Tech Gadgets Reviews

Posted Mar 9th 2008 1:37PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Portable Audio

Word on the street (and by street, we mean mostly British tabloids) is that Paul McCartney’s deal to sell the Beatles back-catalog is done, and the Greatest Works of Musical Art Ever Recorded will be appearing on the iTunes store “within months.” Of course, we’ve been hearing whispers about this for what seems like a million years, and since both Apple Corps and Apple are delivering “no comment” and “rumor and speculation” responses on the topic, we won’t get too excited. Still, there does seem to be some serious movement on this front, with everyone and their mother saying the lot is to be sold any day now for around $400 million — which is no small sum. We will, of course, keep you abreast of any developments which will lead to you stocking your music players with the Fab Four’s work.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

Posted Mar 9th 2008 7:28PM by Joshua Topolsky
Filed under: Laptops

In a recent interview, Asus CEO Jerry Shen talked up the company’s newest edition to the Eee family, and also dropped a few more details on the forthcoming laptop. Apparently, the new set of miniature PCs will carry SSDs as opposed to the flash memory we saw in previous iterations, with sizes ranging from 8GB in the XP-equipped model, up to 12GB or 20GB in the Linux versions — though it’s hard to say why the smaller-footprint Linux would need more drive space. Shen also revealed that there are tentative plans to release WiMAX and HSDPA-enabled models sometime in Q3 of 2008, and he confirmed that come May the company will trade up from VIA CPUs to Intel’s Diamondville (er, Atom) chips. In addition, more colors are on the way, and the base price in the US will be $499 at launch — though that figure is expected to drop in the following months.

[Via Eee Site]

Vigor Gaming has announced the latest addition to its high-end desktop lineup, Colossus.

The Vigor Gaming Colossus is the most powerful system offered by the company and it can currently support up to eight processing cores, up to 8GB of fully-buffered DDR2 memory clocked at 800MHz, 2 Terabytes of Hard Drive space in RAID-0 configuration, a 1000W power supply and four graphics cards. Colossus is capable of running up to two XHD (2560×1600 resolution) monitors

Based on Skulltrail, Intel’s first Dual Socket Extreme Desktop Platform, the Colossus features full support for two Intel Core 2 Extreme QX9775 quad-core processors. Clocked at 3.2GHz and capable of reaching much higher speeds through Vigor’s complimentary overclocking service, these enterprise-level chips provide industry-leading performance that can handle even the most graphically intense computer games with ease. The Intel D5400XS mainboard that makes Skulltrail possible also incorporates the latest technologies from NVIDIA and AMD that allow for multi-GPU configurations.

Thanks to these powerful graphic cards, the Colossus is capable of running up to two XHD (2560×1600 resolution) monitors with stunning clarity and minimal effect on performance. The Vigor Gaming Colossus can be configured with Windows Vista 64-bit and up to 8GB of fully-buffered DDR2 memory clocked at 800MHz. All of these high-end components are cooled using Vigor’s exclusive Twin-Peaks cooling system, allowing the Colossus to run at full speed indefinitely. The Colossus is designed primarily for use as an extreme gaming desktop, but doubles as a powerful multimedia content platform, making it the perfect solution to blend work and play on a single computer.

A fully-configured Vigor Gaming Colossus PC, including two Western Digital Raptor 150 Hard Drives, two AMD Radeon HD 3870 X2 graphics cards, 8GB of fully-buffered DDR2 800 memory, high-fidelity audio by Creative Sound Blaster X-Fi, and many other high-end components would cost just over $8100.

Posted Mar 9th 2008 10:06AM by Darren Murph
Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

No sense in forcing someone to stick with the tried and true MP3 / WMA regimen when formats such as OGG, APE, FLAC and AAC are out there, right? Apparently, the folks at Teclast are nodding their heads in agreement, as the firm’s latest PMP handles all of the aforementioned files alongside WAV, AVI, RM and RMVB. Additionally, the 7.9-millimeter thick PlayFX-compatible unit features a 2.4-inch QVGA (320 x 240) resolution display, 2GB / 4GB / 8GB of capacity, a built-in FM tuner / recorder and a text viewer. No word on price or availability, but considering the dearth of integrated WiFi, we can’t actually see Mariah being interested.

