Tuesday, July 23, 2013

MSI's MouseBook is a laptop whose trackpad doubles as a standalone mouse

MSI's MouseBook is a laptop whose trackpad doubles as a standalone mouse data = {blogUrl: "www.engadget.com",v: 315};when = {jquery: lab.scriptBs("jquery"),plugins: lab.scriptBs("plugins"),eng: lab.scriptBs("eng")}; var s265prop9 = ('20597927' !== '') ? 'bsd:20597927' : ''; var postID = '20597927'; var modalMNo = '93319229', modalVideoMNo = '93320648', modalGalleryMNo = '93304207'; when.eng("eng.omni.init", {pfxID:"weg",pageName:document.title,server:"acp-ld39.websys.aol.com",channel:"us.engadget", s_account: "aolwbengadget,aolsvc", short_url: "",pageType:"",linkInternalFilters:"javascript:,",prop1:"article",prop2:"laptops",prop9:s265prop9,prop12:document.location,prop17:"",prop18:"",prop19:"",prop20:"", prop22:"dana-wollman", prop54:"blogsmith",mmxgo: true }); adSendTerms('1')adSetMOAT('1');adSetAdURL('/_uac/adpagem.html');lab._script("http://o.aolcdn.com/os/ads/adhesion/js/adhads-min.js").wait(function(){var floatingAd = new AdhesiveAd("348-14-15-14d",{hideOnSwipe:true});}); onBreak({980: function () { adSetType("F");htmlAdWH("93319229", "LB", "LB"); adSetType("");}}); EngadgetMenu NewsReviews Features Galleries VideosEventsPodcasts Engadget ShowTopics Buyers Guides Sagas Store HD Mobile Alt Announcements Cameras Cellphones Desktops Displays Gaming GPS Handhelds Home Entertainment Household Internet Laptops Meta Misc Networking Peripherals Podcasts Robots Portable Audio/Video Science Software Storage Tablets Transportation Wearables Wireless Acer Amazon AMD Apple ASUS AT&T Blackberry Canon Dell Facebook Google HP HTC Intel Lenovo LG Microsoft Nikon Nintendo Nokia NVIDIA Samsung Sony Sprint T-Mobile Verizon About UsSubscribeLike Engadget@engadgettip uswhen.eng("eng.nav.init")when.eng("eng.tips.init") onBreak({980: function () {htmlAdWH("93308280", "215", "35",'AJAX','ajaxsponsor');}});MSI's MouseBook is a laptop whose trackpad doubles as a standalone mouse Hands-onBypostedJun 4th, 2013 at 8:41 AM 0

MSI's MouseBook is a laptop whose trackpad doubles as a standalone mouse

The problem with laptop trackpads: they're usually not very good. But would turning the touchpad into a mouse solve the problem? Perhaps. That's what MSI seems to be attempting with its MouseBook concept. In essence, it's a laptop with a trackpad that can pop out and then be used as a standalone mouse. As you can see in the photo above, there's a release switch for removing the pad. Once it's out, you can move it across your desk as you would a mouse, as opposed to just using it as an external trackpad. It connects over Bluetooth and, as you'd expect, it recharges when it's inside the laptop. What we find most intriguing, perhaps, is the fact that when you remove the trackpad, a flat surface rises up to fill the space so that you're not left with a gaping hole in your palm rest. Since this is just an experiment at this point, MSI can't say if it will ever make its way into a real product. If you're curious, though, we've got a walkthrough video after the break, showing everything except, uh, how it works -- MSI still doesn't have a fully functioning unit to show off.MSI MouseBook concept hands-on See all photos 10 Photos

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Zach Honig contributed to this report.

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Intel VP: 'Lack of LTE' hampers our approach to the US smartphone market

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Intel VP 'Lack of LTE' hampers our approach to the US smartphone market

During Intel's press conference today, we got a brief glimpse into how Intel's smartphones are fairing globally. The noticeable gap, however, was the US. Answering questions during a Q&A session following the Computex keynote, Tom Kilroy, Executive Vice President of Sales said that there was a major reason why it was lacking US carrier support: LTE.

"Absence of LTE is the reason. We can't get ranged by US carriers without LTE, so once we have multi-mode LTE coming to market later this year, we'll have an opportunity to compete in that business."

While we've seen Intel add 4G radios to its Atom processors for global-roaming tablets, there's no news yet of the capability launching on its smartphone designs. Last year, Intel launched a Medfield-powered version of Verizon's RAZR M in Europe and Asia, under the RAZR i branding and with only 3G radios.

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Engadget Giveaway: win an Octa-core Samsung Galaxy S 4, courtesy of SellCell.com!

