News Bits: Sony VAIO Celebrity Laptops, New Intel Logos, Atari 800XE Laptop

Sony VAIO FJ Celebrity Signed and Branded Notebooks

Do you like Sony VAIO laptops?  Do you like Jessica Alba?  Would you like to help stop world hunger?  Yes, yes and yes I'm sure.  Well, Sony is running a "Pimp My PC" promotion in which they've gotten some celebs to sign one of a kind design Sony VAIO FJ notebooks.  These VAIO FJ laptops will be displayed at SonyStyle stores in LA, Houston, New York and Las Vegas.  After touring the country, these laptops will go up for auction on eBay on January 9th and bidding will close January 23rd, all proceeds will go to the America's Second Harvest foundation to raise funds to eliminate hunger in the U.S.  Here's a link to the VAIO celebrity auction page where you can see all the details and what's on sale.

These laptops are likely to get expensive as they're bid up on eBay, so if you can't afford the bidding and would would prefer to just spend $1399 on an FJ then checkout our recent review of Sony VAIO FJ laptop.

New Intel Yonah Processor Logos

Intel will be unveiling a new set of logos with its introduction of new Pentium M processors at the beginning of January.  It looks like the small drop down "e" in "Intel" has now been raised up and the blue is now much darker, more navy colored.  The logos were posted by the French site x86-secret.com.

New Intel logos displayed above

Old Intel logo with the drop down "e"

Atari 800XE Laptop With Wood Grain and Brushed Aluminum Finish

Ben Heckendorn is of hacking hardware fame, he's put together a portable Nintendo (8-bit) and Atari 2600 portable to name a few and his latest hardware hack, two years in the making and now complete, is the Atari 800XE laptop.  Here are the specs:

• Atari XE GS (Game System) the last model Atari 800 type computer from 1987.
• 8" TFT active matrix display
• Compact Flash "hard disk drive" utilizing MyDOS 4.53 for maximum drive size of 16 megabytes. Card is removable for swapping.
• Built-in NiMH battery pack and charger (uses external plug like a normal laptop) Also battery is removable from base as with most laptops.
• Full (Atari 800) sized keyboard
• Built-in Player 1 & 2 controls, plus joystick ports. Built-in joypads great for playing Robotron 2084!
• Brushed aluminum and wood grain everywhere! A weird combo style, sure, but I like it!
• Cursor control knob - Allows you to move the cursor around the screen without pressing control+arrow keys. That's awesome if you're an old-school Atari programmer "from the day"
• Slim (compared to an original SIO port) DB25 printer-style port for connecting to disk drives, printers or PC's using an SIO2PC cable.

Unfortunately this is a one of a kind machine and Ben hasn't mass produced them.  To see how he built it go here.

British Politician David Cameron's Laptop Bag Stolen -- Thief Angry Not to Find a Laptop Inside

David Cameron is a front runner to be the Tory party leader in the UK (that's the opposing party to the Labor party of Tony Blair).  Brits might question the common sense Mr. Cameron has though after he left a laptop bag on the back seat of his parked Mercedes as he attended a series of debates last Friday.  A thief walked by the car, saw the laptop bag and assumed a shiny laptop computer was inside, so busted out the Mercedes' window and ran off with the bag.  The thief drove off but upon opening the bag he found only boring political plans inside, apparently they were so boring he tossed the bag, papers and a cell phone from inside the bag out of the car window into a nearby bush.  When Mr. Cameron called his missing mobile phone to see where it might be, somebody passing by the bush picked up the phone and answered and the bag, top secret papers and phone were recovered back to Cameron.

The moral of the story?  Thieves love laptops and will assume a laptop bag left unattended has a laptop inside, if you don't want your car window broken out do not leave a laptop bag in your car in full view.  And think twice about ever voting for David Cameron.

David Cameron is the guy in the white shirt doing who knows what with farmers and cows in the British countryside, a thief attempted to steal his laptop last Friday but found the laptop bag was laptopless