Gadgets Base

by Darren Murph, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 5:46PM
If you’ve managed to blink over the past few weeks, you may have missed it. Missed what, you ask? The war between no name HDD racks, that’s what. After numerous evolutions of the HDD Stage Rack managed to capture the hearts of at least a few storage junkies out there, we’ve seen a barrage of competitors surface over at Brando. The latest is Unitek’s SATA HDD Multi-Function Dock with One Touch Backup, which — to be totally frank — does a phenomenal job of explaining itself. For those a touch slow on the uptake, this unit enables any internal 2.5- / 3.5-inch SATA drive to be accessed externally, and furthermore, it packs a couple of USB 2.0 ports and supports a whole slew of memory cards. You could grab this one now for $53, but then again, you never know what will leapfrog it next week.

[Via The Red Ferret Journal]

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Filed under: Storage

Gadget mavens Brando are back with yet another SATA hard drive dock, and this time round, their offering features a built-in 2-port USB hub and a memory card reader for your convenience. Gotta love the one touch backup feature, since that makes it a snap to keep a copy of all your crucial files without going through too much of a hassle. Good to know it supports both 2.5″ and 3.5″ SATA hard drives, making this a highly versatile gizmo to have, especially when you want to transfer data from different computers since this connects via USB. It will cost you $53 to bring this puppy home.

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by Nilay Patel, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 1:17PMAlthough Alltel is busy courting Verizon’s amorous advances, it looks like the carrier is still serious about rolling with the big boys — it’s just announced a nationwide WiFi service powered by Boingo. Subscribers can opt for $20/mo or $4/day plans, and score access at over 25,000 hotspots in airports, hotels, bookstores, coffee shops and restaurants. Alltel wireless customers can also opt for the $70/mo Internet Anywhere bundle, which gives you unlimited EVDO and WiFi access. Of course, all these plans could change when the Verizon deal finally goes down, but we’ll see how that plays out in the future — at least you’re not being locked into a contract.

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Filed under: Wireless

by Nilay Patel, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 10:35AM
We played around with the home version of the ButtKicker rumpwoofer at CES back in January, but this weekend the NHRA is going to test out the other part of the signal chain: driver Jeg Coughlin Jr. will have a special Bluetooth vibration sensor installed in his car that will eventually allow the home viewer to feel like they’re riding shotgun while planted firmly on the couch. NASA is already using ButtKicker tech as part of the Shuttle launch experience ride at the Kennedy Space Center, so it’s clearly capable of doing the job, and the plan is to eventually sell subscriptions to the ButtKicker feed as an add-on to NHRA and NASCAR races. That should make weekend afternoons a lot more, uh, vibratey — but we’re not going to be happy until our couch is pummeling us during NFL games with full-speed tackles.

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 9:48AM

We may be a little overexcited about Mio’s Knight Rider GPS unit, but we’re not about to apologize for that. This is one beautiful union of KITT and navigation that was meant to happen since the day LCDs and GPS chips first hung out. With that out of the way, we have some hands-on impressions.

The unit feels solid and small enough to be portable while the screen remains just big enough to be of use. A nice anti-glare coating looks to keep things visible during daylight hours. Yes, standard fare.

Peep the gallery below and don’t miss the video after the break.

Gallery: Mio’s Knight Rider GPS hands-on

But wait! Startup. Oh, startup. Complete with KITT’s scanner and flashing red lights, the Mio’s bootup is almost worth the $269 price alone. As for interface, you’re looking at standard Mio fare here, which means it’s nothing amazing nor is it a disaster. Truth be told, it could be a bit faster, but this was a test unit we were looking at, so we’ll give that a pass for now.

Mio has loaded the unit with over 300 names, and we were able to find one of ours in the long list — hearing William Daniels say our name fulfilled at least half of hour childhood dreams.

In short, the Mio Knight Rider GPS won’t change the world of navigation, but it will certainly make some wannabe Michael Knights wish they were driving a Trans Am.

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As expected T-Mobile has officially unveiled the Motorola ROKR E8, which will be available beginning July 7. The ROKR E8 will feature a touchscreen keyboard with a vibration feedback that will change and offer different keys depending on the feature you are currently using. Otherwise the E8 will be a candybar style handset with a 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth, 3.5mm headphone jack, FM radio, 2GB of internal memory with a microSD card slot that will allow for 8GB more and is myFaves compatible.

The ROKR E8 will set you back $199, which comes along with a two-year agreement. Overall a decent little handset, but for $199 one has to wonder why, compared to some other more full featured models that are currently available it sounds a little pricey.

Read [T-Mobile] Via [Engadget]

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by Donald Melanson, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 11:42AM
There may be bigger NASs out there, but there are few more impressively named than Seagate’s new Maxtor Central Axis — a name that’s all the more imposing when combined with the drive’s monolithic appearance. If that’s not enough to sell you on it, however, you may be slightly more impressed with its 1TB 7,200 rpm drive with 32MB of cache, or its support for DLNA and UPnP media streaming, dual USB ports, and magical auto-sorting software, not to mention all the expected security features. $330 and it’s yours this July, with folks in Europe and Asia set to get theirs later this year.

