Tech Gadgets Reviews

It was just one year ago that Asus unveiled the Eee PC and created what has become the netbook craze.  It was October 16, 2007 when the Eee PC 701 first became available, of course at that time the availability was limited to Taiwan.  But how quickly and drastically things can change in just one year.

Since the release of the 701, we have seen netbooks take off.  Not only has Asus continued to expand in this market, but countless others including HP, Acer, MSI and Dell have rolled out their own models to compete.

The Eee has grown from the original 701 with its little 7-inch display that, although, still a nice and capable netbook seems a little outdated when compared to some of the newer Eee models.  As we have seen, Asus has almost gone overboard with the lineup.  However, that has also given us a good selection including the 8.9-inch 900 series, the 10-inch 1000 series and more recently the introduction of the almost luxury model Eee PC S101.

Personally, I jumped on this craze soon after the initial release of the 701 and have used several netbooks so far, but, that little 701 is still in my collection and among my favorites.

In keeping with the celebration, the team over at Laptop Magazine actually went and threw a party complete with some birthday hats, cake and guests (both real and digital). You can attend, virtually of course, and offer the Eee PC 701 some birthday wishes.

Read [Laptop Mag]

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I don’t know what it is about this little astromech droid, but R2-D2 gets way too much publicity in the gadget world. At CES last January, I got a chance to see Nikko Electronics R2D2 Projector DVD player/projector, as well as the R2D2 Wireless Web Camera.

I suppose there is little point of telling about yet another R2D2 product, but I might as well report on the R2-D2 Whizzwatch. No, I did not misspell wristwatch, because this is a Whizzwatch!

Yes, it is a timepiece with a little model of everyone’s favorite non-protocol droid, and you can use the watch as a remote control to make Artoo wheel all around your desk. By the way, the Artoo unit is quite large, and putting it on your wrist is like wearing a shoe around your neck.

I just checked the availability on Firebox, and unfortunately, it is out of stock for now. However, I found that the site that was selling this product could not stop going on about how geeky it is. Is this a Whizzwatch a new candidate for Foolish gadgets?

Well, when it does come in stock, it should be available for about £14.95. Now you can make a donation to the “Get George Lucas even more rich” fund.

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If you have the pleasure of either living alone or living with a female who doesn’t fill the shower up with about fifteen different types of shampoos and soaps, then you might have room for something like this.  It makes it so you can keep your entire shaving kit conveniently in the shower and hung out of the way.  Now of course this only works if you have enough space, but if you do it’d be nice way to simplify your daily routine.  It also might help to get a little clutter off of the bathroom sink.

Which would be good for those guys that happen to have several different types of hair gels lying around.  The mirror is fog-free, so no matter how hot you like your showers you’ll still be able to see in the mirror.  The caddy has a spot for both your razor and your shaving cream.  It attaches to the shower wall by suction cup.  If your shower doesn’t have much lighting, you’ll especially love the twin LED lights built in to illuminate your face.  Even better is that you can keep track of time by the built-in clock.  To pick one up it will cost you $29.95.

Source: GadgetGrid

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We knock Nokia’s premium line of Vertu cellphones not because, deep down, we really love them, but because they are cynical cash-ins, phones devoid of all but the most basic features priced to appeal to the moronic consumer who equates high price with high status.

So Norihiko Inoue’s concept design neatly sums up the whole Vertu scam. Described by Inoue as a “celebration of empty space”, the design is literally a shell with nothing inside. The conceit is that, sometime in the future, components will be so small that they can fit into the skin of a phone-sized handset. After all, unless you are Derek Zoolander, there is a lower practical limit to the size of a cellphone.

The buttons and screen rest on thin strips of shiny plastic which wrap around the air inside. Think of it as a real-world wireframe model. We have no idea if Inoue’s choice of Vertu was intentional, but if so, this is probably the most satirical concept design we’ve ever seen.

Product page [norihikoinoue via Design Launches ]

The folks at German site EE PC News got their hands on the forthcoming Asus Eee Top, an all-in-one desktop with a touch screen. The Eee Top runs Windows XP, but also has Asus’ Easy Mode, a skin which looks a lot like the Eee PC Linux interface — big icons and a tabbed screen selector running along the top.

The hardware looks great: It’s somewhere between the old iBooks and the first generation plastic Apple Cinema Displays. In action, though, things aren’t quite so smooth. Despite the Easy Mode, XP still chokes, throwing up the usual error dialog box and then freezing altogether.

The demo video also brings up the question of whether touch screens are actually useful. For applications where the user needs to interact with the machine for a short time, touch screens are great — think ATMs and cash registers. But for general computing, what’s the point? The old “arm-ache” problem will remain, and really, if you are interacting with a GUI designed for a mouse, using your fingers is no better.

In fact, it offers a disadvantage: with a mouse, a quick flick of the wrist will move the cursor from one side of the screen to the other. With touch, you need to actually move your hand a lot further.

And this style of all-in-one seems particularly ill-suited. It’s perfect for the living room, for movies and photo viewing, but these are done from ten feet away, so you’ll stil need a wireless keyboard and mouse (or a long stick).

We want touch to work, and it seems that the computer makers want it to. But it just doesn’t fit into the current style of computer interfaces. It’s already annoying enough having to switch between keyboard and mouse. Adding in yet another place to move your hands is just making things worse, not simpler.

We predict that touch-computing won’t take off until somebody invents a new UI which works with the new input style. Think iphone, but bigger. The desktop metaphor we know today was invented for the mouse. The iPhone UI was invented for the handheld computer. Touch just won’t work as an alternative input method for today’s machines.

