Aside from the 1-inch screen size bump (at 1024 × 600 resolution), the system is pretty much the same as old Aspire Ones—1.6GHz Atom (model unspecified), 160GB hard drive, 1GB RAM, optional 3G, 3 USB ports, multitouch trackpad, Bluetooth, Wi-Fi, SDHC...you know the drill.

One change noted by jkkmobile, however, was that a series of bottom panels should make changing out the RAM, hard drive, etc, a lot easier than earlier units. Given that most netbook owners that I know are cheap DIY bastards (including myself), that's a welcoming alteration on Acer's part. [Antharius via jkkmobile]

She was good to us. She let us play. She gave us all the glitter and all the shiny pixels. She made our hearts explode with joy and love. But now she's gone.

Oh my, how much I miss you, girl.

[Thanks to REED ANNEX and thanks to our benefactor gizmine.com]

Gizmodo Gallery

Reed Annex

151 Orchard Street

New York, NY 10002

Gizmodo Gallery Reader Meetup

The reader meetup takes place across the street from the Gallery, at a place called The Annex (not to be confused with REED ANNEX where the gallery is hosted.) The address is 152 Orchard Street and we'll be there at 9 PM SHARP on Friday December 5th.

Gallery Dates:

December 4th-7th

Times:

12/4 Thursday

12-8

12/5 Friday

12-8

12/6 Saturday

11-8

12/7 Sunday

11-4

[Read more about our Gizmodo Gallery here and see what else we'll be playing with at the event.]

• Support for Apple In-Ear Headphones with Remote and Mic

• Support for Apple Earphones with Remote and Mic

• Fixed instability issues when using Nike + iPod Sport Kit

• Added a setting to turn off Cover Flow when rotating iPod nano and a Cover Flow menu item under the Music menu

• When Shuffle setting is set to Songs, pressing play on a song in a saved Genius playlist will now follow the Shuffle setting

• After playing a slideshow with TV out, Cover Flow album art is no longer distorted

• Waking iPod nano after hibernating no longer distorts photos

• Other minor bug fixes

[AppleInsider]

The 103 has a 2.8-inch touchscreen with 640x480 resolution, Wi-Fi, AGPS, and no keyboard. The 111 has a front-facing keyboard, which cuts the resolution down to 320x240 on a 2.46-inch screen. This also has Wi-Fi and AGPS. Both phones have a 2-megapixel back camera and a 0.3-megapixel front video camera for conferencing. [Velocity Mobile]

Its official name is TH-103PZ600U, and it's technically part of a plasma line that emerged last year. If you want to buy what could be more or less considered a 50-inch version of it—screen wise one quarter of the area—you'd pay just $2,100 at Amazon.

But as you have already seen, that extra 53 diagonal inches came straight from heaven, and with it came some burdens. It's the same 4,000:1 contrast ratio, nice and rich as plasma tends to be when compared to similar LCD technologies. Live action is great with no blur or jitters, as we had expected given what we've seen of Panasonic's smaller plasmas.

But those smaller plasmas didn't require 12 low-RPM fans running at all times, like this bad boy did. To be fair, I've had desktop computers with noisier fans, and the 8" wall mount didn't have any sort of special exhaust system to help the heat dissipate. In fact, as you can see in the gallery, Panasonic national product manager Karl DeManss had no problem standing up inside the wall mount:

Nevertheless, the TV does take a 220V wall socket, like a freakin' clothes dryer, so you gotta consider the impact to the electrical bill. (Then again, if you're in the market for a $70,000 TV, maybe you don't.)

Input-wise, the unit we got to play with had RGB, component video and DVI/HDMI, but picture only. There are no speakers, though it does have little 3-watt amps for BYO speakers. As I noted in the uncrating, it is a modular system, much like the commercial displays from Panasonic and Pioneer: you tell them which inputs you want, and they sock them in. I believe there were four proprietary slots in the strip, which you can see in the gallery. Each slot could take at least one input.

Contrary to our own concerns, the warm-up time was imperceptible—the screen went on straight away. Also, the pixels themselves were not as visible as we had feared. I was anticipating "screen door" like crazy, but for most of us, the pixels disappeared at about 70 inches of distance (for me, they disappeared around 80 inches). And you're definitely not going to want to stand as close as Adam was during his Bioshock frenzy. After a while, he had to sit down to keep from falling over.

Have a look at the gallery to see some of the specifics of our hands-on. Note the hallowed "dime test" to gauge pixel size, and the tape measure—held by Panasonic displays president Andrew Nelkin and me—to guarantee that it was in fact 103", when we had heard through the grapevine that it may, in reality, be a 102-incher. (The overall dimensions are 56" high by 95" across by 5" deep.)

Bottom line: Would I want one? Nope. WHAAA?? Okay, so yeah, I would love one. But Sharp told me that its goal is to have wall-sized LCDs in the coming years. And if Panasonic is as competitive as I think, it will start pushing the limits too. Bottom line is either bigger sets or cheaper 103s. Either way, we win. Hang on tight, cuz it's going to be a wild ride.

In case you missed the "uncrating" feature over the weekend, check it out.

As you can see, the configurator lets you easily swapout languages, functions, and plugins for each key. We were going to call this vaporware again, but we can't stay mad at you, Optimus. You had us at qwertyuiop[]\.

– Jason Chen

Optimus-103 Configurator [Optimus Blog]

And its full abilities have just surfaced. Everything looks standard (except the size, obviously) But we like the selective backlight control that tweaks contrast on individual parts of the screen. Want? Whateva! If you're so poor that you actually have to read Gizmodo without a Butler pouring wine into your mouth, fuggetabout it. The TV will be available for $69,999.95, come November. Panasonic says keep the extra nickel. They also said F U to Mark Cuban, who begged to be the first to buy it. Looks like between the 100-inch LCD, and this baby (huey) this could be the year that TVs got too big to fit in our livingrooms.– Brian Lam

Panasonic TH-103PF9UK 103" Professional Series Plasma Spec Sheet [Panasonic via the amazing Gizmag]