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Circuit City liquidates

The second largest retail chain in US, Circuit City announced today that it will seek Bankruptcy Court approval to begin the process to liquidate the assets of the company.

“We are extremely disappointed by this outcome. The company had been in continuous negotiations regarding a going concern transaction. Regrettably for the more than 30,000 employees of Circuit City and our loyal customers, we were unable to reach an agreement with our creditors and lenders to structure a going-concern transaction in the limited timeframe available, and so this is the only possible path for our company,” said James A. Marcum, vice chairman and acting president and chief executive officer for Circuit City Stores, Inc.

The company does not anticipate any value will remain from the bankruptcy estate for the holders of the company’s common equity, although this will be determined in the continuing bankruptcy proceedings.

Read the official statement here

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Motorola MotoSurf A3100 goes on sale [Windows Mobile]

Motorola MotoSurf A3100 was planned to made available in the Q1 this year. But, it has already gone on sale in Taiwan, just mere 9 days after it’s announcement! Motorola MotoSurf is powered by Qualcomm 7201A processor clocked at 528MHz processor. It has a 2.8″ QVGA display, 128MB RAM, 256MB ROM, 3MP auto-focus camera, aGPS and 1170mAh battery.

It may not the the most powerful phone in the market, but it is certainly better than the old Motorola’s Windows Mobile handsets. It is priced at NT$15,900 (€363/$477/£325) and comes without a contract, which means you can pop-in any GSM SIM card and you are ready to go.If you live in Taiwan, you already place the order here

[fudzilla]

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MSI Wind NetTop D130 – World’s first Dual Core Nettop

MSI Wind NetTop D130 is equipped with the latest Intel® Atom™ 330 dual-core processor and 2GB DDR2 memory. Both high-definition video of HD-class home theater and other high-load applications, Wind NetTop D130 is easy to handle. Based on the origin of Wind series, Wind NetTop D130 using the same “ultra energy-saving” power design can save nearly up to 90% on electricity. Users no longer worry about overdraft electricity, even when the users use the computer for over a 24-hour period.

MSI Wind NetTop D130 - World's first Dual Core Nettop

It also comes with a Super-Multi DVD burner built-in. Now, the people seem to be complaining it’s inability to play the 1080p videos even though it claims to play the HD videos. Although, just like most netbooks and nettops in the market, it can play the 720p videos just fine. May be the MSI should incorporate the NVIDIA Ion Platform to run those 1080p videos (hint hint MSI!). [global.msi.com]

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OQO Model 2+ benchmarked [UMPC]

The OQO Model 2+ was revealed at the CES 2009. The best thing about the OQO Model 2+ is the use of the fastest Atom processor so far, the Atom Z540 CPU running at 1.86GHz. OQO also beefed up the RAM to 2GB, which made everything even more smoother than before.

OQO Model 2+ benchmarked

Jenn, over midmoves have done some benchmark tests on the new OQO 2+. Here is the screenshot of Windows Experience Index. It is quite odd on the Windows Vista’s way of judging  the base score by taking into account the lowest score rather than taking the average score into consideration. Nevertheless, we can easily make out that Vista seems to be quite usable on the little machine from OQO.

Here are the scores from the CrystalMark, which are not shabby at all comparing to the other UMPCs and Netbooks in the market.

Benchmarks aside, the main aspect of the OQO Model 2+ that stops me from getting one is the low resolution WVGA display, which can natively show only 800 x 480. Folks at OQO should have put in a minimum of 1024 x 600 pixel display which is more common on the netbooks and UMPCs these days. A WVGA display can ruin the whole user experience if you are running a lot of applications concurrently or you are running a lot of tabs in firefox/IE/Chrome.

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HTC rolls out mass update for HTC TOUCH DIAMOND [Windows Mobile]

HTC has been rolling out new updated ROMs for the HTC TOUCH DIAMOND. Yes, HTC has not forgotten the Touch Diamond users (totally).

Improved Functions and Fixes:

  1. When you launch the Camera while the system is working on other programs, the preview screen may become black.
  2. When playing a video, sometimes a portion of the video will be cut off a little bit.
  3. Fixes Audio playback problem with the speaker. Specific issues: sometimes the music will turn off and on after 10 minutes, or there is a buzzing sound or no sound at all.
  4. Fixes the problem of not being able to receive MMS when in standby mode.
  5. When launching music via the Music tab on TouchFLO 3D, the sound may intermittently turn off for a second and come back on.

HTC warns that after the update, you won’t be able to roll back to previous official ROM.

Get the European ROM from here

Other HTC DIAMOND users shall get their update from their regional HTC website. Go to Support link to find out if HTC has an update for you.

Note: There is no update for the Indian HTC DIAMOND

Usual warning: This is a generic update, which means that it would wipe-off the data on your device. Make sure to do a proper backup. Please note that the contents of the “intenal storage” would remain intact.

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StopWatch 2.0 released and reviewed [Windows Mobile]

There are a lot of times when we need a stop watch and we are not carrying one. Your Windows Mobile smartphone is there to rescue! With StopWatch 2.0, one can enjoy the experience of a quality stopwatch. The developer, Martin Kaldma (nitramk at xda-devs) has come with a great stopwatch application.

The author has made every effort possible to make the application look like other HTC Diamond specific applications.

Continue reading “StopWatch 2.0 released and reviewed [Windows Mobile]”

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Palm Treo Pro review [huge review!]

Palm Treo Pro is the first Palm Smartphone with built-in WiFi. WIth a built-in QWERTY keyboard and numerous Palm enhancements, does the Treo Pro makes itself as a worthy contender to the rest of the Windows Mobile range? Read on and find out!

Packaging

Palm has really outdone itself with the packaging. It’s nice, classy, and simple.

Unfortunately my package seems to be lacking the regular flat pins that are common here in the PH. I will try to contact palm about this.

What’s in the box:
Palm Treo Pro

Palm wired stereo headset

Li-ion 1500mAh Battery

micro USB sync /charge cable

AC adapter with interchangeable plugs.

Documentation Continue reading “Palm Treo Pro review [huge review!]”

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NVIDIA Ion Platform = GeForce 9400M + Intel Atom processor = 1080p videos on a Netbook!

It has always been a dream for the Netbook owners to run Hi-definition video on their netbooks. Sadly, due to the limiting processing power of the Intel Atom processors (so far) and absence of GPU in the netbooks, no one ever thought of running 1080p videos on the netbooks.

But, it is not a distant dream anymore. The GeForce 9400M GPU completely nails the integrated Intel graphics. In the video given below, we see a normal Acer Aspire one, which struggles a lot while playing the 1080p video. On the other hand, we see another netbook, but this one is connected to a HDTV and utilizes the Ion platform (GeForce 9400M + Intel Atom).

In the end, the main question that arises is that do we need all those bells and whistles? Well, it would be great for someone who wishes thinks something more than web browsing on his netbook. The inclusion of powerful GPU would also open gates for the gamers. It would also reduce the CPU utilization as most of the graphic part would be taken over by the GPU.

[notebooks.com]