HP DV9890 Laptop Review, Specification And Offers
May 21, 2008
HP DV9890 Laptop
Now as you may know I am a huge fan of Hewlett Packard gear and have a HP laptop myself so I love it when we get our hands on a new one and this DV9890 is a real corker! The HP-DV9890 laptop is stunningly beautiful and is equipped with 17 inch bright view wide screen monitor running on windows vista premium media edition, built in web cam and Harman Kardon speakers that pump out crisp and clear sounds. Read more
Sony Rolly – The Dancing Mp3 Player
May 21, 2008
Sony has taken a somewhat unusual step in its creation of mp3 players. Some may feel that the Rolly is a little gimmicky, to put it mildly, and others will undoubtedly complain at the current $400 (£200) price tag but it is certainly unique and, it has to be said, pretty cool.
The mobile mp3 disco is an mp3 player. It offers 1GB of flash memory and offers dual 20mm speakers mounted on either end. It’s hardly pioneering in its player capaibilities, but that’s not where the design is unique.
The Rolly is also an mp3 enjoyer or a mobile dancer and operates according to movement rather than the traditional and oh so drab method of using buttons. Flick it in one direction and you turn the volume up, flick it in another and it will start to dance.
The Rolly has LCD lights and can be programmed to dance to any music. Arms, shoulders, and wheels combine to give a floor show the likes of which you’ve only ever seen at family weddings. It is unique and certainly fun, but it carries with it an equally impressive $400 price tag (it was just released in the US).
A Solar Charger For Under £25 (Just)
May 21, 2008
There’s a surprising number of solar chargers on the market that can be used to charge your mp3 players and mobile phones. However, many are either essentially useless or prohibitively expensive. The Power Charger, available for £24.99 from iwantoneofthose.com, is compatible with every model of iPod as well as many different mobile phone models.
By leaving the Power Charger in the sun for 10 hours, it will completely charge the battery. A fully charged battery then offers six hours of life to an mp3 player, ten hours of standby to your mobile, or two hours of talk time. What’s more it can be re-used as many as 500 times.
Let’s face it, we’re not always blessed with ten hours of sun are we? On dull days with little or no sun, you can fill the battery charge with USB power giving you a convenient and sleek emergency charger.
The Power Charger is an excellent and ecological solution to your emergency power needs. While it won’t give you a full charge it should be able to provide ample power to tide you over, and it is essentially free power that you’re getting.
$100 Laptop To Be The $75 Laptop
May 21, 2008
The laptopmag blog reports that OLPC, One Laptop Per Child, has unveiled its design for the XO-2. The updated laptop will be strikingly different in its design employing two touch screen displays with a form that looks similar to a standard book. The overall plan of the new machine is to create an e-reader style machine.
As you can see from the picture (taken from the laptopmag site), the bottom display will be used as a keyboard when required. Another point about the new design is that it will be smaller than the original XO, although it appears that the lurid green colour is still going to be prominent in the design.
OLPC is aiming to release the new laptop in 2010, and have also announced that they intend to re-open the Give One Get One program again later this year (August or September). In this program, when you buy a $100 laptop for a child in the developing world you are also able to buy a cheap laptop for yourself.
The new laptop looks like it is in keeping with the ethos of providing children of the developing world with access to information and a broader education. The laptop itself will also be scalable, in the respect that a simple keyboard touch screen layout will be offered to younger children and a more complex one to more developed children.
Toshiba A300-1BZ Laptop Review, Specification And Offers
May 20, 2008
Toshiba A300-1BZ
If you are looking for a decent multi media laptop that will not break the bank then we have the model for you. The Toshiba A300-1BZ is a true heavy weight for the price of a middle weight laptop, it boasts a generous 3 giga bytes of RAM and a powerful intel core duo 2 processor. This is great for playing your favourite games or watching movies on the move or at home. Read more
The Gear4 Blackbox
May 20, 2008
Gear4 is a truly great company that regularly releases new products for the technophile. They make some damn good speakers for mp3 players and PSPs (no, they haven’t suddenly offered us sponsorship although if they’re reading…). We recently reviewed the Bass Station – another great sounding speaker but it looked, to be frank, dull and unimaginative.
In order to try and show off some of their better looking, or at least less dull, speakers here is the BlackBox. Compatible with Bluetooth phones (but not the iPhone without a little tinkering), laptops, mp3 players, and the iPod it is still in essence a box but it has a lot more character than the BassBox.
