The Firefly, which is
available through Cingular, is a mini-cell phone for the 8-12 set. It
has dedicated Mom and Dad button (What if Dad wears mumus or kilts and
Mom wears pants? What if it's two mommies or two daddies? Wow. The
unexpected gender politics of key caps.) and has a 911 button for
emergencies. General usage is uber-simple—press and call. The
review found some quirkiness with the initial set-up, but one can only
assume that once the Mother-Unit and Father-Unit numbers are
programmed in, all the Child-Unit has to do is press a button.
The phone uses prepaid cards to charge usage and supports 850 and
1900Mhz GSM and offers about 6 hours of talk time. It's quite small
and rounded, making it a perfect "I-lost-it-in-the-river" item for the
youngster in your life.
Mobileburn talks about
their brief hands-on experience with the Firefly kids cell phone in
this piece. We first saw the Firefly last month and noted then that it lacks a standard
numeric keypad, instead limiting the user to a "Mom" key, a "Dad" key,
and a phonebook which can store up to 20 preset numbers. The phone was
"a breeze to use, and certainly was entertaining to look at,"
according to the guys at Mobileburn and may potentially have some
appeal in the senior market. Swappable faceplates and a prepaid system
make the idea of handing a cell phone to your preteen a bit more
palatable. The Firefly is available now for $200 which includes 1200
nationwide (GSM) minutes for the year.
GadgetMadness reviews May Flash's
simple GameBoy Advance A/V Adapter. Just put the cartridge into your
player, plug your nearest video-producing device's RCA jacks into the
cartridge, and have at it. Brightness, contrast and volume are
controlled using the GameBoy's buttons, as well as hue and saturation.
A major let down for GadgetMadness was the fact that the unit requires
you to use headphones plugged into the cartridge to hear the sound
passing through it—it's unable to play the sound through the
unit's speakers. Of course, the unit is only a pass-through itself, so
you'll have to be carrying a battery-powered set-top DVD player in
your backpack for this to be of any good, but it allows you to use
your GameBoy's screen for nearly any purpose you can find around the
house. Probably not a bad way to go for some hacky projects, but not
for mobile video.
PC Magazine has a glowing review of the
fresh-from-the-oven Sonos ZonePlayer, applauding its austere good
looks with a complete feature set that makes the system easy to
configure and even easier to use. The cost may take aim at the
bourgeois, but the review kindly reminds us that they're competing
with whole-house audio systems which often cost far more. A gem of a
feature (we've mentioned before) of the Sonos not found in
competing products is its ability to play the same music throughout
your manse in perfect sync.
Aerielle, not to
be confused with the fishy tart of Disney fame, is an RF system that
transmits audio to a pair of stereo headphones with relative accuracy
and fidelity. The advertised 15-foot radius is false but otherwise
these seem like a good solution for those not wishing to be tethered
to their MP3 players or need to watch TV while not waking the demons
in your basement.
The device transmits on the low end of the FM band—no word if
these things can transmit every radio in the vicinity or just the
headphones—but they seem like a fairly good solution to a common
problem.
I can't
imagine too many of you have been biting your nails about how well the
Geil iBall MPV MP3 player will review, but if so, 3DVelocity saves
your knuckles with this review of the flash-based player available in
sizes up to a GB (for $210). It's got a less-than-optimal visual
interface, a slow USB 1.1 connection, and sub-par syncing software. It
can play video, though, which is somewhat unique for a flash player in
this category, but I'm not sure that party trick is going to make it
worth the price. It would, however, perfectly complement your
mechanized zoot suit.
TheRegister has gotten their paws on a Fossil Wrist
PDA, the FX2008, and posted their review of it. After having waited
"an extra year," the reviewer says it has some serious pitfalls
— it's too damn big and has too short a battery life. One is a
critical blow to the "watch" aspect, and the other a critical blow to
the "PDA" aspect. I'll let you figure out which is which.
Fatality.
CNET reviews the Evoluent VerticalMouse 2, a peripheral
designed to ease the stress of mousing by making you hate mice
altogether, apparently. Although the idea is sound, according to CNET,
the execution is flawed, forcing you to hang your hand on the mouse
against gravity, which is tiring. Plus it sounds like there are some
manufacturing flaws, including loose rubber bits that get caught up in
the scroll wheel. It seems you might be better off saving the $70 and
just buying some Valium from your suburban apothecary.
Gigabyte's
GV-3D1 is a neat graphics card: it stuffs two Nvidia 6600GT cores onto
one card and stitches them together in SLI, without any fussy wires or
dual slots. That's the good part.