Engadget Giveaway: win an Octa-core Samsung Galaxy S 4, courtesy of SellCell.com! data = {blogUrl: "www.engadget.com",v: 315};when = {jquery: lab.scriptBs("jquery"),plugins: lab.scriptBs("plugins"),eng: lab.scriptBs("eng")}; var s265prop9 = ('20597177' !== '') ? 'bsd:20597177' : ''; var postID = '20597177'; var modalMNo = '93319231', modalVideoMNo = '93320648', modalGalleryMNo = '93304207'; when.eng("eng.omni.init", {pfxID:"weg",pageName:document.title,server:"acp-ld39.websys.aol.com",channel:"us.engadget", s_account: "aolwbengadget,aolsvc", short_url: "",pageType:"",linkInternalFilters:"javascript:,",prop1:"article",prop2:"announcements",prop9:s265prop9,prop12:document.location,prop17:"",prop18:"",prop19:"",prop20:"", prop22:"brad-molen", prop54:"blogsmith",mmxgo: true }); adSendTerms('1')adSetMOAT('1');adSetAdURL('/_uac/adpagem.html');lab._script("http://o.aolcdn.com/os/ads/adhesion/js/adhads-min.js").wait(function(){var floatingAd = new AdhesiveAd("348-14-15-13c",{hideOnSwipe:true});}); onBreak({980: function () { adSetType("F");htmlAdWH("93319231", "LB", "LB"); adSetType("");}}); EngadgetMenu NewsReviews Features Galleries VideosEventsPodcasts Engadget ShowTopics Buyers Guides Sagas Store HD Mobile Alt Announcements Cameras Cellphones Desktops Displays Gaming GPS Handhelds Home Entertainment Household Internet Laptops Meta Misc Networking Peripherals Podcasts Robots Portable Audio/Video Science Software Storage Tablets Transportation Wearables Wireless Acer Amazon AMD Apple ASUS AT&T Blackberry Canon Dell Facebook Google HP HTC Intel Lenovo LG Microsoft Nikon Nintendo Nokia NVIDIA Samsung Sony Sprint T-Mobile Verizon About UsSubscribeLike Engadget@engadgettip uswhen.eng("eng.nav.init")when.eng("eng.tips.init") onBreak({980: function () {htmlAdWH("93310027", "215", "35",'AJAX','ajaxsponsor');}});Engadget Giveaway: win an Octa-core Samsung Galaxy S 4, courtesy of SellCell.com! AltBypostedJun 4th, 2013 at 11:00 AM 0

Engadget Giveaway win an Octacore Samsung Galaxy S 4, courtesy of SellCellcom!

Samsung has sold over 10 million units of the Galaxy S 4 worldwide, and we have one of them in our possession and just waiting to find a home. This particular version is the GT-I9500, which is an unlocked international model that sports the octa-core Exynos chipset, and we have SellCell.com to thank for the opportunity to hand it out to a lucky reader! If you're looking to sell your phone and get something new, the website -- which bills itself as the "number one mobile phone and tablet trade-in price comparison site" -- invites you to come and see how much your phone is worth. So head below and enter via the widget for your chance to grab an octa-core GS4 for yourself!

a Rafflecopter giveaway

The Rules:

Entries are handled through the Rafflecopter widget above. Comments are no longer accepted as valid methods of entry. You may enter without any obligation to social media accounts, though we may offer them as opportunities for extra entries. Your email address is required so we can get in touch with you if you win, but it will not be given to third parties.Contest is open to all residents of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, and Canada (excluding Quebec), 18 or older! Sorry, we don't make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so direct your anger at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.Winners will be chosen randomly. One (1) winner will receive one (1) unlocked Samsung GT-I9500 (Galaxy S 4). Service will not be provided with the item.If you are chosen, you will be notified by email. Winners must respond within three days of being contacted. If you do not respond within that period, another winner will be chosen. Make sure that the account you use to enter the contest includes a contact email or Facebook login. We do not track any of this information for marketing or third-party purposes.This unit is purely for promotional giveaway. Sellcell.com, Samsung and Engadget / AOL are not held liable to honor warranties, exchanges or customer service.The full list of rules, in all its legalese glory, can be found here.Entries can be submitted until June 5th at 11:59PM ET. Good luck! when.eng("eng.perm.init")

Meet Douglas Booth, Cinema’s ‘Offensively Attractive’ New Romeo

"External beauty is a bizarre thing to me," says Douglas Booth, a man whose external beauty is so great that co-star Emma Watson once described him as "offensively attractive." In a few hours he'll be in a Tom Ford tux at the CFDAs, where he will present the Swarovski Award for Emerging Talent in Accessories Design to Pamela Love. But for now, the 20-year-old Londoner is in a sweatshirt, sprawled across an armchair in his suite at New York's Peninsula Hotel. "I've met some of the most beautiful women in the world, and I can tell you lots of them are the most unattractive people I've ever met."

