Toshiba e740 Pocket PC

Brian writes "Details of the e740, Toshiba's XScale model which will be powered by PocketPC 2002 has been leaked. PDA LIVE.com has the scoop and the photo :)" Integrated 802.11b, nice.

Comments

Sounds pretty cool

[Anonymous Coward]

I like these little computers. Imagine when we'll be able to wear them on our wrists!

Re:Sounds pretty cool

[melmo]

Yah, sure, it sounds cool. But how long does the battery last? I'm lazy. Real lazy. I recharge my Palm MAYBE once a week. Is this thing gonna make me lug a cradle around in my laptop case as well?

obligatory troll

[Kyeo]

Imagine a beowulf cluster of these!

/.ed already

[jasoncart]

3 posts and its dead. Is this a new record? Whos got a copy?

Re:/.ed already

[jasoncart]

Don't take out your sexual frustration on me

e570

[theNote]

Whatever happened to the e570?

I can't even seem to find it on toshiba.com.
I was really looking forward to them putting it on the shelves.

Did they cancel production or something?
It had SD AND a CF expansion slot.

Re:e570

[Triskaidekaphobia]

Look for the Audiovox Maestro: it's the e570.

Re:e570

[JKR]

It had SD AND a CF expansion slot.

So does the e740 - looks like these features are part of the XScaleCPU & support chipset.

Jon.

Re:e570

[ergo98]

I just bought a e310 a couple of days ago, and came across quite a few articles that stated that Toshiba is keeping the e570 very quiet, not even releasing it to retailers, but instead they want it purely for enterprise customers. I actually found it on http://www.cendirect.com (A Canadian place that I buy from) for less than the lesser equipped e310 (the 570 is at a sweet price), however my main criteria was size and battery life, so I still went with the e310.

Re:e570

[RevAaron]

The big deal here isn't that the XScale *can* support both SD and CF, but that the model *does* support it, that they built physical slots to accept the media. That's what is cool.

Re:e570

[WiPEOUT]

The e570 was not released to the retail market in the US. Enterprise customers could buy it modified to order.

The e570 was released to the retail market elsewhere around the world.

Re:e570

[Sneaky_Jesus]

Hopefully this one will see a public release everywhere.

Re:e570

[Anonymous Coward]

According to a Toshiba rep I spoke with last week, the e570 has been withdrawn from production and is totally out of stock. Since it was only ever available directly from the manufacurer, that means only resales will be still available.

An interesting fact

[Anonymous Coward]

This unit uses a stripped-down version of Win98 and not XP embedded to save on costs. I still think they would be better served going with a Linux based os.

Re:An interesting fact

[ergo98]

It uses PocketPC 2002, a variant of Windows CE which, while carrying a similar API and sharing some GUI elements, has nothing to do with the x86 Windows lines (i.e. it isn't remotely a "Stripped down version of Windows 98"). PocketPC 2002 is very streamlined for the types of operations that people do with their PDA, and for that it works very nicely.

MMMMmmmmm

[linuxrob]

ohhhh yeah.... I want it. I hope it can run FreeBSD... ;)

Re:MMMMmmmmm

[RevAaron]

Why? So you can sound 31337 and name-droppy without even being at your computer, or for a good reason? ;)

Found some goodies

[jasoncart]

Over at Blue Unplugged

Doesn't look all that

That looks pretty neat

[JKR]

A 400 MHz ARM-derived processor should be able to handle pretty much anything your might want to do, short of playing Unreal Tournament on it!

Interesting that the article alludes to "production difficulties" with the XScale. Anyone know what did Intel manage to do to screw up StrongARM? I know they had problems with USB on early SA-1100s, but the article is talking about CPU performance issues...

Jon.

Is Xscale ARM or not then?

[Anonymous Coward]

Personally I think it is, despite what the Intel web site says. Everything has been carefully worded to imply that it's merely ARM "compliant" but I somehow think there's more to this than meets the eye.

What do you think?

p.

Re:Is Xscale ARM or not then?

[Triskaidekaphobia]

ARM helped Intel.

Re:Is Xscale ARM or not then?

[Anonymous Coward]

The performance problems are related to poor
cache memory controller implementation. It requires
new C libraries and compiler tweaks.

Now taking bets...

[Akardam]

... on how long it takes someone to get a Linux kernel hacked onto the thing :)

Re:Now taking bets...

