PlayStation Home Beta

I’ve been holding out on the purchase of a PS3, as yet. They do represent the only truly worthwhile way of entering the Blu Ray market and Home, when it’s finally released looks like it is going to be quite an accomplishment. Until then, it’s a lot of money. However, the good news is that PlayStation Home is one step closer to completion.

Home has entered a closed Beta testing stage in Japan and existing, regular European users should expect to receive an invite to the testing soon. For those that don’t know, Home is a community based application where users create their own character or avatar and then upgrade a free apartment with items from games and other sources. The plan is to continue expanding the service to include other upgrades.

As you can see from the picture, it looks incredible, although that is presuming that the real thing offers a similar quality. Presumably the system is going to be used in a similar way to Xbox achievements and gamer score, which certainly adds a different layer to Xbox 360 gaming. Home has now faced a couple of delays that have set the project back some way, so it had definitely better be worth the wait.

Lenovo IdeaPad S10

The Netbook trend is in full flow and fine form with manufacturers willing to bite their own appendages off in order to be the next to release one. An unfortunate by-product of this is that the prices have actually been increasing as manufacturers begin trying to cram more and more into the tiny little laptops. Lenovo, as it turns out, appear to have stolen a march on many of their competitors.

The IdeaPad S10 has been pencilled in for an October release in the States and the price is being kept to a respectable $399 for the entry model. The IdeaPad has a 10.2” screen and uses the Intel Atom processor to deliver the goods. The basic model, costing around £200 will have 512MB of RAM and an 80GB hard drive. Increase your budget marginally to $449 and you can increase to 1GB of RAM and a 160GB hard drive.

White, red, or black are your colour options and the IdeaPad will also offer a 4-in-1 card reader, twin USB ports, and an ExpressCard slot. On paper, there’s a good balance between beneficial features and a budget price bracket. Let’s see how it works out in real life.

Nokia 6650 Launched In The UK

It was only announced a few weeks back in June but the new clamshell phone from Nokia, the 6650, has been launched exclusively with T-Mobile today in the UK. Not only does it look good but the range of features that’s offered is pretty impressive too with decent camera, great multimedia, and a number of applications that have been designed specifically to make the most of the T-Mobile network (apparently).

The 2MP camera include flash while the phone also has built-in GPS receiver, mp3 player functionality, web TV, and the T Mobile Web n Walk service. The keypad will also change colours, just in case that’s the kind of thing that floats your boat and makes you run out to buy a new mobile phone.

The handset can be snared for free on the Combi30 package or higher and other features of the steel encased phone include the 2.2” TFT display, HSDPA high speed connectivity, multimedia keys, and 30MB of internal memory as well as a flash SD card slot so that you can upgrade this (which you will probably want to if you intend to do anything other than people – perish the thought).

R2D2 Projector Clock

Stuck for a gadget? You can always rely on a bit of Star Wars branding on household items. For those of you that can’t afford the full on R2 D2 projector, universal remote thing (the one that comes with a Death Star remote) the R2-D2 projector clock is smaller and thankfully much less expensive at around £20.

R2 will beam the time onto a spare bit of wall, and altohugh it’s difficult to find out more details about this clock, if worse comes to worst you can flip him on his back and will project at the ceiling, which is a lot more convenient. He doesn’t do that much in the way of Star Wars trickery but he is a clock and not the real R2 after all.

You can set the alarm so that R2 sound effects wake you up. It’s always a pleasant change to see a Star Wars gadgetthat isn’t priced so ridiculously high that only George Lucas himself could afford one (although you can probably get a cheaper copy off Ebay).

Like most projector clocks you won’t get much change during the day because these things come into their own at night when you can easily read them on just about any reasonably flat surface.

The RoboStool Party Stalker

The RoboStool must be one of the best party gadgets of all time. The leather style stool will gently meander around a room looking for the perfect individual to seat. We presume it does it gently anyway, although there’s no doubt some way to mod it in order that it “hilariously” moves out of the way whenever somebody attempts to sit on it.

There are three settings – the remote control, a waypoint settings (you can set the stool to patrol a specific area if you wish), and the free roam setting. It’s this free roam setting that’s particularly impressive using thermal sensors to seek out hot spots and then offer one of those hotspots somewhere to sit down.

When in stalking mode, the RoboStool will rear its laser guided head from the top of its construction. The sensor that forms part of the stool’s head will then help it detect any objects that might be in its path. The head also intelligently prevents the stool from shorting when it has an option of two bums to pick (not literally) and has the three rules of robotics hardwired in too, for good measure.

