NVIDIA today brings its next-generation NVIDIA Kepler graphics architecture to the top of the GeForce notebook GPU lineup, with the launch of the NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M. The fastest, most advanced gaming notebook GPU ever built, the GTX 680M GPU delivers unprecedented performance, incredible power efficiency and the world's most advanced gaming technology.

"The GeForce GTX 680M is the fastest mobile GPU ever, but it's more than just a speed king," said Rene Haas, vice president and general manager of the notebook business unit at NVIDIA. "It also offers an entire arsenal of next-gen gaming technology, along with Optimus technology for extended battery life."

GeForce 600M Series GPUs are built for superior performance and power efficiency. Only GeForce GPUs offer:

• Adaptive V-sync - newly developed technology for a smoother gameplay experience
• Advanced AA modes - for crisper images, including NVIDIA FXAA and new TXAA
• NVIDIA Optimus technology - enabling extra-long battery life by automatically switching on the GPU only when it is needed
• NVIDIA PhysX support - for accelerated in-game physics
• NVIDIA 3D Vision 2 technology - for bigger, brighter, more comfortable 3D gaming
• NVIDIA 3DTV Play software - for connecting notebooks to 3DTVs for the most immersive gaming experience to be had in a living room
• High-performance NVIDIA Verde notebook drivers - offering day one game support and maximum compatibility
• NVIDIA SLI technology - make the fastest notebook GPU even faster with up to double the gaming performance
• NVIDIA CUDA technology support - for high-performance GPU computing applications

"The intense focus on performance and technology engineered into the 2GB GDDR5 NVIDIA GeForce GTX 680M is a perfect match for the Alienware M17x and M18x laptops," said Frank Azor, Alienware General Manager. "Whether a single graphics card on the 17x or dual GTX 680M's on the M18x, Alienware owners are going to love having this much power at their fingertips."

The Alienware M17x will be available with a GeForce GTX 680M GPU and NVIDIA Optimus technology or NVIDIA 3D Vision technology. The Alienware M18x notebook will be available with GeForce GTX 680M GPUs in single or SLI configurations before the end of the month.

The GeForce GTX 680M GPU is also available in MSI GT70 notebooks and gaming notebooks from Clevo channel partners such as Ava Direct, Maingear and Origin.

At Computex ASUS is demonstrating Windows 8 based tablets and notebooks. The big whopper amongst them all will be the  Transformer Book which has an Ivy Bridge CPU and then a discrete GPU from Nvidia. The Transformer Book will get both SDD and HDD for storage and screen sizes of 11.6", 13.3", and 14".

Sicne these are Transformer models the screens will be detachable. You'll spot USB 3.0 connectivity and a good 4GB of DDR3 memory.

Asus claims the Transformer Book will be the world's thinnest and lightest Core i7 tablet

The FCC approved the ASUS MeMO 370T, which means this tablet will be available in the U.S. market very soon as well.

For your info, the ASUS MeMO 370T features a 7-inch touchscreen display with a 1280 x 800 pixels resolution, an nVidia Tegra 3 quad core processor, a 1GB of internal storage space, a 1.2-megapixel front-facing camera, a 5-megapixel rear-facing camera and the Google Android 4.0 ice Cream Sandwich operating system.

Thjis could actually be close to what is supposed to be Google Nexus Tablet, as soon as we get some more information we will let you guys know.

It seems that Google's is to relase their own 7-inch tablet PC whicch is scheduled to launch in July. There will be an initial batch of only 600,000 units shipping as early as June though.  Word of mounth is that Asus is co-developing the device and the entry-level tablet will cost around $200 or less.

The tablet's inner details aren't known but we can probably expect Android 4.0 and maybe a quad-core chip. The Google 7-inch tablet could easily go up against existing Android 7-inchers that dominate; the Kindle Fire. The tablet might even come at a time that will help it compete against the rumored iPad Mini. If the tablet is really coming as early as June, I'm sure we'll here more official news about the device soon enough. Honestly, it strikes me as being a little odd that Motorola (which now finally belongs to Google) wasn't involved in the device's development. Who knows for sure. At least for a bit longer, I'd take this news with a grain of salt.

In order to help reduce costs of ultrabooks, Intel is aggressively pushing two new battery solutions for these systems; the 16650 cylindrical battery and a prismatic lithium-ion battery. Full details at DigiTimes. Acer has already started adopting the 16650 battery while Lenovo's IdePad 530 uses the prismatic li-ion, albeit in limited volumes.