[VividU]

Or how about a Beowulf cluster of one of there?

Re:Now taking bets...

[nathanm]

It should already run on this. Montavista had Linux running on the XScale architecture in February (story here). Also, the XScale CPU can run code written for the StrongArm SA-1110, which powers the HP iPaq, Sharp Zaurus, & other PDAs (specs here).

Re:Now taking bets...

[Wesley Felter]

The CPU is no problem, but each model tends to need different drivers. Unfortunately, PDA hardware isn't as standardized as PC hardware.

e740 X 2=better than my pc....

[BerserkDog]

400MHz Intel XScale Processor, a 3.5" 16-bit reflective screen, 64MB RAM, 32MB ROM

Get two e740's, add a little more ROM and it's better than my pc...I really need to have a talk with the wife about my allowance.....

P.S.Could someone extract all these "anonymous cowards" from my butt?

Re:e740 X 2=better than my pc....

[Anonymous Coward]

Go here, find

Anonymous Modifier (modifier assigned to anonymous posts)

about half way down, and mod them (us) down.

Re:e740 X 2=better than my pc....

[Pierre]

hehe,

I agree my geek budget is woefully underfunded....

XScale - apparently that is the strongArm?

Re:e740 X 2=better than my pc....

[BerserkDog]

Kick my ass....sad to see you go, anonymous friend......

Re:e740 X 2=better than my pc....

[Anonymous Coward]

i can still KICK your ass anyway. who is going to register to dozen of sites for customized data blah blah blah ...

400MHz? Bah.

[Anonymous Coward]

Only 400MHz? With MS on there, you should wait for a 2GHz version.

BTW, I like peanut butter. :)

What's needed on new PDAs and Not Yet Available

[pinkpineapple]

- 3D to a lesser extent than desktop: If I buy one of these, it's gonna be to play on it half of the time.
- USB in: HP did release a Palm PC allowing you to connect devices like keyboard, mouse and the like to it. And that was really cool when using it on a desktop. Unfortunately, no USB hub on these little sucker.
- No integrated extended battery pack ala VAIO. What I would like to get is a double or triple life battery extension that matches the design of the PDA.
- Most PDA come with no screen cover. Being the most fragile part of a device that you are supposed to carry all over the place, this one is just a pure puzzle to me.
- I want WiFi AND Bluetooth, not one or the other.
- Wireless earphones so I can listen to my mp3s without tripping in the cables, or hanging myself when I take out my coat.
- etc...

PPA, the girl next door.

Re:What's needed on new PDAs and Not Yet Available

[jonbrewer]

Wireless earphones so I can listen to my mp3s without tripping in the cables, or hanging myself when I take out my coat.
- etc...

I imagine you could do this with the bluetooth interface, a la Ericsson's http://www.expansys.com/product.asp?code=ERIC_HBH- 15 bluetooth headset.

Re:What's needed on new PDAs and Not Yet Available

[Anonymous Coward]

Most PDA come with no screen cover.

Actually, I've seen several Palms and some HP Jornadas that have them standard. Not that they're that great though. In my experience the m100's is cheap and fragile, and the Visor Neo/Pro/Deluxe's clip on cover is a pain in the ass to use. The covers on the Palm III (yeah, I know this is old..) and HP Jornadas look to be a bit sturdier than the m100. The best screen cover I've seen is the metal (I think) one on the Visor Edge. It just seems sturdier than the rest. I believe the Sony Clies come with covers too, but I don't have much experience with them.

Interesting how the cheap PDAs (Palms, Visors) usually come with covers, while the expensive ones (iPaqs) usually don't.

Re:What's needed on new PDAs and Not Yet Available

[lanalyst]

The iPaq has an expansion pack that accepts 1 or 2 pc cards and carries an integrated screen protector and battery. I use my 802.11 card with my 3870 (bluetooth enabled) and my laptop. Also, Verizon's 1X express network card works with it. My only beef is the iPaq won't wake up when a call is being received on the Sierra Aircard.

Re:What's needed on new PDAs and Not Yet Available

[cmj]

The iPaq can do most of what you're asking for...
Take a iPaq 3870 which has Bluetooth inside, add a expansion pack for the extra battery and CF or PC Card.

Personally I couldn't justify the extra $$$ for Bluetooth, so I went one model down (3835).