The bad part is that Gigabyte has made the boneheaded decision to
only bundle the 3D1 with a motherboard, which also boneheadedly
happens to be the only motherboard that the 3D1 can run on. That might
be a technical limitation, but with no promise from Gigabyte that the
3D1 will work with any future motherboards and a price premium that
puts the bundle at around $100 more than buying two 6600GTs and a
motherboard from Newegg, it seems mostly like a nifty bit of
engineering that isn't worth actually spending money on.
I'll
admit to a certain bias when it comes to Gizmondo, since ever since
they announced their name change a year or so ago, they've made my
life a living hell. "They guy who writes Gizmondo is an idiot!"
or "I hate Gizmondo!"
Okay, obviously sometimes it works out. But still, it causes a lick
of fire to stir in my smudged crystal of a heart to read this review
from Mobile Playa, which tears apart the Gizmondo for a confusing
interface, seriously lacking content, spotty video performance, and an
inflated price. It's one thing to go up against Sony as they try to
throttle the life from the Game Boy juggernaut, but who is going to
buy a $400 Gizmondo when the PSP is out there for $250 (a price many
already consider very high for a portable)?
HardOCP has reviewed the XPS 2, the second
generation gaming laptop from the usually staid Dell. Gone from this
new incarnation of the XPS, thankfully, is the death’s head on the
case cover. New features include a move to Pentium M and NVIDIA’s
GeForce Go 6800 mobile graphics chipset, making this a truly portable
gaming laptop as opposed to a fat Pentium 4 in an ugly desktop
replacement body.
The lads at HardOCP got into the nitty gritty, even going so far as
to describe the integrated PowerMizer battery saving features. While
the XPS 2 doesn’t have cool neon ground FX—yet—it seems
like a step in the right direction.
So I'm a child. I know
that. But surely I'm not the only one who has noticed the Cellpoint
Flamingo Headset looks like a big, black cock hanging out of these
people's ears? It may sound great, feel great, and have a long battery
life—it still looks like a dong. If I'm going to pay $130 for a
nubian schlong, it's going to be attached to something more
substantial than six different rubber ear pieces.
We first mentioned the
Sleeptracker watch earlier this month. Now,
a watch designed to supposedly wake you up while at the lightest part
of your sleep cycle leaving you completely rested sounds a lot like
paid-advertising poppycock. Refreshingly enough, (note the subtle pun)
the Sleeptracker more than lives up to its namesake and received quite
a dreamy (omg again!) review from Gear Live.
They have
developed a product that actually improves your quality of life.
Waking up fully energized on a daily basis is just amazing. It is
almost as if there is no lost time, and you just want to seize the
day. The product did exactly what it said it would
do.
Coming from an unbiased source, this is enough to make
me really consider buying one, even though they're $150. Available
now, read the full review at Gear Live.
ExtremeTech dorks out
with the LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D, a geek-friendly motherboard with 4
SATA-II sockets, dual PCI Express graphics slots and plastic parts
that glow under a blacklight.
There are a few odd design decisions, including the addition of 4x
PCI Express slots which are rarely, if ever, used.
Perfect for the casual
CIA operative or dolphin trainer, the Olympus R1000 is a truly rugged
"tough" digital assistant, as MobileMag's review clearly shows. The
device offers enhanced security along with the ability to take nearly
anything you throw at it (including other R1000s). Surviving
submersions in tanks of water, 8 hours of "agitation" with dust and
drops from more than 6 feet, the device is available in either Linux
Qtopia or CE .NET and will cost you between $900 and $1100, depending
on your wireless options. (Bluetooth vs. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.)
Available now, check MoblieMag's review for all the rugged
details.
The
PalmOne Tungsten E2 is official and it looks like a pretty decent deal
for the price, although its conspicuous lack of Wi-Fi should not be
understated. The E2 retains the 320 by 320 pixel display, although
PalmOne claims it is "brighter" and "richer," and adds built-in
Bluetooth for connectivity. The processor has gotten a bump, too,
moving from a 126MHz OMAP to a 200MHz Xscale. Otherwise, it doesn't
appear to be that different than the original Tungsten E. The best
news is the price, which remains a reasonable $250.
Logitech's new Premium USB Headset 350 gets a glowing
review from Everything USB, who claims its slim construction is light
and comfortable and not just a fragile $50 headset. One benefit they
don't exactly mention is that a USB headset serves as a separate sound
device in Windows, allowing you to run just the headphone chatter in
multiplayer games like Battlefield 2 to the headphones alone,
while keeping the sounds from the game, explosions and such, in your
booming surround sound speakers.
Want to know what the pictures from a cameraphone with a
5-megapixel sensor look like? MobileBurn has a review of the Samsung
SCH-S250, a Korea-only import that was one of the first from Samsung
to feature a high-megapixel sensor (which means no optical zoom like
the models announced this year). The pictures are okay, but
there is a lot of noise and a lack of color depth to most of them,
which bears out the thinking that more megapixels does not necessarily
mean more better. Still, it's interesting to see some shots
from the same sensors that will likely be in our phones next year.
