a8

The ultimate example of having your cake and eating it too is the A8 hybrid that Audi announced it will begin building in 2012. Audi's flagship luxury sedan boasts a Bang & Olufsen audio system and Google Earth integration into the navigation system. And with its hybrid system, it also earns 44 mpg under the European test cycle.

The hybrid version of the A8 will use Audi's direct-injection turbocharged 2-liter four-cylinder, which in this application produces 208 horsepower and 258 pound-feet of torque. Audi replaces the torque converter in the eight-speed automatic transmission with a 53-horsepower electric motor, … Read more

The landscape of budget laptops often looks like a police lineup of suspects: a muddy confusion of similar-looking faces and bodies. For $600 you can buy a lot of computer lately, though you're not likely to get something that's particularly sexy.

The $629 Gateway NV55S05u is one of more than a dozen 15-inch Gateway NV laptops with a galaxy of different processors. In the case of our 15.6-incher, an AMD A8-3500M APU is inside. AMD's A8 processor is part of a new line of AMD Fusion processors with graphics and CPU on one chip (called an … Read more

Today, AMD releases the desktop version of its Fusion laptop accelerated processing unit (APU) it launched earlier this month. The quad-core, 2.9GHz A8-3850 ($135) and 2.6GHz A6-3650 ($115) should appear in stores today, accompanied by a motherboard from multiple vendors using AMD's new A75 and A55 chipsets that are required to use the new chips.

Similar in design to Intel's second-generation Core CPUs (aka Sandy Bridge), the A-Series incorporates a graphics-processing core directly into the CPU silicon. The advantage of this design is greater power efficiency than separate CPU and GPU chips offer, as well as … Read more

BARCELONA, Spain--At the Mobile World Congress here, I hitched a ride in a 2011 Audi A8 demo equipped with Alcatel-Lucent 4G/LTE infrastructure.

The 2011 Audi A8 is typically equipped with an integrated 3G Wi-Fi hot spot to support its Google Earth navigation system and up to six device connections. But the 4G hot spot will give users even higher bandwidth for better telematics response and Internet access to support applications such as streaming media. Think live video conferencing from the backseat of the car, which is what we did.

Alcatel-Lucent demoed the 4G capability in the vehicle using LiveCast and Vidyo. As I rode around Barcelona in the back of the A8, I video-conferenced with an Alcatel team following us in another vehicle. Our demo was also broadcast to Alcatel's booth at Mobile World Congress.

This Audi connected to Alcatel's temporary 4G base station in a building about 1.5 miles away from us, and we witnessed speeds of up to 30Mbps. However, there were only a couple of users accessing that base station. In a commercial application, Alcatel says users can expect speeds around 5Mbps. That's a lot faster than the 400Kbps to 1.5Mbps you can expect on current 3G networks. … Read more

Each winter the Super Bowl attracts more viewers. Super Bowl XLIV, last year, between the New Orleans Saints and the Indianapolis Colts, attracted an audience of 106.5 million viewers.

This year during Super Bowl XLV, Audi will debut a commercial inspired by "Goodnight Moon," the 1947 children's book by Margaret Wise Brown, one of the best-selling children's books of all time.

The commercial, which begins airing this week on select networks, features the all-new 2011 Audi A8 flagship sedan, the most technologically advanced vehicle the company has ever produced--and a favorite among CNET editors.

Last … Read more

Audi today announced the all-new Audi A8 will have a starting price of $78,050. The Audi A8L will start at $84,000.

Audi A8 gets 17 miles per gallon in the city, 27 mpg highway, which puts it on par with the Mercedes-Benz S400 hybrid. It's also better than the fuel-economy numbers for the BMW 7-Series hybrid and six-cylinder models, Audi said in a news release.

Audi also announced the R8 4.2 quattro, which gains 10 more horsepower for 2011 and will have a base price of $114,200--unchanged from the 2010 model price. The Audi R8 … Read more

GM talks about a hybrid future for Corvettes, 3D TV coming to cars in January, using the iPhone 4 in your BMW, wireless key headaches, and we drive the new 2011 Audi A8.

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• Hacking Mercedes COMAND system

• 3D TV coming to cars

• CNET drives the Lotus Evora

• Ford revives the Boss 302 for 2012

Audi's new A8 rewrites the description for a high-tech car; the feds put the brakes on blaming tech for Toyotagate; and is your car the hacker's next frontier? Lotus has plans to go way beyond the Evora, and we thrash the very tossable new Subaru WRX with the big body.

• Audi A8 is a high-tech powerhouse

• Hacking cars wirelessly via tire pressure sensor

• Site for Chrysler MyGig updates and hacks

• CNET reviews the 2011 Subaru Impreza WRX

• CNET reviews the 2010 Mazda MX-5 Miata PRHT… Read more