Also note that the iPaq comes with a nice protective case that wraps around the entire thing. The screen is covered by a semi-transparent, smoke grey piece of plastic that you can see through if you need to read something off the screen. I've dropped mine it multiple times and even stepped on it (long story) and I haven't broken anything yet (knock on wood).

Now unfortunately the iPaq is far from perfect. My Palm Vx was small enough to carry in my pocket literally ALL the time. The iPaq is too big for that. I am personnally hoping to see something as bright, and readable as the iPaq, with 802.11b, that's batteries last as long as the Palm Vx and has the Palm's form factor. If it shows up 2 years from now I'll be all over it. Of course by then my requirements will have changed again. :)

Other sites on e740

[doubtless]

blue unplugged.com has a review, and expansys.com accepts preorder.

Cheers!

PDA LIVE == PDA DEAD

[jvl001]

As PDA Live appears to be /.ed:

http://www.pocketpccentral.net/toshiba740.htm

When?

[lowtekneq]

Small computers are great, but they do lack one thing that most geeks see as paramount in desktop systems, that is upgrading and builing them yourself. Though with laptops you can add/remove ram and harddrive(s) you cannot change the key compontents such as the cpu. What we need is some kind of standard that small/wearable computers need to be built around, not only would that help small businesses that don't have the money to start from scratch but it would also make a wearable computers move forward and become aplicable to the things we use desktops and servers for today.

Re:When?

[RevAaron]

There are a lot of us that aren't into the computer hotrod bullshit olympics. I want a computer, be it a desktop or a PDA, to just work. Be expandable of course, but with a PDA, being able to upgrade the processor, internal ROM and RAM isn't terribly important.

You may like to read about the ChipSlice, which is, if anything else, such a standard for upgrading and expanding a PDA. Really sweet sounding architecture- and as a plus it runs PicoGUI on top of Linux. PicoGUI definately kicks some asses.

The only modern PDA I've ever heard of that was able to accept CPU upgrades is the Newton 2x00 series. Cool, but not very important.

Re:When?

[SoupIsGoodFood_42]

I would say never, but then there will prolly be some small company that does.

Given that 99% of the components are soldered down to the board. Just how would you upgrade one of these things?

If you designed it so that parts can be exchanged and upgraded etc. The PDA would be too big.
Plus the fact that some of the parts won't be upgradeable, the limited range of upgrade parts for each model, and that fact that newer models would still come out, and will probably have things that you can't upgrade to if you have an older PDA. I really can't see it happening.

Alot of people find it cheaper to buy a whole new computer than to upgrade their existing one in todays world. Let alone PDAs.

802.11b, but not 802.1x

[drfrank]

IIRC, 802.1x will start showing up in PPC PDAs in the first quarter of next year, on a per manufacturer basis.

Until then, you don't get security, which means that you can't use your fancy device, for example, at Microsoft's corporate campus.

My employer requires 802.1x on our wireless network, so I'm not excited yet.

Re:802.11b, but not 802.1x

[Jerp]

You can tunnel through insecure connections using the VPN client of PocketPC.

Re:802.11b, but not 802.1x

[Qrlx]

Last I heard, the original poster is right; PocketPCs are not allowed to connect to the Coporate Network on the Microsoft Campus due to the insecurity of the connection.

That was a few months ago, maybe they've gotten their act together. From my conversations with the PocketPC groups at Microsoft, I got the impression that strong (128-bit) security for a wireless connection was not on the PocketPC roadmap.

Re:802.11b, but not 802.1x

[Jerp]

From my conversations with the PocketPC groups at Microsoft, I got the impression that strong (128-bit) security for a wireless connection was not on the PocketPC roadmap. I can't speak for the Microsoft Campus, but according to this page(see the'Security Options' table),the PocketPC 2002VPN client can do 128-bit encryption.

Re:802.11b, but not 802.1x

[Qrlx]

Well, My call to Microsoft Product Support Services told me otherwise. Also, if you actually try it, it won't work.

Set TS encryption to require 128-bit, then try to connect. You can't. I can forward the emails between me and PSS if you don't believe me.

Re:802.11b, but not 802.1x

[Jerp]

Set TS encryption to require 128-bit, then try to connect. You can't.

I was quoting the microsoft specs regarding the 128-bit VPN client, not the TS client.

For all I know microsoft's specs could be completely wrong (or right...), as I don't have one of these devices to test with. I appreciate the feedback though.

