Gadgets Reviews

CyberPower new Xtreme 3D 3000 gaming desktop w/NVIDIA 3D Vision
Jun 04, 2010
CyberPower has updated its gaming desktop lineup with new NVIDIA 3D Vision machines. I have played with their customizer to find how much can a CyberPower Xtreme 3D 3000 with all the crucial gaming stuff cost you. This is what it turned out like (picture on the left): Intel Core i7-930 2.8GHz, single NVIDIA GeForce GTX 480 1.5GB, 3GB triple channel DDR3 @1333MHz and 500GB SATA II 7200rpm HDD rig runs slightly over $2000. This includes Samsung 22-inch 3D monitor and stereoscopic glasses bundle. If you start adding tasty stuff like SSDs and USB 3.0 cards, liquid cooling, etc. you can still fit in $3000. But if pushing things to the max is on your mind CyberPower will install 3-way CrossFire Radeon HD 5970 and a GTX 480 solely for PhysX plus overclocked Intel Core i7-980X Extreme Edition 3.3GHz and 12GB DDR3 @1866MHz… It is possible to keep all of that under $10,000, but why bother?
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Nokia expands C series with dual SIM mobile phones
Jun 03, 2010
It will not be a surprise to anyone if I say that our blog does very few covers of, so to say, talk phones. They are not very interesting to speak about as well as to read about, so we often go for something more vibrant and gripping. But I do want to speak about the ones Nokia has announced today in Nairobi, Kenya – the four new C series devices. Nokia’s budget mobile phones are one of the only in the market that I think are any good. That’s because they do really stick with them as this is how Nokia has become what it is today. The last time I checked their website they had no less than ten cheap to buy, easy to use upcoming mobile phones.
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Intel Computex keynote roundup
Jun 01, 2010
Computex 2010 computer technologies exhibition has started today in Taipei and will be going on for the whole week until Saturday, the 5th of June. No doubt a lot will be showcased in this period, but in the meanwhile Intel’s keynote takes our attention with its three major announcements: Sandy Bridge processor architecture, Oak Trail netbook / tablet platform and Canoe Lake demo.
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ASUS Eee Pad & Eee Tablet get announced ahead of COMPUTEX 2010
May 31, 2010
Just ahead of COMPUTEX 2010 starting tomorrow, June 1st, we have some straight-forward iPad competitors appearance to discuss. These are ASUS Eee Pad and ASUS Eee Tablet. The Eee Pad model number EP121 is a 12-inch full-on Windows 7 Home Premium touch sensitive device with Intel Core 2 Duo CULV doing all the processing. It also has a webcam, a couple of connectivity ports I suppose and a dockable physical keyboard. Battery on this one will be going on for 10 hours. 10-inch Eee Pad EP101TC on the other hand runs Windows Embedded Compact 7 so it can very well have less processing power and longer battery life. Anyway, prices on both fit in $399 - &36;499 range.
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Acer Aspire One AO533 leaks with latest Intel Atoms and Bluetooth 3.0 under the hood
May 28, 2010
Looks like Intel Atom N455 and N475 processors quietly make their way to OEMs. Just like we said, June is the month when updated Pine Trail lineup becomes available. I’m sure there will be a lot more Intel Atom N455 and N475 machines at the time, mind you we are looking forward to them because they are DDR3 compatible, but for now we only have a new Acer Aspire One 533 with the choice of both of these processors. Naturally, AO533 features DDR3 system memory and thanks to its lower power consumption, battery life is prolonged to 10 hours compared to AO522 which looks much of a donor for AO533. No goodies such as USB 3.0 or DirectX 11 support therefore. However, you can have it with Bluetooth 3.0.
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Happy iPad international availability day!
May 28, 2010
Yes, Apple iPad does so much noise these days that we have to write about it several times in a row. This time it’s because today it has gone on sale in countries of Europe and Asia. Not in all of them though – non U. S. iPad availability pertains to United Kingdom, France, Spain, Switzerland, Germany, Italy, Japan and Australia. In early July Apple plans to add Ireland, Belgium, Netherlands and Luxemburg to the list.
