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All this CES coverage makes you just want to hear about a different event, doesn’t it? Well, if the more music tech inclined among you are looking forward to the NAMM trade show in one week’s time, keep an eye out for the Rain Computers booth. They will be showing off their new LiveBook Studio laptop and ION Studio rackmount unit, both geared for audio and video editing, and both with plenty of power under the hood.

Not a whole lot separates the LiveBook Studio from any other high end notebook. Different configurations are available, but all include some form of quad-core Intel i7 processor, nVidia GTS 250M video card, and DDR3 RAM. They run anywhere between $1799 and $2099.

The rackmounted ION Studio however, is a force to be reckoned with. The chassis takes up 4 standard audio rack spaces (each being 19″ across). Inside you’ll find the same Intel i7 processor, up to 16GB of DDR3 RAM, whatever video card ocnfiguration you could possibly wish, and in a bit of an odd move, a Windows OS. Albeit, a Windows OS optimized by Rain for A/V work, but I’m not completely sure exactly what that means. Mac OS has long been the operating system of choice for “artsy” folk, but Rain seems to be making a push for Windows users.

The connectivity of this unit is absolutely ridiculous. 10 USB 2.0 ports, 5 FireWire ports, an eSATA port, and 5 PCIe slots. Ah yes, also 1 PCI-X slot. There won’t be a configuration of Pro Tools HD or UAD cards that this beast can’t handle. My current recording setup is a Presonus FireStudio running through a Glyph HDD into my MacBook Pro on a single FireWire 800 port. So if anyone at Rain wants to send me a test unit, I would be most obliged. You can find the ION starting at $2499.

You know that thing about robots eventually taking over the world? Or computers? Or robots with computers in them and at first you’re like, “Hey cool, I’m friends with a robot and we play Scrabble together because he has a computer in him,” but after a while the robot gets all moody and you start to notice stuff missing from your room and all of a sudden the robot is, like, locking you out of your house and punching you in the upper arm for no reason? Maybe that robot would have one of these VIA Mobile-ITX boards in it. It’s small, is what I’m saying.

And sure enough, it seems that VIA has indeed already kowtowed to our soon-to-be robot overlords, as evidenced by this quip in the company’s press release:

“Mobile-ITX offers system designers a more compact, flexible and feature rich solution for a range of device designs and is especially suited for next-generation, ultra-compact applications in military, medical, robotics and transportation segments.”

Robotics, eh? I’m going to move in with that cave guy until this blows over. Before I leave, though, I’d be remiss if I didn’t list some of the features of the Mobile-ITX platform:

• Board size: 6cm by 6cm (2.36 inches by 2.36 inches)
• “Support for complete range of I/O standards including USB, CRT, TTL LCD, PCIe, SPI, LPC, Video capture (or COM), SDIO, IDE, PS/2, SMB, GPIO, Audio, DVI, LVDS (by Transmitter).”
• Low power consumption, 12-watt power supply, fanless design

It’d be nice to see this spill over into the consumer sector, though the importance of mere trinkets and gadgets seems greatly diminished when you’ve got robots after you.

VIA Mobile-ITX Form Factor [VIA.com.tw]

Simply put: You’ll have to rely on expensive “solutions” which create more problems than they solve.

Courtesy Village Tronic

A review of the Village Tronic ViBook mysteriously calls the USB graphics extender “a good option” for those who want to power a secondary display with their PC, laptop, or netbook. To the reviewer’s credit though, he realizes that there are ways to do this for less than the ViBook’s $129 price, including just getting a PCI or PCIe graphics card for a desktop.

It’s clear that the ViBook is perfect for owners of portable computers that don’t feature VGA-out, specifically netbooks like the HP Mini 1000. Unfortunately, like other USB graphics extenders, Village Tronic’s product is very demanding on the CPU. Granted, some netbook processors are powerful enough to handle the load—which, according to the review, can go as high as 95% on a Core 2 Duo laptop. But guess what a constantly high load does for battery life? (Answer: cut it down significantly)

These realities limit the ViBook to a very niche market—netbooks that don’t support an extra monitor out-of-the-box—and makes it an impractical solution for even this market, as a USB graphics extender would put too much strain on a netbook’s limited capabilites. In short, just avoid all the trouble, and support netbooks that come with its own VGA-out port. Nothing sends a better message to manufacturers than ignoring portables that require you to purchase a separate adapter just to get it working with a second display or projector.

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Post from: The Gadget Blog