Darla Mack has a
review of Nokia's Wireless (Bluetooth) Keyboard, occasionally called
the SU-8W. Overall, her impressions are that it's a sharp unit which
obviously cuts (get it?) down your typing time. Pairing the keyboard
to your phone initially involves installing software (included in a
32MB memory card installed into the keyboard) and selecting a
four-digit number to secure the device. After that, subsequent uses
are simple and Darla says the keys are easy to use once you get used
to the feel of them. Her only qualms with the device are its lack of a
carrying case and a smaller-than-preferred space bar. The keyboard is
compatible with Nokia's 3230, 6260, 6630, 6680 and 7610 phones and
includes a fold-out cradle to stand up your phone, for roughly
$140.
Hardware Pacers has an
exceptionally detailed (albeit slightly fanboy-sounding) review of
Actiontec's 54Mbps Wireless Network Camera, including a full rundown
of the install process and loads of screenshots. Their overall
impression was that the camera worked perfectly—it was simple
access from a web browser and the video stream was great, at least at
the 320x240 resolution. They noticed what they termed a dramatic
slowdown when bumped up to 640x480, so it effectively becomes a
question of exactly how much detail you want in your voyeuristic
indulgences. Regardless, it's a small, easily mounted camera with a
built-in microphone and email-capable motion detector for just about
$200. Not too bad a deal.
Everything
USB takes the Logitech MX518 Gaming Mouse out for a night of LAN
gaming and says it's A-OK. The MX518 is the new model with the DPI
changing switch on the side, making it easy to flip back and forth
between quick movement with high DPI settings (up to 1600!) down to
the low DPI settings for precision sniping, even without drivers. If
you do install the drivers, though, be prepared to experience
both a wide range of extended features and a bunch of confusing,
not-quite-explained options. Still, it looks a winner for $50, even if
it does look like the Edward James Olmos Edition.
Wetpixel has a review of both
the Nikon D2X 12.4 MP camera and its Subal ND2 underwater housing. The
pictures produced by the camera are vibrant and incredibly
well-balanced, which you would expect for the $5,000 it costs. Still,
reviewer Dr. Alex Mustard says that if you don't need very large
output sizes for your shots, you can purchase a Nikon D70 for
considerably less that produces rather decent underwater shots. The
housing is designed very well and offers excellent ergonomics—an
important consideration when on a dive. Dr. Mustard muses "It costs
$5,000. And if you fill it up with water, it is worth $0," but goes on
to say "in a word, [the D2X] is awesome." Some gorgeous pics accompany
the review, so be sure to check them out. (Thanks, Eric!)
The
Nikon Coolpix 5900 is a step towards the consumer camera of the
future. It doesn't offer a lot of finesse, like manual exposure
control over aperture and shutter speeds, but it does offer things
like 'Face-Priority AF,' (automatic focus on human faces) and
D-Lighting (automatic contrast correction). Now they don't always
work—the Face-Priority in particular has some problems
picking the right face on which to focus—but when they do they
can make taking high-quality pictures much easier for people that
don't know what they're doing. That said, if you're already a
photography champ, the $350 Nikon 5900 is only going to get in your
way.
Photography Blog has a typically in-depth review with sample images
and more.
The NEC N840, which we mentioned in
November, is a big 2-megapixel cameraphone not yet
available on American shores. It's quite beefy and underpowered but
the camera and reception are excellent, according to MobileBurn.
It's nice to see that the phone has an externally accessible
Mini-SD storage slot. That's the one thing that saves a lot of these
high-megapixel monsters from extinction.
I4U has a review on the Mvisto DivX
Player. Very similar indeed to the Wigobyte Mvolt-100 Media Flash we mentioned last week, it lacks the
Mvolt's soft, supple curves but includes a 40GB hard drive. (It may
very well be an OEM derivative of the Wigobyte device, actually.) The
Mvisto excels in playing back DivX files on your TV and can even read
ISO files, allowing you to copy full DVDs with playback of all its
special features. The on-screen interface actually looks quite
charming, and it's powered through its USB port. (You use an adapter
to plug into the mains when playing back on your TV.) The review is
overall very favorable and the Mvisto is only $325 through MacPower
distributors, although you have to contact them to purchase a unit for
now.
Sea kayakers are a hearty
breed, born of the sea and prone to yarring and yawping at storms.
Whereas they once had to depend on arcane skills like "looking at
clouds" and "watching the Weather Channel," the Summit watch's
barometer allows them to tell when the storms are coming and even
includes a digital compass and a little icon that tells you if it's
going to be sunny or rainy. Plus it has a thermometer.