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Apple exaggerates iPad demand, underrates its customers
May 27, 2010
AdMob – one of the largest mobile Internet advertising companies has compiled a report on ad requests by iPhone OS and Android as of April, 2010. All in all it is very interesting to see how these two mobile giants stack up as well as to forecast dynamics considering recently announced Android 2.2. You can find the report on AdMob official web site to see all the data for yourself. Some simple calculations helped me to work out that more than 25% of April’s iPad ad requests have been done from outside the U. S. And that is when we are only one day away from iPad international launch.
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ASRock Vision 3D HTPC will be out in July
May 26, 2010
ASRock has come up with a 3D video playback kit, which looks pretty solid. It is based on Intel Core mobile processor and graphics powered by NVIDIA GPU for 3D Vision graphics support.
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Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive - best from both worlds
May 24, 2010
Today Seagate unveiled what I think will change hard drive market in the nearest future. Momentus XT hybrid drive is what we are talking about here. Momentus XT shipping now to OEMs is a combination of a small form factor HDD coupled with a small SSD module. All together they allow users to have large capacities with much faster performance, comparable with standalone SSDs even, for the quarter of the price as Seagate presenter says in official comparison video. HDD and SSD interoperability is managed by Adaptive Memory technology. It monitors OS’, programs’ and user’s file calls and moves frequently used ones to a built-in SSD. Momentus XT is shipped as an upgrade option for ASUS gaming notebooks with various hard drive capacities but all of them have the same 4GB solid state supplement. Follow the link for Seagate Momentus XT specifications.
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Sony Internet TV is now official
May 21, 2010
Sony Internet TV has become official today. Google TV platform based on in-house Android operating system is largely the technical part of the entertainment solution coupled with Sony industry experience. All together under Sony Internet TV name these two efforts will become available for U. S. citizens in Autumn, 2010. At the moment it is pretty hard to sum up what Sony Internet TV devices will cost, but at least two of them were also announced today. Very few facts are known though: one piece will be a standard TV model and the other will feature an in-built Blu-ray Disc drive.
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Android 2.2 quadruples Flash performance
May 19, 2010
Google I/O 2010 event takes its place today in San Francisco and one of the headlines of the agenda, almost certainly, is going to be presentation of their smartphone operating system Android version 2.2 aka Froyo. The big thing about Android 2.2 is native Flash support. Compared with previous versions it runs Flash 10.1 plug-in four and a half times faster hence smoother. Now this, of course, comes into collision with Apple’s way of delivering web experience.
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DDR3 ready Intel Atom N455, N475 and dual-core N500 processors are round the corner
Apr 26, 2010
Back in November 2009 we previewed Intel Cedarview still to come notebook / netbook platform. The first thing we liked over upcoming at that time Pineview chipset and Pine Trail Atom processors was DDR3 support. Waiting a for more than year to get hold of one looked like too long. And it still is. So now there is a rumor saying Intel will add Atom-based N455, N475 and dual-core N500 processors with DDR3 support to its current lineup. This reportedly will happen in early June and already ASUS is preparing a netbook sporting dual-core Intel Atom N500 for under $600.
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Sharp has two new AQUOS Blu-Ray players for May
Apr 22, 2010
Sharp will ship two new AQUOS Blu-Ray players starting from May, 24. With recording uncompressed Full HD video stream for some very long hours in mind they have fitted BD-HDS55 with 500GB hard drive and BD-HDS53 with smaller 320GB HDD. Sounds to me like that’s a lot of recording. Anyway, apart from decoding H.264/AVC/MPEG-4 new Sharp AQUOS BD-HDS55 and BD-HDS53 players don’t have too many features to talk about, hence both are priced under a thousand dollars, so you could call them entry level models.
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Gateway NV59C-H34E and NV59C-H54E notebooks go on sale this Friday
Apr 21, 2010
Gateway will update its NV notebook series this Friday, April, 23. NV lineup will now have two more Intel Core i-powered machines, but both new models (NV59C-H34E and NV59C-H54E) also feature Intel integrated graphics. So to say the least, update has its aim at business public because sans graphics latest NV’s specs don’t say too much about economy. Follow the link for the rest of specifications.
