Sony recalls PC batteries

SAN FRANCISCO/TOKYO - Sony Corp said five PC makers including Hewlett-Packard Co and Toshiba Corp will recall 100,000 computer battery packs made by the Japanese electronics maker due to a fire hazard.

Sony said the recall is expected to have limited impact on its earnings, and its shares outperformed a falling Tokyo stock market on Friday.

The recall is a fraction of a much bigger recall of 9.6 million Sony PC batteries in 2006, which cost the company around 35.5 billion yen ($360 million).

The U.S. government issued on Thursday a recall of 35,000 Sony batteries and the Tokyo-based company said it would recall a further 65,000 batteries worldwide.

PC makers have reported 40 cases of overheating, including four cases where users suffered minor burns, and 21 cases of minor damage from fires and overheating, a Sony spokeswoman said.

The recall affects around 74,000 notebook PCs sold by HP and 14,400 from Toshiba.

The faulty batteries are also used in laptop PCs from Dell Inc, Acer Inc and Lenovo Group Ltd, Sony said.

Sony blamed the faulty batteries on factory changes dating back up to four years, which it believes may have affected the quality of some battery cells.

Other incidents of overheating may have involved a problem with raw materials, the company said.

Sony recalled last month 438,000 of its Vaio laptops due to concerns about overheating batteries.

Article source: http://www.canada.com

Retailer to ship laptops with Intel's Core i7 chips

In an unlikely union of technologies, PC retailer Eurocom has said it will ship laptops powered by Intel's Core i7 processor, which the chip maker has dubbed the "fastest processor on this planet."

The Eurocom D900F Phantom i7 will include Intel's Nehalem-based quad-core Core i7 chips, which are typically put in servers and high-end gaming desktops. The laptops will ship on May 1, according to the Canadian PC retailer's Web site.

The laptop's Core i7 920, 940 and 965 processors will run at speeds from 2.66GHz to 3.2GHz and include 8MB of L2 cache. Intel launched the Core i7 chips in November and since then the chip has been praised for its speedy performance.

Calling it the "world's first notebook with i7 processor," Eurocom is targeting the laptop workstation as a desktop workstation replacement. It will include the X58 chipset and an Nvidia graphics processing unit (GPU) to boost graphics performance.

It will have a 17-inch screen and support up to 1.5TB of storage, 8GB of DDR3 memory and 1GB of graphics memory. It will also include wireless 802.11a/b/g/n technology and a webcam. It will ship with either the Windows Vista or Linux OS.

The laptop will weigh a whopping 11.9 pounds (5.4 kilograms), and it will come with a 12-cell battery. Pricing was not immediately available, though users can expect to dig deep into their wallets considering the use of new technologies in the laptop.

If Eurocom indeed ships the laptop, it could be the fastest Intel-based x86 laptop on the planet. Core i7 chips are built on the Nehalem microarchitecture, which includes the QuickPath Interconnect (QPI) technology. QPI integrates a memory controller and provides a faster pipe for the CPU to communicate with system components like a graphics card and other chips.

Each core will be able to execute two software threads simultaneously, so a laptop with four processor cores could simultaneously run eight threads for quicker application performance.

Nehalem chips are a significant upgrade over Intel's Core 2 chips, which are currently used in desktops and laptops. The new chips cut bottlenecks of Intel's earlier Core microarchitecture to improve system speed and performance-per-watt.

Though Core i7 isn't targeted at laptops, Intel intends to scale down the Nehalem architecture for other chips that will go in mainstream desktops and laptops. Intel will also integrate graphics capabilities in the CPU down the line, which should bring more power-efficiency to laptops. However, gamers might need a separate graphics card for better graphics performance.

Intel has said it will release laptop-specific Nehalem chips in the second half of this year.

Many companies including Lenovo and Dell offer laptop workstations. Last month Lenovo launched the ThinkPad W700DS mobile workstation that has two LCD screens.

Article source: www.nytimes.com

Prepaid Calling Card - Affordable and Accessible Way of Communicating

A prepaid card makes communication with relatives and friends who live far away possible. Despite the introduction of wide online tools used for communication such as Skype, Yahoo Messenger or Dial Ring, the prepaid calling card is still here to stay.