This review is aimed mostly at water sports enthusiasts but they've
added just enough geekery to make it palatable to everyone.
Robert Silva at About.com has reviewed the new InFocus X3 DLP
front projector, the third update to the popular low-end line (there
was an X1A before the X2). Silva likes it well enough—besides
the update to 1,024 by 768 from 800 by 600 resolution, the X3 sounds a
lot like the older models—complaining mainly about the DLP
rainbows that are just going to happen in lower-end DLP units. For me,
it's a promising sign that an affordable true 720p (1,280 by 720
pixel) DLP projector should be coming soon, which will probably be my
stopgap purchase while waiting for 1080p DLP projectors to cost less
than a car.
iPodlounge reviews the official Apple iPod Camera Connector,
the little clip-on bit that makes direct transference of pictures from
your camera to your iPod photo. It's far from perfect, but it at least
fixes the most glaring flaw of the iPod photo: the ability to copy
pictures directly to your iPod and then view them, all without
touching a computer. It's still slow, though, like the other media
readers, and using the iPod like a portable data drive sucks down a
lot of power quickly, too. For only $30, though, it's probably a
no-brainer if you already have the iPod photo.
On the other hand, it doesn't work at all with previous generation
iPods, so if you just want a dumb storage device with no display
capability, you'll have to pick up something from Belkin (or
similar).
I
love that the first caption I see on I4U's review of the Oakley thump
MP3 sunglasses is, "never ever wear it with the lenses flipped open -
it is dorky!" I would like to expound on that thought a bit and
encourage you to never, ever wear the Thumps at all—they are
perhaps the ugliest sunglasses ever to fall off Predator's
codpiece.
For $500, I will ride on your shoulders and bang 256MB worth of
songs onto your ear piercings.
Corinex
is hoping there are still a few networking situations out there where
wireless won't do, but you can be arsed to run Ethernet. Its AV
Powerline Ethernet Adapter uses your powerlines as the cable, based on
the new HomePNA 2.0 specification that can supposedly hit 200Mbit/sec
transfer rates. That's all well and good, except that Trusted Reviews
found real-world rates of around 20Mbit/sec, which is about you can
expect to get from 802.11g on a bad day, and doesn't hold a
candle to proper Ethernet. At around $130 per unit (and you'll need to
buy one for each power socket you intend to turn into an Ethernet
port) it doesn't sound like much of a value.
The
technical specs of the LG Flatron 1980Q flat-panel monitor aren't that
impressive, especially when considering the $800 price, but it does
have one neat trick: the ability to be flipped over 150 degrees,
automatically switching the image to show correctly past the apex.
While that sounds perfectly useless at home, it could be useful on the
desk of a bank executive, showing you exactly to what depth your will
be penetrated by the terms your new mortgage.
PC Magazine has a
review on the Hercules Muse Pocket USB external sound module. The unit
offers paltry sound output, with noise troubles at -32dB and a problem
switching from 5.1 mode to stereo. The unit also suffers from a lack
of a MIDI synthesizer and requires third-party software to play
multichannel DVDs, further hurting its claim as a 5.1-channel device.
The Muse's primary focus appear to be as a VOIP device, with Hercules
including a headset and Skype on its software CD. The Muse's
convenient volume and mute controls as well as high sound quality on
calls redeemed the device at least partially, and it might make a good
addition if you already have a soundcard as an out-of-the-box VOIP
device. It's available for about $80.
When did that brand get resurrected, anyway? I used a Hercules Muse
sound card over five years ago.
The
Sharp Zaurus may no longer be with us, but that might not be all bad,
since the hack-ready Archos PMA 430 is getting very decent reviews.
It's a portable video device first like the AV420 before, but adding
in a touch-screen interface and the same Qtopia Linux-based
environment of the Zaurus. That means it's effectively a PDA with a
30GB hard drive with Wi-Fi and USB Host capability. If that doesn't
give you some ideas, then I don't know what does.
The downside? Archos wants $800 for all that power, so you'd almost
be better off buying a cheap, ultra-portable laptop.
I can't say I was familiar with 'NXT' technology, apparently
the technique that made all those slick-looking but poor-sounding
flat-panel speakers possible a few years back. It seems the technology
itself can actually be used to make some pretty decent
sounds—sound that can be heard from a variety of listening
positions, instead of right in front of the speakers. Mission is using
NXT in their new M-Cube 5.1 home theater system and as reviewing get
pretty high marks, spreading sound throughout rooms in a way that
"needs to be heard to be believed," according to the reviewer. They
are pricey, though, at £1,200—nearly $2,250.
