Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US)

Last year?before Intel launched its ultrabook initiative?Samsung staked a claim to the thinnest Windows laptop with the 13.3-inch Samsung Series 9 (since replaced by an even slimmer 2012 model). This year Samsung has thin-sliced another executive status symbol with the Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US) ($1,499 list), which the company claims is almost 50 percent more compact than any existing 15-inch laptop. Samsung doesn't call it an ultrabook, but at 3.6 pounds and 0.6 inch thick, the new Series 9 (NP900X4B-A02US) is barely heavier than many 13.3-inch ultrabooks?and makes systems that meet Intel's 0.83-inch-thick guideline for 15-inch ultrabooks, such as the Acer Aspire Timeline Ultra M3-581TG, look chubby.

It also makes us a little unsure how to classify it; except for its larger screen, the Series 9 15-inch's ultrabook-like components keep it from qualifying as a true desktop replacement like our Editors' Choice Samsung Series 7 Chronos (NP700Z5A-S03) ($1,299 list, 4 stars) or the Apple MacBook Pro 15-inch (late 2011) ($1,799 direct, 4 stars). Probably the new Series 9's closest competitor is HP's Envy 14 Spectre ($1,399.99 direct, 4 stars), which offers the same Intel Core i5 processor, 128GB solid-state drive, and 1,600-by-900 screen resolution, albeit in a screen one inch smaller. Like the Spectre, the Series 9 15-inch is a way to stand out from the ultrabook crowd, even as ultrabooks stand out from the laptop crowd.

Design
The Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US) boasts an aluminum one-piece shell in a handsome shade? Samsung calls it Titan Silver?with a touch of dark blue. It measures 0.6 by 14 by 9.3 inches (HWD), with an ample palm rest and space on either side of the black tile keyboard.

The keyboard has dedicated Home, End, PgUp, and PgDn keys but no numeric keypad. It offers a tolerable typing feel, but shallower travel than the Spectre and some other thicker systems' keyboards, and is backlit, but quite dimly?we had trouble detecting the backlight in all but the darkest environments. The large touchpad has clickable lower corners instead of dedicated mouse buttons; it has a smooth, almost slippery feel. Annoyingly, it occasionally failed to register our taps on the touchpad surface, but a driver update during our testing helped.

The 15.0-inch display is not dim or dark in the slightest?it's impressively bright even with the backlight dialed down a notch, with a matte finish, sharp contrast, and crisp colors as well as the extra resolution (1,600 by 900 versus 1,366 by 768) that's a real treat for multitaskers or image editors and unavailable on 13.3-inch ultrabooks except for the Asus Zenbook UX31-RSL8 ($1,049 list, 4 stars). Impressively for such a thin system, the screen shows next to no flex or wobble when grasped by the corners, as opposed to more bendy ultrabooks such as the Toshiba Portege Z835-P370.

Features
Samsung earns kudos for including an SD card slot?hidden behind a nifty folding door on the laptop's right side?and three USB ports?two USB 3.0 on the right and one USB 2.0 on the left. Other ports are miniaturized, with a micro Ethernet port (dongle included) and micro HDMI port (dongle not included) on the left and a micro VGA port (dongle not included) on the right. In case you haven't guessed, the super-skinny Samsung has no optical drive.

Wireless connectivity options include the trifecta of 802.11n Wi-Fi, Bluetooth, and Intel Wireless Display (WiDi), but not the Intel Smart Connect technology that lets the HP Envy 14 Spectre and Dell XPS 13 ($999.99 direct, 4 stars) update e-mail, social network, and other information while the system sleeps.

Samsung backs the Series 9 15-inch with a one-year warranty, and fills its 128GB SSD?all but a scanty 57GB of it out of the box?with an array of helpful system-settings utilities, 60-day trial of Norton Internet Security, Skype, the WildTangent games suite, and a recovery partition. The system's cold boot times, helped by a Fast Boot utility that turns off Windows 7's startup animation, averaged a blazing 17 seconds and its resume-from-sleep times 2.5 seconds by our stopwatch.

