Archive for February, 2008
« Previous Entries Next Entries »Asus U2E gets unboxed
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Filed under: Laptops
Although we’d been told that the hot Asus U2E ultraportable was delayed so the company could launch several products at once, it looks like the crew at PC Perspective managed to get their hands on one and do the requisite unboxing. No word on how the lil’ scamp runs with that ULV Core Duo, but it looks just as slick as ever, and we’re digging that satchel case it comes with — check it all out at the read link.
[Thanks, Ryan]
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Bluetrek’s Bizz Bluetooth headset improves your memory
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Filed under: Cellphones, Peripherals, Wearables
Finally someone has combined the two things we love most — Bluetooth headsets and microSD storage — into one, sweet package. Enter the Bluetrek Bizz, a marriage of seemingly disparate products that actually kind of makes sense. On the headset side, you get up to seven hours of talk time, ten days on standby, and a customizable color panel. When you crack it open, you’ve got direct USB 2.0 connectivity, as well as a slot for a microSD card up to 8GB. You can charge the headset directly from any USB port, thus making your efforts to keep it at the ready a little bit easier. The headset weighs around 10 grams, and is slated in sell for around £40 (or roughly $80). Check out the totally jazzed-up video after the break to see what it’s all about.
[Via Mobility Site]
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Everex Cloudbook teardown bares all
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Filed under: Laptops
What’s more fun than seeing a highly-anticipated device get the full-on dissection treatment? Upgrading it, of course. Cloudbooker forum member Azazel got a Cloudbook to play with and is doing just that: ripping apart the laptop piece by piece for you viewing pleasure, while also upgrading the RAM and documenting the process. He’s already spotted a way to add Bluetooth internally, and how to open up the laptop without voiding your warranty, but we’ve still got a long ways to go before we start to see Eee PC-level hackerdom.
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MacBook Air gets smothered in Swarovski crystals, loses innocence
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Filed under: Laptops
For whatever reason, products designed in Cupertino have a strange attraction to precious coverings — ones created with gold and diamonds, namely. Nary a month after Apple’s thinnest laptop ever started shipping out to eager early adopters, over 8,000 Swarovski crystals have somehow found their way onto a totally helpless MBA. We wish we could say it was defaced and stripped of its soul for a good cause, but sadly, it wasn’t.
[Via Crystal Icing]
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LG Glimmer in the mix for Alltel?
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Filed under: Cellphones
What do you get when you cross LG’s Shine slider and Viewty full touchscreen candybar? If you guessed the “Vine” or the “Shewty,” well… no, you’d be wrong. If this ad posted over on Howard Forums turns out to be legit, you’d actually end up with the “Glimmer,” a phone that appears destined for Alltel (of all carriers) that combines a 2.8 inch capacitive touch display, numeric slider, 2 megapixel cam with flash, microSD slot, Bluetooth, and EV-DO. It’s unknown when the rather attractive metal-clad piece might launch, but the existence of prepared advertising leads us to believe it could be sooner rather than later, putting Alltel in the rare and enviable position of one-upping its larger counterparts with unique hardware. The Voyager proves that the touch / slide hybrid concept can work, so don’t be shy, Alltel, bring it on.
[Thanks, Bradley]
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Ars Technica dishes out guide for building your own green PC
Wednesday, February 27th, 2008Filed under: Desktops
There’s certainly no shortage of companies out there touting their own ready-made green PCs, but if that’s not your thing, the ever-helpful folks at Ars Technica have now let loose a guide for building your own. As you might expect, there’s no shortage of compromises involved in this particular endeavor, although Ars has at least laid out a pair of different options to accommodate different needs, including a Green Gaming Box and an Extreme Green Box. All told, that former option will run you just over $1,000, with one of the biggest energy-saving trade-offs coming from the video card (a Radeon HD 3850) which, as we all know, is one of the biggest power hogs in any system. The Extreme Green Box, on the other hand, pushes things up past the $1,400 mark, and includes no-comprise options like a VIA C7 processor, integrated graphics and, of course, a 32GB SSD drive (which is obviously responsible for a huge chunk of that total cost). Needless to say, Ars thinks you’ll have to make fewer such compromises in the not too distant future, what with things like cheaper SSD drives and VIA’s low-power, high-performance Isaiah processor on the horizon.
[Via Slashdot]
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Sony H50 and W300 camera hands-ons
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Filed under: Digital Cameras
Oddly, it turns out the photos floating around of the DSC-W300 really don’t do the megapixel-packing slim point and shoot justice. That finish actuall looks pretty good in real life, although the lens protrusion was a little puzzling. And, of course, the DSC-H50 is a hefty, solid feeling bugger, not unlike what you’d expect from the H-series. Hit the photos below, it shouldn’t be too long before the camera sites post their reviews.
Gallery: Sony H50 and W300 camera hands-ons
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Nintendo wants your money for online “Pay & Play” gaming?
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Filed under: Gaming
Nintendo couldn’t have been more obtuse in its announcement last week at GDC, but from the looks of it you won’t be enjoying that totally free Nintendo Wi-Fi Connection play forever. Nintendo is busting out a new Pay & Play service for certain games, which seems to refer to both downloadable content for some titles, and online multiplayer for others. It’s really hard to tell, but it doesn’t sound like Nintendo has any intention of going the Xbox Live route. There will be red stickers on games with Pay & Play features so you can spot them in the store, and if you do end up paying for online multiplayer, it looks like it’ll be on a per-title basis. Other than that Nintendo isn’t spilling much — we have no idea what titles will cost money to play, and how much it’ll be — but given the fact that Super Smash Bros. Brawl and Mario Kart are just about to make online play on the Wii actually interesting, this isn’t exactly an encouraging sign.
[Via Register Hardware]
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Dell’s XPS 630 gaming desktop gets official, reviewed
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008
Hailed as a rig that “gamers won’t outgrow,” the XPS 630 that we originally peeked at CES is finally official. As expected, the tower is ATI CrossFire and NVIDIA SLI-ready and will support Intel’s Core 2 Quad and Core 2 Extreme processors on the nForce 650i SLI chipset. You can beef things up with 4GB of DDR2 RAM, 1TB of HDD space or an optional Blu-ray drive and AGEIA PhysX accelerator, and you’ll have plenty of room for all those peripherals thanks to six total USB 2.0 ports, an optional 19-in-1 media card reader, gigabit Ethernet, audio in / out, FireWire and even PS/2 mouse and keyboard connectors. Also of note, it’s the first pre-fab PC to support the Enthusiast System Architecture (ESA), and you can snag your own for as little as $1,249 right now. Click on through for more of the breakdown. Oh, and if you’re interested to see how this beast stacks up, you can check out reviews from PC Mag and Computer Shopper.
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Danish wind turbine eats itself
Tuesday, February 26th, 2008Filed under: Misc. Gadgets
You know how we love wind turbines around here, but we love carnage even more — so we can’t get enough of this 200-foot tall Danish wind turbine shearing itself to bits after its brakes failed during a recent storm. The 10-year old windmill is the one of two different Vestas windmills to fail in Denmark in the past week — the company is launching an investigation, but might we suggest selling tickets instead?
[Via BoingBoing]
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