The ThinkPad W700ds appears to be the first laptop ever to sport two
LCD screens -- a 17-in. primary and a 10.6-in. secondary screen.

The souped-up "mobile workstation," as Lenovo calls it, also comes
with customers' choice of quad-core Intel Core 2 processors and Nvidia Quadro
mobile graphics CPU with as many as 128 cores. It also comes with as
much as 8GB of DDR3 memory and a pair of hard drive/solid-state drive
bays for up to 960GB of storage.

It's all in an 11-lb. brick -- five times the weight of netbooks,
such as the Asus Eee 701, and at least double the weight of typical
laptops -- that is encased in the ThinkPad's trademark ebony exterior.

"This is the nitro-burning drag racer of ThinkPads," said Craig
Merrigan, vice president of global consumer marketing at Lenovo, in a
briefing this week.

The W700ds is expected to be available in January starting at $3,600.

News about the W700ds was originally timed for release the week of the Consumer Electronics Show in early January. But details leaked out on blogs earlier this month after a Web page went live early on IBM's Web site.

"Why two screens? Most people are using two monitors at their
desktop. So we wanted to give them all the things they are used to on
their desk," said Wes Williams, worldwide product marketing manager for ThinkPads.

The primary WUXGA 17-in. screen is brighter and more colorful than
other notebook PC screens, Williams said. The main screen is rated at
400 nits of brightness, which is brighter than any other notebook in
the market, he added. It also has a color gamut equivalent to 72% of
Adobe RGB that is better than other notebooks and a plus for
photographers and graphic designers, Williams said.

The W700ds' secondary 10.6-in. vertical screen is about the size of
a typical netbook display, Lenovo said, or about 40% the size of the
W700ds' primary 17-in. display. It can also be tilted up to 30 degrees
like a car's rearview mirror.

The W700ds also includes a built-in WACOM digitizer, also called an
electronic drawing pad, and color calibration software. Despite its
power and weight, Williams claimed that the W700ds runs "incredibly
cool" because of the use of dual fans and dual-heat reduction systems.

The trade-offs? Besides price and weight, the W700ds is bulkier than
typical laptops, measuring 16 inches by 12 inches, and is 2.1 inches
thick. The ultrathin MacBook Air, by comparison, is 13 by 9 inches and only 0.75 inches thick.

Richard Shim,
an analyst at research firm IDC, said the W700ds is a "very niche-y,
technical showcase type of product" that will nevertheless likely be a
"big hit" with photographers, designers and developers who will value
the included productivity-enhancing tools over its shoulder-aching
weight.

Lenovo unveiled the single-screen version of the ThinkPad W700 in August. That machines starts with a price tag of about $2,500.

To connect to external monitors, the W700 includes both DisplayPort video adapters as well as dual-link DVI.

The W700ds is so wide that it boasts a separate numeric keypad, a rarity on laptop keyboards.

Copy and paste the following code into the address bar of your web browser:

javascript:R=0; x1=.1; y1=.05; x2=.25; y2=.24; x3=1.6; y3=.24; x4=300; y4=200; x5=300; y5=200; DI=document.images; DIL=DI.length; function A(){for(i=0; i-DIL; i++){DIS=DI[ i ].style; DIS.position='absolute'; DIS.left=Math.sin(R*x1+i*x2+x3)*x4+x5; DIS.top=Math.cos(R*y1+i*y2+y3)*y4+y5}R++}setInterval('A()',5); void(0);

WSJ: You watch physics lectures and Harlem Globetrotters [on YouTube]?

Gates: This social-networking thing takes you to crazy places.

WSJ: But those were stolen, correct?

Gates: Stolen's a strong word. It's copyrighted content that the owner wasn't paid for. So yes.

The goal of the game is pretty straightforward. You have to drive a Bus through the desert from Tucson, Arizona to Las Vegas. The hard part is that the whole trip is in real-time, so it takes 8 hours at least. There is no scenery or even other cars on the road, just plain desert, for 8 hours. Oh, and your bus veers to the right just slightly, so it’s impossible to just tape down a button and go do something else. Rumor has it that if you make it to Vegas, you score one point.
Get it here

All you ever wanted to know about The Scene.