Performance
The Series 9 15-inch has the same 1.6GHz Intel Core i5-2467M processor as numerous other ultrabooks ranging from the Dell XPS 13 to our Editors' Choice HP Folio 13, but teams it with 8GB of memory instead of the usual 4GB. That helped it post an impressive PCMark 7 performance score of 3,611, topping the other Core i5-2467M ultrabooks we've tested (such as the Folio 13 at 3,146 and Envy Spectre at 3,221). The Samsung also wins the Core i5-2467M class crown in our Handbrake video encoding and Adobe Photoshop CS5 image editing tests, with times of 2 minutes 28 seconds and 5 minutes 20 seconds, respectively.

Like other systems with Intel HD Graphics 3000 integrated graphics, the NP900X4B-A02US is no choice for serious gamers, struggling to around 18 frames per second apiece in our Lost Planet 2 (DirectX 9) and Crysis (DirectX 10) tests. It finished half a step behind the MacBook Air 13-inch (4,781 versus 4,561) in the 3DMark06 graphics benchmark.

The Series 9 15-inch's non-removable 62Wh battery lasted a solid 7 hours (plus 1 minute) in our MobileMark 2007 rundown test, trailing behind the HP Folio 13 (7:33) and Envy 14 Spectre (8:04) but outlasting the Dell XPS 13 (5:58) and Asus Zenbook UX31-RSL8 (6:09) by roughly an hour apiece?and most full-sized 15-inch laptops by considerably more.

Speaking of full-sized 15-inch laptops, can the Samsung Series 9 15-inch replace one? It's a tempting proposition?we can't emphasize enough that this machine is just marvelously thin and light, every bit the showpiece that the 13.3-inch Series 9 is. On the other hand, if your workload involves serious number-crunching or video encoding, you'll probably choose to carry a slimline laptop's one or two extra pounds rather than settle for what amounts to the performance of an ultrabook.

By contrast, if your workload centers on office productivity suitable for an ultrabook, your choice will come down to the Samsung's big, bright screen versus some ultrabooks' better keyboards and full-sized ports. The latter factors, and its lower price, keep the HP Folio 13 in place as our ultrabook Editors' Choice, but the Series 9 15-inch joins the HP Envy 14 Spectre as a premium alternative.

BENCHMARK TEST RESULTS:

COMPARISON TABLE:
Compare the Samsung Series 9 15-inch (NP900X4B-A02US) with several other laptops side by side.

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Samsung, NTT DoCoMo, et al. cancel plans for LTE chip joint venture

Looks like the decision to not make a decision has... well, created a decision. Back in December of 2011, NTT DoCoMo, Panasonic, Samsung and a smattering of other Japanese firms put their heads together in order to launch a joint venture to manufacture and sell ICs for mobile devices. Communication Platform Planning Co. was actually established with the goal to hawk these LTE semiconductors, but now that a consensus on how it'd all play out wasn't reached by the March 2012 deadline, it'll be liquidated in June. Reportedly, DoCoMo even set aside some $5.4 million to set up the now-defunct subsidiary, but now it's all for naught. The entire press release is embedded just after the break, though it's about as light on deets as they come.

Continue reading Samsung, NTT DoCoMo, et al. cancel plans for LTE chip joint venture

Samsung, NTT DoCoMo, et al. cancel plans for LTE chip joint venture originally appeared on Engadget on Mon, 02 Apr 2012 10:16:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Mexico ends Canada's Olympic soccer hopes

KANSAS CITY, Kan. ? Canada?s Olympic dream was dashed by a powerful Mexican team Saturday.

Marco Fabian had a goal and an assist to lead Mexico to a 3-1 victory over Canada in the semifinals of CONCACAF?s Olympic qualifying tournament.

The Canadians had to play the last 13 minutes shorthanded after defender Doneil Henry was sent off for his second yellow card.

Mexico took the lead for good in a quick first-half exchange of goals.

Canada?s Marcus Haber tied it with a header in the 32nd minute, but a minute later Alan Pulido finished off a give-and-go from Fabian to make it 2-1.

?You think you?re back in the game, and then all of a sudden you go down again,? Canada coach Tony Fonseca said.

?Obviously, that makes everything bad for the team. I thought we kept battling, kept fighting for things, but unfortunately in that particular moment it was painful to watch.?

A win would have sent Canada?s under-23 men?s team to the Olympics for the first time since the 1984 Games in Los Angeles.

