People prone to putting their laptops in precarious situations (such as dropping it into water, or onto concrete) may want to consider getting one of NEC's ShieldPRO tablet PC. It's rugged build promises to offer some resistance against water, dust, and other harm that may befall the poor laptop. More details in the full article.

 

Sony and NEC Corporation released, simultaneously but separately, the other day a new line of computers that carry Hybrid HDD. For the uninitiated, these are new kinds of hard disk drives employing large buffer of non-volatile flash memory.

Sony's VAIO Type F was released yesterday while NEC's LaVie C came out the day before that in Japan. Like we said, both carry hybrid HDD that give users the following advantages: speed increase, decrease of power consumption, improved reliability and lifespan, faster boot process, and less noises.

The following features are available for the high-end units of both lines:

• Sony VAIO Type F (FZ71)
• 15.4 inches monitor
• GeForce 8400M GT
• Wi-Fi A/B/G/N
• 200GB of Hybrid HDD (256MB of Flash)
• 1 to 4GB RAM
• Core 2 Duo T7250 at 2GHz (BTO up to 2.8GHz)
• Webcam
• HDMI, Blu-ray drive
  

• NEC LaVie C (LC950/KC)
• Face Pass: face recognition system that lets users log on into the computer once they show up  their face to the computer web camera
• Blu-ray disc drive (read only)
• HDMI output for HD Video
• Hybrid HDD of 160GB with Flash Memory (256MB)

If you thought that Ms. Hilton's pink Nintendo DS covered in glittering crystals was a bit excessive, then this might entertain you. An Associated Press report reveals that NEC has recently released a pink laptop, and the said laptop is covered in crystals in the shape of Hello Kitty.

It's called the La Vie G Hello Kitty laptop, and it uses around 299 Swarovski crystals shaped into four hearts and Sanrio's Hello Kitty, and comes complete with a pink bow and crown. Given the bling and the price tag, this is obviously inline with NEC's attempt to capture that demographic comprised of high-paid working women.

The laptop itself comes with the fashionable Windows Vista, a 100GB HDD, and 1GB of memory.

The product is reportedly set to target the summertime season in Japan where professionals get twice-a-year bonuses and have some extra spending money to go around.

The La Vie G Hello Kitty laptop retails for around US$ 1,650, and can only be grabbed by ordering on the Internet.

International market research and market data company Research and Markets just announced that it has added "The Market for Portable Video Games" in its huge roster of studies. If you are not familiar with this company, you can actually think of it as a one-stop shop for market research reports and industry newsletters.

Anyway, like we said, a new report has been published that tackles the market for portable game systems. The study itself contains a detailed five-year forecast for each platform. Aside from that, the study also discusses the potential impact of yet-to-be released gadgets.

Aside from the above mentioned, a sub-report has been attached to the study that concerns the mobile game market and you can get a lot of insights from it given the round table discussion with leading players and visionaries in the mobile game space. The companies included in the study are:

• Atari (Atari Lynx)
• Bandai (Bandai Wonderswan)
• NEC (NEC Turboexpress)
• Nintendo (Game Boy, Virtual Boy, Game Boy Advance and Nintendo Ds)
• Nokia (Nokia N-Gage)
• Sega (Sega Game Gear and Sega Nomad)
• SNK (SNK Neo Geo Pocket Color)
• Sony (Sony PSP)
• Tiger (Tiger Gamecom and Tiger Telematics Gizmondo)

Quite interestingly, the study also gives a detailed history of the portable game market as well as an overview of failed systems. Video game genres were also discussed aside from complete business models for third-party software sales broken down by platform.

Refer to the Read link below for more details and how you can get the study.

Despite reports that the three prime consumer electronics giants will be working on next-generation, cutting-edge chips by 2010, Sony, Toshiba and NEC Electronics have all denied such claims. In fact, only Toshiba and NEC Electronics are attempting to renew the chip development alliance, and have left Sony out of the talks.

For the next line of 45nm chips for consumer electronics, Sony will be going their own separate way. "We have no intention of joint production. We make products ourselves, and if our capacity is not sufficient, we can turn to outside suppliers," a Sony representative said.

Next-generation development of smaller and more intricate chips require deeper pockets as development costs and upgraded facilities require more financial resources than usual.

Only experienced and money-burning giants, such as Intel and IBM, have every ability to develop next-generation chips without outside help. Whether or not this has any effect on the STI alliance (Sony Computer Entertainment, Toshiba, and IBM) for the Cell BE, Sony consumers will just have to wait and see.

Meanwhile, Intel has already been successful with a next-gen, 45nm-prototype of the Core 2 Duo processor ("Penryn"), and plans to mass produce a 32nm, 80-core processor ("Westmere") by around 2009.

Most concept phones are never mass-produced because they are either too expensive to make or they are too outrageously designed that you would want it more as a house decor or something. Just look at the promising-looking yet farfetched Nokia Open Phone. Anyhow, Nokia is of course not alone in the concept phone department as NEC is also strutting their cool concept phone.

The NEC farfetched mobile contraption is simply called "tag". tag is a malleable and casual communicator. It is soft and flexible and could be attached on a belt or the user's arm. How can it do that? Thanks to the almost-magical shape memorizing material that will remain a secret and multiple pressure sensors, it could shape-shift according to the mode. The user can also alternate the mode by the changing the shape.

Cool concept, just don't lose some sleep over waiting for this one. We'll tell you right now, it is going to be one helluva long wait until you see them in stores.