Re:802.11b, but not 802.1x

[Qrlx]

VPN client, TS client. I guess I was getting the clients confused. I *knew* 640K wasn't enough memory!

If they have a 128-bit VPN client that should be a secure enough connection for Microsoft to allow it on the corporate network. I wonder if they have some other unknown-to-us security reason for keeping PocketPCs off...

Integrated Wi-Fi sounds good

[peterdaly]

I could really take advantage of the Integrated Wi-Fi, seeing how I just equiped both my home and office for it. Integrated Wi-Fi inso a PDA changes drastically the posibilities of usage for such a device. Wireless is what I believe will change PDA's from being an expensive rolodex and note pad into a crucial business device.

Too bad it's a PocketPC. The Sharp PDA looks interesting though, even though the Wi-Fi option is an aftermarket card.

-Pete

Re:Integrated Wi-Fi sounds good

[jimmyphysics]

What sounds great to me would be NFS mounting my mp3s off my computer up in my room, and cruising around campus with a ton of music on tap.
Maybe combine this with some bluetooth headphones, and you've got an *amazing* jukebox.
Take it to a party somewhere on campus.. instant DJ.

Re:Integrated Wi-Fi sounds good

[Anonymous Coward]

Mobile piracy, you communist.

When will Pocket PC get a bigger screen?

[Qrlx]

Yay, 400 MHz must mean it's twice as fast as my 206 MHz IPaq, right? Well, regardless my main problem with the PocketPC line is that the screens are so small, by which I mean they don't have enough pixels. There's that new Clie or whatever with a 480x320 screen, and this dinky little PocketPC has a screen half that size. I'm just not impressed, even if it does say Microsoft when you turn it on.

Porting your 640x480 app to a screen 1/4 the size is not easy!

The other problem that I have with PocketPC is that the PocketPC Terminal Services Client won't let you run 128-bit encryption. Strange, considering that the Citrix Client does 128-bit encryption just fine. Citrix figured it out but MS, who CODED THE POCKETPC OS can't get it to work. Not very reassuring.

And whoever said that PocketPC needs some kind of screen cover is right. And the OS itself is extremely difficult to work with from an installling-drivers-for-the-802.11-card perspective. Like to install software you have to have a Windows PC running ActiveSync. They should focus more on making the PocketPC a computer capable of standing on its own and not requiring constant trips to the cradle.

Re:When will Pocket PC get a bigger screen?

[RevAaron]

Hear hear! Since I moved to an iPAQ with it's measly 320@240 screen from a Newton 2100u with a 480@320 screen, I've wondered many times why the hell there's not at least one available PocketPC with a decently sized screen. On a PDA, I expect to be able to take notes- not just keep schedules. I'm not talking about jotting down a short grocery list, but taking college lecture notes. I can do that fine on my Newton. The software is to do so is available on PocketPC (CalliGrapher), but not the hardware.

Sure, there are laptop-style devices that run WinCE 3.0 with 640@480 screens, but they have a permenently attached keyboard. That doesn't cut it.

The 480@320 Clie screen is OK, but is still physically small, with a high DPI. I'd like to have a larger screen with a lower DPI. A comprable DPI to the Newton or the iPAQ. I want more space to write and display, damnit!

Re:When will Pocket PC get a bigger screen?

[freechina]

Newton! Now those were the days... Maybe Jobs will resurrect this puppy in Apple's next handheld!
Sure hope so!

why don't they put a decent gamepad on these?

[John_Booty]

sounds like these things have loads of horsepower; i'm sure some pretty amazing games can (and will) be played on them.

games are pretty popular on PDAs, and this begs the question... why don't they make the controls better-suited to gaming?

you know games are one of the reasons people use to justify the purchase of these things. nobody is buying one solely to game, of course, but why else do you need a 400mhz cpu in your PDA?

just like the PC market, games are one of the driving forces behind ever more-powerful hardware, even if people don't always admit it/realize it.

the thing that sucks about gaming on these machines, though, are the controls! they're awful, and your hands get cramped up. why don't they build one with a slightly bigger control pad? also, they should move its location from the center, over to the left, to resemble a more traditional gameboy setup. i can guarantee the company to do this first will see a nice return on their tiny investment. :)

Re:why don't they put a decent gamepad on these?

