MacBook Air to get new Intel chips?

Apple's MacBook Air could be getting a fresh new look--inside at least--in the coming weeks.

Rumors of new Apple notebooks have been all over the place this summer, given the length of time since the last redesign of the MacBook and Intel's new Montevina chips. But Phone News believes that the MacBook Air will also get a new Penryn chip that will improve performance at the cost of battery life.

The MacBook Air's performance doesn't really compare to that of the rest of the MacBook lineup, but it was designed to be thin and light, not as a gaming rig. Still, adding one of the new Penryn chips to the MacBook Air could help improve performance for things like video playback, noted by some as an issue with the early MacBook Air units.
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Hot or not: Logitech's new clip-on travel mouse

When it was announced last year, the Logitech VX Nano notebook mouse earned a CNET Editors' Choice award for its compact, comfortable shape and dual scrolling modes.

Now there's a new Nano in Logitech's lineup: The V550 Nano, announced on Wednesday, adds a unique "clip and go" dock that lets you attach the mouse to your laptop's lid.

According to the company, plenty of users carry their laptops among rooms in the house or from a desk to a conference room at work; the dock lets you carry the mouse and laptop in one hand. "Now, you won't have to choose between grabbing your mouse or a cup of coffee," a Logitech rep quips in the press release.

Otherwise, the V550 Nano incorporates all the features we loved about the VX Nano, including the dual-mode scroll wheel, tiny USB receiver, and 2.4GHz wireless technology. Even better, the US$60 V550 Nano costs a bit less than its predecessor.

It's difficult to judge a product like the V550 Nano based just on pictures--mousing preferences are such a personal thing, as we've seen--but I do like the idea of being able to roam from room to room without juggling my laptop, cell phone, mouse, and beverage (one of which is almost always dropped in the process).

What do you think: Is it hot or not?

Via CNET Crave

ComScore: Social sites are going global

We sort of knew it already: While Facebook, MySpace, Bebo, Hi5, Orkut, and Friendster were all founded in the US, social networking is a worldwide phenomenon. New statistics from ComScore show that sites like Facebook are growing rapidly across the globe, even as that growth slows down in their home country.

Earlier on Tuesday, performance firm Pingdom released numbers pulled from Google Insights for Search, showing that different social networks have very different levels of "interest" across the world. ComScore's numbers, also released Tuesday, underscore the fact that social sites are increasingly global in nature--and sometimes unexpectedly.

According to ComScore's numbers, social-networking sites may be nearing a peak in North America. The industry's foothold in the US and Canada grew only 9 percent from June 2007, but in Asia it grew 23 percent, in Latin America 33 percent, and in Europe 35 percent. And social networks grew a whopping 66 percent in the Middle East and Africa. The 9 percent growth in North America meant that it was the only region of the world where the growth of social networks did not outpace the growth of the Internet-using populace as a whole, which ComScore pegged at 11 percent.
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ASUS ExpressGate boots up notebook in 8 seconds

One of the first things we do when we get home is to switch on our Vista machine. Not because we need to surf the Internet or send an email immediately, but because when the need arises we don't want to wait minutes just to perform a task that takes mere seconds.

ASUS' latest ExpressGate technology may soon make that task a thing of the past. A small Linux kernel is stored on a flash component which boots up within 8 seconds. This allows the users to immediately access the Internet and even play multimedia files from the hard drive without having to boot into the Windows environment. As the applications are all freeware, there is no need to pay for additional licenses to use this feature. Unfortunately, since the Linux operating system and programs are hardcoded, you cannot upgrade the individual applications. For example, ExpressGate uses FireFox 2 for Web browsing and you cannot update to FireFox 3 which is already available.

The feature is immediately available in the full range of Centrino 2 machines from the Taiwanese maker.

Extreme gamers padding video game industry's bottom line

The video game industry had better thank its lucky stars that hardcore gamers do what they do.

According to a report issued Monday morning by industry analyst firm, The NPD Group, the most active group of players, which it termed "extreme gamers", devote more than a full-time job's work week to their avocation. But they don't get insurance benefits for their efforts.

Rather, NPD's "Games Segmentation 2008" report explained that extreme gamers put in an average of 45 hours a week playing games, and, even better--for the video game industry's coffers--bought a whopping 24 titles in the last three months.

True, these committed gamers make up just 3 percent of the 174 million that NPD said play on PCs or Macs or dedicated video game machines. Still, that means 5.22 million people out there are putting in serious amounts of time gaming away. And if you stop and think about the dollars they're spending, if they're buying 24 games every three months, it's kind of breathtaking.

The NPD report identified seven different segments of gamers, including our extreme friends. The others include 9 percent who are "avid PC gamers", 17 percent who are console gamers, 14 percent who are online PC gamers, 15 percent who are offline PC gamers, 22 percent who are "young heavy gamers", and 20 percent who are "secondary" gamers.
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