News Bits: Toshiba Announces Battery Recall, ThinkPad Turns 15, Voodoo Releases New Gaming Notebook

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Toshiba announces another Sony battery recall

Toshiba on July 19 said it is recalling more Sony-made notebook batteries due to risk of fire. A total of 10,000 batteries are being recalled, even though only 5,100 are deemed potentially defective. Toshiba is recalling roughly double the amount to ensure safety.

Last year Sony recalled 9.6 million notebook batteries due to overheating/fire risks, costing the company about US$418 million.

Read More (Reuters.com)


VoodooPC introduces ENVY H:171 gaming notebook

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VoodooPC today introduced its ENVY H:171 notebook PC. It has an available Intel Core 2 Extreme X6800 desktop CPU and up to two Nvidia GeForce Go7950GTX 512MB graphics cards (1024MB total). With the ability to hold three internal hard drives, up to 600GB of storage is possible.

VoodooPC's chief technology officer Rahul Sood, said in a statement:

“Our customers demand unique machines with incredible performance–the ENVY H:171 notebook PC delivers on all fronts. We have also packed the ENVY H:171 with the ultimate in PC technology, making it one of the fastest and most powerful 17-inch notebooks on the market.”

The VoodooPC ENVY H:171 starts at about US$5,000 ($5681.82 Canadian/ €3806.82); please see the product page on VoodooPC.com.

Read Full Press Release ( BusinessWire.com)


Lenovo ThinkPad turns 15 years old, ranked top notebook PC brand in China

The ThinkPad 700 and 700c were launched in October of 1992. They were clamshell style notebooks and akin to the notebooks we know today. But the ThinkPad 2521, a pen enabled computer, was released in July of 1992 and was the first computer device to be released to have the ThinkPad moniker on it. The ThinkPad 2521 was actually based on a design and OS from an innovative company called the Go Corporation that IBM bought out in the early 90's. The ThinkPad 2521 was way ahead of its time really, it had a pen based OS and flash memory on board. It took more than a decade for Microsoft to rehash the Tablet PC concept and here we are in 2007 getting all excited about flash memory once again.

ThinkPad 2521

You can read more about the 15th anniversary of the ThinkPad at The Reg.

In other ThinkPad News, in the China market during Q1 2007, the ThinkPad brand Lenovo notebook was ranked as the most preferable brand of notebook PC according to an online survey of 24,719 notebook users. The survey was conducted by China-based Analysys International.

Read More (DigiTimes.com)


Asus uses SiS chipset in F5V notebook

Image courtesy DigiTimes

SiS announced July 18 that Asustek Computer will be using the SiS671DX chipset in its F5V notebook series. The SiS671DX is paired with the SiS968 southbridge chipset.

The Asus F5V is a mainstream 15.4-inch widescreen notebook that supports Intel Core Duo/Celeron M processors and up to 2GB of DDR2-667 memory. Graphics power is provided by the ATI Mobility Radeon X2300 with 128MB of memory

Read More (DigiTimes.com)


PC shipments worldwide up 12 percent

According to two research companies, global shipments of PCs skyrocketed in Q2 due to higher demand in Asia and unexpected strength in the United States. IDC estimates that 58.8 million PCs were shipped in the time period from April to June, a 12.5 percent increase from the same quarter in 2006. Gartner Inc counted 61.1 million units and an 11.7 percent growth.

Read More (NYTimes.com)


Mozilla release 2.0.0.5 Firefox update

Mozilla July 18 released the 2.0.0.5 update for its Firefox Internet browser, which adds several important security fixes. The security fixes include remote code executition by launching Firefox from Internet Explorer, more crashes due to memory corruption, unathorized access to certain files, and privilege escallation by using an event handler attached to an element not present in the document.

For users who already have Firefox, please update your browser by left-clicking the Help menu drop down and then left-clicking &quot;Check for Updates.&quot; Users wishing to download Firefox may do so at Mozilla.com.

Read More (DailyTech.com)

 

That Voodoo looks gorgeous. I want one

Why aren't there any high-end notebooks on the market with nVidia 8700Go SLI?
Is it because of price, or technical restrictions, not allowing you to have two 8700s?

 

Red should be hot but I am not sure the use of black here to offset it is not quite right

 

Load that Voodoo up and it's almost $8000!

 

Who would spend $5000+ for a machine that isn't even DX10? HP/Voodoo must think people are really stupid.

 

The phrase goes "more money than sense", but if you got it, then why not? They're sure as hell as not marketing it towards the likes of me!

 

Is Sony still making a profit off of their battery sales?

 

i agree. Who in their right mind would now buy a none Dx10 gaming laptop.

 

erm, where do we go to find out of our toshiba sat battery was recalled?

on the bottom, it doesnt say anything about sony.

interesting side note: cell made in japan, pack processed in china

 

Maybe the Toshiba website?

http://www.csd.toshiba.com/cgi-bin/...BV_EngineID=cccjaddlhgdjmfjcgfkceghdgngdgnj.0

 

for people that got more money than they know what to do with, people that don't visit these forums. for some people that spend over $150k on a car, $8k on a laptop is a bargain really.

 

DirectX 10 requires Windows Vista, and at this time Windows Vista does not support SLI. And since the 8700M GT is not more powerful than the 7950 GTX, at this point it makes since to go with the 7950 GTX in SLI with Windows XP.

That's all assuming you want the maximum performance money can buy right now - eventually Vista will support SLI, but by the time that happens and DX10 comes out, the people buying these will probably already be in the market for a replacement for them.

Already got the Firefox update! I say this as I post from Opera!

 

alright thanks, guess mine is safe, till next time

all these notebook batteries are an accident waiting to happen!