Gearfuse

If Terminators and Skynet take over Earth, at least you’ll have a laptop that will stand up to them. The Dell E6400 XFR is the latest “toughbook” to hit the market and boy is it ugly. That’s OK, though, because you’re buying this for usability, not design and portability. Inside this ugly beast, you’ll find a decent set of specs including an Intel Core 2 Duo CPU, 256MB of nVidia Quadro 160M graphics and a big 14.1″ display. Not bad, not bad, but where are features like fingerprint recognition and a webcam for video conferencing?

Need one to throw in the bed of your Ford F-150? The XFR won’t come cheap. It starts at $4300 and weighs a whopping 8.5 pounds to boot.

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Those shady motherfuckers at Apple decided to mention a Mac Pro update an hour after I caught the original update on the iMac and Mac Mini. The new Mac Pros cost $300 less than before, feature new Intel “Nehalem” Xeon CPUs (read: hella fuckin’ fast) and better graphics cards standard. Some bullshit about DDR3 RAM and that about sums it up. Sorry, but I really doubt anyone can afford one of these right now. If you can, however, let us know how it runs.

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It’s Monday, I know. Let’s just take a minute and sigh collectively. Alright. Feeling better? Good. You need some breakfast. After all, you can’t do any work or concentrate without a proper breakfast. This is a motherboard cake. It’s similar to that of a birthday cake in taste and more of a computer in the design department. It also has a gooey Intel inside. Do you like my jokes? It’s too early, isn’t it? Sorry. Have some cake, sunshine.

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Word of MSI’s latest line of Wind netbooks has surfaced. Attempting to beat out its netbook competitors in battery life, MSI has unveiled the Wind U110, U115 and U120. The U110 and U115 stress battery longevity,  with a 6-cell battery that comes standard, an upgraded Intel Atom processor that uses 20% less power and a hybrid storage device that also uses less power, these latest netbooks hope to come close to a seven hour battery life.

As for the U120, it holds the same features as the original U100 except with 3G added in to the equation. Internet anytime, anywhere? So much for the competition.

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Intel’s Core i7 processors are wicked fast. Faster than that new Lamborghini we know nothing about. Of course, the earliest devices that will utilize the processor are gaming PCs. The Core i7 was officially launched yesterday and computer companies like CyberPower are already stocking the assembly lines with this quad-core powerhouse.

CyberPower unveiled its latest and fastest gaming PC, the Black Pearl, which will pack the Intel’s new Core i7 processor inside. With a 3.2GHz 965 Extreme Edition CPU and a sickening 12GB of RAM, this computer is looking too fast for its own good. Crysis on the highest settings powered by a dual ATI Radeon HD 4870 X2 graphic cards with 2GB video RAM? Ain’t nothing for this PC. Try two Crysis’ on the highest setting running simultaneously. This computer can handle it, no problem. There plenty of room for all your pirated software, so storage space will never be an issue. It has two separate 300GB HDD, 10,000RPM SATA II units from Western Digital. Or perhaps you’d prefer to use the 1TB, SATA II drive, which is also included. Not bad for a gaming rig that’s only priced at $3,999.

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Retro computer enthusiast Bill Kotaska has successfully built a replica of Busicom’s historic 141-PF printing calculator using vintage Intel chips. It’s the 37th anniversary of the world’s first single chip, customer-programmable microprocessor, the tiny Intel 4004. It was the Japanese calculator maker known as Busicom which later introduced the first product ever built around an Intel microprocessor.

So, in light of this historic event, Bill Kotaska decided to craft this re-creation of the historical machine which is capable of running the software from the original Busicom ROMs. Fancy yourself a computer historian? Bill’s got you covered as he provides schematics and photos of his re-creation at the unofficial 4004 web site, provided below.

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One part iMac and one part Eee PC, the Eee Top is a touchscreen PC with a 15.6-inch display that will retail next year. It features a 1.6GHz Intel Atom CPU, 1GB of RAM and 160GB of storage. Six USB ports, WiFi, a card reader and a built-in webcam top it off, making it quite the impressive PC. Knowing Asus, it’ll be sold for a relatively inexpensive price. One of the last PCs being sold with Windows XP, I can see demand for the Eee Top come its release next year.

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The holiday season is upon us and pretty soon, Black Friday is going to roll around. Why not convince your loved one to go wait overnight in a line for a deal on an MSI Wind? The ultra-hackable netbook is now on sale at Best Buy for just $350 and the specs are updated quite nicely. You’ll score a whopping 120GB hard drive and a 1.6GHz Intel Atom processor, as well as WiFi and a built-in 1.3-megapixel camera. 1GB of RAM tops it off. The 3-cell battery kind of sucks, but you can easily buy a bigger, longer battery for about $100.

It’s awesome that you can walk into a Best Buy and purchase a netbook, finally. Too bad it’s Best Buy.

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I have to admit, the last place I ever expected to see a tutorial detailing how to install OS X on a PC would be the Register. But hey, Brian Hurley has a fantastic tutorial for those of you too broke to afford Apple’s hardware. The process is very detailed and is more suited for a long weekend than an evening but the payoff is oh, so sweet. You’re getting yourself into piracy, hacking and tinkering to no end with this project, so make sure your data is backed up and you’re not at a university or somewhere similar. Happy OS X-ing!

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Hot damn! Believe it or not, the above display and handsets are for a new platform from Open Peak called Open Frame. It lets IP-based devices talk to each other over the network and acts as an entertainment hub. Built-in WiFi and Ethernet will let you check your calendar, YouTube, text messages, address book, email and more. All powered by a new Intel Atom processor, which helps keep the design small. It looks like a beautiful interface. Here’s to 2009, hoping that some company will use Open Frame wisely.

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