Canada had reason to be optimistic after upsetting the United States, but the team was forced to face Mexico after a 1-1 draw against Cuba cost them top spot in the group and a much easier opponent in Honduras.

?They have to be proud of themselves,? said Fonseca. ?They left everything on the field.?

Mexico secured its 10th Olympic berth and will meet Honduras in the championship game on Monday. Mexico did not make it into the 2008 Games.

?We don?t have to relax,? said American-born midfielder Miguel Angel Ponce, who gave Mexico an insurance goal in the 59th minute. ?We?re in the Olympics, but we have another important game and we have to do a nice job.?

Mexico has already beaten Honduras 3-0 in the group stage, but coach Luis Fernando Tena said he would not make wholesale changes to his lineup for Monday?s game.

?We?re going to maintain the base,? he said. ?We?re going to make a couple of changes, but nothing too serious.?

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Shorter, More Intense Workouts May Be Healthier

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Brazil and South Africa Hit Hard by Exchange Rate Complications

GENEVA, Mar 30, 2012 (IPS) - Brazil and South Africa have experienced a widespread contraction of their manufacturing industries, with the latter suffering massive unemployment as well, thanks to the rampant volatility and misalignment of dominant global currencies like the dollar, trade experts from the two countries say.

"Brazilian industry is at the receiving end of exchange rate appreciation and 2011 saw a negative growth in the manufacturing sector with textiles, leather, chemicals, rubber, and electrical industries, among others, having been adversely affected," said Josue Gomes da Silva, the chief executive of the Brazilian company, Coteminas. He was speaking at a closed-door seminar at the World Trade Organization (WTO) on Mar. 27.

"Four hundred thousand small businesses closed down in South Africa over the last three years, resulting in unemployment of about 23 to 34 percent due to the unstable exchange rate that made South African exports uncompetitive," said Stewart Robert Jennings, chief executive of South Africa?s PG Group.

"The South African Rand has strengthened during the last three to four years and is now the most volatile currency," he said, suggesting that the Brazilian Real and Rand are at their highest appreciation values against the greenback.

Da Silva and Jennings offered a detailed account of the creeping "deindustrialisation" in their respective countries at a closed-door seminar convened by the WTO?s Working Group on Trade, Debt, and Finance.

The two-day seminar, which concluded on Mar. 28, is an outcome of a sustained campaign by Brazil over the last year to persuade members of the WTO to discuss the role played by volatile exchange rates in international trade.

However, several industrialised countries, as well as China, were reluctant to address the issue of exchange rates at the WTO, saying it is part of the International Monetary Fund?s (IMF) agenda. "The seminar is an attempt to give shape to a reality, away from abstract concepts," Brazil?s trade envoy Ambassador Roberto Azevedo told IPS.

While representatives from the private and public sectors and academia were invited to discuss the role exchange rates played in trade, journalists were barred from the seminar at the insistence of Canada and the United States.

Though there was no consensus on the factors influencing the misalignment of currencies, which imply that there is a gap between a country?s real exchange rate and its equilibrium level, there was general recognition that a problem exists and is playing an adverse role in different countries.

While currencies in big developing countries appreciated significantly over the last few years, in other countries, currencies depreciated or were maintained at a steady peg to the dollar despite favourable macro-economic fundamentals.

The Real is overvalued by 42 percent, while South Africa?s Rand has appreciated in double-digit percentage terms against the dollar. The Indian Rupee also initially appreciated by five percent against the dollar from 2008 to 2009. However, it has recently depreciated sharply due to the country?s burgeoning current account deficit.

Consequently, Brazil and South Africa witnessed a sharp drop in their exports of manufactured goods, while imports from other countries shot up alarmingly. "Brazil has dropped to 14th place in machinery and equipment exports, while imports doubled because of exchange rate overvaluation," said da Silva.

Meanwhile, the policy flexibility of South Africa, Brazil and India, as reflected by the Wiggle Room Index constructed by The Economist, is not high. The three countries are ranked 65th, 79th and 82nd, respectively.

Against this backdrop, WTO director general Pascal Lamy issued a nuanced statement on Mar. 27 on the exchange rate volatility and its various effects on traders. He said international trade needs exchange rate stability.

"Trade measures cannot correct policy imbalances elsewhere, and be an answer to non-trade policy concerns?. Tit-for-tat measures would be a recipe for protectionist crossfire," Lamy cautioned.