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by Paul Miller, posted Jun 26th 2008 at 6:01AM
Alright, this one is no surprise, but Dell is finally officially official about its leaked and re-leaked “Studio” laptop line. The specs are as previously stated, with a 15-inch Studio 15 model starting at $799, and a 17-inch Studio 17 model that starts at $999. What is perhaps more interesting than rehashing those laptop specs for old times sake is the new software Dell is pushing to these laptops and eventually the rest of its computers. Dell Dock is just like what it sounds, a program launcher along the lines of the OS X dock, but with some app-categorization magic and fairly extensive customization. Dell is also doing up Dell Video Chat, in partnership with SightSpeed, which integrates some rather easy-to-use video chat (powered by those integrated webcams on the Studio Laptops) with VoIP and IM for a pretty compelling alternative to Apple’s iChat. In all it seems Dell’s continued fascination with Apple is starting to really pay off for the end user, and those pricepoints are just as loveable as ever. Both laptops should be hitting retail in the next few days.

Gallery: Dell’s new Studio laptops official, along with new Dell Dock and Dell Video software

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Last night in NYC, Gadgetell was on hand for the Digital Experience, a tech press event where companies show off their latest and greatest.  Think of it as a condensed mid-year CES event.  The question everyone asked me was, “what is hot here?”.  For me, the answer was pretty easy: FindWhere.

You might remember us getting excited about adding GPS and reporting capabilities to your car we found at CES.  That is all well and fine, but this company has done it for your GPS smartphone.  As more and more phones toss in GPS, unique software solutions abound to help us take advantage out of it.  The company aims their product at two groups: families and enterprise.

As the father of a preteen, my daughter gets a very short list.  With Findwhere, I can get alerted when she crosses over our town line, travels at over 65mph, or even if she travels to a dead end street the teens like to hang out at (so I can show up with my baseball bat).  Perhaps even better, she can hit the panic button and I am alerted to her location immediately.  Maybe I will make it through the teen years…nah.

For their enterprise clients, FindWhere can offer similar conveniences: tracking, location of execs, even panic could be handy.

The key to all this is convergence.  It is not something else you have to remember.  No one goes anywhere without a cell phone these days and that makes it the perfect tracking tool.  FindWhere relys on a small downloaded program installed on each users phone.  Simple settings are set and the rest is automatic.  Users can be tracked on a web tool and there are tons of custom settings to take advantage of.  Even minimizing battery drain can be addressed individually for each phone. 

Right now the service is $19 per month (a small price to pay for that kind of piece of mind) and the company intends to offer a paired down service in the future.  The list of phones it currently works with is rather short (AT&T and T-Mobile in the US) but expanding and they are, of course, targeting the iphone.

I really like this service and will be reviewing it in the near future.

Company site: [FindWhere]

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Last night I had the occasion to play around with the new crop of phones put out by the industry’s big players.  It always surprises me how quickly a phone can feel great or not so great in your hand vs staring at it on the screen.  I was shocked at how quickly I hated one of these supposedly sexy models and how much I liked one I really didn’t think I would.  Here is the run down:

HTC Touch Diamond. One word: HOT!  This little phone is very sexy and after I figured out how to turn the bugger on, it was off to the races.  The skin over the Windows Mobile OS is the best yet in terms of speed and functionality.  I’ve played with a few of these skins and this one is rather remarkable.  The screen is very responsive, and it’s tempered glass feels very high end.  It even has a tilt game with feedback as your little ball hits the obstacles.  Overall, I was very impressed with this diminutive phone and could easily see owning this one. 

Sony Xperia. One word: Not.  Maybe it is just me (I am sure our Sony-fanboy Adam will refute my impression) but this phone just doesn’t do it for me.  Sure the slide out keyboard felt like a Sony: finely crafted of smallish buttons that looked sharp; it is a well put together beast for sure.  But I was dumped out of the UI very quick, leaving me staring at Windows Mobile which brings me back to why I look at other phones all the time: it doesn’t feel fun, new or sexy.  Perhaps my beef is with Windows Mobile, but Sony’s rendition here seems just, I don’t know, not fun.  Not for me and I don’t think it will win over the BB crowd or the iphone crowd; and really, who does that leave left?

Samsung Instinct. After realizing I was cruising through the Sprint women’s personal phone, I quit sending text messages to her favs… This phone was rather nice in navigation, everything was laid out pretty well, the response was good and the feedback was a nice novelty.  My biggest issue came with what felt a real narrow screen.  The web and movies which automatically go to landscape felt like the edges were closing in.  Forget that some real estate is taken up by buttons that were not super intuitive: it just felt crammed and that kills the experience for me.

Blackberry Bold. I’ll admit to not being a fan of the blackberry but this bold was the nicest one yet.  The Blackberry rep was doing his best to dance around AT&T’s reasoning for delays, no news there.  The navigation was good, the screen bright and the look is rather sexy - even for Blackberry.  This will be the one to beat from RIM.

All told, there are some superstars in this crop of the latest and greatest.  These manufacturers have put some effort into staying on the curve while none really push it to much.  If I had to pick a fav of these, it would be the HTC hands down.  It’s small, fun and easy to work - which really is what the teeming masses hope to get out of their phone.

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