Epson Photo Viewers

Epson has announced that it will be launching two specialist multimedia photo viewers that are designed for the professional and extremely keen photographer. That is, you need to either be extremely keen, or are looking for things to buy in order to hide a recent inheritance you’ve come in to. For the convenience of being able to view photographs before you get home and store everything from your memory card in a photo viewer, the price tags of £300 to £400 are a little restrictive to all but the most obsessive.

With that said, the feature range is pretty good and enables you to store and watch video and audio as well. Between 80GB and a massive 160GB of storage you shouldn’t run out of room too quickly at all unless you’re attempting to record the next Batman film in high def and store all the takes on either of these models.

The P-6000 is the entry level model costing about £300 and featuring an 80GB hard drive while the P-7000 costs about £400 and has 160GB of storage. The interface is reasonably well designed and the Epson photo software offers some basic open, zoom, and save functions but little else.

Handpresso Espresso Machine

If you’re into coffee, and I mean a serious caffeine addict and brew connoisseur, rather than somebody that partakes in the occasional tipple then the Handpresso Wild Instant Espresso machine is an excellent and potentially life saving device costing just £80 at IWOOT and using standard sized Espresso coffee pouches.

The convenient little device requires hand pumping, hot water, and your coffee pouch and that’s it. Once you’ve added the necessaries, which is an incredibly simple step, then you can pour your cup of Espresso and get drinking. It really is a good looking little gadget, too, even if it does look like a modern peace pipe or something from a really dodgy car boot sale.

Of course, the other advantage of the hand pumping, which is achievable by even the most feeble wristed of us all, is that you don’t need batteries, it doesn’t plug in, you’re not draining the world’s resources of soon to be depleted energy stocks, etc… and so on.

If you like your coffee fresh and you have a penchant for the Espresso flavour and kick then the Handpresso machine is great, and there is a forthcoming release of many accessories and related items to make the experience even more positive.

GPS For Motorbikes

The TomTom Rider is a satellite navigation system designed especially for the biker. It features, large glove friendly buttons, an ultra clear display that is visible in any lighting conditions, and a little windscreen wiper type implement for removing dead flies and other assorted motorbiking debris from the monitor.

The screen is an impressive 3.5” touch screen and the software has been altered from the usual TomTom fare so that menus are less fiddly and the on screen display buttons are significantly larger and much easier for gloved hands to press without sending yourself on a wild goose chase in the wrong direction.

To set everybody’s minds at ease about the safety of riding motorbikes in general, the TomTom Rider, which is now in its second generation, also includes a Help Me menu feature. This convenient menu enables quick access to emergency services and roadside assistance and you can also plan the itinerary for your trip and log all of the statistics and data about your journey.

The included rechargeable battery will last for about 5 hours on a single charge and it can be recharged using a motorbike battery (which is a good thing, really, when you think about it).

Olympics Shown on Freesat Via BBC HD

Despite its extremely lacklustre entry into the market, Freesat is coming on in leaps and bounds and it has quite a bit going for it already. After all, it’s a digital freeview service that also offers free high definition content; albeit in fairly limited supply. Well, following the news that Sky was going to be offering their customers HD footage of the olympics, Freesat has followed suit.

The footage will be made available courtesy of BBC HD, as you might have guessed, and will offer viewers free and unrestricted access to more than 300 hours of Olympic footage from the Beijing Olympics. The Olympics open on the 8th of the month so you’ve got yourself but a couple of days to rush out and buy yourself an HD ready TV and a Freesat dish and box.

Unfortunately, while this a great addition to an already expanding portfolio of HD content there’s still no sign of a Freesat box that includes PVR recording capabilities. Anything that enables you to pause Live TV while you make a brew or shut the dog up is good news and it’s possible that a lot more subscribers would be more inclined to get on board if there were a greater range of associated products.

Fujitsu Siemens Amilio Li 2727

As far as budget laptops go you shouldn’t expect to get too much for your money. However, for less than £300 you can pick up the Fujitsu Siemens Amilio Li 2727 which offers a good level of functionality and decent specification for a laptop of this price. It uses a reasonable Core Duo processor with a reasonable amount of hard drive space although the onboard graphics means you won’t be able to run the latest or most graphics intensive games.

The processor is a 1.73GHz Core 2 Duo processor which is one of the better choices at this kind of budget. The 120GB of hard drive is also respectable for laptops that cost a little more so it shouldn’t be frowned at. It does, however, offer an unimpressive 1GB of RAM and the onboard graphics will enable you to do most things except play games.

The monitor is a 15.4” widescreen monitor and like many of the features helps to make the Fujtisu Siemens Amilio Li 2727 a decent buy for the money, especially if you want it for school, work, or as a basic multimedia unit. The graphics capabilities don’t inspire but it does only attract a £300 price tag.

<« Previous page 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 Next Page »