Saturday, June 14, 2008

Toshiba Qosmio G55 features SpursEngine, visual gesture controls


Looks like Toshiba's not too far out from a new Qosmio called the G55, which LAPTOP says is on sale next month for $1,550. Listed among the specs are an 18.4-inch (1680 x 945) display, Centrino 2 CPU, GeForce 9600M GT, 4GB of RAM, dual drives, and the "Quad Core HD processor" (probably the commercial name for the Cell-based SpursEngine), which powers many of the media functions, including its camera-based visual gesture control system. LAPTOP calls the gesture system groundbreaking, but we're clearly two sides to the same coin: the demo they gave looks cumbersome, inaccurate, and incredibly frustrating. And besides the fact that it requires "steady hands" and "can't be used by people with wrist problems," even if the gesture controls were well done, holding your arm in the air for minutes at a time is nowhere near a practical for regular use. Is it sad that we still kind of want it, though?

Analyst foresees PS3 gaining momentum, Xbox 360 price cut at E3


Things have been relatively quiet on the Xbox 360 price-cut front as of late, but EEDAR analyst Jesse Divnich has now thankfully come through and stirred the pot a bit, saying that he thinks Microsoft is set to make an announcement about a price cut at E3 this July. That, he says, would be in response to the PlayStation 3's steady growth, which he expects to continue to out pace the 360, aided in no small part by exclusive titles like Metal Gear Solid 4. As if that wasn't enough speculation for you, Divnich further goes on to say that if Microsoft does in fact cut the price of the 360, Sony would likely follow suit with a price cut of its own within two months.

TomTom speaks up about iPhone situation


As if the iPhone 3G launch could really have any more misinformation floating around, we've got yet another tidbit that needs clarification. Shortly after Apple's second iPhone was announced, out flew a report from Reuters suggesting that TomTom already had iPhone navigation software ready to go. French site Mac Generation was able to get ahold of TomTom spokesperson Yann Lafargue, and here's the gist of what he had to say. First off, the aforementioned Reuters statement was said to be inaccurate, though he did affirm that an iPhone version of the software was running in the labs and working "pretty well." Unfortunately, the question of "will you guys ship this for the iPhone?" was answered with a "We don't know" style response, but he did clarify that the questionable SDK verbiage we saw wasn't an obstacle at all. Check out the full interview in the read link below -- hope you're fluent in French and / or machine translation!

Nintendo sues Nyko over nunchucks, ninjas still silent


It looks like Nyko's nunchuck controllers for the Wii could possibly be getting a whole lot more limited, at least if a recently filed lawsuit plays out the way Nintendo would like. As Bloomberg reports, Nintendo is claiming that Nyko's wireless Kama nunchucks not only infringe on its trademarks for the Nunchuk name and packaging, but that they wholly appropriate the "novel shape, design, overall appearance and even the color and materials used in the Nintendo Nunchuk controller." For its part, Nyko is not surprisingly only saying that it has "not knowingly violated anyone's intellectual property," and that they're "still examining this."