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Performance

Speed Racer is Elvis

Have you ever seen the movie Viva Las Vegas? In it, Elvis Presley plays a racecar driver in a city-to-city race, in between songs. The music isn't to my tastes, but the cars, a collection of mid- to late-1950s sports-racers, many with considerable history, are. And the plot, such as it is, was familiar. Point-to-point race over the open road, good guys versus bad guys. I hadn't seen Viva Las Vegas before viewing it on TV about 20 years ago, as Elvis never made my musical radar screen, but I had seen Speed Racer cartoons. Instant flash of recognition!

Viva and the Speed Racer cartoons share the same basic action-filled "plot." There is even some similarity in cars. And Speed Racer looks more than a little like an anime version of Elvis in his prime, even though he doesn't sing. Which might be for the best.

A gearhead classic that was underground for many years is now readily available over the counter. That's C'etait un Rendezvous by Claud Lelouch, better known just as Rendezvous. It's expensive, intense, and worth every penny. There is no real plot, merely action of the "kids, don't try this at home" variety.

… Read more

HP laptop claims to break 24-hour battery life barrier

Hewlett-Packard says it has achieved a mobile-computing milestone by getting the HP EliteBook 6930p to operate continuously for 24 hours on a single battery charge. The laptop used in the test is, however, rather different from those consumers would pick up at the store, at least for now.

The machine's equipped with high-end components including Intel solid-state hard drives (SSDs), a mercury-free LED display, and an optional ultra-capacity battery.

The cream-of-the-crop components played a crucial role in making the 24-hour battery life possible. HP says the Illumi-Lite LED display, by itself, boosts battery run time by up to four … Read more

Nismo tunes the untunable Nissan GT-R

When the Nissan GT-R was released, Nissan's engineers famously stated that the vehicle was the apex of Nissan performance, its systems so well integrated that any traditional go-faster mods would in fact make the car slower. According to sources at gtrblog.com, Nissan's Nismo tuning division didn't get the memo since it just released the Nismo Club Sport Package for the Nissan GT-R in Japan.

The Club Sport package actually consists of three smaller packages, a chassis package, a sport seat package, and exhaust package.… Read more

Reconfigurable performance display gives Ecotec owners a peek under the hood

When we looked at the Nissan GT-R, we were impressed by the amount of engine information available through the vehicle's touch-screen display. It seems that Nissan really understands that the performance enthusiast is very interested in what the vehicle is doing behind the scenes.

Now Chevy Cobalt and HHR drivers can pretend they're behind the wheel of the GT-R with GM's new Reconfigurable Performance Display for use with Ecotec engines, according to GM's Tuner Source Blog. Intended for use with performance Ecotecs, such as the turbocharged mills in the Cobalt SS or HHR SS, the display … Read more

Electronic flags to debut in F1 night race

If driving while talking on a mobile phone is dangerous, how much more deadly would it be if Formula One racers got distracted while race officials tried to communicate with them via headsets?

Thankfully, colored flags are the de facto method by which vital information is relayed to the drivers without causing unnecessary disturbance. For example, a yellow flag means there's danger ahead and overtaking is prohibited, while a white flag indicates slow-moving vehicles (like the safety car or tow truck) on the track.

However, in F1's upcoming first-ever night race, traditional colored flags might be a little … Read more

Just what's so 'dynamic' about contrast ratio anyway?

Vendors want to sell you stuff! There, it's finally been said. Don't believe me? Well, you wouldn't be the first, but thankfully, I have evidence.

Within the last year I've seen a new spec, called dynamic contrast ratio (DCR), tossed around for computer displays. If you didn't know before, contrast ratio is simply the difference between the darkest blacks and the brightest whites a given display can produce.

Typically, computer displays have a contrast ratio of about 1000:1. However with DCR, you'll see numbers like 4000:1, 10,000:1, and higher. Basically, it's just a way for Company A to proclaim, "Don't buy Company B's monitor because it has a much lower DCR than our monitor." Since more and more vendors have been pushing this, I want to delve further into how they're getting these numbers. I also covered this topic in less detail (but with a sexy voice thrown in) in episode 2 of the Inside CNET Labs podcast.

Before a monitor is released to the public it goes through a bunch of testing in the vendor's own lab. These tests produce the specs that the vendor will then publish with the release. Specs like maximum brightness, pixel pitch, pixel response time, contrast ratio, and dynamic contrast ratio are all determined in the vendor's own lab.

When testing normal contrast ratio, vendors use a device that measures light to determine how much light is emanating from a display while it's showing both a completely black and a completely white screen. They then take each number, do a bit of math, and come up with the contrast ratio. … Read more

Dynolicious revs auto performance meter for iPhone, iPod

Dynolicious appears to be the first automotive performance meter available for the iPhone and iPod Touch. The app utilizes the iPhone's built-in accelerometer to measure the performance characteristics of any vehicle it's placed into.

Simply toss your iPhone into the nearest cupholder or cradle and Dynolicious will record your quarter-mile, 0-60 time, lateral Gs, horsepower, and a host of other statistics. The developers state accuracy within a tenth of a second and 1.5 mph.

Dynolicious is available in the iTunes Store for $12.99.

eSATA comes to a pocket-size external hard drive

I asked for it a few blogs ago and now I've got it: the first pocket-size external hard drive that features an eSATA connection, the eSATA OWC Mercury On-The-Go. eSATA is the external interface for SATA, currently the most popular interface for internal hard drives.

A while ago, OWC introduced the world's largest small external had drive and has now become the first vendor to put eSATA on a compact external hard drive. The eSATA OWC Mercury On-The-Go also supports USB 2.0 and features a 320GB internal hard drive from Hitachi that spins at 7200rpm (as opposed … Read more

Is there anything the Mitsubishi Lancer can't do?

Mitsubishi announced today that it will enter a modified Lancer in next year's Dakar rally, the legendary grueling race through Africa. The base model Lancer is a small economy car with not much pep but a good cabin tech package, seemingly a poor platform for this tough race. However, Mitsubishi has been proving for years with the Lancer Evo, a heavily modified version of the car, that it can win World Rally Car races. The newest version, the Evo X, impressed the heck out of us on the track at Laguna Seca in Monterey, Calif., earlier this year. Mitsubishi … Read more