With PC laptop shipments projected to decline by 7.3% this year, Windows 8 machines desperately need a shot multiple shots of adrenaline. The Toshiba KIRAbook may be just that.
The KIRAbook is Toshiba’s first entrant in their newly fashioned “KIRA” line of luxury ultrabooks. At first glance, you can see that the KIRAbook is meticulously designed, and it radiates a Cupertino-esque level of fit and finish. We haven’t seen this kind of quality from Toshiba for a very long time (if ever).
That doesn’t mean the KIRAbook offers anything new in terms of design. There are still shades of the Macbook Air to be found here and there, as is the case with all top of the line Windows ultrabooks.
The KIRAbook has a smaller profile than the Macbook Air, but somehow manages to include a retina-quality 2560×1440 WQHD touchscreen display. Although I didn’t get an opportunity to compare it side by side with the retina Macbook Pro, or for that matter the Chromebook Pixel, but it’ll definitely be one of the best laptop displays out in the market once it’s released.
The display is most certainly the KIRAbook’s marquee feature and Toshiba’s primary justification for its slightly onerous pricing, which I’ll get to in just a moment.
Inside the KIRAbook, you’ll find an Intel Core i5 or i7 processor, 8GB of RAM, and a 256GB SSD. The KIRAbook is also bundled with full versions of Adobe Photoshop Elements and Premiere Elements, as well as a complimentary two year service and support package that Toshiba claims to be on par with Applecare.
At least on a spec level, the KIRAbook lives up to its “luxury” label. But that also means it’s saddled with a luxuriously high price.
The non-touch KIRAbook with Core i5 starts at $ 1,599. It gets a little crazy from there. The touchscreen KIRAbook with Core i5 goes for $ 1,789, while the top of the line touchscreen KIRAbook, with Core i7 and Windows Pro, goes for a whopping $ 1,999. That kind of pricing blows its PC and Apple counterparts out of the water.
For comparison’s sake, the 13-inch Retina Macbook Pro starts at $ 1,499, albeit with a smaller 128GB SSD. The Lenovo Thinkpad x1 Carbon starts at $ 1,187, while the touchscreen equipped model starts at $ 1,319. The Asus Zenbook Prime, with a touchscreen and a nearly retina quality display, is currently retailing for $ 1,253 on Amazon.
Toshiba representatives told me that they don’t expect the Kirabook to become the bestselling laptop PC on the market. They understand it’s a bit of a niche product. If anything, the Kirabook is a statement that Toshiba is capable of producing top of the line hardware in a very appealing package.
No word on whether the KIRAbook is worth its price tag, but we’ll be sure to keep you in the loop with a full review soon. It’ll be available in stores May 5th.
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The story sounded far-fetched: OLPC researchers, working with a team of technicians in Ethiopia, created a special “hut” covered in solar panels where the children of a few distant towns could go to recharge some toys they were given. The toys were boxed Motorola Xoom tablets and every child between the age of four and eight got one. The researchers were expecting the children to play with the boxes and potentially open them in the first week but instead they turned them on in less than an hour and a few months later were modifying the settings and singing ABC songs. It was, at once, a triumph of technology and of the human capacity to learn.
The hut became a focal point for the town’s children and the kids loved their tablets so much that they slept with them. One kid would learn how to launch a Disney movie and the others would follow. Another kid learned how to unlock the built-in camera. It was a form of viral education that we see, under the surface of many childhood interactions, ever day. They learned without learning.
We first heard this story last week in Boston when we were touring the MIT Media Lab and it sounded too good to be true. The thought that children cut off from education by dint of their physical location were able to learn, without teachers, the rudiments of English and how to manage a complex tablet device, was wild. Luckily MIT’s in-house magazine, Technology Review put together a very nice story about the project and I have to say I’m impressed.
After several months, the kids in both villages were still heavily engaged in using and recharging the machines, and had been observed reciting the “alphabet song,” and even spelling words. One boy, exposed to literacy games with animal pictures, opened up a paint program and wrote the word “Lion.”The experiment is being done in two isolated rural villages with about 20 first-grade-aged children each, about 50 miles from Addis Ababa. One village is called Wonchi, on the rim of a volcanic crater at 11,000 feet; the other is called Wolonchete, in the Great Rift Valley. Children there had never previously seen printed materials, road signs, or even packaging that had words on them, Negroponte said.