[RevAaron]

I know I'm in the minority, but I reap the benefits of a quite fast CPU in a PDA without playing games. I currently have PDAs with 206 MHz (iPAQ 3150) and 162 MHz (Newton 2100u) processors and utilize them without games. How? I use a PDA much like most people use a desktop computer. I do development (programming) on my PDAs. It's a way of doing what I want as far as coding, but without needing to be restrained by a desktop or even a laptop. It's a pain in the ass doing it on current PDAs- with their piddly 320@240 screens- but it's quite usable on a 480@320 screen, like on my Newton.

Re:why don't they put a decent gamepad on these?

[nathanm]

It's not exactly what you're looking for, but you could get one of these.

Hm

[gTsiros]

Another fellow /.er made a funny comment about how long before we see linux on it... well, Are there plans for that? Or, in other words, is it possible? I see the windows logo and my eyes hurt :(

Re:Hm

[ahfoo]

I was lamenting along the same lines yesterday or so on another Pocket PC story and I got links to three Linux efforts for PPC, but I wasn't impresed by any of them.
The first was a page for a the earliest IPaQ running X, but the page was two years old and they had to tweak the hardware in what they themselves claimed was a fairly risky procedure just to get it to run Xcalc. So, that was more of a cool hack stunt than the KDE or Gnome distro for Pocket PC 2002 that I was hoping to find.
Then some helpful individual started giving me cheerleader stuff about the Zaurus. Well it sure seems to me that the Zaurus is more about Java than what I think of as a Linux distro. Personally, I don't see any advantage to either Sun or IBM over Microsoft.
Finally someobody pointed me to Symbian which also appears to rely quite heavily on Java. Perhaps Symbian did the Zaurus software or has some licensing deal, I'm not sure. They seem to be the closest thing to Linux for a Pocket PC platform.
However, I recently did some work for a Pocket PC OEM and I researched the market in the course of that contract and learned about the OQO. This is probably going to be the Pocket PC platform killer as it's a Transmeta processor wth a micro hard drive that can run standard Linux distros and at the same time it can run XP, so Redmond likes it too. I honestly don't think the Pocket PC thing is going to work until something more like the OQO concept comes to market.
I thought one of the coolest parts of the OQO design was the external LCD monitor and keyboard. The thing is like a Pocket PC when you're really on the road, but at home or work you plug it into a monitor. With a ultra thin bluetooth DVD burner it could be the pretty rad toy. Of course price is very important. All this stuff has to get much cheaper. The Pocket PCs are so overpriced right now and that GPRS service or whatever it's called is really hard to sell as a bargain when they're charging by the meg. Oh yeah you can use Instant Messaging pretty cheap and for some people in certain types of companies that's really super special but generally speaking it's a tough sell at twenty bucks a month with bandwidth caps of a few megs when people are thinking in wi-fi terms already.

Re:Hm

[treke]

http://handhelds.org. for Linux on the iPaq. No hardware tweaking needed, just need a serial cable, active sync, and the ability to read the instructions to install Linux.

Well...

[Akardam]

The possibility of making Beowulf cluster certianly should be raised, but the Slashdot Collective is probably more worried about it being driven by the Devil's software, so it seemed like the logical choice.

Re:Well...

[RevAaron]

Heh, driven by the Devil's Software? Devil or no, there has to be pragmatist or two around here. There has to be a practical person or two around here. It's too bad about being so closed minded- Linux on a PDA sucks currently. I have no doubts that it'll get better, but I can't imagine using it for anything serious myself. Especially because of the complete lack of usable real handwriting recognition, or any projects that are working towards it [1].

And before some numbskull posts a link to wavvy or xstroke- those are character recognition programs, not HWR.

I'd love if there were though. On my iPAQ, I use PocketPC 2002. Sure, it gives me a dirty feeling, but at least I can use it for what I expect a PDA to do, rather than having just an overly expensive toy. If that's what you want though, that's fine- I just expect more I guess.

At least there's Qtopia, which in the right direction, I suppose. But rather like KDE and GNOME, seem to be working towards a Windows clone rather than what works best. It's still pretty rough, but it's better than nothing.

[1] If there is a fairly new project that is working towards this, please do prove me wrong, I'd love to hear about it. :)

3d to a lesser extent?

[Anonymous Coward]

Fathammer optimizes X-Forge mobile game engine for intel® strongarm* and intel® xscale(TM) microarchitecture

emphasis mine

economic inaccuracy.