[Via PMPToday]

Earlier this year we raved about the FPS Gaming Vest that punches you when you get shot, well if you don’t fancy being punched there is now an alternative, Mindwire V5 gives you physical feedback by way of electric shocks.

History of the Mindwire V5

“How much better would games such as Mortal Kombat or Streetfighter be if you were ELECTROCUTED each time you were hit!”

Sudenly there’s something to play for. Watch your opponent squirm as you beat him to a pulp, and fear every one of your opponents blows as you know its going to do a lot more than make your little animated character full backwards…

The Mindwire V5 works by connecting electrical pads to your body these then deliver a mild (we hope) shock when playing games. It has a ‘dumb dumb’ mode for existing games (reacts to the force-feedback signal) and offers other ’special’ features for specially designed games.

You can find more information and buy online for £99.99 (~$200) from the Mindwire V5 site [via The Sun].

Plug and Play Snowboarder
Yo dude, the powder's up. Forget consoles, now you can hop into a virtual pipe, like, for real.

You can have this for ?39.95

Pico Z Micro Helicopter

Picco Z Remote Controlled Helicopter The Picco Z is the perfect gift for all kids (big and small)…From Age 6 - 60, This is the kind of toy your dad say’s is stupid but secretly he’s playing with it while your asleep (thats why the batteries are always flat!) This fully operational, crash-resistant Picco Z helicopter is perfect for indoor aerial action and comes ready to fly, with take-off, hover and left/right functions providing enough manoeuvres to make Torvil & Dean dizzy.

 About The Picco Z  The inexpensive Picco Z is remarkably robust, made of tough expanded Polypropylene foam, features a brilliant blue LED strobe light allowing fantastic flights in the dark, and incorporates an auto stability system to make this easy to operate both indoors and outside in calm conditions.  

Picco Z has 2-channels, infrared control allows for left, right, up and down movement Picco Z is small in size which provides agility and speed Picco Z 3 selectable frequencies let you fly up to 3 Picco Z helicopters at once Picco Z Includes  1 Picco Z Remote Controlled Helicopter 1 Picco Z Transmitter 2 x Spare Propellers for the Picco Z Picco Z requires 6 x AA Batteries

Technorati Tags: Toys 4 Boys

At last we have entered the age of affordable DSLR cameras. This one comes with a 2.7″ LCD display screen and a crazy 10 megapixel lens. Another stunning feature is that weighs just 13.4 oz. That’s 40% lighter than most of its contemporaries. Autofocus and Face Detection are features that should be taken for granted in wonders such as this. You can expect better contrast and color range with the HyperCrystal II. It brags about being the world’s smallest DSLR. I wonder what’s happening in the backyards of all the competitors after hearing this news. I’m more excited that curious about this.
[Source]

Data security in today’s work environment is of the utmost importance. In the worst case scenarios not having a backup of all recent data could spell doom for any PC user. HDD based solutions are available but they require almost an infrastructure of USB wires/ dongles at hand. The SanDisk FlashBack Adapter plugs into the ExpressCard slot found on many Windows laptops today. Into the adapter is plugged a SD or SDHC memory card, which is sold separately. These two items work in conjunction with user installed software on the laptop itself to offer real time backups of important files directly from the computer to the memory card.
[Source]

We’re sure there have been some really great Java Micro Edition apps developed over the years, we just haven’t been fortunate enough to find any that aren’t a Bejeweled variant run into many of them. But that could very well change with the news that Sun is using that fancy new SDK to develop a Java Virtual Machine for the iPhone, which it expects to have ready “some time after June,” and which will allow iphone users access to the vast libraries of existing JME apps. We suppose the real conundrum now is which Java ME app we’ll grab first: Harry Potter, or MapQuest Mobile. These choices, they overwhelm us
[Source]