A Place in the Sun for Apple’s MacBook

By STEPHEN WILLIAMS

Pay your money and take your choice: a solar-powered battery charger for an Apple MacBook for $1,200; or a new Apple MacBook for $200 less.

A Kansas company called QuickerTek has just announced the Apple “Juicz,” for those who just can’t find an AC outlet nearby, but can find the sun (the company claims someone took a Mac and a Juicz on a visit to Mount Everest and it worked well—closer to the sun, I guess).

The $1,200 lightweight, flexible panel puts out 55 watts and supposedly fully recharges just about any current Apple laptop in six hours, plugging into the Magsafe port. A bargain model for $700 has 27 watts and takes about twice as long to recharge the MacBook.

It’s a serious device, but at this price, one would have to be either committed to going green full time, or just committed. After all, AC outlets are…well, ubiquitous. As one reviewer noted, $1,200 could buy one heck of an extension cord.

Article Sourc :http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/03/a-place-in-the-sun-for-apples-macbook/

Dell Adds Firepower to Its Workstation Line

By STEPHEN WILLIAMS

With netbooks and ever-slimmer notebook computers attracting the lion’s share of consumers’ attention this holiday, Dell apparently believes there’s still room for workhorse PCs, even if — at about nine pounds — they defy current fashion. Enter the Precision M6500 “mobile workstation.”

Workstations are just that: monster-spec machines made for high-performance and powerhouse applications (although it still runs user-friendly Microsoft’s Windows 7, among other operating systems). Dell’s just-released package, priced to start at $2,750, is structured around an advanced Intel Core i7 quad-core processor — among the first mobile PCs to use that chip — and a 17-inch, 1920-by-1200 LED-lighted screen. There’s a gaudier variation, the Covet, in hot copper orange ($4,220), that makes the Apple MacBook Pro look like the Fisher Price version.

While the base version is loaded with only 2 gigabytes of memory — not nearly enough for a computer with this potential — it will accommodate up to 16 gigs in four memory slots, a feature normally found on desktops, not on laptops. The nine-cell battery should run strong, although its life on the road depends on how the PC is configured. The M6500 began shipping on Dec. 1.

Article Sourch :http://gadgetwise.blogs.nytimes.com/2009/12/02/dell-adds-firepower-to-its-workstation-line/