24w output from two speakers gives crisp sounds and clarity, while the funky graphic equalizer display is retro styling at its funky best. A Mini USB port is provided so that you can also downoad the most appropriate firmware for your mobile device.
Pretty much every conceivable store stocks the BlackBox and it is available (with it’s very own carrier bag) and at £100 it’s not an unreasonably priced bit of kit. We’ll be the first to admit that the design won’t be to everybody’s taste but I personally like it and it’s got oodles of character compared to the Bassbox.
The Expandable Dining Table
May 20, 2008
Nothing new there, I hear you shriek. But Philippe Braun has designed a patented expandable circular dining table – it’s difficult to get aroused by a dining table design, but if there were ever a dining table to have that effect then this is it.
Expandable tables are nothing new. Square and rectangular tables have long been in production that use various forms of extension, typically through the addition of an extra leaf. Circular tables have also offered a similar mechanism, but when you add a rectangular bit of wood into the middle of a circle it no longer remains circular in shape.
The Braun Woodline brings a new idea to the world of round tables (I’m trying). Four drawers conceal semi circular sections of table that fold up and fit in place (three sections in each drawer). The end result is a considerably larger, but still circular, table that looks great and offers more comfortable seating arrangements.
Visit the Braun Woodline site for more details. The English site is currently unavailable, but there is a significant gallery in any language and hopefully the site will be back up and running properly soon.
Does The Modular Mobile (Modu) Represent The Future Of Mobile Communications?
May 20, 2008
The mobile communications industry is constantly evolving and transforming. The modular mobile phone is one possible direction for the industry, and in the Modu we have a potential trend setter. Slightly bigger than a domino, the Modu is a mobile phone stripped down to only the most essential components.
The screen is small but does its job, and there are no discernible numerical keys. It will send and receive data in the form of voice and text packages and it will store up to 16GB of data including software, images, and contacts. However, the ingenious idea behind the Modu is in its modular lego style application. Read more
Chris Evans Blows Over £5m On A Ferrari
May 19, 2008
Chris Evans has never been one to shy away from blowing his cash on something he wants. But he’s outdone himself this time, spending just over £5 million to buy a Ferrari once owned by The Great Escape actor James Coburn at a prestigious Ferrari auction. The price unsurprisingly represents the highest value a car has ever sold at auction.
The typical price one can expect to pay for this model Ferrari is around $5 million, or just under £2.5 million. However, a combination of a vicious bidding war and the history of this particular car itself saw prices rocket to an almost unbelievable level.
We recently showed you some pictures of the next model of Ferrari California and bearing in mind the impressive line up of cars the BBC Radio DJ already has in his personal collection, we’re willing to wager that this won’t be the last California he buys by the end of the year. Expect a blog entry some time in October to say he’s been to Paris for a few days and bought a new toy.
While it will undoubtedly cost a few pounds, and people are sure to criticise (personally I don’t see the problem with him spending the money however he wants), the next addition is unlikely to cost quite the same amount.
Find Lost Items Like The Parked Car And Your Grandma With The Loc8tor
May 19, 2008
Gadget theft is officially on the rise, so attention will naturally turn towards personal security items (our attention certainly will, anyway, for at least this post). While the loc8tor (I’m trying my best to avoid the flagrant attempt goad me into commenting on the use of text talk) isn’t specifically going to hep prevent your items from being stolen it will help you find them once it happens. It’ll even warn you when something goes astray - including children and, as per the Loc8tor website, a parked car!
The loc8tor is a light and sleek design, roughly the size of a credit card so will slot happily into most pockets. By attaching a radio tag to any device that you want to protect, the loc8tor will then be able to guide you to that device using both audio and visual clues; namely beeping and arrows.
Locating objects to within a couple of inches, it has a range of up to 122m, although that’s apparently only applicable for remote airplanes that you’ve lost up a tree (come now, we’re certain that’s happened to everybody).
All jokes (no matter how poor they may be) aside, the loc8tor is a genuinely useful piece of kit in certain circumstances. Some of us are simply more prone to losing or misplacing items and it would prove cheaper to invest the £50 it costs to protect two items than to replace, for example, your iPod and your iPhone.
Although, in all honesty, it would be cheaper to pay for around the clock protection provide by an elite squadron of SAS security than to replace an iPhone. And you’ve probably got more chance of finding one.
