Isaiah's Tech

The title says it all. Today, Alienware announced that it would open its first store "at the Micro Center near New York City" on July 25th, which is this Saturday. The store will be called the Alienware Experience and will give consumers a chance to try out Alienware's product "firsthand." "The first 500 visitors will get special Alienware T-shirts, gift bags and 2GB USB drives. Those who participate in the LAN games will also have [a chance] at winning extra prizes including PC games, speakers, keyboards, mice and headphones." Don't forget that the newest gaming laptop from Alienware, the M17x, will be on display at the store. The Alienware Experience will open this Saturday at 11:30 a.m. ET.

[Electronista]

Sony Insider is taking a guess that this picture consists of Sony's new S-Series Walkmans. The specs of this new Walkman have not been revealed, but the picture shows that these new PMPs will have speakers on the front of the device. "The S-Series Sony Walkman has been a good seller for Sony - super-thin, music and video capabilities, long lasting battery, FM tuner, and so forth. It resides in a good price range and has probably been one of Sony's best selling Walkmans." We should have more information on this new Walkman in a couple of weeks, but you can always check out the rumoured iPod Touch that should come camera-equipped later this year.

[Sony Insider]

The Toshiba Satellite U500 notebook is now available in the US on Toshiba's official website for a starting price of $698 USD. For the base price, you get: a 13.3-inch display with a 1,280 x 800 resolution, an Intel Pentium T4200 CPU, 4GB of DDR2 800MHz RAM, a 320GB HDD, WiFi 802.11 b/g/n, a DVD-SuperMulti drive, two USB 2.0 slots, and an ExpressCard slot. The Toshiba Satellite U500 notebook is now available in black and white. Check it out on Toshiba's official website.

[Pocket-Lint]

Back in late April, we heard that LG planned to released their THX-certified LED-backlit LH90 LCD HDTV outside of Korea, which was amazing news; and you can now get the beautiful LG LH90 HDTV in the US. Just to recap, the LG LH90 HDTV has THX-certification, 240Hz technology, a 2,000,000:1 dynamic contract ratio, and it is also energy efficient, thanks to its ambient light sensor. The 42, 47, and 55-inch models are now retailing for $1,899.95 USD, $2,399.95 USD, and $3,199.95 USD, respectively, which makes it much cheaper than when it first launched in Korea. You can check them out on LG's official website here.

[Engadget]

Three days ago, Verizon's upcoming phone list was leaked out and one of the phones on the list was the Samsung SCH-U640 Convoy. I'm sure you're somewhat curious about the specs of this handset and, today, I have them for you. The Convoy has: dual-band CDMA support, a microSD card slot, Bluetooth 2.1, GPS, and 3G support. I haven't been able to locate a real picture, price, or release date of this handset, but it should hit Verizon by the end of this year. Unfortunately, this handset doesn't look like it will be WiFi-equipped.

[Phone Arena]

Yesterday my girlfriend went to the mall and told me that she went to Telus to check if the HTC Snap was in stock. The employee working there said that it'd be available in "less than two weeks", so it looks like we'll have to wait a little bit longer - even though it was supposed to be available last week. So, every single day I check out Telus' website and Best Buy's official website to check if the HTC Snap is in stock.

What do you know? I checked out Best Buy's official website today and they have it listed as "only available in-store" for $29.99 CAD on a 3-year contract. It looks like if you want to scoop it up at a Telus store, you'll have to wait a little bit longer.

[Best Buy]

You may only be familiar with the phone manufacturer and unfamiliar with where they get their parts from. Well, the old-school Synaptics' ClearPad 2000 capacitive [somewhat] multi-touchscreen display can also be found on the T-Mobile G1 aka HTC Dream. That's a good start, isn't it?

Well, Synaptics is now working on their latest multi-touchscreen display and it's the ClearPad 3000. This upcoming touchscreen display is capable of registering up to 10 fingers simultaneously; this touchscreen can also be as large as 8-inches without sucking a huge amount of battery life, which would actually make it easier to use both of your hands for multi-touch galore - kidding, don't really do it, unless you feel like it. Back in May, we heard a rumour that Nokia would use Synaptics' capacitive multi-touchscreen displays in their future handsets, so let's hope that rumour is true. The first devices with the new Synaptics' ClearPad 3000 multi-touchscreen should be available as soon as this Fall.

Update: After reading the title of this Pocket-Lint story, I realized that it could be used in Apple's future tablet which is also scheduled to land this Fall. Rumours, rumours, rumours! Oh, I've also posted a short video below, courtesy of Gizmodo.



[Engadget]

Packard Bell is gearing up to release a notebook that's equipped with Intel's CULV CPU. The Butterfly S FC has: a 13-inch display, a 1.4GHz Core 2 Solo SU3500 CULV CPU, 4GB of RAM, a 500GB HDD, ATI's Mobility Radeon HD 4330 graphics, an HDMI output, and a battery life long enough to supposedly last 8 hours. This notebook will be hitting Europe in a few days for €650 ($923 USD)

[Slash Gear]

The first thing that comes to mind when I hear the BlackBerry Thunder is, why? The second thing is that it could be the BlackBerry 9550 Storm 2. There is no confirmation yet, especially seeing how we've already seen dummy units called Storm 2. Maybe Verizon wants to change the name of the Storm 2 to the Thunder. We don't know, but it's the best thing we can think of.

[CrackBerry]

It looks like HTC is slowly trying to move away from Windows Mobile. According to DigiTimes, HTC is on track "to make 30% of its 2009 handsets Android-based" which is definitely a good thing. The bigger news is that 50% of HTC's 2010 line-up of phones are said to run Android, which is a great push for HTC. It looks like Microsoft could be in trouble here and it also looks like HTC will be an avid Android phone maker in the future. I'm hoping for a high-end HTC Touch Pro 2-like Android device in the future - HTC don't fail me now!

[Engadget]

The Samsung t559 Comeback is now available on T-Mobile for $129.99 USD on a 2-year contract. The $129.99 price tag could be a little bit high and is also the same price tag we heard about last week. You can check out the t559 Comeback's specs here, if you'd like.

Another handset that will be available on T-Mobile in the future is the Samsung Gravity 2. You can check out the specs here. The Gravity 2 will hit T-Mobile next month (August), but the price hasn't been mentioned yet.

[Engadget Mobile]

This is really unsurprising to me, but the PSOne classic, Final Fantasy VII, has just topped the list on PSN's "Top 10 Downloadable Games" list. After being announced back in early June, Final Fantasy VII dominated all month long and is probably still dominating now because it was a solid RPG - back in the day. I do find it surprising that Metal Gear Solid didn't nab the Number 2 spot though, I thought it was much, much better than Wolfenstein 3D.

[Joystiq - PlayStation]