All these issues, Lamy said, "require a mix of cooperation in the macro-financial field and proper domestic policies which lie outside the remit of the WTO."

The director general exhorted participants to make sure that the "WTO system does not crumble under the weight of excessive expectations."

In contrast, a senior official of the U.S. administration, which is providing credit at close to zero percent to its banks and industry since the onset of the financial crisis in 2008, complained that China had kept the Yuan nearly unchanged despite a growing current account surplus and bulging foreign exchange reserves.

"A strong consensus now exists on the importance of promoting market-determined exchange rate systems, enhancing flexibility to reflect underlying economic fundamentals, avoiding persistent exchange rate misalignments and refraining from competitive currency devaluation," said Mark Sobel, the U.S. Treasury Department's deputy assistant secretary for international monetary and financial policy.

China responded saying that those countries adopting unconventional monetary policy have contributed to the currency volatility and misalignment by adding liquidity to financial markets.

"Exchange rate volatility was intensified by the monetary policy of major currency issuers - the U.S.," Ruogu Li, president of China?s Exim Bank, told the participants.

"Both developed and developing members have fallen victim to major currency issuers," the Chinese banker said, according to sources present at the meeting. "For every iPhone sold in the U.S., Chinese workers and companies get less than two percent, while the rest of the profits go to the American companies."

The seminar has underscored the need to acknowledge the problem.

"If countries agree that misalignments are a given in the current international economic and trade processes, it is important to discuss the trade-related aspects of the problem at the WTO," said Azevedo.

(END)

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Bus inspections get lax oversight despite crashes

FILE - In this Aug. 8, 2008 photo, A Texas state trooper makes photographs at a bus accident scene on U.S. 75 North bound that killed several people in Sherman, Texas. Months after their state-certified vehicle inspection station was cited by federal authorities for failing to notice defects in a bus that crashed in North Texas, killing 17 passengers, brothers Alam and Cesar Hernandez shuttered their firm. But that didn?t mean they were out of the vehicle inspection business. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 8, 2008 photo, A Texas state trooper makes photographs at a bus accident scene on U.S. 75 North bound that killed several people in Sherman, Texas. Months after their state-certified vehicle inspection station was cited by federal authorities for failing to notice defects in a bus that crashed in North Texas, killing 17 passengers, brothers Alam and Cesar Hernandez shuttered their firm. But that didn?t mean they were out of the vehicle inspection business. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)

FILE - In this Aug. 8, 2008 photo, an emergency worker wrestles with the steering wheel on a wrecked bus that several people died on in an early morning accident on U.S. 75 North bound in Sherman, Texas. Months after their state-certified vehicle inspection station was cited by federal authorities for failing to notice defects in a bus that crashed in North Texas, killing 17 passengers, brothers Alam and Cesar Hernandez shuttered their firm. But that didn?t mean they were out of the vehicle inspection business. (AP Photo/Tony Gutierrez, File)

In this Feb. 13, 2012 photo, Yen-Chi Le sits in her Houston office talking about the loss of her mother, pictured on the wall. Le's mother died in a bus crash in North Texas that killed 16 others. (AP Photo/Pat Sullivan)

HOUSTON (AP) ? Months after their state-certified vehicle inspection station was cited by federal authorities for failing to notice defects in a bus that crashed in North Texas, killing 17 passengers, brothers Alam and Cesar Hernandez shuttered their firm. But that didn't mean they were out of the vehicle inspection business.

Instead, they opened another station in the same Houston neighborhood and continued to inspect buses like the one involved in the accident. And they did it with the approval of the Texas Department of Public Safety.

The Hernandez brothers' story underlines a phenomenon that highway safety advocates say has long existed with deadly consequences ? the lack of oversight for the businesses that perform state inspections of buses and other large commercial vehicles.

Records examined by The Associated Press show that three of the deadliest bus crashes in recent years raised questions about the commercial vehicle inspection programs in Texas, Illinois and Mississippi and prompted calls from the National Transportation Safety Board for better oversight. Forty people died in those wrecks, yet the agency to which the recommendations were directed, the Federal Motor Carrier Safety Administration, has refused to act.

Anne Ferro, the FMCSA's administrator, declined through a spokeswoman to comment. The agency has previously termed additional scrutiny of state programs unnecessary.

