The European Commission has announced its intent to enact legislation that would mandate all consumer electronic devices sold in the European market within certain categories have a USB-C port for charging.
Should the new rules be enacted, they would make it illegal to sell consumer electronic devices that lack that port. The law would apply to smartphones, portable video game consoles, portable speakers, cameras, and some types of headphones—but it would not apply to devices that only use wireless charging.
The legislation also would not prevent devices from having additional ports for charging, as long as they also have a USB-C charging port.
Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop Studio is an unusual-looking convertible notebook. Sure, you can use it as a laptop or tablet, but its display doesn’t rotate 360 degrees until it’s behind the keyboard. Instead you pull the screen forward. Pull part way and you’ve got an easel that you can use to create digital artwork. Keep pulling […]
Microsoft’s new Surface Laptop Studio is an unusual-looking convertible notebook. Sure, you can use it as a laptop or tablet, but its display doesn’t rotate 360 degrees until it’s behind the keyboard. Instead you pull the screen forward. Pull part way and you’ve got an easel that you can use to create digital artwork. Keep pulling and you can push the screen flat for use in tablet mode.
But when Microsoft introduced the Surface Laptop Studio this week, it wasn’t the first company to release a laptop with this sort of easel-style hinge. In fact, they’ve been a thing for over a decade, and at least a handful of different companies have made use of the design, although perhaps none more so than Acer.
Here’s a brief history of easel-style notebooks:
Flybook VM (2007)
A now-defunct PC maker called Flybook launched one of the earliest laptops with an easel-like hinge. The Flybook VM was a 3.5 pound notebook with an 11.5 inch display and an Intel COre 2 Duo processor.
Unlike most laptops, the Flybook VM had a display that was raised up high over the keyboard for a more desktop-like viewing angle thanks to an extended hinge. But it wasn’t designed for artists, but rather “jet-setting business professionals” looking for a computer that could comfortably fit on a tray table.
The unusual display, which tilted forward over the keyboard, meant that there was more space for typing on the go, and you could also bring the screen closer to your eyes when watching videos on a plane.
Acer Aspire R7 (2013)
More than 8 years ago, Acer introduced this notebook with what it called an “Ezel” hinge and display. This 15.6 inch notebook may have been the first true convertible tablet with this sort of design, allowing you to use the computer in laptop, tablet, “ezel” or display modes (that last one is what you get if you flip the screen over so that it faces away from the keyboard.
For some reason Acer thought it was a good idea to put the touchpad above the keyboard, where it’s completely inaccessible in laptop mode, meaning you could only use it in ezel mode on this notebook.
Weighing about 5.5 pounds and selling for $1,000 and up at the time, the Aspire R7 was just the first in a line of models from Acer to feature this sort of hinge.
The company referred to the Sony VAIO Duo 13 as a “slider hybrid PC” with a screen that could slide forward to and over the keyboard for use in tablet mode. But it wasn’t really designed to be held stationary in easel mode.
Sony Vaio Flip 15 (PCMag)
Sony also introduced the Vaio Flip PC the same year. This series of laptops, available with 13.3 inch, 14 inch, or 15.6 inch displays, also had displays that could be pulled forward to cover the keyboard, but you could also flip the screens so they face away from the keyboard for use in presentation mode.
When the displays were slid partway forward, the Vaio Duo and Flip laptops looked a lot like they had easel-style hinges. But since you couldn’t actually hold the display firmly in that position, they weren’t truly the same kind of easel-style notebooks as most others on this list.
Acer Aspire R13 (2014 – 2015)
The following year Acer introduced the Acer Aspire R13, a smaller laptop with a 13.3 inch touchscreen display, pen support, and an “Ezel Aero” hinge that supported both flipping the screen around 360 degrees and bringing the screen forward like an easel.
That means this 3.5 pound notebook supported notebook, tablet, tent, or stand modes as well as an easel and display modes.
Available with up to a 2560 x 1440 pixel IPS LCD touchscreen display, the Acer Aspire R13 sold for $899 and up when it went on sale in 2014. Acer released upgraded models with newer, more powerful processors the following year.