I
had not realized that Victorinox had upgraded their Swissbit USB
key/Swiss Army knife combo, but Trusted Reviews got their hands on one
and proclaim it a winner. It's got a new look, obviously (the new
model is called the 'retroALOX' but I don't know my knife history well
enough to tell you if that means it's based on an older knife or not),
but also is a USB 2.0 part, making for much faster fills of its 1GB
storage.
Plus, I happen to think that Victorinox has the best pocket
scissors around, even compared to the Fiskars that come on the Gerber
multitools.
Oh, I almost forgot the best part. You can take out of the USB key
now, meaning you don't have to leave your data at home when you got on
a plane. Smart. Update: And apparently, not a new feature.
Still!
Friend-of-Gizmodo Scott reviewed
his heavy-duty Chase Durer Chronograph, a big, beefy quartz thing that
I actually saw on the wrist of Greg Kihn last night. He was one of the
contestants of Beat Me Baby One More Time or whatever it's called.
But I digress. This is a quartz chrono with PVD coated body and
bracelet. It's water resistant to 1000 feet, meaning you can go diving
for the lost treasure of Atlantis. In terms of underwater demolition,
however, the watch does not have a remote timer/detonator even though
it certainly does look like it should have one.
It's going to be 95
degrees—Fahrenheit, you Euro-hippies lovely
Europeans [Joel pointed out I'm mean to Europe. It's because I want to
go back there so badly. And we always strike out at the things we
love, don't we - John]—this weekend so here's a bit of fun for
you and your dirty friends. The CO Play and Freeze, which I actually
received from some friends, is kind of a soccer ball that makes ice
cream. You put ice and salt in the outer ball and a lot of cream and
stuff inside the metal canister. Then you kick it around until you get
a semi-solid lump of frozen cream stuff. It's a nice little bit DIY
although it doesn't store very well and often falls onto my head when
I open the closet.
For
the life of me, I can't figure out how to configure my phone to pair
with my Bluetooth headset and still ring, which means I miss a
lot of calls if I'm not paying attention. The (relatively) new Jabra
BT800 headset has a built-in vibrate mode that would alleviate that
problem, while giving me another: embarrassment. While the BT800 does
feature an integrated LCD Caller ID read-out, it's also sort of huge,
which makes my likelihood of wearing it anywhere outside of a tech
convention pretty slim. If you don't mind the bulkiness, though,
Mobileburn gives it high marks, with good battery life, excellent
noise-cancelling features, and decent sound quality.
Breaking News - Firefly with Freshtel's Low Cost Offnet Fixed and Cell Phone Termination Launched This Week has the World in a Buzz
Breaking News - Firefly with Freshtel's Low Cost Offnet Fixed and Cell Phone Termination Launched This Week has the World in a Buzz05/31/2004 02:11 PM Australian VoIP (Voice over Internet Protocol) developers Freshtel
proudly announce the public release of their much-anticipated low cost
off-net toll quality calling from PC to fixed and cell phones using
the Firefly internet soft phone.The Firefly internet phone now extends
it features by allowing its customers to call landlines and cell
phones but with great advantages over other services. [PRWEB May
10, 2004] Grok Description matches for Firefly Phone Reviewed (Verdict: You Know, For Kids) GrokA matches for Firefly Phone Reviewed (Verdict: You Know, For Kids)
Firefly Phone Reviewed (Verdict: You Know, For Kids)
The following phrases have been identified by the grok system as matching this entry:
The Firefly, which is
available through Cingular, is a mini-cell phone for the 8-12 set. It
has dedicated Mom and Dad button (What if Dad wears mumus or kilts and
Mom wears pants? What if it's two mommies or two daddies? Wow. The
unexpected gender politics of key caps.) and has a 911 button for
emergencies. General usage is uber-simple—press and call. The
review found some quirkiness with the initial set-up, but one can only
assume that once the Mother-Unit and Father-Unit numbers are
programmed in, all the Child-Unit has to do is press a button.
Mobileburn talks about
their brief hands-on experience with the Firefly kids cell phone in
this piece. We first saw the Firefly 
GadgetMadness reviews May Flash's
simple GameBoy Advance A/V Adapter. Just put the cartridge into your
player, plug your nearest video-producing device's RCA jacks into the
cartridge, and have at it. Brightness, contrast and volume are
controlled using the GameBoy's buttons, as well as hue and saturation.
A major let down for GadgetMadness was the fact that the unit requires
you to use headphones plugged into the cartridge to hear the sound
passing through it—it's unable to play the sound through the
unit's speakers. Of course, the unit is only a pass-through itself, so
you'll have to be carrying a battery-powered set-top DVD player in
your backpack for this to be of any good, but it allows you to use
your GameBoy's screen for nearly any purpose you can find around the
house. Probably not a bad way to go for some hacky projects, but not
for mobile video.
