Western Digital has finally released a 2 terabyte drive that spins at 7,200rpm. The WD Caviar Black supports up to 2 TB, supports speeds up to 3 Gb/s and with 64 MB Cache. The other model WD RE4 is aimed for business users.
Via Electronista. Hopefully Nahil will bring these drives to Saudi Arabia as soon as possible even though I couldn’t find any “Caviar Black” models.
Mobily has announced that they have extended their 3G coverage in Saudi Arabia. From AME info:
Saudi Arabia’s Etihad Etisalat Co. (Mobily) has said it has added a number of the kingdom’s Northern Province’s cities and villages to its advanced 3G network (3.5G and 3.75G) coverage. This latest addition brings to 326 the total number of cities and villages which come under Mobily’s 3.5G and 3.75G coverage.
I just came back from Jeddah and the Mobily 3G connection there was horrible: 3G isn’t working in many areas, HSDPA speed is horrible (less than 100kbps down according to speedtest.net iPhone app) and Mobily connect card can’t even connect for some reason.
STC is just as horrible with the dropped calls and horrible 902 services. Maybe it’s me or maybe it’s the weather? Who knows.
Great achievement for Saudi students from King Saud University, the “UT” team will represent Saudi Arabia in the 6th Sixth Scientific Conference for the care of the talented in Jordan.
Read more about it on Riyadh newspaper and Sabq (Arabic site).Forget about these links! Read actual info about it (in Arabic) on Abdullah Driaan’s site.
The odd thing is the website for “Sixth Scientific Conference for the care of the talented” apparently expired? The domain won’t expire until 2010 but now it’s only showing ads unlike this cache.
The news source didn’t mention what UT stands for I would assume “Ultrasonic testing”? Can someone clarify? The sites did mention Dr Man-Gon Park. Anyone knows please tell me.
Update: Thanks Abdullah for posting this. “UT” stands for Ubiquitous Technology which is actually Ubiquitous computing, a form of human-computer interaction (HCI). Now it makes some sense.
Update 2: Thank you Dr. Man-Gon Park for posting your comment on this entry:
I am Prof. Dr. Man-Gon Park with department of the IT Convergence and Application Engineering, College of Engineeing, PuKyong National University, Rep. of Korea.
I was Director General and CEO of the Colombo Plan Staff College (http://www.cpsctech.org) which is an international organization for HRD in Asia and the Pacific region with its 29 Member governments. Also I was the president of Korean Multimedia Society.
The Adamo, Dell’s solution for the Apple Macbook Air, had a massive price drop of up to $499 (1,900SR). The price cut was to compete with the MacBook Air.
The “1.2GHz Core 2 Duo, 2GB of RAM and a 128GB SSD” model cost $1,500 (5,700SR) and the “1.4GHz Core 2 Duo processor, a 128GB SSD, and 4GB RAM” will be for $2,230 (8,500SR). These are significant price changes and we have no idea when will it be applied in Saudi Arabia.
The Dell Adamo was released in Saudi Arabia last month.
Via Maximum PC.
Jarir “bookstore” is having a promotion on Dell Inspiron 15.
The specs are: Intel Core 2 Duo P8700 2.53GHz, 4GB DDR2 (according to Dell, it’s dual channel), 320GB hard drive (I assume 5400rpm), 15.6″ (WLED with 1366×768 resoultion according to Dell), dedicated 256MB VRAM (more on that later), DVD+R/RW (8X DVD+/-RW Drive with DVD+R DL according to Dell), High Definition Audio 2.0, Wireless (802.11n from Dell’s site), Bluetooth and WebCam.
Video card is not specified on the ad, but looking online I found that the video card is ATI Mobility Radeon(TM) HD4330 with 256MB and you can read more information and benchmarks about it here.
The deal includes a 3.5G HSPA USB modem, one month data subscription with STC (1GB bandwidth, includes the free SIM card), a notebook bag (a bit obvious really) and a “Learn Windows Vista & Office” training DVD.
The deal costs 3,999SR which is very good for the specs. Of course you should be eligible for a free upgrade to Windows 7.