Acer ConceptD 9 (2019)
A few years ago Acer decided to get serious about the content creation market with a series of ConceptD laptops and desktops aimed at creative professionals. The first models included a 9 pound ConceptD 9 notebook with a 17.3 inch 4K display and an easel-style hinge that can be pulled forward.
With support for a Wacom EMR stylus, up to an Intel Core i9 processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 2080 graphics, and 32GB of RAM, this was the most powerful laptop of its type at launch. It was also one of the most expensive, with prices starting at around $5,000.
Acer ConceptD 3 Ezel (2020 – ??)
The following year, Acer introduced the ConceptD 3 Ezel, a smaller, more affordable laptop with an Ezel hinge, support for up to an Intel Core i7-10750H processor, NVIDIA GeForce RTX 1650 graphics, and 16GB of RAM.
Acer ConceptD Ezel (14 inch)Available with 14 or 15.6 inch displays, these laptops are still available, with list prices starting at around $1500, although they’re occasionally on sale for less.
Earlier this year Acer also unveiled the ConceptD 3 Ezel Pro, with up to an Intel Core i7 Tiger Lake-H processor and NVIDiA RTX 3050 Ti or NVIDIA T1200 graphics. It’s set to launch in North America in December for $1600 and up.
The first version was available with up to an Intel Core H-series processor and NVIDIA RTX graphics for $2700 and up, or in a ConceptD7 Ezel Pro version with an Intel Xeon processor and up to NVIDIA Quadro RTX 5000 graphics, with prices starting at $3100.
Both models were 5.5 pound notebooks featuring 4K IPS touchscreen displays, support for Wacom EMR pens and up to 32GB of RAM.
In mid-2021, Acer introduced upgraded models that are expected to be available later this year for $2500 and up.
ConceptD 7 Ezel
The 2021 models are available with up to an Intel Core i7-11800H processor and NVIDIA GeForce RTX 3080 graphics or up to an Intel Xeon W-11955M processor and RTX A5000 graphics for the Pro version.
Weighing just 2.85 pounds and measuring 11.8″ x 9″ x 0.6″, this convertible notebook/tablet/easel hybrid might be the smallest to date, but it still has a reasonably large 13.5 inch, 1920 x 1280 pixel touchscreen display and support for a Wacom AES pen.
One reason the HP Elite Folio can be so thin and light? It has a Qualcomm Snapdragon 8cx 5G processor rather than an Intel or AMD chip. Qualcomm’s ARM-based processors typically consume less power and generate less heat than x86 processors. As the name of this chip suggests, the Elite Folio can also connect to 5G cellular networks.
That said, Windows 10 on ARM is still a bit of a work in progress, so not all apps or features will run as well as they do on computers with x86 chips.
Ein führender Vertreter des Bundesverkehrsministeriums erklärt die Open-RAN-Förderung der Regierung und verwickelt sich dabei in Widersprüche. (Open RAN, Huawei)
Ein führender Vertreter des Bundesverkehrsministeriums erklärt die Open-RAN-Förderung der Regierung und verwickelt sich dabei in Widersprüche. (Open RAN, Huawei)
The semiconductor chip shortage that has so vexed the auto industry looks set to continue for quite some time, according to a new industry survey. More than half of the companies that were surveyed by IPC said they expected the shortage to last until at least the second half of 2022. And right now, the chip shortage is being exacerbated by rising costs and a shortage of workers.
According to the survey, 80 percent of chip makers say that it's become hard to find workers who have to be specially trained to handle the highly toxic compounds used in semiconductor manufacturing. The problem is worse in North America and in Asia, where more companies are reporting rising labor costs compared to those in Europe.
But only a third of Asian chip makers say they are finding it harder to find qualified workers, compared to 67 percent of North American companies and 63 percent of European companies. That may well explain why fewer Asian semiconductor companies (42 percent) are reporting increasing order backlogs, compared to 65 percent of North American and 60 percent of European companies.