PC Magazine has a glowing review of the
fresh-from-the-oven Sonos ZonePlayer, applauding its austere good
looks with a complete feature set that makes the system easy to
configure and even easier to use. The cost may take aim at the
bourgeois, but the review kindly reminds us that they're competing
with whole-house audio systems which often cost far more. A gem of a
feature (we've mentioned 
Aerielle, not to
be confused with the fishy tart of Disney fame, is an RF system that
transmits audio to a pair of stereo headphones with relative accuracy
and fidelity. The advertised 15-foot radius is false but otherwise
these seem like a good solution for those not wishing to be tethered
to their MP3 players or need to watch TV while not waking the demons
in your basement.
I can't
imagine too many of you have been biting your nails about how well the
Geil iBall MPV MP3 player will review, but if so, 3DVelocity saves
your knuckles with this review of the flash-based player available in
sizes up to a GB (for $210). It's got a less-than-optimal visual
interface, a slow USB 1.1 connection, and sub-par syncing software. It
can play video, though, which is somewhat unique for a flash player in
this category, but I'm not sure that party trick is going to make it
worth the price. It would, however, perfectly complement your
mechanized zoot suit.
CNET reviews the Evoluent VerticalMouse 2, a peripheral
designed to ease the stress of mousing by making you hate mice
altogether, apparently. Although the idea is sound, according to CNET,
the execution is flawed, forcing you to hang your hand on the mouse
against gravity, which is tiring. Plus it sounds like there are some
manufacturing flaws, including loose rubber bits that get caught up in
the scroll wheel. It seems you might be better off saving the $70 and
just buying some Valium from your suburban apothecary.
Gigabyte's
GV-3D1 is a neat graphics card: it stuffs two Nvidia 6600GT cores onto
one card and stitches them together in SLI, without any fussy wires or
dual slots. That's the good part.
I'll
admit to a certain bias when it comes to Gizmondo, since ever since
they announced their name change a year or so ago, they've made my
life a living hell. "They guy who writes Gizmondo is an idiot!"
or "I hate Gizmondo!"
HardOCP has reviewed the XPS 2, the second
generation gaming laptop from the usually staid Dell. Gone from this
new incarnation of the XPS, thankfully, is the death’s head on the
case cover. New features include a move to Pentium M and NVIDIA’s
GeForce Go 6800 mobile graphics chipset, making this a truly portable
gaming laptop as opposed to a fat Pentium 4 in an ugly desktop
replacement body.
So I'm a child. I know
that. But surely I'm not the only one who has noticed the Cellpoint
Flamingo Headset looks like a big, black cock hanging out of these
people's ears? It may sound great, feel great, and have a long battery
life—it still looks like a dong. If I'm going to pay $130 for a
nubian schlong, it's going to be attached to something more
substantial than six different rubber ear pieces.
We first mentioned the
Sleeptracker watch 
ExtremeTech dorks out
with the LanParty UT nF4 Ultra-D, a geek-friendly motherboard with 4
SATA-II sockets, dual PCI Express graphics slots and plastic parts
that glow under a blacklight. 
Perfect for the casual
CIA operative or dolphin trainer, the Olympus R1000 is a truly rugged
"tough" digital assistant, as MobileMag's review clearly shows. The
device offers enhanced security along with the ability to take nearly
anything you throw at it (including other R1000s). Surviving
submersions in tanks of water, 8 hours of "agitation" with dust and
drops from more than 6 feet, the device is available in either Linux
Qtopia or CE .NET and will cost you between $900 and $1100, depending
on your wireless options. (Bluetooth vs. Bluetooth and Wi-Fi.)
Available now, check MoblieMag's review for all the rugged
details.
The
PalmOne Tungsten E2 is official and it looks like a pretty decent deal
for the price, although its conspicuous lack of Wi-Fi should not be
understated. The E2 retains the 320 by 320 pixel display, although
PalmOne claims it is "brighter" and "richer," and adds built-in
Bluetooth for connectivity. The processor has gotten a bump, too,
moving from a 126MHz OMAP to a 200MHz Xscale. Otherwise, it doesn't
appear to be that different than the original Tungsten E. The best
news is the price, which remains a reasonable $250.
Logitech's new Premium USB Headset 350 gets a glowing
review from Everything USB, who claims its slim construction is light
and comfortable and not just a fragile $50 headset. One benefit they
don't exactly mention is that a USB headset serves as a separate sound
device in Windows, allowing you to run just the headphone chatter in
multiplayer games like Battlefield 2 to the headphones alone,
while keeping the sounds from the game, explosions and such, in your
booming surround sound speakers.