The inaction has rankled safety advocates, who believe government regulators aren't attentive to the needs of bus travelers.

"If you can't afford to take a plane and have to take a bus, you are going to be subject to second-class safety standards, both in terms of equipment and oversight by the federal government," said Jacqueline Gillan, president of Advocates for Highway and Auto Safety.

Federal regulations require that commercial vehicles be inspected annually. Those inspections can be conducted by state personnel, private garages or even the companies operating the vehicles. Passing a roadside inspection also can meet the requirement as long as it occurs within the previous year.

More than half the states have no prescribed inspection requirements, leaving it open to the motor carriers themselves. And even those with approved private garages are not required to subject those companies to oversight or quality assurance.

Safety legislation approved in the Senate on March 14 as part of the highway funding bill would force the federal government to evaluate state inspection programs, but the legislation has stalled in the House.

Former FMCSA head John Hill said the agency doesn't have the resources to monitor state commercial vehicle inspections. States typically employ people to do that, he said.

"If the person chairing the NTSB were the head of the FMCSA, I guarantee he or she would talk differently," said Hill, now a trucking industry consultant.

Documents recently obtained by the AP shed new light on the crash in the North Texas city of Sherman, one of the worst in U.S. history.

NTSB investigators determined that a blown tire caused the bus carrying members of Houston's Vietnamese Catholic community to a retreat in Missouri in August 2008 to careen off the highway. But they also found evidence calling into question the inspection conducted by the Hernandez brothers' business, 5 Minute Inspections, eight days earlier.

The NTSB report cited evidence indicating the bus had passed inspection despite defects that included a retread tire illegally affixed to the front axle and grease contamination in one of the brakes.

The NTSB investigation followed concerns expressed by a Texas Department of Public Safety trooper, who requested an audit of both 5 Minute Inspections and the inspector, Cesar Hernandez.

"In light of all the circumstances, I seriously feel this 'inspection' was 'pencil-whipped,'" the trooper wrote in a memo after the accident.

Despite those issues, the DPS granted the Hernandez brothers approval for their new business in May 2010, and it remains in good standing, records show.

Yen-Chi Le, a Houston medical researcher whose mother died in the crash, expressed outrage when she learned that the brothers were still able to inspect buses.

"We thought there was no way they'd stay in business," she said. "This makes my stomach turn."

A DPS spokesman said the agency didn't find the issues raised by the NTSB or the trooper "sufficient to justify action" against the station. However, further inquiries have led the department to seek Cesar Hernandez's suspension for bogus inspections of passenger vehicles, the spokesman said.

The DPS employs more than 200 officers and auditors to support its vehicle inspection program, and it improved its investigative process under a reorganization plan instituted two years ago, the spokesman said.

Messages left for the brothers were not returned. An attorney for Cesar Hernandez said his client did not want to discuss the matter.

Another accident points to similar problems with a bus that passed inspection in Illinois.

The NTSB's investigation of the 2004 crash in Arkansas determined an inspection conducted by a state-approved garage in Chicago two months earlier failed to notice cracks in the rail supporting the engine. The defect wasn't the cause of the wreck, which killed 15 members of a tour group, but it should have kept the bus off the road, according to the NTSB.

The garage was conducting inspections at the time even though three months earlier it had pleaded guilty to failing to notice a hole in a school bus' muffler, according to Illinois Department of Transportation records.

An IDOT spokesman said the garage wasn't under any restrictions when it inspected the bus because the school bus case had yet to be heard by a judge. The firm later received a one-month suspension because of the school bus infraction, and it then stopped inspecting vehicles altogether, the spokesman said.

Questions about the effectiveness of allowing motor carriers to inspect their own vehicles emerged after a church bus from Texas crashed in Louisiana in 2003, killing eight passengers.

The bus hit a tractor trailer from Mississippi that was parked on the shoulder because its brakes were smoking. The NTSB blamed the crash on the bus driver, but it also found that the tractor trailer was being operated in a "serious state of disrepair" despite passing an inspection conducted by the president of the company six months earlier.

Mississippi Lt. Donald McCain said his state believes roadside inspections conducted by law enforcement are adequate for making sure commercial vehicles are being properly maintained.

Associated Press

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