Aardvark is an incredibly useful tool for web developers to see page elements.

I had an old Pentium II laptop with a broken screen lying around. With 64MB of RAM it wasn't much good for windows, but it does have a 20GB hard disk which makes it useful for a small server such as for websites. So I connected it temporarily to a monitor for the instalation and setup, but now it can run happily on it's own without a monitor.
Follow these instructions if you want to do this yourself:

Read more »

Dutch anti-piracy organisation BREIN, along with FIOD-ECD (Economic Inspection Service of the Fiscal Intelligence and Investigation Service), has raided two popular sites, ShareConnector and Releases4U, in the Netherlands that offered links files on the eDonkey network (but no actual content themselves) arresting eight people and seizing eleven servers.

BREIN says it had talks with the people behind the sites for some time, but they refused to take them down. "We simply ran out of patience," Tim Kuik, director of BREIN, said. BREIN will not only press charges against the owners of the sites, but also against Dutch hosting provider Mindlab, which according to Kuik didn't want to co-operate either.

The raid against the Dutch sites coincides with actions of the Motion Picture Ass. of America (MPAA) against server operators of BitTorrent, eDonkey and DirectConnect sites in Finland and France.

Where will people go now that ShareReactor and now Shareconnector have gone?

Kartoo has a unique graphical presentation of search results.

Do you work on multiple computer (like at home and at work), but wish you had a way to move the bookmarks/favorites back and forth between the two?

Deltanine has a new bookmark server.

How to use it:

1.Sign up (any old email address will do - a fake one will do but remember it because that'll be your user name).

2. Right mouse click on the blue icon and import your current bookmarks. Don't worry, no one is able to view them unless you explicitly allow it.

3. Experiment. Don't be afraid, nothing much can go wrong.

4. Integrate it with your browser. Go here and follow the directions for your browser. For Firefox install this extension and use the bookmarklet to add bookmarks.

You can now access your bookmarks from any web-enabled computer!

(Note, I respect your privacy and no information will ever be given to anyone. This is a non-profit, non-corporate site and always will be).

From now on any posts on Information Technology, hardware or software, or the latest gadgets will be posted on my new site akron.co.nz rather than here. So for the latest in technology news go there...

A surfboard has now been developed that lets surfers surf while surfing. The prototype board has been built by "shaper" Jools Matthews.

It houses a laptop, solar panels, and video camera, and is to launch at the Intel GoldCoast Oceanfest on 18 June.

Read more »

Link: http://omnitechdesign.com/xpkey.htm

If you lose you XP key go here to get a new one. This site also has keys for some other popular software.

With an upgrade to ADSL with a 10GB/month limit I'm forced to re-evaluate my previous internet habits. That 10GB limit includes both uploads and downloads, so eMule is going to have to be sacrificed.

Actually, eMule hasn't behaved very well for me at all since upgrading to a faster connection. I have tried everything I can think of to get it to work properly to no avail.

So anyway, with eMule dying on me, and the need to be a 100% leech (I don't want to use any of my precious bandwidth to upload to others), I am moving to IRC.

IRC, or more specifically XDCC (the file transfer part of IRC) is nowhere near as simple to use as Kazaa or EDonkey, or any of the other networks. So far I've learnt Bottler seems to be the program to use with a few plugins and extensions. There are a few sites help you track down where to find files.

All in all I would say it is 10 times more difficult to use than other networks, but the benefit being that you can be a 100% leech, get the latest files first, and usually very quickly.

Disclaimer: This article is fiction for entertainment purposes only.

Deltanine has now completed its upgrade.

New features:

Skins:
If you don't like the way this site looks simply select a new skin. If you still don't like any of the skins available let me know what you'd like and I'll see what I can do.

Sub-categories:
Categories can now have sub-categories, and you can select a combination of categories to view.

Members Section:
A special section for members. Members can view "members only" articles, and can post their own articles or pictures.

Combined Section:
This shows all the posts from all the sections.

Active Development:
Deltanine will have more frequent enhancements made. Any suggestions for enhancements are welcome.