True that these online tools provide more options and added access to users, but the prepaid card gives you the assurance that you can communicate with someone even though he or she does not have a computer unit. Majority of people these days own a mobile phone, and this device makes it more dependable and easier to contact than the typical online tools.

Calling overseas proves to be very expensive be it done using a mobile or a landline phone. This gets most people think twice about placing that call, especially the damage which it may cause on your pocket. International calls result in expensive bills of course.

There is an option however should you still want to hear a common voice to you from someone far away. This is when a prepaid calling card comes in. It allows you to make communication possible at a very affordable price. This in effect makes you save money while staying connected to your loved ones.

There are numerous companies which offer a prepaid calling card. You can easily use your internet connection to look at possible vendors. The type of prepaid calling card that you choose would of course very much depend on your budget and the specific features which you are looking for.

A prepaid calling card directory is even available online. With this type of service, you may get more information about companies who sell these cards. Extra information which you may well gather here too is features, prices and add-ons which come with the prepaid calling card. You may avail of existing offers and promos which these companies offer along with the purchase of the card. All of these things are very helpful in deciding which card to pick.

As for any purchase, it is important for you to read details regarding these cards so you may get your money's worth and to ensure that your expectations are met. We often fall into lazy habits of skipping information and later on resenting it once we are told so by after inquiring. Any investment for you money requires careful consideration of course.

Once you start your search, you may very well find out that there is a lot of competition going around these companies to offer prepaid calling cards. You end up feeling that this makes selection difficult for us. On the contrary, this is actually something beneficial to us consumers. This ensures that we get more chances of getting the best service as any company would go that extra mile just to get more customers. This assures that we have more options to choose from.

Article source: http://ezinearticles.com

Apple Reinvents the Laptop Battery for its MacBook

The most frustrating issue with portable computing devices, such as laptops, is the poor battery run time and overall short battery life. This is the reason why many laptop owners keep additional battery packs with them while on the move. They can also be seen hunting for a new battery pack when their old battery crashes after just a few recharges. In response to such issues, Apple has come up with a new technology that, it claims, not only enhances the battery run time, but also offers a huge increase in the number of recharges.

The company has developed a new non-removable battery for laptops that offers 8 hours of juice to run the device on a single charge, even when the display size is 17 inches and some power hungry goodies such as Wi-Fi and Bluetooth are turned on. Apple has installed the new mighty battery in its Apple MacBook Pro 17. According to the company, the new battery has got 40 percent more capacity than the legacy batteries and can be recharged 1000 times (3 times more than the current standard).

How Apple made this possible is simple. The company is now using lithium polymers to make the new batteries that offer many advantages over conventional batteries. Besides this, the company has also introduced the concept of ‘Adaptive Charging’ that incredible improves the battery life. Instead of charging the battery at a constant rate the adaptive charging charge the battery after calculating how much recharge each individual cell needs. This directly prevents premature death of the battery.

Source: www.mobile-computing-news.co.uk

IBM computer will have power of 2 million laptops

SAN FRANCISCO: Seven months after IBM delivered the world's fastest supercomputer, it has announced an even speedier one with the computing power of 2 million laptops.

IBM said on Tuesday it is developing the technology for its new Sequoia computer, with delivery scheduled in 2011 to the Department of Energy for use at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.

Sequoia will chug along at 20 petaflops per second and is one order of magnitude quicker than its predecessor. The earlier machine, delivered in June to the Energy Department, broke the 1 petaflop barrier.

Peta is a term for quadrillion and FLOP stands for floating point operations per second.

Sequoia, and a smaller computer called Dawn, are being built in Rochester, Minnesota, for use in simulating nuclear tests. IBM says they can also be used for complex tasks like weather forecasting or oil exploration.

IBM says Sequoia will be highly energy-efficient for the job it does but even so will occupy 96 refigerator-sized racks in an area the size of a big house -- 3,422 square feet.

Source: economictimes.indiatimes.com