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Archos' Arnova 7 G2 and 10 G2 tablets launch in Hong Kong, taste like Gingerbread
It looks like Archos' summer of the sequels is just heating up. Less than a week ago, we spied the outfit's 8-incher at the FCC, and now our brethren at Engadget Chinese are offering up a hands-on with two more second-gen Arnovas: the Arnova 7 G2 and 10 G2. These made-over slates best their predecessors with Gingerbread and capacitive touchscreens. The original 7-inch tablet ran Froyo while its big brother came with Eclair; both sported resistive displays. The pair will also see a spec bump in the processor department, with the inclusion of a 1GHz ARM Cortex-A8 -- likely the same processor found in their 8-inch sibling. While we do have Hong Kong pricing -- HK$1,680 (or $215 US) and HK$1,980 (about $250 US) -- we've yet to land a release date. So, for now, we'll just stick with "coming soon to a retailer near you?" If the wait is too much to bear, hop on past the break for some hands-on love from our Chinese counterparts.
Eutelsat's Ka-Sat blasts off for adventure and good uplink speeds (video)
Oh, look at you Europe, with your white Christmas blizzards and your fancy satellites. All proud and bragging as your second internet-beaming vehicle in as many months rockets off into orbital oblivion. Following November's Hylas 1 is Ka-Sat, using the same spotbeam technology to rain down limited, focused areas of connectivity that are a couple-hundred kilometers across, allowing better management of overall satellite bandwidth. Hylas 1 used its beams to cover areas across the UK and Eastern Europe, while Ka-Sat will cover more areas of Europe and also hit parts of the Middle East. Maximum speeds offered to subscribers will be 10Mbps down, 4Mbps up, but with only 900Mbps on tap total per beam we're thinking that could get a little slower on Saturday nights. Obligatory countdown and blastoff video below.
Summer-loving NASA engineers launch SDO probe to worship the sun (video)
Say all you want about how bad your local forecast is, it's way more accurate than our local solar forecast. The last time we checked, solar storms are said to knock out GPS temporarily sometime in the next two years -- the kind of window that would make even the most suave meteorologist smirk. With the launch of the new Solar Dynamics Observatory we're hoping NASA can shrink that window down by, oh, at least a few months. The probe lifted off yesterday, perched atop an Atlas V rocket, and is now orbiting Earth. There it will study our sun with a series of optical and magnetic sensors, beaming data back at a rate of 150MBit/sec, making us ever so slightly jealous that this thing can get a better signal in space than we can down here on the surface. The launch fireworks are embedded below for those who weren't glued to NASA TV yesterday morning. [Thanks, Pavel]