[CathedralRulz]

I realize this UPI story is off-topic, but the sixth paragraph exhibits extreme ignorance of economics on behalf of the UPI wire service

Some part-time students may convert to full-time status to continue their education but at a heavy price. Canadian students pay nearly $2 Canadian for every $1 in American funds.

That there is a conversion rate difference does not impact financial burden. For example, Japanese currency is around 150 (?) yen per dollar, but they find US colleges inexpensive.

Yes, Canada dollars may have a 2 to 1 ratio to US dollars, but they earn more dollars to balance for it. The best way to determine the real impact of different currencies is a purchasing parity index. A popular one is the the Big Mac index. Read more here.

Nah, video is very, very slow

[Anonymous Coward]

. Video on these things are very, very slow. 100x slower and more than what you may have now.

.

Re:PREMIER COMMENTAIR FRANCAIS

[smaug195]

Isn't there something inherently funny about a french guy posting as Annonymous Coward? :)

USB host mode available on Casio E200 and NEC P300

[Adam J. Richter]

The Casio Cassiopeia E200 and NEC MobilePro P300 can be USB hosts.

The Cassiopeia E200's cradle has both a USB client connector (for syncing) and a USB host connector. You can also buy a bottom lip for the Casio and that has the USB host connector, so you could drive a tree of USB devices while mobile. I saw a picture of it in a magazine review. I believe USB current out from the lip device is limited to 100mA (the USB specification allows current limitiations of 100mA to 500mA).

I do not know if the NEC MobilePro P300's USB host mode requires it to be plugged into its cradle.

Finally, some fair coverage

[Anonymous Coward]

It's nice to see Slashdot covering the PDA arena besides Palm and Zarus. The Pocket PC is HP, Toshiba, Compaq, Audivox, HTC and more...not just Microsoft.

XScale - and why?

[tchdab1]

from PDAlive.com:
"Rumors of performance issues of the Microsoft Pocket PC 2002 platform on XScale processor which was being floated around a few months seemed to be solved with the new devices performing beyond the initial level which was similar to that of the older StrongArm."

The older Strongarm was 209Mhz vs Xscale at 400Mhz, and after some tweaking Xscale now performs better. Um, why should I be excited about this? It appears to be a step backward. The PPC2002 was released last fall only supporting StrongArm processors - maybe it was optimized for them and now must be reoptimized (reengineered) ?

Enlightenment welcomed.

Re:XScale - and why?

[Anonymous Coward]

The performance problems were two fold.

First, the design of the XScale memory controller
requires writing load/store operations with consideration of the XScale's problem with thrashing
the cache too frequently.

Second, the ARM libraries and compiler needed hacks
to deal with above mentioned issues too.

Ah, the plot thickens.

[ahfoo]

Alright, this is more like it.
I think I'm starting to get it which isn't too bad since I disdained portables till I got this gig with the Pocket PC company.
The first IpaQ link I saw was obviously outdated, but handhelds.org is the scoop and a painfully obvious URL to boot. Thanks for clearing that up.
I wasn't too far off though because I notice that they are suggesting you're going to want a microdrive to take advantage of all the Linux Arm goodness out there and this current set of flash memory powered devices is going to be lacking in that respect. Add that with the knowledge that WiFi still has some issues that should be addressed real soon but not quite yet and the verdict reads: not ready for prime time --yet.
Besides, I think the OQO notion of being able to plug into an external monitor or KVM is excellent. Let's move production on those babies to China and drop the knob on the price selector. Or droolsville, how about 2X512Meg Compact Flash and dump the microdrive. Too pricey for now, but next year? Who knows.

fantastic!

[hype7]

Most interestingly, the e740 will be available in three different trims: one with Integrated Wi-Fi, the other with Bluetooth and one with neither.

I see two ways for a BeoWolf cluster! :))

-- james

PDA LIVE not dead

[Anonymous Coward]

Apparently, PDA LIVE is not dead, they just shifted to a new server and dns takes time to propagate I suppose :)

Great, they are quite on the ball with news I suppose slashdotted 4 times during the past month...

Hardly a "scoop", this news is a month old

[Anonymous Coward]

This information and photo are old news, it was covered on pdabuzz and other sites in early May. Here is the link http://forums.pdabuzz.net/showthread.php?s=&thread id=37865.