However, only a limited supply of the 16650 cylindrical battery is available, so prismatic lithium-ion battery will have a higher chance to success, but due to issues such as capacity and certification, vendors will not have chance to adopt prismatic lithium-ion batteries for their products until 2013.

The 16650 cylindrical battery has a diameter of 16mm and is only available from Japan-based Sanyo and China-based BAK, but due to vendors being concerned that supply is fully controlled by only two players, and BAK is unlikely to pass most vendors' certification process, there are concerns about the solution.

Although prismatic lithium-ion battery is higher in cost compared to the 16650 cylindrical battery, but the solution's size of 60mmx80mm and thickness of 5-6mm is providing a strong advantage, while the battery also has more suppliers available in the market.

Experience the all new Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich operating system with Chinavasion

Check out this newly released Android tablet from Teclast, the A12. Powered by a 1.5GHz ARM Cortex-A10 processor, the device packs a 10.1-inch 1024 x 600 capacitive multi-touch display, a Mali-400 GPU, a 1GB DDR3 RAM, an 8GB of storage, a microSD card slot, a front-facing camera, 2160p Super HD video playback support, 3G module support, OTG function, WiFi, a 6000mAh battery and runs on Android 4.0 OS. The A12 can be yours for $176.99. [Product Page]

Brilliant stuff -- MSI has developed Super RAID for its new gaming laptops, a system that uses a 2.5" WD Scorpio Black 500GB HDD in combination with a pair of mSATA SSDs to deliver amazing performance. MSI's GT70 with Super RAID achieves an average read speed of 928.6MB/s with a burst rated at 1,997.2MB/s!

The SSDs you see are a pair of OEM models from SanDisk, and seem to be a pair of U100 drives. This notebook has two 64GB drives installed, with the RAID element of this setup handled by Intel's chipset. The 64GB models aren't the fastest mSATA's SSDs on the market with rated sequential read speeds of up to 450MB/sec and write speeds at 220MB/sec. In RAID 0 however, they're entirely different beasts.

The Super RAID setup shows off an average read speed of 928.6MB/sec with a burst rated at 1,997.2MB/sec in HD Tune Pro 5.00. This is something we would normally look past, interesting. A gaming notebook with storage capable of nearly 1GB/sec is quite impressive. I'm just wondering where my MSI GT70 notebook is and why MSI haven't sent me one yet.

If you are searching for a new affordable Android tablet, then check out the Eken A90. Priced at just $157.99 each, the tablet comes jam packed with a 1.2GHz Allwinner A10 processor, a 1GB of RAM, an 8GB of internal storage, a large 9.7-inch (1024 x 768) display and the Google Android Ice Cream Sandwich 4.0.3 OS.

Measuring at just 11mm thick, the Eken A90 provides a pair of micro USB ports, a 2-megapixel rear-facing camera, a 0.3-megapixel front-facing camera, a 3.5mm earphone jack and a microSD card slot for storage expansion. Additionally, this gadget also supports HD video playback via an HDMI port. [Product Page]

Hasbro, a maker of toys and board games that sells, among other things,

Tegra 4 may be based on the Kepler architecture. According to the vr-zone information, Tegra 4 will not only beat but leapfrog the competition (Mali-T600 Serie and PowerVR SGX54x).

One subject of our discussions was Project Denver and the pace of its development, but also the development of Tegra 4 i.e. T40. As we all know, Tegra 2 and Tegra 3 use what is essentially NV4x-class GPU (GeForce 6000, 7000 Series, RSX from Sony PlayStation 3). As such, we were not surprised to hear that benchmark results are not ideal against the competiton. Truth to be told, if Imagination Technologies and ARM took one more year to beat what is an eight year old PC architecture, it would be borderline ridiculous.

According to the sources in the know, Tegra 4 will utilize a GPGPU-compliant, i.e. CUDA-compliant graphics core which is very power savvy. Since a single Kepler-based 20W GPU is enough to run Battlefield 3 with Ultra details in 1366x768 resolution, a 1W GPU should be more than good enough to run Angry Birds in current and next-gen smartphone and tablet designs. Also, with the breakthrough in smartphone i.e. superphone design, you can expect that next generation of superphones such as Motorola's Droid Razr MAXX to carry 2500-3300 mAh batteries, and that will get you both the desired thinness and long battery life.

Well that was bound to happen real fast, and so it did. It was only going to be a matter of hours before someone would jailbreak the right-off-the-shelf iPad and that was just about the amount of time it took. iOS hacker Stefan Esser was one of the first and posted the video:

Razer is working on a second-generation Blade gaming laptop as BSN heard. While the current Razer Blade left a sour impression because of its $2,800 price tag and poor hardware, the new model will reportedly feature more high-end hardware from Intel's Ivy Bridge and NVIDIA's Kepler lineup. The site claims the Blade 2.0 may hit the market as early as June and August.