I’ve been down on the educational value of “throwing” electronics at kids for years. However, this example of a positive outcome is inspiring. Sadly, these children would presumably have no education at all if they didn’t receive these tablets and the fact that they far surpassed the researcher’s expectations proves, categorically, that modern technology has moved from the realm of the technical to the realm of what can be called conversational. I’m reminded of William Gibson’s comment on going to the movies for the first time.
But I remember being taken to my first film, either a Disney animation or a Disney nature documentary (I can’t recall which I saw first) and being overwhelmed by the steep yet almost instantaneous learning curve: in that hour, I learned to watch film. Was taught, in effect, by the film itself. I was years away from being able to read my first novel, and would need a lot of pedagogy, to do that. But film itself taught me, in the dark, to view it. I remember it as a sort of violence done to me, as full of terror as it was of delight. But when I emerged from that theater, I knew how to watch film.What had happened to me was historically the result of an immensely complex technological evolution, encompassing optics, mechanics, photography, audio recording, and much else. Whatever film it was that I first watched, other people around the world were also watching, having approximately the same experience in terms of sensory input. And that film no doubt survives today, in Disney’s back-catalog, as an experience that can still be accessed.
Reading a book, he wrote, was hard. It required years of education and training and a concentration that many children don’t possess. But, thanks to advances in technology, he and every other child can understand a film, or in this case, a tablet. The skills needed to open a Xoom, turn it on, and play with it have been subsumed deep within the technology. In short, the tablet hides complexity so completely that anyone with a finger and a good head on their shoulders can learn from it. This is a triumph but it is double-edged. On one hand it creates a grave disconnect between the nuts and bolts of the OS and the user and on the other hand it encourages projects like the Raspberry Pi which aims to bring the bare metal back into computer interaction.
Teachers are important. Technology, thankfully, can replace some of their skills. I doubt that dropping a dozen tablets on a remote village in Ethiopia or – and this is true – rural Georgia is the end of our responsibility to these children. It is, however, a promising beginning.
Read the rest of the piece here. Being down on OLPC is fashionable recently, but it’s clearly working.
Today: A new Rovio game that has nothing to do with birds! A review of Amazing Alex by www.AndroidApps.com App: Amazing Alex Price: .99 The price depicted is at the time of this review, and could easily be changed. View this app’s Appolicious.com page for more info: www.androidapps.com View the transcript of this review on Appolicious: www.androidapps.com
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Amazing Alex 3-14 Mission Improbable 3 stars walkthrough. Amazing Alex by Angry Birds creators Rovio
roundaboutsactown.com This walkthrough tutorial shows you one way to get 3 stars in Amazing Alex 3-14 Mission Improbable. Visit http or www.youtube.com for more Angry Birds walkthroughs, news, and user submitted strategies as well as other games! More to come! Please subscribe! Description: GET READY FOR SOMETHING AMAZING! AN AMAZING NEW PHYSICS PUZZLE GAME FROM THE CREATORS OF ANGRY BIRDS! Meet Amazing Alex! This whiz kid has a boundless imagination and a houseful of fun toys that can turn anything into an adventure! From cleaning up his room to battling cardboard robots in his backyard, Alex creates amazing chain reactions to get the job done with the maximum amount of fun! Now he has some challenges for you — and he wants to see the most creative solutions YOU can create! With 100 challenging levels across four fun-filled locations, there’s a whole world of creations to explore! The latest title from the Angry Birds developers “Amazing Alex” is now available to download on iPhone, iPad and Android amazing alex levels Amazing Alex now available on iOS and Android Rovio, the creators of the recently successful game series “Angry Birds” has launched another physics puzzle game Amazing Alex. Based on Casey’s Contraptions, the game revolves around Alex, a curious boy having interest in building things. There are around 100 levels in the game and 35 objects that can be utilized in order to finish the game. There are some similarities between the two games but Rovio’s … Video Rating: 0 / 5
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This is my playthrough of the Amazing Spider-Man movie tie-in video game (2012), with live commentary. www.thekingofhate.com http for game playthroughs www.youtube.com for fighting game coverage www.facebook.com Subscribe on Facebook www.facebook.com Like my Facebook Fan Page Follow me on Twitter @TheyCallMeDSP Video Rating: 4 / 5
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Welcome to my The Amazing Spider-Man walkthrough! If you would like to buy this game from Amazon, visit this link: amzn.to DISCLAIMER: This video may contain SPOILERS so be warned! The Amazing Spider-Man Playlist:www.youtube.com
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