get the basic job done with a 3.5-inch QVGA touchscreen, those same PMP features, and some maps without any POIs on the bundled 1GB SD card. If that’ll do, you can grab either one right from all the usual sources right now.

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Filed under: Wireless, Networking

Buffalo’s out tooting its own horn today, as the AirStation Wireless-G MIMO Performance Router claims to be the “first commercial wireless router to come with DD-WRT firmware pre-installed.” Aimed squarely at the SMB and SOHO market, the WHR-HP-G54DD (WHR-HP-G54 pictured) is the first device to emerge from the firm’s partnership with NewMedia-NET. Of note, this device features five QoS levels to prioritize traffic, optimized link state routing (OLSR), a data transfer application with VPN functionality, PPTP protocol support, WMM and DDNS, and a bevy of management applications including remote network status logging, remote web management via HTTPS and web-based backup / restore. If all this sounds like your cup of tea, you can pick one up now for £41.70 ($86), and you can check out the full (and we mean full) list of specifications right there in the read link.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

Been looking for a PMP that really snaps out of the mold and lightly dances into the realm of the truly daring… and your heart? Feast your eyes on the Shenzhen Shibang New Age Technology S1808 (no kidding), a brand new player that comes across like some retro-future, steampunk-meets-Gundam sidearm from the year 4000. The PMP is housed in a leather-esque casing with an ornate, shielded speaker — which certainly wins it a few points for originality. In reality, the player is nothing special, featuring a 1.8-inch, 160 x 120 screen, storage capacities ranging from 128MB to 2GB, an optional FM radio, and playback of a few of your favorite formats, like WAV, ASF, MP3, and WMA. Oh, yeah — it also has a place to attach a lanyard. No word on price or availability, or what kind of alien robot it transforms into.

[Via PMPToday]

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Filed under: GPS

Man, it must feel mighty fantastic to be Tele Atlas right about now. Not even a month after TomTom finalized a whopping $2.5 billion offer to take the map maker over, Garmin — which currently relies on NAVTEQ maps — has come out swinging with a staggering $3.3 billion bid of its own. As expected, Tele Atlas is now taking a good hard look at both offers and examining its options, and some analysts are even suggesting that a bidding war could take the figure even higher. ‘Course, such a conjecture is easy to make when TomTom has already proclaimed that it would reply in some way “in the near future.” Bust out the blank checks — this one could get ugly (or very pretty, if you’re a Tele Atlas shareholder).

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Filed under: Cellphones

The Gphone rumors have been heating up lately, and things seems like they’re about to come to a boil. The Wall Street Journal, not generally known for wild rumor-mongering, is reporting that Google is in “advanced talks” with Verizon and Sprint and has made “significant progress” with T-Mobile, with an announcement of some kind due within two weeks. The news sent Google stock past $700 today, although it’s still not clear if Google is simply developing its own software or going all out and doing an entire handset. Either way, it looks like Google’s getting ready to make a move sometime soon, and with the amount of chatter we’re hearing, it’ll to be a big one.

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Filed under: HDTV, Home Entertainment

We realize what day it is, but we’re pretty certain the FCC isn’t messing around on this one. Right on cue, regulators have “approved a rule that would ban exclusive agreements that cable television operators have with apartment buildings, opening up competition for other video providers that could eventually lead to lower prices.” The move was apparently “unanimously approved,” and Chairman Kevin Martin went on to say that there was simply “no reason that consumers living in apartment buildings should be locked into one service provider.” Not surprisingly, a spokeswoman for Comcast proclaimed that “many consumers were likely to wind up paying more for services if the FCC’s interference in the competitive marketplace stands,” but it’s fairly safe to assume Verizon and AT&T see things very differently.

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Filed under: Storage

It’s not the first to boast of a 320GB 2.5-inch hard drive, but Western Digital looks to be the first to actually ship one, with its new 320GB Scorpio SATA drive now available to anyone with a hankering for some spacious portable storage. In addition to cramming all those gigabytes into a laptop-friendly package, the drive is also said to be “one of the quietest 5400 RPM, 2.5-inch drives available,” with WD’s trademark WhisperDrive and IntelliSeek technology promising to keep the noise down and the power consumption to a minimum. Those looking to swap out their old drive for this one can expect to pay an even $200, although you can be sure you’ll be seeing it as a pre-installed option before too long as well.

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Filed under: Gaming, Peripherals

Saitek’s got a new gaming mouse for those in need of a little more precision than your standard off-the-shelf model, with its new Cyborg mouse cranking the dpi all the way up to 3200. That, of course, can be dialed back to accommodate various mousing tasks, and you’ll get a good number of non-standard mouse features as well, including a programmable four-way hat switch, and two extra buttons that can be set up however you like. While there still doesn’t seem to be any official word on a release, Gizmos.es points out that Amazon UK currently has it listed with a release date of January 11th and a list price of £40 (or $83), although it can be had for £30 (or just over $60) at moment.

[Via Gizmos]

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Filed under: Portable Audio

We’ve never had much love for Sony’s SonicStage software, and now it looks like there’s yet another reason to avoid it: according to Secunia, there’s a buffer overflow vulnerability in the latest edition, version 4.3, that allows arbitrary code to be injected and run. The bug is triggered by .m3u playlists that contain over 1000 characters and there are already sample exploits floating around, so those of you still rocking the ATRAC action may want to avoid downloaded playlists until things get patched up.

[Via Heise Security]

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