We have been hearing rumors from our sources within the industry that Razer is preparing a refresh of their Razer Blade, say a Razer Blade 2.0. This laptop, we believe, will enable Razer to deliver a much higher level of performance than the current generation Razer Blade with potentially better battery life in the same size or thinner laptop. There's even a chance that Razer can reduce the weight of the Blade as well. While details are still somewhat scarce, we do believe that Razer's main limitation with the Blade was the fact that the chassis simply could not accommodate enough cooling in order to enable quad-core processors and high-end graphics.

Because of this fundamental truth, we believe that an Ivy Bridge and Kepler based Razer Blade could easily capture significantly more sales and actually give Razer something to really talk about. There is a strong sense that this Razer Blade 2.0 could honestly, in our eyes, claim the title of best gaming laptop in the world. Once Razer starts to ship in greater volumes, there could be a chance that they would change the direction of the PC gaming market and bring even lighter and thinner high-end gaming machines to the market. Hopefully, those higher volumes also might help lowering their prices.

Details about the Asus 13.3" UX31A and 11.6" UX21A Zenbook ultrabooks were published by The Verge. These systems will feature low-voltage 17W TDP Intel Ivy Bridge processors, from Core i3 up to Core i7, up to 4GB DDR3L 1600MHz memory, integrated graphics, a 256GB (perhaps also 512GB) SATA 6Gbps SSD, Intel Wireless Display (WiDi) support, 802.11n WiFi, Bluetooth 4.0, SDXC memory card reader, two USB 3.0 ports, Micro-HDMI output, and a backlit keyboard. Battery life is said to be up to six to seven hours for the UX31A and around five hours for the UX21A.

Both models will offer various LCD screen options, with the most expensive one being an IPS screen with a 1920 x 1080 pixel resolution and 350 nits brightness.

Externally, neither the UX31A nor UX21A should look terribly different from its predecessor, both are maintaining the same thickness and weight as previously (18.3mm and 1.3kg for the 13-inch model, and 17mm and 1.1kg for the 11-incher). Prices should begin around $1,050 for the UX21A and $1,100 for the UX31A. Asus hasn't yet settled on a release date, but we should expect to see these on sale around the same time as all other laptop vendors make the move to Ivy Bridge.

Additionally, The Verge also published details about the Zenbook UX32Vd and UX32A, two "budget" 13.3" ultrabooks with a price range of $800 to $1,100. The first batch of shipments will be Sandy Bridge based but later the series will be upgraded to Ivy Bridge, with Core i3-3217U, i5-3317U, and i7-3517U processor options. Both models can be shipped with the same 1080p IPS screen from the more expensive Zenbooks, and interestingly the UX32Vd will also include a switchable NVIDIA GeForce GT620M 1GB graphics card.
Like the UX31A, the battery is supposed to last between six and seven hours, and all models come with the option of either 2GB or 4GB of RAM. Unfortunately, it looks like the 256GB solid state drive isn't included: instead, you'll get up to a 500GB HDD with a 24GB SSD cache. There's also a little extra weight

As anticipated, Apple introduced its next-generation iPad at a launch event in San Francisco. The 9.7" tablet has a faster A5X processor, 4G LTE, 5MP digicam, and a Retina screen with 2048 x 1536 pixel resolution. Interestingly, the name of the new tablet isn't "iPad 3" but "the new iPad".

Its E-Sense system creates the impression that a touchscreen has real texture, through so-called 'tixels' using electric fields via elements embedded around the edge of the screen. These tixels can make specific areas of the display feel rough or ridged, for example, in response to the image being displayed on screen. As TNW points out, perhaps the most significant element of this technology, at least as far as the new iPad is concerned, is that E-Sense 'requires no modification of the screen's surface, nor does it use moving parts', meaning that it could conceivably be integrated into Apple's new tablet without requiring substantial re-engineering of the display.

DigiTimes reports that ASUS will introduce Intel Cedar Trail based netbooks sometime this month. Netbook shipments are on their way back though, last year shipments accounted for about 28-38 million units, and this year the volume is anticipated to be only 20-25 million units.
With Acer having already started selling its new Cedar Trail-based netbook, Asustek Computer also plans to launch the Cedar Trail-based Eee PC 1011CX in March, according to sources from upstream component players.

Although Intel announced that players including Acer, Lenovo, Asustek, Hewlett-Packard (HP), Samsung Electronics and Toshiba will all launch Cedar Trail-based netbooks, so far, only Acer and Asustek have confirmed they will launch products, while there is currently still no firm information about when the other vendors will launch their products.