That model “Dell Inspiron 15″ with that CPU “Intel P8600″ were not available in the US so you cannot order it online. It is available from Dell Singapore for $1,878.45 which is 4,853.76SR so it is a decent deal.
Dell has launched their ultra thin notebook, the Adamo in Saudi Arabia this week. The notebook is similar in many ways to the Apple MacBook Air. Prices in Saudi Arabia start at 9,500SR ($2,500). The Dell Adamo was launched last week in UAE in a press event while the Saudi Arabia “launch event” was in Jarir Bookstore. Dell Saudi Arabia also decided to copy the UAE event by hiring, uh, “models”?
Please Dell, why don’t you fix your keyboards first? Instead of having two guys in a very weird dress. Is that supposed to be a thobe? It’s NOT! This is how a thobe supposed to look like! Not having a stupid line on it like that just to have the Dell name on it! Look at the models used in the UAE launch event, but don’t look too much 
. Their outfit doesn’t have the word “Dell” on it.
Finally, Dell should have a real press event in Saudi Arabia. You have a Saudi headquarter, don’t you?
Anyway those Dell Adamo machines are found in Jarir “Bookstores”. Just don’t mind the crappy keyboard print found on all Dell notebooks in the Middle East.
Sony Gulf FZE has launched the Sony BRAVIA WE5 LCD TV in the Middle East. Sony labeled at as their “first eco-friendly LCD TV”
It has several features that together will help a household that watches about six hours of TV per day save around AED100 per year on their electricity bill, according to Sony. For a country the size of the UAE this would amount to about AED50 million saved over a year, the company stated.
It will be available for AED5,999. Sony WE Series – KLV-40WE5. Via Shufflegazine.
Toshiba has announced the Toshiba Mini NB200 netbook. It includes a 9-cell battery (most current netbooks include a 3-cell or 6-cell battery and most netbooks sold in Saudi Arabia only include a 3-cell battery).
Other features include a choice between Intel’s Atom N270 (1.6GHz) or N280 (1.66GHz) processor, a 160GB had drive, WiFi, Bluetooth, 0.3MP webcam, and Windows XP. The Mini NB200 can also withstand a bit of abuse thanks to its 3D-accelerometer monitoring system. A small chip on the motherboard detects acceleration from all directions and will remove the HHD head from between the HDD platters when the netbook goes into a freefall.
It will be released in the UK for $465. No information about when will one of Toshiba’s Gulf distributors will release this netbook.
Via Ubergizmo and Maximum PC.
Hewlett-Packard announced a voluntary recall of about 70,000 lithium ion batteries. The potentially defective batteries can be found on a number of both HP and Compaq branded notebooks. These include the following:
- HP dv2000, dv2500, dv2700, dv6000, dv6500, dv6700, dv9000, dv9500, dv9700
- Compaq A900, C700, F700, V3000, V3500, V3700, V6000, V6500, V6700
- HP G6000, G7000
- Compaq 6720s
The U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission (CPSC) says the recalled batteries can overheat, posing a fire and burn hazard to consumers. So far there have been two reports of overheating and ruptured batteries, which resulted in flames and property damage, but no injuries.
You can check your battery’s serial number on this website. Many stores in Saudi Arabia import some notebooks from the United States so there is a possibilities that some of these notebooks might end up in Saudi Arabia.
Image and news from Maximum PC.
The Western Digital TV HD Media Player is now available in Saudi Arabia. You can can buy it at Jarir “Bookstore” and it cost 449 SR. I have seen the media player in other stores in Riyadh’s Olaya computer market.
Maximum PC reviewed the TV HD media player and gave it 8/10.
The device delivers much higher video resolution than most media players, all the way from 480i using the composite video port to 1080p using HDMI (576p, 720i, 720p, and 1080i are also supported via HDMI). The WD TV supports a host of video formats, codecs, and containers, including AVI, H.264, QuickTime, VOB, and Matroska.
Update: I should have known that Jarir Bookstore links expire so fast.