Seeing as Apple was the first company to bring the mouse driven UI to market with the Macintosh back in 1984, and multi touch in 2007, we’re expecting something fancy to emerge from Cupertino. The huge glass multi touch trackpads on the new MacBooks shows that Apple is clearly pursuing touch, The most obvious prediction is a giant iPhone, the fabled MacBook Touch. Who knows? It may not be Apple, but somebody has to do it — the current touch screen paradigm is broken.

Video: ASUS Eee Top “Hands on” [Eee PC News via Laptop Mag]

The headline at New Launches reads “HourDoc a new way to punch in to work”. When I read it, I immediately imagined Spidey’s arch-enemy Doc Octopus literally punching through a wall before crashing into his office and then simultaneously checking email, pouring coffee and being evil, his many arms whirring into a blur of productivity.

Sadly, upon further reading it turns out that “Revolutionary time and labor tracking company HourDoc.com” has added a service that lets mobile workers clock in and out via text message. The system is clearly aimed at paranoid employers who can’t trust their minions unless they can track their every movement from afar.

That said, the press release contains some delightful nonsense. One is reminded of nothing more than the Hokey Pokey (Hokey Cokey in the UK):

The text messages are commands for the HourDoc.com system, and the employee chooses one of four text message commands. They are “in”, “out”, “bin” or “bout”.

The system works by identifying each employee with their cellphone number. If the message is delayed by bad cell network conditions, technical wizardry works out the time the message was sent, rather than received, keeping the scores accurate. And if you already have the HourDoc system installed, this add-on costs nothing but the price of the messages.

Press release [PRLog via Textually via New Launches]

Photo: »Philo/Flickr

by Darren Murph, posted Oct 16th 2008 at 10:00PM

Any avid concert goer will confess — security can be a royal pain in the arse when trying to sneak your point-and-shoot in for a few Facebook-bound memories. ‘Tis a shame a few morons who can’t deactivate their flash has to ruin it for everyone else, but rather than ramble on, we’ll let Latrell take it from here:

“I’m tired of security confiscating my point-and-shoot at concerts. I’m just looking to snap a few good shots without the flash, but it seems they always find my camera on the way in. What’s the slimmest, most discrete camera out there that can still muster decent images. I’m not looking to buy a new cellphone with a robust camera, either. Help a man a need, please.”

We can say from personal experience that we feel this guy’s pain, and after you’ve done your part to make a viable suggestion, you can send in a question of your own to ask at engadget dawt com.

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Filed under: Ask Engadget, Digital Cameras

Here in the States, we can’t wait until T-Mobile officially releases their G1 powered by Google’s Android.  Already, 1.5 million Americans placed their order for the new phone, and very few have ever seen how Android works.  This number will probably jump way up once it is released, but already you can see how popular it is, and I expect something similar to happen in the UK.

Within a short 15 days, those who live in the UK can get their hands on T-Mobile’s G1.  Now, the G1 will be available for free if you decide to get the “Combi” plan or the “Flext” plan, which both cost 40 Euros per month.  Also, both of these plans come with unlimited Internet usage, and varying amounts of minutes and texts.  The UK version of the G1 will come in both black and white, bundled with a 2GB microSD card, and uses UK’s HSUPA network, similar to United States’ HSDPA. 

In addition, Jim Hyde, Managing Director in T-Mobile’s UK division, had this to say about the T-Mobile G1:

“With so much excitement generated by the announcement last month, we’re thrilled to bring the T-Mobile G1 to the UK in time for Christmas. It’s set to revolutionise the way we use the internet on our mobiles: it’s uniquely built for effortless online communication - whether you want to email, text or blog - and with access to some groundbreaking applications on Android market, the possibilities really are endless.”

It will be interesting to see how well T-Mobile’s G1 fares in the UK market.  Stay tuned for continuing coverage.

Via [AndroidAuthority]

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by Darren Murph, posted Oct 16th 2008 at 11:10PM

Not that it really matters to consumers one way or another — after all, if you want a Bold, you’ll pay the asking price — but recent analysis by research firm iSuppli has found that parts and materials used to make the device “cost $158.16, and that assembly and testing add another $11.25, for a total cost of $169.41.” Just for comparison, the Curve costs a cool $103 to build, and assuming RIM can sell the Bold to carriers at around $350, it’ll net a gross margin of around 45% before R&D costs, software, marketing, shipping and freebies given to obscenely wealthy celebs are taken into account. The report (er, the part about the nice margins) should come as welcome news to shareholders, who have recently been worried that the current economic situation may keep individuals from snatching up new ‘Berrys at a breakneck pace. Now, if only RIM / AT&T would let the thing get through testing, we’d be all set to contribute to those margins here in the US. Ahem.

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Filed under: cellphones

by Joseph L. Flatley, posted Oct 17th 2008 at 12:32AM

It looks like the slow crawl towards a consumer 3D printer continues with Objet’s newest outing, the Alaris 30. The relatively compact peripheral uses something called PolyJet Photopolymer Jetting to produce 600 x 600 dpi objects up to 11.5 x 7.7 x 5.9 inches in size (not too shabby when compared to the 5-inch cube of last year’s Desktop Factory offering). Equally impressive is the printer’s ability to manufacture small moving elements and elements as thin as 0.0011 inches. A generous build tray means that many small parts can be printed simultaneously, and the company promises up to 36 hours unattended printing from your 3D CAD files. Finished models leave the printer fully cured and hardened by UV light. There is no pricing or availability yet, but if you hit the read link below there are plenty more juicy details.

[Via TFTS]

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Filed under: Peripherals