This morning HTC and Verizon announced the Droid Incredible 2 (aka Incredible S) will be up for sale starting on April 28, this Thursday, for $200 with a 2-year contract. Internally the Droid Incredible 2 uses the same Qualcomm MSM8655 Snapdragon SoC we've seen in other recent releases, including the HTC Thunderbolt. The 8655 combines a single Scorpion core running at 1GHz with an Adreno 205 GPU, all built on a 45nm process. The SoC has 768MB of LPDDR2 DRAM on-package.

We're working on our full review of the phone (it just showed up this morning) but read on for a quick preview!

A few weeks ago, Alienware launched a revamped version of the famed M11x, the world's smallest gaming laptop. We've been pestering them to get a review sample ever since the press release, as we know there's a ton of interest in the updated M11x. Much to our surprise, a package arrived unannounced yesterday with said laptop. We quickly unpacked the system and prepped it for testing. We already liked the original concept, and the R2 release improves on several areas. Specifically, the old overclocked CULV SU7300 processor was swapped out for a Core i7-640UM and the GPU now has NVIDIA's Optimus Technology to allow seamless switching between the Intel HD IGP and GT 335M. We'll be running benchmarks over the weekend, but today we wanted to present our initial impressions.

Seasonic was kind enough to send us a PSU in for our expanding list of testbeds. They shipped us their latest member of the M12 II line: a 620W modular unit. It's got three modular cables for SATA power (9 connectors), two for molex power (6 connectors), two for PCIe (1 x 6-pin + 1 x 6/8-pin) and one for floppy (2 connectors).

The unit itself is 80 Plus Bronze certified which means that at 20%, 50% and 100% load the PSU will operate at a minimum of 82% efficiency. Expect to see it used in some of our reviews going forward!

More pics of the PSU in the gallery

I had a lot of stuff come in this morning. First the iPad 3G, then Zotac's next-generation ION box and a bunch of NDA'd CPUs. A little earlier in the week however I got a delivery of a few new SSDs that I've been diligently working on. While the point of This Just In was to catalog parts as they come in so you could see what I'm working on, one particular SSD was too interesting to not start testing right away.

Starting at the very left we have Patriot's Zephyr, a JMicron JMF612 based value drive. Next to it we have the long awaited OCZ Onyx, a $99 Indilinx Amigos based SSD (Amigos is literally half a Barefoot in terms of channel count). Number three is OWC's Mercury Extreme SSD. This is the same product we reviewed a while back but it's been updated to use a SF-1200 controller instead of the original SF-1500/SF-1200 hybrid it used. I asked for it to confirm the controller used inside. The final item on the list is the exciting one. Note that it has no label, it doesn't even have a product name at this point. It may be something new entirely or carry an existing brand. I'll leave you all to speculate as to what it is, but I've hinted at it in a recent SSD piece. It's nothing earth shattering but it is an option I was curious about.

That's Zotac's HD-ID11-U, a nettop based on the dual-core Atom D510 and NVIDIA's 16 core next-gen ION with 512MB DDR3 frame buffer. The system shipped entirely barebones so we'll be suiting it up and running whatever preliminary tests we can on it over the weekend. As I mentioned earlier, drivers aren't final so don't expect a full rundown anytime soon.

The system sports 6 USB ports, HDMI & DVI out, eSATA, Ethernet, optical audio out, headphone/mic jacks and a SD card reader. Internally you've got one 2.5" bay for a SATA HDD (or SSD) and a single SO-DIMM slot for DDR2.

If you want a closer look at the system head over to our pics in the Gallery.

Today the first iPad 3Gs will go on sale starting at 5PM at Apple Retail Stores and Best Buy. Those who preordered at the time of announcement should be receiving their shipments via Fedex before then. The device itself hasn't changed except for a black strip at the top where the 3G antenna is located and there's now a removable micro SIM tray along the left side.

Activation is handled entirely within the iPad OS itself and AT&T offers two domestic dataplans: $14.99 for up to 250MB of data transfers per month, and $29.99 for unlimited. If you'd like to add international data roaming the options are as follows:

Sigh. I long for the day when we'll get reasonable wireless internet pricing internationally.

The most interesting thing I've run into thus far is the fact that while operating on the 3G network we appear to be network bound rather than CPU bound. I timed simultaneous web page loads on both the iPhone 3GS and iPad 3G to get an idea of 3G performance on the devices. Each test was repeated at least 3 times and as many as 7 times to ensure repeatability. Outliers were thrown out and averages are reported below:

The iPhone 3GS is actually slightly faster over 3G. I suspect this is an OS/browser optimization issue because loading up AnandTech would occassionally come up lightning fast on the iPhone, presumably because it's loading almost entirely out of cache while I could never get the iPad 3G to do the same. If we look at the rest of the tests the race is far closer with the iPhone 3GS usually getting the slight edge over the iPad 3G. The opposite is true in one of the benchmarks. At the end of the day it seems that the A4 does nothing for web page loading performance over 3G. It's only over WiFi that you'll see a big performance gain over the iPhone 3GS (or perhaps on web pages with few images/ads).

More pics of the iPad 3G in our Gallery.

Next week I'll have more to report on than just SSDs, I promise. Until then, the SandForce festivities continue with today's arrival: The OCZ Vertex 2.