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Dio-Lase uses laser to make soft tissue treatment less scary
Apr 16, 2010
A good friend of mine decided to enter stomatology faculty after graduating from school. She always had a heart of gold so naturally her decision has become a source of jokes how she will mercilessly pull ones decayed tooth. The thing is though that it takes seven years to get certificate of medical degree and she is no where near that point at the moment of writing. So I hope she’ll get to work with one of these new laser dental drilling machines when the time comes. Well since it has no drill, I’ll call it by its product name from now on. Designed by Germans, Dio-Lase requires no cable, comes with a small techy dock instead. Its function element is vibrationless and soundless 7W diode laser – the main reason why it should be less scary for patients of all ages. Dio-Lase has other smart features too like rotating head for better access to soft tissues that need treatment, etc. But still, not scaring kids to death is priceless.
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Moshi Moshi 01H + iPad. Can you hear me now?
Apr 15, 2010
You might have probably seen already one or two mock ups on how Apple has designed iPad by running over iPhone with an asphalt roller meaning that it’s just a giant iPhone so that you could have more apps. The only thing missing is that iPad doesn’t do calls. Apart from VoIP, of course. So, if you want you to make your iPad (or really any other gadget) look more authentic among its handset predecessors you can equip it with a fairly cheap Moshi Moshi 01H – a vintage-styled handset designed for wide variety of devices that has come out today with just $29.99 on the price tag. In stock, Moshi Moshi 01H is supplied with 3.5mm jack. USB and other types of adapters are sold separately. They say it has high quality speaker and microphone, modern, pleasant to use materials, but, well, it just looks good with an iPad. A black one though (also available) would be even better.
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Nintendo Wii 2 shows up in June on E3 2010
Apr 13, 2010
The upcoming Electronic Entertainment Expo 2010, or E3 2010 for short, planned for June 15 to 17 has just been made doubly more expected by Shigeru Miyamoto from Nintendo. In today’s interview he said some interesting things about Wii’s successor. This might not be Nintendo Wii 2 by the way. Mr. Miyamoto said he couldn’t give out that kind of information, but two other variants apart from Wii 2 are Wii HD or even a completely new console. What he did say though was that the emphasis in design are put on how original and distinctive the console will be compared to its rivals. That is because today everyone has the same technology at their disposal and Wii 2’s (Wii HD’s, etc.) future is down to unique gaming experience. We’ll see what’s what in June then.

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ASUS EeeBox PC EB1007 gets official, gets Intel Atom D410 and USB 3.0
Apr 12, 2010
At CeBIT 2010, at the beginning of March, we saw some interesting models flashing at ASUS booth. Many of them were shown as upcoming, so naturally, in a month we got some of those officially announced. ASUS has recently announced its EeeBox PC EB1007 nettop, but things have changed to good since CeBIT. I mean, of course, ASUS’ promise to equip as many products as they can with USB 3.0 ports. So they did it with EeeBox PC EB1007 as well. However, things are not so jolly well with EB1007 nettop.
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Panasonic's "professional" micro camera AF100
Apr 12, 2010
Panasonic has come up with an idea of a micro small professional camera. However, its Micro Four Thirds sensor can be useful shooting some budget video clip for home cinema. The video quality will be pretty decent for such a small camera thanks to its suite of 4/3 lenses, adapters and filters.
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ZF designs carbon fiber MacPherson strut for 2014
Apr 09, 2010
We are no strangers to auto industry here at this blog. How can we not if it is a constant source of innovation and cutting edge technologies? So we got one more concept from ZF guys. This auto supplier from Germany has shown an alternative way to construct a MacPherson strut which uses a significant amount of carbon fiber in its production. I can sense images of sports cars popping up in your mind. Well hold it. It’s for small city-cars and yes, it sounds like despite benefits of lower mass and higher strength carbon fiber will be too expensive to be used in small cars. ZF engineers say they have found their way round it.
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