Since this review starts with a heavy-handed intro, this gallery focuses on the remastered CGI cutscenes included in the package. Click through this review's additional pages to see screens from live gameplay. [credit:
Blizzard
]
Where do I even start with Diablo II: Resurrected? Unfortunately for its creators at Blizzard and developers at Vicarious Visions, the answer isn't "the game."
We have to hash some other stuff out first, and I appreciate your patience with this, because no review of Diablo II: Resurrected is complete without an explainer like this at the outset. (Should you not need the refresher on Activision Blizzard's recent woes, skip to the section titled "Delivering good work in a bad era" and start there.)
Setup can’t synthesize complete meals like the Star Trek Replicator, but it’s a start
Creative Machines Lab at Columbia Engineering have developed a system of software-controlled lasers to cook food with precision, retain moisture with the final-cooked product, brown food within its original packaging, and create an entirely new meal creation process for a consumer.
Who hasn't dreamt of coming home after a long day and simply pressing a few buttons to get a hot, home-cooked 3D-printed meal, courtesy of one's digital personal chef? It might make microwaves and conventional frozen TV dinners obsolete. Engineers at Columbia University are trying to make that fantasy a reality, and they've now figured out how to simultaneously 3D print and cook layers of pureed chicken, according to a recent paper published in the journal npj Science of Food. Sure, it's not on the same level as the Star Trek Replicator, which could synthesize complete meals on demand, but it's a start.
Co-author Hob Lipson runs the Creative Machines Lab at Columbia University, where the research was conducted. His team first introduced 3D printing of food items back in 2007, using the Fab@Home personal fabrication system to create multi-material edible 3D objects with cake frosting, chocolate, processed cheese, and peanut butter. However, commercial appliances capable of simultaneously printing and cooking food layers don't exist yet. There have been some studies investigating how to cook food using lasers, and Lipson's team thought this might be a promising avenue to explore further.
“We noted that, while printers can produce ingredients to a millimeter-precision, there is no heating method with this same degree of resolution,” said co-author Jonathan Blutinger. “Cooking is essential for nutrition, flavor, and texture development in many foods, and we wondered if we could develop a method with lasers to precisely control these attributes.” They used a blue diode laser (5-10 W) as the primary heating source but also experimented with lasers in the near- and mid-infrared for comparison, as well as a conventional toaster oven.
Im Wahlkampf-Endspurt bekommt der Ex-Geheimdienstchef und CDU-Kandidat Schützenhilfe von der AfD – und kritisiert den Umgang seiner früheren Behörde mit der ultrarechten Partei
Im Wahlkampf-Endspurt bekommt der Ex-Geheimdienstchef und CDU-Kandidat Schützenhilfe von der AfD - und kritisiert den Umgang seiner früheren Behörde mit der ultrarechten Partei
“I thought all along that we were doing it on Theranos’ gear,” Mattis said.
Elizabeth Holmes speaking at the Fortune Global Forum in 2015, around the time Theranos was under increasing pressure to deliver results from its ill-fated Edison testing device. (credit: Fortune Global Forum)
James Mattis, the retired general and former defense secretary, took the stand yesterday in the criminal trial of Elizabeth Holmes, detailing how his faith in the company plummeted when a Wall Street Journal expose revealed that Theranos had been performing tests on third-party equipment.
“There just came a point where I didn’t know what to believe about Theranos anymore,” he said.
When Mattis first met Holmes in 2011 in San Francisco, he was taken by her vision and believed it could become a critical tool for the military. Later, she gave him a private demonstration, pricking his finger and showing him the company’s Edison device.
Ein führender Vertreter des Bundesverkehrsministeriums erklärt die Open-RAN-Förderung der Regierung und verwickelt sich dabei in Widersprüche. (
Was am 23. September 2021 neben den großen Meldungen sonst noch passiert ist, in aller Kürze. (
In einem FAQ hat Valve Nutzerfragen zum Steam Deck beantwortet. Derzeit erhalten Entwickler erste Prototypen. (
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