Tech Gadgets Reviews

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by Joshua Topolsky, posted Jul 17th 2008 at 9:50AM

According to our friends at AVING, HP is set to launch a business-themed tablet pc with Intel’s Centrino 2 on-board. The device — dubbed the Compaq 2730p — will be an update to the 2710p, and will feature a 12.1-inch WXGA display, a 1.86GHz Core 2 Duo L9400 CPU, 2GB of RAM, a 120GB hard drive, a GMA 4500MHD integrated graphics chipset, and Windows Vista… of course. No word on a price or release date, but plenty of handsome pictures if you hit the read link.

[Thanks, Elais]

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Filed under: Laptops

Sometimes, I’m such a stereotypical girl. Yes, the new iPhone is all very exciting, but it means nothing if it doesn’t give me the chance to do some more shopping (even if it’s virtual, since I don’t actually have an iphone, 3G or otherwise).

And top of my virtual shopping list are these hot new cases (in cool colors) from one more thing, which are made from pure silicone, with no nasty bits added, and which were tailored especially for the contours of the iPhone 3G. The yellow one makes me happy just looking at it!

Via textually.org.

There are times that I would really love to have a solar bag, but they do lack a bit in versatility.  First of all if the bag is something that won’t blend easily into different environments you’re going to end up using it less.  Also, sometimes you aren’t going to be out and around much and might just want to pop it in the window, but the bag may be too large or awkward to stay in the window and charge up.  With the Solar Globetrotter Kit, the solar panel can just attach to any bag, making it useful in a variety of situations.

The solar panel is for those that enjoy traveling a bit and especially those that are the outdoorsy type, so therefore they have obviously made it completely water resistant to accommodate that.  The lightweight gadget comes with a Velcro strap and a couple of buckles to make sure you can easily attach it to different things.  The panel is being sold for £49.99  or $98.65 over at Lazybone.

Source: ubergizmo

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Samsung has recently released two new digital cameras. The TL34HD (lower left) is said to be one of the “most advanced point-and-shoot digital camera in Samsung’s history”, and the other camera, the TL9 (upper left), is advanced too, despite its most non-advanced feature.

The TL9 has two analog (that’s right, analog) gauges that display the amount of memory, as well as the battery life. Don’t let the old school display fool you, as this guy has 10 megapixels of action, a 2.7 inch LCD, 5x optical zoom, face detection, and dual image stabilization.

As for the TL34HD, it has 14.7 megapixels, a three-inch touchscreen LCD, plus a Schneider lens with 28mm wide-angle focal length and 3.6x optical zoom. It can also shoot video in 720p high-definition at 30 fps. It also has “H.264 compression, a codec for high-definition video that has become an industry standard and which yields three times the recording length than of MPEG4”.

The TL34HD will be available in September for the price of $330 in all black or silver with a red accent. The Samsung TL9 should be available for $280 in the fall. It sounds like either camera would be a good deal, and it would be interesting to see what sells more: the more advanced one or the one with old-school features.

Source 1 and Source 2

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This probably wouldn’t be the best thing to bring aboard an airplane. You’d either get arrested, or people wouldn’t be able to stop laughing at you, so it’s a lose-lose scenario. It seems like some nostalgic person missing the “good old days”, took the time to take apart this analog pocket watch, and replace its guts with a 3mm gun. The watch obviously doesn’t show the (correct) time anymore, but it might be comforting to know that you have a tiny gun in your pocket, just in case a kitten tries to scratch you or something.

Visionman Computers have announced its latest gaming notebook known as the Widow Predator.

The new Widow Predator laptop uses the latest Intel Core 2 Quad Q6700 processor, combined with two on-board nVidia GeForce 8800M GTX video cards to deliver a blistering benchmark score of almost 20K! Breathtaking color, clarity and a game winning 3D benchmark score, add special features such as built-in dual gaming buttons and a Blu-ray/DVD/CD-ROM combo and you will soon be at the top of your game!

