There are very few laptops as appealing as the Thinkpad, and Lenovo have updated the X1 model with carbon fibre materials. We reviewed the X1 on Kitguru last September.

Lenovo have increased the screen size from 13 inch to 14 inch but the weight is down, thanks to the use of a carbon fibre rollcage. The new carbon fibre ThinkPad X1 is also the lightest 14 inch business class ultrabook available, say the company.

Lenovo are shipping the Carbon X1 with a 1600×900 resolution screen, a 720p HD camera which has face tracking capabilities and a backlit keyboard. It has built in 3G connectivity as well for business users. The machines will feature Intel third generation Ivy Bridge processors.

Lenovo claim that the new version of the X1 will feature the same ‘Rapid Charge’ feature, which means that the battery will recover from dead to 80% in only 30 minutes.

Pricing has not yet been confirmed but we expect it to be around the same price as the original, which means it should be an excellent purchase.

The new ThinkPad X1 Carbon laptop from Lenovo is supposedly the lightest 14-inch Ultrabook the world has ever seen, but don’t take that to mean it’s flimsy. On the contrary, Lenovo insists its ThinkPad X1 is quite the durable beast and exceeds Ultrabooks specifications by using a premium carbon fiber rollcage to create a rough and tumble system, yet weighs less than 3 pounds.

“We crafted the ThinkPad X1 Carbon with premium carbon fiber material in order to make it incredibly thin and light, yet durable,” said Lu Yan, senior vice president, Think Product Group, Lenovo. “Our new ThinkPad laptop portfolio embodies much of the innovative thinking exemplified in the X1 Carbon, such as a backlit keyboard, super-bright high definition display, Dolby Home Theater, and rich communications features that balance business performance with personal use.”

Unfortunately, Lenovo opted not to share a whole bunch of information on the ThinkPad X1′s specs, though did say it will ship with 3rd Generation Intel Core processor options (Ivy Bridge), 3G connectivity, 720p HD camera with Face Tracking, and a 1600×900 screen resolution. It will also feature a Rapid Charge option to boost the battery to 80 percent in just half an hour.

The ThinkPad X1 will ship sometime this summer. Pricing information has not yet been announced.

Image Credit: Lenovo

The year 2245 is just too distant — we should build and commission a real USS Enterprise right now, cracking the champagne across her hull within 20 years, according to an enterprising engineer. The gigantic ship would use ion propulsion, powered by a 1.5-GW nuclear reactor, and could reach Mars in three months and the moon in three days. Its 0.3-mile-diameter, magnetically suspended gravity wheel spinning at 2 RPM would provide 1G of gravity, and the thing looks just like the “Star Trek” ship of lore.

This project is the brainchild of an engineer who calls himself BTE Dan. As in “Build The Enterprise,” which is also the name of his brand-new website.

“We have the technological reach to build the first generation of the spaceship known as the USS Enterprise – so let’s do it,” BTE Dan writes. He even sifts through the federal budget and proposes tax hikes and spending cuts to cover the $1 trillion cost.

Though the “Star Trek” connection lends the project an air of sci-fi fun, BTE Dan is hardly the only engineer dreaming up a next-generation spaceship to the stars. DARPA’s 100-Year Starship project is designed partly to foster ideas just like this one, from a project planning roadmap to a real ship.

The so-called Gen1 Enterprise would be built in space and would serve a triple function, as a space station, spaceport and traveling spaceship “all in one!” BTE Dan says. It won’t cruise the galaxy at light speed, unfortunately, but it could explore new worlds right in our own neighborhood, providing a constant acceleration to reach distant targets much more quickly. Its first missions would be to the moon, Venus, Mars and maybe Europa. Universe Today notes the ship’s onboard laser would be used to sear through the moon’s ice crust to allow a ship to drop into its oceans. Three additional nuclear reactors would provide electricity for this laser and other ship needs.

BTE Dan also crunched some numbers to prove he’s really serious. He proposes a matrix of tax increases and budget cuts in defense, health and human services, housing and urban development, education, energy and more. But he promises they will be small cuts and small tax increases, Universe Today notes. “These changes to spending and taxes will not sink the republic,” BuildTheEnterprise.org reads.

BTE Dan identifies himself as a “systems engineer and electrical engineer who has worked at a Fortune 500 company for the past 30 years,” Universe Today says. He is on Twitter as @BTEDan and he says he’s setting up a Facebook page where you can all go and like his project. His website keeps crashing, but we’ll let you know if we hear back from him.

[via Universe Today]

A new generation of retinal implants could use light to provide power and data, potentially restoring vision in a less-invasive form than existing implants. Researchers at Stanford University previously described how such a system would work, and now they’ve designed implants that can receive infrared signals for power and information processing.

Many vision diseases damage the light receptors but not neural processors, located deep within the eye. Implants work by stimulating those healthy receptors and sending electrical signals to the brain. They can be very effective, but they’re also bulky and complex, requiring inductive coils and cables to provide power. Instead, this method uses pulses of infrared light to stimulate implanted silicon diodes.

The patient would have to wear glasses because the infrared pulse is transmitted through a pair of goggles, at least in the current configuration. But lab tests show that a very weak signal, illuminating just one pixel, is enough to elicit a neural response — this means future versions could be fully integrated infrared laser implants.

James Loudin and colleagues worked with lab rats, fitting each pixel in a retinal prosthetic with independently functioning silicon photodiodes. A video camera captures the scene, and a small computer processes the images, which are then projected into the eye in near-infrared. The photodiodes convert this light into electrical pulses, which are transmitted to the retina — like a healthy eye would work.

Ambient light is about 1,000 times too weak to stimulate the neurons, so the researchers used an infrared laser. But this introduces its own set of challenges, especially heating of the retina and surrounding tissue. Loudin and colleagues tested various pulse durations and wavelengths and were able to achieve effective neural stimulation at very low levels, they write. The rat prototype worked well below safety limits for human ocular exposure, they say, so this could conceivably work in people.

The setup also preserves the connection between eye movement and perception, using flexible silicon that can conform to the eye’s natural curvature. Silicon therefore enables larger pixel arrays, too, meaning more information streaming into the retina.

The research appears online in Nature Photonics.

[via BBC]

Tired of the current crop of tablets mostly sporting Android and iOS? If that’s the case, mark your calendars for November, because according to reports, that’s when Intel-based slates running Microsoft’s Windows 8 operating system are set to land in retail. Anticipation is running high for next-generation tablets equipped with Microsoft’s touch-friendly OS, which could prove game changing in the mobile space.

An un-named source “familiar with the device makers’ plans” told CNet that the first wave of such tablets will show up in stores in November. The source described the schedule as being “tight” and that Windows 8 mobile devices won’t be limited to strictly tablets, but over half of the “more than a dozen” models will be hybrid devices that function as both a notebook and a tablet.

Each Windows 8 device, whether it be a full-blown tablet or a convertible, will run Intel’s Clover Trail Atom platform, which will be the chip maker’s first dual-core Atom design built on a 32nm manufacturing process. A single-core version of Clover Trail will be used in smartphones.

Image Credit: Redmond Pie