- NTT

Background Music for 65Bits is courtesy of spinningmerkaba.

Stories in this episode:

1. Acer announces Aspire S5, ‘world’s thinnest ultrabook’ with Thunderbolt port
2. Intel announces over 75 ultrabook designs for 2012, partnership with Nuance for voice recognition
3. Intel Nikiski laptop prototype
4. Lenovo launches first Ice Cream Sandwich TV
5. Samsung and LG announce 55” OLED TVs.
6. Samsung ‘future-proofing’ Smart TVs with Evolution Kit
7. First LTE Windows Phone, the HTC Titan II
8. Nokia Lumia 900 LTE Windows Phone
9. Wireless LAN SD standard aims to give every SD card that Eye-Fi flair
10. Broadcom 802.11ac Wi-Fi chips hit CES 2012
11. MakerBot goes big with Replicator 3D printer
12. DBS Bank said that 400 customers have been victims of an ATM fraud scheme that has seen S$500,000 stolen from POSB and DBS accounts over the last two days
13. Fusion Garage files for liquidation, owes 40 millon to creditors

Hu Shunjie, Usergroup Manager for the Singapore Flex Usergroup

Hu Shunjie is the Usergroup Manager for the Singapore Flex Usergroup (FUG), a community with a common interest in Adobe Flex, Flash technology and Actionscript development, and organizes monthly meetings for the group. He currently works at Google as their Rich Media Specialist, managing innovations for Flah and HTML5 rich media campaign for Asia Pacific. Prior to that, he works as a Front-end developer for Seesmic, a company that produces social networking management tools for the web, desktop, and mobile devices.

Subhransu Behera, Senior Software Engineer, HCL Singapore Pte Ltd

Subhransu is a Senior Software Engineer at HCL Singapore Pte Ltd working on mobile application development. He has worked on a wide variety of IOS, Android and WebOS apps ranging from casual games to enterprise applications. Apart from mobile development, Subh is a passionate Ruby on Rails developer and is currently exploring SmartTV SDKs and building next generation TV apps. For more information, check out his blog at http://subhb.org/.

Hean Hong
Project Manager from Stream Media Pte.Ltd

Hean Hong graduated from Nanyang Technological University (Singapore) with a Bachelor Degree in Computer Science with (2nd class) Honor. Upon graduation, he has been working in CNET as a software engineer. His job scope includes development and maintenance of large Content Management System (CMS) for several countries (Southeast Asia, Japan, French, and UK). Multi-talented, Hean Hong is familiar with web, sever and mobile development, and has developed applications on the IPhone and Android. He is also one of the key pillars behind CodeAndroid Malaysia, and has outreached to developers in many technology and developer events. At Stream Media, he is in charge of managing projects and overseeing the whole project delivery.

Scene at Lenovo Code-a-Thon, Lounge area, coding area, food provided round the clock.

Coming up later, we interview the speakers who presented at the event. Watch this space.

Lenovo IdeaPad K1, a tablet weighing only 0.74 kg with HD display and dual camera. It also comes with more than 30 preloaded apps like Angry Birds, full-version of Documents to go and many more.

Lenovo IdeaPad K1 Wifi version is already available retailing at S$699 and 3G version will be available soon in end of September 2011 retailing at S$799.

Check out the first look video for more insights.

Lenovo staff, Keith Liu, brings us around their Lenovo’s latest product, the ThinkPad Tablet.

Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet is their first business-class tablet, designed as a companion computing device for professionals on the go. It includes a digitizer pen, a full-size SD card slot, and mini-HDMI for connecting to external projectors and displays.

At its core, it is powered with 1.0Ghz NVIDIA Tegra 2 dual-core ARM processor with 1GB of memory. It offers a choice of storage from 16GB, 32GB or 64GB. They all come with 10.1″ WXGA (1280×8000, 16:10 display format, IPS Technology with wide viewing angle and Corning Gorilla Glass. While 3G connection is optional, the rest of the connectivity points include Bluetooth 4.0 and 802.11b/g/n WiFi. At its side, you can get a 3 in 1 card reader (SD, SDHC, MMC), One Mini HDMI connector, One USB 2.90, One Micro-USB port, One dock connector, microphone/headphone combo and SIM card slot.

There is a front-facing camera and rear-facing having resolutions of 2.0 megapixels and 5.0 megapixels, respectively. A Digitizer Pen is an optional item which fits in the ThinkPad Tablet pen storage slot. It weigh 725gm for WiFi and 730gm for WiFi+3G. With WiFi, the battery is expected to last up to 8 hours. When 3G is enabled, it is expected to last up to 7 hours.

The Lenovo ThinkPad Tablet runs on Android 3.1 Honeycomb Operating System

Results of RapidDrive Technology

Here are the visible results of this RapidDrive Technology, taken from the Lenovo Blogs - Inside the Box. Pictured are two Y560 systems.  The one of the left has RapidDrive.  The one on the right has a standard HDD.  Otherwise, both are identically configured.  A simple script shows loading a series of programs and how much extra speed the RapidDrive can provide.

As you can see, the system with the RapidDrive finishes in about 13 seconds, but the system without takes almost 30 seconds. This is about up to 66% increase in speed.

How does RapidDrive Technology work?

