Archives for the day Wednesday, November 7th, 2007


Manufactum, the same company who apparently produces a totally sensational espresso machine, is offering up something a bit different with the Manuscriptum. Not vastly unlike many of the diminutive alternatives already out there, this two-pound PC gets stuffed with a 500MHz AMD Geode LX800 processor, an 80GB hard drive, up to 1GB of RAM and a motherboard that handles four USB 2.0 ports, VGA / serial connectors, dual Ethernet jacks and audio out. Additionally, this little fella is passively cooled and sucks down just 12-watts of power when in operation. As for the OS, you’ll find Debian Linux loaded on, and it also ships with OpenOffice, Foxit PDF Reader and Firefox to keep you busy right from the get-go. In the aforementioned configuration, the Manuscriptum will run you €449 ($650), but it sounds like you can pony up even more if you’re craving a customized rig complete with a 32GB SSD.

YoTank has introduced its iTank Nano 3 aluminum case for iPod nano (with video) and the PhoneTank aluminum case for iPhone. Both cases are machined from solid aluminum, and come as 2 pieces that are held together by screws. Features include felt interior lining, access to the nano’s Click Wheel, headphone jack, Dock Connector, and hold switch, access to the iPhone’s touch screen, buttons, and headphone jack, and 2 extra screws and an allen…


Although HP’s beastly xw8600 / xw6600 machines don’t yet have a definitive ship date, it’s looking like the duo will indeed be sporting a couple of Intel’s forthcoming Penryn chips. Judging by the specifications list on HP’s website, each workstation can be equipped with two of many Xeon 5200 (dual-core) or Xeon 5400 (quad-core) processors ranging from 1.86GHz to 3.33GHz. Additionally, the xw6600 features up to 32GB of DDR2 RAM, an internal DVD burner, a number of PCI / PCIe slots, seven USB 2.0 ports, FireWire, audio in / out, gigabit Ethernet, your choice of NVIDIA Quadro / ATI FireGL graphics cards and a 650-watt power supply to boot. As for the xw8600, it steps things up by supporting as much as 128GB of DDR2 RAM, making room for a few more 3.5- / 5.25-inch drives and PCI cards, and throwing in a more robust PSU. Not surprisingly, there are no pricing details available at the moment, but if we were bent over a barrel and forced to guess when we’d know more, we’d shoot for November 12th.