Gadgets Blog News

Posted Feb 28th 2008 4:57PM by Donald MelansonFiled under: Laptops It’s already extended Penryn updates to its Precision M6300 laptop and a couple of Inspirons, but Dell’s unsurprisingly not done yet, and it’s now doled out similar upgrades to its Precision M2300 and M4300 models. Those are each now available with Penryn processors ranging from 2.1GHz to 2.6GHz, and for the same price as the earlier Mermom processors, although Dell warns that opting for Penryn on the M2300 may delay your ship date. Otherwise, you can load ‘em up with a max 4GB of RAM and 32GB or 64GB SSD drives, but you’ll have to make do with an NVIDIA Quadro FX 360M for graphics. If that’s not too much of a compromise, you can customize your system right (Read the full post about ‘Dell brings Precision M2300, M4300 laptops into the Penryn fold’…)

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Posted Feb 28th 2008 3:21PM by Donald MelansonFiled under: GPS We’ve already seen GPS used to track elderly patients, but some student researchers now look to be taking the idea one step further, with them outfitting some nursing center patients’ walkers with a GPS system that helps guide them around. While the exact technical details are a bit unclear, the system apparently uses GPS when the patients are out and about, and relies on a WiFi-based system to direct ‘em around inside the nursing center itself. The entire system has also obviously been about as simplified as possible, with it boasting just five buttons and large arrows pointing the way to the patients’ destination. (Read the full post about ‘GPS-equipped walkers promise to keep elderly patients on track’…)

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Posted Feb 28th 2008 6:41PM by Darren MurphFiled under: Storage Don’t worry, you’re not losing it — yet, anyway. Corsair has indeed already launched a 16GB (and 32GB, for that matter) Voyager flash drive, but its forthcoming Voyager GT promises access speeds “up to four times faster” than standard USB 2.0 drives. Furthermore, this one comes housed in a water and shock resistant all-rubber casing, and could be entirely more appealing if that keyring slot were expanded to open bottles. (Read the full post about ‘Corsair bringing 16GB Voyager GT flash drive to CeBIT’…)

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Posted Feb 28th 2008 10:29AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Digital Cameras, Displays
Polaroid film may be gone, but for some of us with fond memories of the format — for no discernible reason, Polaroids were slow, blurry and expensive — this digital picture frame concept seems a fitting tribute. There’s a dry erase portion on the bottom, and the frame can stand on its own or be pinned to a cork board for added realism. “Standard” mode emulates a regular digital frame, while “Classic” mode slowly fades the picture into view. Yeah, maybe a little too cute for its own good, but maybe we like it that way.

[Via Gadget Lab]

Tags: dvr, laptops, gaming, pvr

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Posted Feb 28th 2008 10:08AM by Paul Miller
Filed under: Misc. gadgets
Look, we’re sorry, but 1,420 LEDs just isn’t cutting it anymore. Maybe back when we were children a touchable 14-foot by 6-foot wall lit up by a myriad of magical blue lights would’ve managed to pull us away from our Lincoln Logs for a minute or three, but the kids of today grew up on Baby Einstein and a post-Steve Blue’s Clues — they aren’t easily impressed. The Philips “Imagination Light Canvas” is being shown off at the Mercy Medical Center in Rogers, Arkansas, and allows visitors to touch the wall and “paint with light.” Whatever you draw slowly fades over time, and apparently you can draw using a bunch of different colors and shapes, though we’re only seeing blue squares here. (Read the full post about ‘Philips shows off “Imagination Light Canvas” for the easily entertained’…)

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How do you get away from it all without 1) time or money to take you far, far away, 2) a Holodeck, or 3) psychadelic drugs? Maybe by surrounding yourself with mood lighting created with this Room Palette Skyrium from Banpresto RelaxStyle line of products. Nine different LED color lights move through a diffuser to project different lighting themes onto walls and ceilings - like “Aurora” and “Resort Ocean.”

Scheduled for release in April - no information on pricing yet, but the original Room Palette sells for $69 at Japan Trend Shop.

Via Trends in Japan.

Tags: gaming, video games, home theater, game

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Everyone wants to love this cute little thing.  Chumby is a fun little alarm clock that features more things than my smartphone: touchscreen, WiFi, accelerometer, active user/developer community and lots more.  Does it live up to our wide-eyed expectations?

(Read the full post about ‘Just how good is WiFi Chumby alarm clock?’…)

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Posted Feb 28th 2008 12:13PM by Nilay Patel
Filed under: Desktops, LaptopsSo now that the “Vista Capable” lawsuit is a full-blown class action, the judge has unsealed all 158 pages of emails between Microsoft execs trying to sort out what went wrong with the sticker program. While bits and pieces have been blacked out, what remains is still fairly incredible — although Intel’s 915 chipset was initially rejected as compatible with Vista, MS execs flatly admit that “In the end, we lowered the requirements to help Intel make their quarterly earnings so they could continue to sell motherboards with the 915 graphics embedded” and “We are caving to Intel. (Read the full post about ‘Microsoft lowered Vista requirements to help Intel sell incompatible chipsets’…)

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Posted Feb 28th 2008 12:41PM by Paul MillerFiled under: Gaming While we chew on that incoming Metal Gear Solid 4 80GB PS3 (with DualShock 3) in the States, Europe has a pair of SKUs of its own to look forward to. Sony’s hitting with a “movie bundle” on March 19th that includes Spider-Man 3, 300 and Casino Royale on Blu-ray, along with a 40GB PS3, all for the regular €399 price. If you can wait until March 29th, for the same price you can nab a 40 gigger bundled with Gran Turismo 5 Prologue. Both bundles promise to be quite appealing, but apparently neither come packing HD cables, which could be a bit of a hangup for those ready to make the Blu-ray plunge. (Read the full post about ‘Europe getting 40GB PS3 bundles packing Gran Turismo, Blu-ray movies’…)

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Panasonic has announced the latest TV centric mobile phone, the Viera P905iTV. As of now it looks to be a Japanese release only and pricing has not yet been announced. It does appear to be a nice handset, featuring a 3.5-inch widescreen 854 x 480 display with playback at 30 frames per second and a 4,000:1 contrast ratio it should offer a good quality TV viewing experience. The phone offers 230 minutes of talk-time and 160 minutes for video watching. In addition to the nice display the P905iTV will also include HSDPA connectivity, a 2-megapixel camera with autofocus, an SDHC memory card slot and TV/audio outs. Via [ubergizmo] Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! - Subscribe to our feed → Tag (Read the full post about ‘Panasonic intro’s the TV-focused P905iTV phone’…)

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