Want to know what the pictures from a cameraphone with a
5-megapixel sensor look like? MobileBurn has a review of the Samsung
SCH-S250, a Korea-only import that was one of the first from Samsung
to feature a high-megapixel sensor (which means no optical zoom like
the models announced this year). The pictures are okay, but
there is a lot of noise and a lack of color depth to most of them,
which bears out the thinking that more megapixels does not necessarily
mean more better. Still, it's interesting to see some shots
from the same sensors that will likely be in our phones next year.
Darla Mack has a
review of Nokia's Wireless (Bluetooth) Keyboard, occasionally called
the SU-8W. Overall, her impressions are that it's a sharp unit which
obviously cuts (get it?) down your typing time. Pairing the keyboard
to your phone initially involves installing software (included in a
32MB memory card installed into the keyboard) and selecting a
four-digit number to secure the device. After that, subsequent uses
are simple and Darla says the keys are easy to use once you get used
to the feel of them. Her only qualms with the device are its lack of a
carrying case and a smaller-than-preferred space bar. The keyboard is
compatible with Nokia's 3230, 6260, 6630, 6680 and 7610 phones and
includes a fold-out cradle to stand up your phone, for roughly
$140.
Hardware Pacers has an
exceptionally detailed (albeit slightly fanboy-sounding) review of
Actiontec's 54Mbps Wireless Network Camera, including a full rundown
of the install process and loads of screenshots. Their overall
impression was that the camera worked perfectly—it was simple
access from a web browser and the video stream was great, at least at
the 320x240 resolution. They noticed what they termed a dramatic
slowdown when bumped up to 640x480, so it effectively becomes a
question of exactly how much detail you want in your voyeuristic
indulgences. Regardless, it's a small, easily mounted camera with a
built-in microphone and email-capable motion detector for just about
$200. Not too bad a deal.
Everything
USB takes the Logitech MX518 Gaming Mouse out for a night of LAN
gaming and says it's A-OK. The MX518 is the new model with the DPI
changing switch on the side, making it easy to flip back and forth
between quick movement with high DPI settings (up to 1600!) down to
the low DPI settings for precision sniping, even without drivers. If
you do install the drivers, though, be prepared to experience
both a wide range of extended features and a bunch of confusing,
not-quite-explained options. Still, it looks a winner for $50, even if
it does look like the Edward James Olmos Edition.
Wetpixel has a review of both
the Nikon D2X 12.4 MP camera and its Subal ND2 underwater housing. The
pictures produced by the camera are vibrant and incredibly
well-balanced, which you would expect for the $5,000 it costs. Still,
reviewer Dr. Alex Mustard says that if you don't need very large
output sizes for your shots, you can purchase a Nikon D70 for
considerably less that produces rather decent underwater shots. The
housing is designed very well and offers excellent ergonomics—an
important consideration when on a dive. Dr. Mustard muses "It costs
$5,000. And if you fill it up with water, it is worth $0," but goes on
to say "in a word, [the D2X] is awesome." Some gorgeous pics accompany
the review, so be sure to check them out. (Thanks, Eric!)
The
Nikon Coolpix 5900 is a step towards the consumer camera of the
future. It doesn't offer a lot of finesse, like manual exposure
control over aperture and shutter speeds, but it does offer things
like 'Face-Priority AF,' (automatic focus on human faces) and
D-Lighting (automatic contrast correction). Now they don't always
work—the Face-Priority in particular has some problems
picking the right face on which to focus—but when they do they
can make taking high-quality pictures much easier for people that
don't know what they're doing. That said, if you're already a
photography champ, the $350 Nikon 5900 is only going to get in your
way.
The NEC N840, which we mentioned in
I4U has a review on the Mvisto DivX
Player. Very similar indeed to the Wigobyte Mvolt-100 Media Flash 
Sea kayakers are a hearty
breed, born of the sea and prone to yarring and yawping at storms.
Whereas they once had to depend on arcane skills like "looking at
clouds" and "watching the Weather Channel," the Summit watch's
barometer allows them to tell when the storms are coming and even
includes a digital compass and a little icon that tells you if it's
going to be sunny or rainy. Plus it has a thermometer.
Robert Silva at About.com has reviewed the new InFocus X3 DLP
front projector, the third update to the popular low-end line (there
was an X1A before the X2). Silva likes it well enough—besides
the update to 1,024 by 768 from 800 by 600 resolution, the X3 sounds a
lot like the older models—complaining mainly about the DLP
rainbows that are just going to happen in lower-end DLP units. For me,
it's a promising sign that an affordable true 720p (1,280 by 720
pixel) DLP projector should be coming soon, which will probably be my
stopgap purchase while waiting for 1080p DLP projectors to cost less
than a car.
iPodlounge reviews the official Apple iPod Camera Connector,
the little clip-on bit that makes direct transference of pictures from
your camera to your iPod photo. It's far from perfect, but it at least
fixes the most glaring flaw of the iPod photo: the ability to copy
pictures directly to your iPod and then view them, all without
touching a computer. It's still slow, though, like the other media
readers, and using the iPod like a portable data drive sucks down a
lot of power quickly, too. For only $30, though, it's probably a
no-brainer if you already have the iPod photo.