Booth stars in an upcoming Romeo and Juliet destined to make teen hearts pound. Sixteen-year-old Hailee Steinfeld plays Juliet; Gossip Girl bad boy Ed Westwick plays Tybalt. The film comes out in Great Britain in July. In the next year, Booth will appear in four feature films from the likes of Darren Aronofsky and the Wachowskis; he'll share screen time with the likes of Watson, Mila Kunis, Russell Crowe, and Channing Tatum. Teen girls are already dedicating dreamy art to him on Tumblr.

"Do I do any grooming for this event? No, I'm fine. Very low-maintenance," he says of his event preparations. As his assistant begins to chuckle, he adds, "Well, I think I'm low-maintenance."

Produced by Julian Fellowes, the new Romeo and Juliet has been compared to Zeffirelli's classic version — both for its Italian director and sets, and for the youth of its stars. When Hailee Steinfeld was cast in 2011 at age 14, the press — including the hosts of The View — fretted at a script that required nudity. Director Carlo Carlei later clarified that the script had initially been written "with a 20-year-old actress in mind" and had to be altered to eliminate Juliet's nudity.

Booth dismissed the controversy as "the press wanting to write rubbish," bristling at questions about the "beautiful and tasteful" scene. "We're not immature, puerile kids." Technical child Hailee Steinfeld is "so with it and grounded" that filming romantic scenes was "not difficult."

"We know what characters we're playing; we're professionals. I'm not sitting here feeling like I've snogged Emma Watson. I haven't!"

As an up-and-coming actor, Booth modeled alongside Watson in a fall 2009 Burberry campaign. The duo reunites in Aronofsky's Biblical Noah, in which they play husband and wife. Asked about Watson's "offensively attractive" comment, Booth notes that Noah is a poor showcase for his looks: "I had hair down to here and a big old beard. It feels great and refreshing to just not care."

But back to our history of kissing Booth. Shortly after the Burberry campaign, he starred as Boy George in BBC biopic Worried About the Boy. "I don't feel like I've snogged Richard Madden, who played Lord Stark in Game of Thrones," Booth continues. "In the Boy George movie, I had to kiss him."

Presumably he does not feel like he snogged Miley Cyrus, either, despite playing her love interest in his first American-made movie, LOL. Co-starring Demi Moore, the teen movie flew so far under the radar that Booth never learned how to pronounce its name. "El oh el? Lull?" he guesses. Apparently "it never came up before."

As for his real-life girlfriend, all Booth will say about her is that she "has great energy." Is she an actress? "Maybe." Would he like to share her name? "Not really."

A few minutes later, Booth's publicist arrives to shoo me out of the room. The CFDAs approach, and her client has a tuxedo to put on. 


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Razer puts 14-inch Blade up for pre-order

Razer announces World's Thinnest & Most Powerful 14-inch laptop is available for pre-order

Thinner than the diameter of a standing dime, new 14-inch Razer Blade packs most power per cubic inch in gaming laptop history

TAIPEI, Taiwan, June 3, 2013 /PRNewswire/ -- Computex -- Razer™, the world leader in high-performance gaming hardware, software and systems, announced that it is taking pre-orders for its new 14-inch Blade gaming laptop.

Powered by a 4th gen Intel® Core™ i7 quad core processor with Hyper-Threading (Base 2.2 GHz/Turbo 3.2 GHz) and the latest NVIDIA® GeForce® GTX 765M GPU, the Blade is the thinnest and lightest 14-inch gaming laptop in history. Measuring in at just 0.66-inches thin, the Razer Blade packs more power-per-cubic-inch than any other laptop in the world. The Razer Blade utilizes solid-state storage technology with boot speeds of up to four-times faster than a traditional 5400-RPM notebook hard drive. The Razer Blade has a rigid all-aluminum chassis, with a stunning 14-inch LED-backlit HD+ display and features a custom-designed track pad and backlit gaming grade keyboard.

"The Razer Blade is the thinnest and most powerful 14-inch gaming laptop ever, thinner than a standing dime, and we couldn't have created it without the help of partners like Intel," says Min-Liang Tan , Razer co-founder, CEO and creative director. "Now that the Blade is open for pre-orders, we can all celebrate a monumental day for PC gamers worldwide."

The ultra-portable laptop features 8 GB of fast 1600 MHz DDR3L memory and comes standard with 128 GB of total solid-state storage with options for a 256 GB or 512 GB SSD. The Razer Blade also comes with Dolby® Home Theatre® v4, featuring immersive audio-quality output that is custom-tuned to deliver a cinematic sound experience.

"Incredible innovation is happening across the computing landscape, and the new mobile gaming experience Razer is delivering with the Edge, and now its Blade, is remarkable," says Navin Shenoy , vice president and general manager of Intel's Mobile Client Platforms. "Powered by a future 4th gen Intel Core processor, people can expect the highest level performance from the Blade for the most discerning gamer."

