Razer has managed to sell out of pre-orders of the Blade Gaming Laptop within 30 minutes of the page going live. The new gaming laptop has a hefty price tag of $2,800 although that didn't seem to prevent buyers snapping one up.
Laptops
It was a big day for Apple yesterday and certainly a day where an industry is shaken up a little. As well as launching iBooks 2 with Textbooks and iBooks Author for the Mac, Apple also launched iTunes U for the iPhone and iPad. The app follows along with iTunes U that has been available in iTunes on the Mac or PC for a while, but allows you to sync your notes, courses and content between devices so that you can study whilst on the move.
Before I begin I'll just comment that this needs to be taken with a pinch of salt as it contains an iPad 3 (or 2S) rumour.
A case manufacturer has created a new case that has been designed for an iPad 2S. The company believes that the new iPad will be a small update similar to that of the iPhone 4 to 4S. The main difference with dimensions will be that it is slightly thicker as previously rumoured.
iConvert is a dock for the iPad that has a scanner built in. The dock has a feeder tray that allows paper to be fed through a document scanner. When an iPad is docked with the scanner, you can load up an app and any data scanned can be captured and then sent direct to the app running on the iPad.
An interesting story has revealed that some fake iPads were sold by some major Canadian retailers. What was actually sold was a lump of clay which was put in an official iPad 2 box which was then professionally sealed. It is believed that about 24 of them were sold this way.
Now that iOS 5.1 Beta 3 has been seeded to developers, we are now seeing reports and hints at what could be included in future updates. One of the first discoveries is that the iPad and perhaps the iPod touch could be getting some form of Siri.
We've already had confirmation that the new Asus Transformer Prime will be getting the Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich update. This is of course happening on the 12th January (this week!). For those with the older generation device, the Asus Transformer, you'll also be getting the update this week.
Lenovo has launched a new tablet called the Lenovo IdeaTab S2. The device measures just 8.69mm thick and comes with a 10 inch display. The operating system running on the S2 is Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich.
The keyboard is an extra which adds a little thickness to the tablet. In a similar way to the Transformer Prime, the S2 keyboard allows the tablet portion to be docked so it can be used more like a laptop for data entry.
The beta of iOS 5.1 has some indications that the next iPad and iPhone will run a quad-core processor. That particular processor is expected to be an Apple A6 provided by Samsung. Although a quad-core chip is not really a surprise, what is good to see is that the iOS 5.1 beta has references to such a processor.
Jeremy Horowitz of iLounge has commented on Twitter that the iPad 2 will continue to live on after the iPad 3 has launched. This is no real surprise. He also comments that the iPad 3 will be 1mm thicker to incorporate an iPhone 4S like 8 megapixel camera and lens system.
Samsung has made the Series 5 Ultrabook available for pre-order in the US. The new ultrabooks have price tags of $899.99 and $949.99.
Two models are available for pre-order with one having a 13 inch screen and the other with a 13.3 inch screen.
Digitimes is reporting that there will be two new iPad models launched this year. When they say two models, they don't just mean black and white or 3G vs non-3G. They actually mean that a second and cheaper iPad will be launched to target the mid-range price of $299. The main difference will be that the high-end model which is priced around that of the current iPad 2 will have a higher resolution screen. Both the high-end and mid-range models will use the Apple A6 processor.