I
love that the first caption I see on I4U's review of the Oakley thump
MP3 sunglasses is, "never ever wear it with the lenses flipped open -
it is dorky!" I would like to expound on that thought a bit and
encourage you to never, ever wear the Thumps at all—they are
perhaps the ugliest sunglasses ever to fall off Predator's
codpiece.
Corinex
is hoping there are still a few networking situations out there where
wireless won't do, but you can be arsed to run Ethernet. Its AV
Powerline Ethernet Adapter uses your powerlines as the cable, based on
the new HomePNA 2.0 specification that can supposedly hit 200Mbit/sec
transfer rates. That's all well and good, except that Trusted Reviews
found real-world rates of around 20Mbit/sec, which is about you can
expect to get from 802.11g on a bad day, and doesn't hold a
candle to proper Ethernet. At around $130 per unit (and you'll need to
buy one for each power socket you intend to turn into an Ethernet
port) it doesn't sound like much of a value.
The
technical specs of the LG Flatron 1980Q flat-panel monitor aren't that
impressive, especially when considering the $800 price, but it does
have one neat trick: the ability to be flipped over 150 degrees,
automatically switching the image to show correctly past the apex.
While that sounds perfectly useless at home, it could be useful on the
desk of a bank executive, showing you exactly to what depth your will
be penetrated by the terms your new mortgage.
PC Magazine has a
review on the Hercules Muse Pocket USB external sound module. The unit
offers paltry sound output, with noise troubles at -32dB and a problem
switching from 5.1 mode to stereo. The unit also suffers from a lack
of a MIDI synthesizer and requires third-party software to play
multichannel DVDs, further hurting its claim as a 5.1-channel device.
The Muse's primary focus appear to be as a VOIP device, with Hercules
including a headset and Skype on its software CD. The Muse's
convenient volume and mute controls as well as high sound quality on
calls redeemed the device at least partially, and it might make a good
addition if you already have a soundcard as an out-of-the-box VOIP
device. It's available for about $80.
The
Sharp Zaurus may no longer be with us, but that might not be all bad,
since the hack-ready Archos PMA 430 is getting very decent reviews.
It's a portable video device first like the AV420 before, but adding
in a touch-screen interface and the same Qtopia Linux-based
environment of the Zaurus. That means it's effectively a PDA with a
30GB hard drive with Wi-Fi and USB Host capability. If that doesn't
give you some ideas, then I don't know what does.
I can't say I was familiar with 'NXT' technology, apparently
the technique that made all those slick-looking but poor-sounding
flat-panel speakers possible a few years back. It seems the technology
itself can actually be used to make some pretty decent
sounds—sound that can be heard from a variety of listening
positions, instead of right in front of the speakers. Mission is using
NXT in their new M-Cube 5.1 home theater system and as reviewing get
pretty high marks, spreading sound throughout rooms in a way that
"needs to be heard to be believed," according to the reviewer. They
are pricey, though, at £1,200—nearly $2,250.
I
had not realized that Victorinox had upgraded their Swissbit USB
key/Swiss Army knife combo, but Trusted Reviews got their hands on one
and proclaim it a winner. It's got a new look, obviously (the new
model is called the 'retroALOX' but I don't know my knife history well
enough to tell you if that means it's based on an older knife or not),
but also is a USB 2.0 part, making for much faster fills of its 1GB
storage.
Friend-of-Gizmodo Scott reviewed
his heavy-duty Chase Durer Chronograph, a big, beefy quartz thing that
I actually saw on the wrist of Greg Kihn last night. He was one of the
contestants of Beat Me Baby One More Time or whatever it's called.
It's going to be 95
degrees—Fahrenheit, you 
For
the life of me, I can't figure out how to configure my phone to pair
with my Bluetooth headset and still ring, which means I miss a
lot of calls if I'm not paying attention. The (relatively) new Jabra
BT800 headset has a built-in vibrate mode that would alleviate that
problem, while giving me another: embarrassment. While the BT800 does
feature an integrated LCD Caller ID read-out, it's also sort of huge,
which makes my likelihood of wearing it anywhere outside of a tech
convention pretty slim. If you don't mind the bulkiness, though,
Mobileburn gives it high marks, with good battery life, excellent
noise-cancelling features, and decent sound quality.