Apple will introduce 16GB and 32GB iPad 3 tablets on March 7, as well as a cheaper iPad 2 with just 8GB of storage capacity.
In addition to iPad 3, Apple is also expected to unveil an 8GB iPad 2, allowing the tablet PC series to cover different segments and to defend against Windows 8-based tablet PCs, the sources noted.

Since Apple has put high hopes on its new iPad 3 and has been aggressively placing orders, iPad 3 shipments in the first quarter of 2012 are expected to double from original estimates.

The iPad 3 is expected to have a 9.7-inch Full HD QXGA panel with a resolution of 2048 by 1536 (264dpi) and its backlight module will adopt two LED light bars.

MSI introduces the GT780DX, a new gaming laptop with a Core i7-2920XM Extreme Edition processor that promises a 4.16GHz clockspeed with overclocking.

Have you ever seen a high-performance notebook computer packing Intel's top-of-the-line Core i7 Extreme Edition with overclocking that blazes along at more than 4GHz? Have you ever experienced the superfast performance of a quad core gaming laptop that transfers files in less than half the time? Only the MSI GT780DX laptop, on display for a limited time, supports the Core i7 Extreme Edition, the fastest in the industry, to give you extreme system performance and cooling capabilities.

World-record smashing 4.16GHz clock speed
During Europe's Dreamhack late last year, MSI held its "Beat It!" video gaming competition and computer exhibition. MSI showed a number of MSI GT780DX gaming laptops all packing Intel's smoking limited edition Core i7-2920XM Extreme Edition processor. In this, the first dynamic demonstration of the processor in notebook computers on the market, these top-end laptops broke the 4GHz overclocking barrier. With Dreamhack over, MSI's GT780DX with Intel Core i7 Extreme Edition can be seen in activities spotlighting laptops organized by Intel and MSI in other countries. The GT780DX displayed at Dreamhack outperformed laptops with Core i7-2630QM by more than 50%!

Not only does the limited edition GT780DX zip along at 4.16GHz, when you compare it to notebooks with Core i7-2630QM, tests show that CPU performance increases by at least 43%. The CPU calculates "Super PI 32MB" a minimum of 52% faster which is very helpful for decimal number and complex multifunction calculations. For example, the time required to compress a 1GB file drops from 3 minutes 6 seconds to 2 minutes 9 seconds

The Transformer Pad Infinity is the slate that has just been introduced by ASUS, a renamed TF700T.

It boasts a 10.1-inch display with two major selling points: a resolution of 1,920 x 1,200 pixels and a Super IPS+ Gorilla Glass 2 panel.

For those unaware, Gorilla Glass panels basically make displays unbreakable, unless tablet owners, or particularly malicious people, truly seek their destruction with abandon. Back to the slate, the Infinity has 1 GB of RAM (random access memory) backing the CPU. Oddly, though, the platform will be different depending on the wireless options.

Where the Wi-Fi version gets the 4-PLUS-1 NVIDIA Tegra 3 quad-core 1.6GHz SoC, the 3G/4G LTE Pad gets Qualcomm's Snapdragon S4 MSM8960 (based on the new 28nm Krait architecture). Both come in the same sort of aluminum case, colored amethyst grey or champagne gold.

Furthermore, ASUS sells the newcomer with 8GB of free lifetime ASUS WebStorage space and, for some extra money, an optional mobile dock as well (an additional 22Whr battery, keyboard, trackpad, etc.). A battery charge should be good for about 10 hours of operation, while the dock adds 6 more.

Finally, there should be two cameras (8MP back, 2MP back), storage of 16/32/63GB and the Android 4.0 operating system. No pricing or availability yet.

Vendors will ship 14.97 million tablet PCs in the first quarter of 2012, dropping 30.6% on quarter but rising 77.6% on year, according to forecasts by Digitimes Research.

Shipments will consist of 11 million iPad 2 and iPad 3 units as well as 3.97 million non-iPad tablet PCs which will decrease by 50.8% on quarter and include 1.5 million Kindle Fires and 300,000 Nook Tablets, Digitimes Research said.

Of tablet PCs to be shipped in the first quarter of 2012, 13.3% will be equipped with processors developed by Texas Instruments and 26.3% will be based on Android.

Taiwan-based ODMs will ship 13.51 million tablet PCs for a global share of 90.25% in the first quarter. Foxconn Electronics will account for 83% of Taiwan-based makers' total shipments, followed by Quanta Computer with 9.6%, Digitimes Research indicated.