The Blade is available for pre-order online at www.razerzone.com/blade. For more information, go to www.razerzone.com.


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Rock Band creators team up with Disney for next-gen in 'Fantasia: Music Evolved,' headed to Xbox One / 360 in 2014

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The tattoo-laden, musically-inclined game developers behind Frequency, Amplitude, Guitar Hero, Rock Band and Dance Central are taking on Disney's Fantasia, this morning announcing next-gen Kinect game Fantasia: Music Evolved. Like its last game franchise, Harmonix is keeping exclusive to Microsoft game consoles with Kinect -- the game is planned for launch some time in 2014 on both Xbox One and Xbox 360.

Fantasia: Music Evolved -- which we're assuming must feature Master Chief somewhere given the naming convention and Microsoft exclusivity -- aims to turn gamers into aspiring orchestra conductors. Er ... sort of. The game is played by using both your arms to synchronously gesture in a variety of directions, with two on-screen icons indicating how to place your arms and which direction you'll be gesturing toward. Ostensibly, the game asks players to conduct various pop songs (Bruno Mars' "Locked Out of Heaven" and Queens' "Bohemian Rhapsody," among others), occasionally punctuated with a push, depth-wise, for various auditory flairs (among other things). You are the sorcerer's apprentice, conducting the heavens (as it were). Moreover, the songs get remixed as you go along, with players choosing one of four musical styles to introduce dynamically as the track continues to play in the background. If it sounds overwhelming, that's because it is.Fantasia: Music Evolved See all photos 13 Photos

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Rock Band creators team up with Disney for nextgen in 'Fantasia Music Evolved,' headed to Xbox One 360 in 2014

Like an orchestra conductor, gesticulating your arms this way or that produces the next step of the song you've chosen; all due respect to orchestra conductors the world over, as actual conducting is of course far more complex. Conducting is simply the closest analog to what Fantasia: Music Evolved tasks players with doing. Occasionally, things take a turn for the surreal and -- in beat with the song -- a cube appears (seen above) and you must gesture your arms in a variety of guided movements, thus unlocking an effects pedal. Think of it as a gameplay reward for performing a difficult move, as it were. It's this, and a relatively arbitrary score, that keep the game grounded (somewhat) in the world of video games.

Though music from the original Fantasia film isn't explicitly mentioned as included in the game, a heavy bout of wink-wink nudge-nudgery is clear in Harmonix's official statement regarding the original film's score:

"While we can't announce any tracks beyond the five we're confirming today, there will be some classical music on the tracklist. Without saying exactly which songs those will be, fans of the film will definitely be happy about the choices."

Thus far, the game has the aforementioned two tracks, as well as AVICII's "Levels," Fun's "Some Nights," and Kimbra's "Settle Down," each representing disparate music genres. The five tracks represent 20 percent of the game's artist stable, and each song has two remixes, all of which is played across backdrops ("the realms of Fantasia") meant to evoke the world of Fantasia. When we saw the game running last week in a New York City event space, it was on a PC with a first-gen Kinect and next-gen graphics -- a bit of a hybrid build of the game's two forms, which was an unfortunate byproduct of seeing an Xbox One game before Microsoft allows developers to show games running on next-gen hardware. Thusly, we can't say how much Microsoft's next-gen hardware impacts the experience of playing a Kinect game, and Harmonix reps weren't saying anything specific regarding major differences.

So far, we've covered the "Music Evolved" aspect, but what about the "Fantasia" bit? The experience of playing the game is synaesthetic, and meant to evoke the feeling of Fantasia's dreamlike world. We didn't glimpse any dancing hippos wearing tutus, but the interactive underwater aspect of the stage we saw ("The Shoal") offered some music instrument-inspired takes on sea life. There's also the concept of "tearing" through whatever realm you're in to access the songs you play, adding yet another layer of abstract detachment.

Rock Band creators team up with Disney for nextgen in 'Fantasia Music Evolved,' headed to Xbox One 360 in 2014

With no movie re-release tie-in on the horizon, Harmonix is being left (mostly) to its own devices with Fantasia: Music Evolved. Disney's offering its license, and finances to support the game's publishing, but is staying mostly hands-off. Even some of the game's remixes are being handled by in-house staffers at Harmonix, including the lead of one of the studio's other (unannounced) in-development projects. We're promised a hands-on with the game at E3 which will use Xbox One tech and the next-gen Kinect, so we'll circle back on Fantasia: Music Evolved next week at the big show. All that said, there was only one question left to ask -- will the classic Fantasia game for Sega Genesis be included, even as an Easter Egg?

"I am fighting for it," Harmonix director of communications and brand management John Drake told us. "It's one of the greatest games ever made. To get the last achievement in the [Xbox] game, you should have to play all the way through Fantasia in the credits, and I've been told that game's too hard. I'm still fighting for it, we'll see." We can only dream.

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