As you may have heard, the Vertex 2 uses a special brew of SandForce's SF-1200 firmware that gives it the small file random write performance of a SF-1500 based solution, without most of the added cost. Unless Corsair and SandForce work something out, the Vertex 2 is going to be the only SF-1200 based SSD that can use SandForce's MP firmware and attain 30,000 sustained 4K random write IOPS.

I'm running the drive through the ringer now and hope to have results as well as an update to our SSD Bench later this week. If you want to see pics of its internals, check out the gallery.

Things move in real time around here. Just yesterday we published an article detailing the differences between SandForce's SF-1200 and SF-1500 controller. We also pointed out that the mass production firmware for the SF-1200 controller (v3.0.5) caps 4K random write performance on all drives except for OCZ's upcoming Vertex 2. The only problem (aside from the obvious) is I had no way of determining how much of a real world impact the lower 4K random writes would have on a SF-1200 drive. Until today that is.

The Agility 2 is OCZ's standard SF-1200 SSD, using the same firmware that's been made available to all of SandForce's partners. The performance of this drive should tell us what we can expect from all other SF-1200 drives on the market. My Vertex 2 sample won't be here until next week.  I also received a reference SF-1200 drive from SandForce to verify the performance results.

The drive just arrived this morning and I snapped some shots of (and took it apart) for a quick This Just In post before I got to testing. As a reminder, these posts are designed to give you all a glimpse into what is dropped off at our doorstep on a regular basis. The full review will follow.

Observations? OCZ bundles the 3.5" drive tray we've seen with a few SSDs now. The Agility 2 PCB has a silkscreened location for a super cap, which indicates that the layout/routing differences between the SF-1200 and SF-1500 are negligible. You can catch these details and more in the Gallery.

Update: Our full review is up!

It's been some time since we last had an HP laptop in our labs for review. Recently, we received the new ProBook 5310m business laptop, and there's certainly a lot to like. This is a CULV laptop with a twist: you can opt for full-blown Core 2 Duo (SP9000) processors as well if you want more performance. Perhaps the bigger advantage over most of the current crop of CULV laptops is that the 5310m is available with a matte LCD.

Pricing is a bit higher than much of the direct competition, but you're balancing that with some additional features. The ProBook 5310m comes with aluminum surfaces on the cover and palm rest, and it also provides a DisplayPort output. This is a very thin and light laptop—less than an inch thick and weighing in at 3.8 pounds—that has a very good keyboard. It may not replace the ThinkPad T-series for overall comfort, but the spacing is far better than most chiclet keyboards.

I haven't taken a look at a new Corsair SSD in a while. The company started out by shipping relatively uninteresting Samsung based SSDs, but since then we've seen Corsair ramp up adoption of newer technologies fairly quickly. With drives from Indilinx and now SandForce onboard, it's time for an update from one of the first companies to ever visit me in NC over a decade ago.

Next week I should receive their new SandForce SF-1200 based drive, the Corsair Force, however today I got their Indilinx Barefoot based Nova drive:

This drive is based on Indilinx's Barefoot controller but uses 34nm Intel NAND (other NAND vendors are supported as well). It's Corsair's version of the G.Skill Falcon II we looked at a while back, or OCZ's Solid 2. I'm running it through our test suite now, expect to see results in Bench in the next couple of days.

More pics in the Gallery.

As I mentioned in our review, there are elements of Apple's iPad launch that seemed rushed. The lack of any spectacular apps from Apple itself, some performance/OS issues and even missing accessories at launch. 

One accessory that couldn't be found on day 1 is the iPad Keyboard Dock. This accessory has a dock port for your iPad, an external dock port for connecting to your computer/power brick and a 1/8" line out. The keyboard itself is Apple's condensed chiclet, which ranks up there with ThinkPad keyboards in my book. The dock and keyboard are both very well built.

You can use keyboard shortcuts (e.g. copy, paste, option+delete to delete the previous word, etc...) and there are even some hotkeys on the keyboard itself (.e.g lock, brightness control, home screen). You do lose things like auto punctuation in Pages (e.g. tapping space twice doesn't put a period at the end of the previous word) and you can't Cmd+Tab between apps (perhaps that's coming in OS4?).

It does improve the overall functionality of your iPad quite a bit. If you plan on using your iPad as a netbook alternative, I'd say the iPad Keyboard Dock is a necessity. Unfortunately, priced at $69 it contributes to the iPad's already high cost of ownership.

More pics in the Gallery, and more thoughts later!

Before the new site launched I demoed a new feature I'd been toying with called This Just In. The idea is to give you guys a quick glance at what I'm working on (and eventually what the entire team is working on) as soon as something new arrives at our doorsteps.

I'll admit that there have been a few things that have arrived since my last post, however all of them are under NDA at this point. I do have good news though, more giveaways are coming.

I asked our ad reps to see if any of their clients wanted to provide any giveaways to commemorate the new site launch. G.Skill was eager to show their appreciation for you all and dropped off a big box of goodies to give away.

I haven't inventoried it all yet, nor have I decided how we're going to give it away but expect more details next week :) And congrats to our AMD/Lenovo giveaway winner Scott T. from Syracuse, NY. Scott and I have already been in communication and AMD is working hard to get him his brand new ThinkPad X100e asap!