I’m sure you can find many places that tells you how this RapidDrive technology will benefit you as a consumer. That’s not my purpose in writing this article. I want to understand how this RapidDrive technology works, and how it can potentially be different from other hybrid technologies that tries to do the same.

Currently the configuration is as follows: Lenovo Y460 and Y560 will offer SSD options of 32 gig and 64 gig alongside with a 500 gig HDD option (configurations might vary). The SSD will be using a PCI-E internal expansion connector, and the HDD will be connected using the normal SATA connection. When you view the physical storage on Windows 7, you will only see 1 seamless partition for both drives instead of 2 separate partitions for each drive. This means that you don’t have to worry about where to put your files, be it SSD or HDD, this RapidDrive technology will decide for you.

Where are files stored in the SSD?

Based on Lenovo’s current software design, all the key files required for PC boot up and large calculation (paging files) will be stored on the SSD. By storing the key OS files on the SSD, Lenovo PCs enable more enhanced performance overall, even if the SSD is filled and data is being store on HDD. Windows 7 system files and the paging file is located on the SSD which takes up the first 15 to 17 gigs of the total SSD drive. That leaves about 15 gigs remaining on the 32 gig SSD drive, or 47 gigs remaining on the 64 gig SSD drive.

What happens after the SSD gets filled up?

Currently the software is designed to store files first on SSD then HDD after the SSD storage is filled. But the core system files and paging files (for virtual memory usage) are stored on the SSD in order to achieve an overall enhancement on performance. This is only the first stage in their software development and Lenovo will continue to improve the system capability in terms of intelligent loading depending on file size and usage.

So where is my System Recovery partition located?

The system recovery partition is hidden in the last partition of the HDD, which is not part of the combined SSD and HHD of the large C Partition. So the user just needs to use Lenovo’s “OneKey Rescue System” to restore their entire system and will not require special system tasks compared to non-RapidDrive systems. Users can still customize their partition if they choose to, but to maximize RapidDrive performance, the OS and necessary system files should be hosted on the C partition to benefit from the faster performance of the SSD.

Can I install another OS and/or repartition my drives?

The system does enable user to customize their partition as they choose to, however, changing the standard setup of the system, such as installing dual OS will affect the performance consistency of RapidDrive and security of your data.

Does this RapidDrive technology only work on Windows 7?

Currently, only Windows 7 “Enhanced Experience” by Lenovo is supported.

Summary

So there you have it. Lenovo has taken up the mantle from IBM and continued to innovate their PC brand, not only providing the ultimate hardware experience, but also new ways to bring more value to consumers with their software “Enhanced Experience”. I hope that answers most of your questions about RapidDrive technology because those questions were exactly what I wanted to know. Special thanks to Derrick Koh, Lenovo’s communications manager for the ASEAN region, for providing me with the answers.

Today, we take a look at the first 16" notebook we've come across. This portable (as in, you can carry it around portable, not netbook portable) home-theatre-centric machine is, after the Intel Core i7 rig, the biggest machine we've featured on Gear65.

Link: Lenovo Ideapad Y650

This week we take a look at the ThinkPad X200. In an age where companies are trying to add as much as they can into their products, Lenovo decided to omit some common features, while still maintaining the strenghts of the original ThinkPads.

Link: Lenovo ThinkPad X series

We take a quick look at Lenovo’s netbook, the Ideapad S10, and find out what Lenovo has to offer to convince others to choose their netbook in this already over-crowded netbook market.

Featuring Daniel, Nicole and DK

[2:15]‘Curse of Silence’ exploit squelches inbound SMS/MMS to Nokia S60 devices

[8:40]IDA proposes shorter telco deals

[12:45]Meet the Ophone from Lenovo

[16:40]Macworld 2009 Preview

[24:45]CES 2009 Preview

[24:55]Palm to come up with a new OS, Palm Nova.

[27:50]Sony to launch a new Netbook, the Viao P series.

[32:10]Creative Zii

[40:20]Byte of The Week: Google Sites

Join the fighters as they tell the tales of their adventures in the world of technology this week…

-Fei Long, Dhalsim and Ryu

Stories this week :

[1:00]Samsung Flagship Store in Singapore.
- Shoutout to Daniel Goh.

[5:45]Dell launches the Inspiron Mini

[10:23]Lenovo’s Blogger’s Night in Singapore
- Lenovo U110

[18:20]Apple event on the 7th Sepember.

[30:49]Google launches a browser, Google Chrome.

[38:37]Byte of the Week : Ping.fm

This week’s episode with only two men and no booze, comes with much news, such as that of Microsoft losing interest in its hot fling, Yahoo. Expensive and yet totally desirable tech from Lenovo, HTC and Apple shows up on our desks and we cannot help but drool all over our keyboards. We are also in awe of Robots and Local researchers that bring us good tidings. Tis a great time to be alive, and geeking out before we die of too much American junk food.

We Love YOU GTAIV,
Niko Bellic and Roman Bellic.

Stories this Week :

Microsoft Withdraws Its Bid for Yahoo – New York Times

Final specifications for Lenovo’s IdeaPad U110 revealed – Engadget

HTC Touch Diamond – Engadget

10 More Countries to get the iPhone – Gizmodo

Creative could pay class-action settlement over exaggerated MP3 capacities – Engadget

Singapore researchers removed the last obstacle on the OLED way | TheTopBlog

Bentley Unveils Electric Greenpower

Byte of The Week : LogMeIn

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