What you see on the right is not the Widow Predator gaming notebook, but it is one of them gaming machines from Visionman Computers which I have included for context. No idea on how much it will cost though as the Widow Predator was not yet featured on the company’s website.

Press Release

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A 43 year-old computer engineer by the name of Terry Childs has brought San Francisco to its knees by locking the city out of its main network.

The network stores information such as the payroll details of city employees, law enforcement documentation, countless e-mails and even the local jail records. None of it can currently be accessed though, because Mr Childs, employee of the Department of Technology, is keeping the password to himself as he sits in jail this week.

His motives for locking everyone out of the system are not totally clear. It may be tied in to recent disciplinary measures taken against him and management attempting to fire him. The lock out may be Mr Child’s way of stopping them from actually getting rid of him, but has now landed him in more trouble.

His modifications to the system are not limited to just locking everyone out and he started tampering as of June 20, according to officials involved in the case. He is also thought to have been listening in on communications between staff and authorities to find out what they were trying to do with him.

An attempt is currently being made to crack his password and regain access. The chief administrative officer for the Department of Technology, Ron Vinson, has assured everyone that the system is running without problems and is fully functional. The only problem being they can’t gain access to it.

Read more at SFGate.com

Matthew’s Opinion
Well if this teaches us anything, its don’t let any one person get into a position where they have that much power.

It shouldn’t be possible for an individual to lock a city out of the network that runs its day-to-day activities. Mr Childs is either very clever and has bypassed a number of safeguards, or the system really was poorly implemented from a security and management perspective.

I’m not sure what he was thinking when he did this. If it was to act as insurance against being fired it has really backfired. He will now surely face criminal charges and a damages claim; and will likely never work in the tech industry again.

While most people expect falling prices, consumer electronics makers scramble to add features to justify constant or higher prices. This is no different for this particular player. Let’s tale a look at the improvements: Picture-in-Picture (also called “bonus view”), read error correction (scratched discs), Ethernet access for firmware and other updates and an upscaling algorithm called “Precision Cinema HD Upscale” to nicely magnify standard-definition content to HDTV resolutions. “We leveraged our expertise in film production and digital technology to build a machine that movie fans would truly love,” says Chris Fawcett, vice president of marketing for Sony Electronics’ Home Products Division.

Let’s skip the marketing spin here: yes Sony does have proprietary algorithms for upscaling (so do Samsung and many CE manufacturers), but I think that this has little to do with “leveraging the expertise in film production”. My advice: buy a lower-price player or a playstation 3.

I don’t know why people would still want to get a dedicated Blu-ray player since Sony has already slashed its 80GB PS3 price to a mere $399, and at that number, it is pretty hard to say no to one. After all, not only can you update its firmware through the Internet, you can also use it to play games whenever you’re feeling bored. All of that cannot be achieved by even the best standalone Blu-ray player in the market which will also be relatively more expensive than the PS3, but that has not stopped Sony themselves from rolling out yet another player for the masses. This time round we have the Sony BDP-350 to keep you entertained in the living room, so without much further ado, I’ll move on to the nitty gritty right after the jump.

The BDP-S350 supports BonusView (picture-in-picture), which is featured on select new Blu-ray Disc home video releases, and is also BD-Live ready, with an Ethernet port for easy firmware updates and access to Internet-based interactive content features. A firmware update enabling BD-Live is planned later this year. It also features quick start-up mode improving the player’s boot-up time to approximately a few seconds and offers an external port for local storage for BD-Live, allowing users to add an optional flash storage device (sold separately). The BDP-S350 incorporates Sony’s new Precision Cinema HD Upscale technology that converts standard-definition signals (480i) to 1080p and outputs a full HD equivalent resolution signal to 1080p TVs via HDMI. Additionally, the model also adds Sony’s new Precision Drive HD, which helps to detect and correct wobbling discs from three directions, stabilizing playback of bent or scratched Blu-ray Discs and DVDs.

Surprisingly, Sony has kept the BDP-S350’s price tag at approximately $400, which is in the same neighborhood as the 80GB PS3. As a consumer, which model will you take?

Press Release

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