Gadgets Base

The MSI Wind was officially announced back in mid-May and now it has turned up on the FCC website. Along with the traditional filing the user manual is up and available for download (PDF link), but the Wind was also opened up and showed off all of its internal glory. Hey, its always fun to see those internal images, especially when its not yours that you are messing with. Keep reading to check out a few more internal MSI Wind images.

Read [FCC] Via [jkkMobile]

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by Paul Miller, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 9:50AM
It’s not every day we get to glimpse a brand new experience from Dell, and while Studio might just be near-XPS laptops in everyman clothing, that certainly seems to be a good thing. The laptops appear to combine the power of XPS and the prices of Inspiron, with some new perks like HDMI out and slot-loading drives to keep things fresh. The laptops tend a little thicker than their XPS counterparts, and the fact that these are hitting just before Centrino 2 might be cause to hesitate, but otherwise we’re getting the feel from these reviews that the Studio line just might be the consumer lineup to beat if you can dig the design quirks and a little bit of bulk.

Read - NotebookReview, Studio 17 (”Hard pressed to find a better 17-inch notebook in the same price range”)
Read - CNET Reviews, Studio 15 (7.3 / 10, “We’d be tempted to save up a few extra dollars for a thinner, lighter XPS.”)
Read - PC Mag, Studio 15 (4.5 / 5, Editor’s Choice, “Retaining many of the XPS’s qualities while selling it for Inspiron prices.”)
Read - Laptop Mag, Studio 17 (3.5 / 5, “For $1,599, you’ll get plenty of multimedia muscle.”)

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Filed under: Laptops

In case you are wondering what the next step is for video game consoles, a British magazine known as T3 has some idea of where the future is headed. I believe that these visions are simply ideas, and nothing that is presently under development by the big video game developers.

The first concept is a different type of remote for the Nintendo Wii. This type of Wiimote is still a stick, but it only has one button. It is apparently hooked up to some sort of headset accessory that uses brainwaves to control, and has in-ear headphones. Brainwave technology has been under development for a while now, and if Nintendo gets the first mind interface, they could seriously corner the video game market.

The second concept is a version of the Xbox that is completely portable. Not only is it a game player with 64 GB of memory, but it has built-in Zune capability and can even act as a mobile phone.

Now all I need is to know what Sony is planning for the future of the playstation. So far, I can only see the number “4” in the future, but assuming that these concepts have some truth to them, Sony will have to come up with something very original in order to compete.

Source 1 and Source 2

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by Ryan Block, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 11:51AM
Hey, if Bill can give away tens of billions of dollars, the least we can do to celebrate his last day is to give away some Microsoft-powered gear, right? First up: the 4GB Toshiba Gigabeat T400, one of the very last Portable Media Center-based devices ever made. Damn, we kind of miss PMC, and the rad stuff it could do that Zune couldn’t (like sync recorded TV shows from your Media Center PC). Take it away!

• Leave a comment below. Tell us about your favorite Microsoft-powered product. Or your favorite Apple product, too, since Bill totally bailed those guys out back in ‘97.
• You may only enter this specific giveaway once. If you enter this giveaway more than once you’ll be automatically disqualified, etc. (Yes, we have robots that thoroughly check to ensure fairness.)
• If you enter more than once, only activate one comment. This is pretty self explanatory. Just be careful and you’ll be fine.
  
• Contest is open to anyone in the 50 States, 18 or older! Sorry, we don’t make this rule (we hate excluding anyone), so be mad at our lawyers and contest laws if you have to be mad.
• Winner will be chosen randomly. That winner will get a brand new orange Toshiba Gigabeat T400. Approximate value is $150.
• Entries can be submitted until Sunday, June 29th, 11:59PM ET. Good luck!
• Full rules can be found here.

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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video

by Darren Murph, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 1:31PM
Remember that hundred pack of blank cassettes you bought back in ‘93 when they hit 90-percent off? Man, those were the days. Unfortunately, you only got around to making three or four mix tapes, leaving you with quite a few unused hunks of junk cluttering up the closet. If you’ve managed to hang onto ‘em just knowing a worthwhile use was just around the bend, congratulations. The ingenious cats over at Transparent House have glued an assortment of old tapes together and inserted neon lights within to keep things cool and create a rather impressive source of lighting. Oh, and if you can’t figure this one out sans a how-to guide, maybe DIY work just isn’t your bag.

[Via technabob]

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Filed under: Household

Aside from it’s rather weird name, this new ”Eee” like laptop is actually a pretty good one. The Mouse Computer U100 LuvBook comes with 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, a 10.2-inch WSVGA screen, a 1.3-megapixel webcam, a 1.6GHz Atom processor and runs Windows XP. Unfortunately, it is only slated for a Japanese launch at this time, with no word on whether if or when it will be available in other countries. Beginning in July, the U100 will be selling for 59,800 Yen, or around $439 US.

Via [Pocket-Lint]

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by Joshua Topolsky, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 9:31AMPalm continued to flaunt its almost inexplicable boost in health in an earnings call yesterday. According to reports, honcho Ed Colligan boasted of a 29 percent gain in smartphone sales year-over-year, largely in part to the stellar performance of the company’s budget-priced (with contract) Centro. In light of the recent negative outlook from investors, retail store closings, a constantly delayed OS update, and fierce competition, it’s a pretty impressive feat to not only stay afloat, but manage some small victories. Now if they can just deliver on those OS and device promises we keep hearing about, they may stay in this game yet.

[Via Palm Infocenter]

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Filed under: cellphones

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Jun 27th 2008 at 8:24AM
Leave it to space nerds with money to come up with the world’s highest resolution visualization system. NASA’s Advanced Supercomputing Division at Ames has created the 128-screen hyperwall-2, a mega display capable of rendering one quarter billion pixels. Hyperwall-2 measures 23- x 10-feet of LCD goodness, and is powered by 128 GPUs and 1,024 processor cores with 74 teraflops of peak processing power. To top things off, 475 terabytes of storage keep the system rolling. All in all, hyperwall-2 has more than 100 times the processing power of its poor predecessor, hyperwall, from 2002. The elder hyperwall was unavailable for comment and is most likely on an alcoholic bender somewhere, complaining about “kids these days.”

[Thanks, james]

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Filed under: Displays

Most people that enjoy their music a lot like to keep it with them and on cleaning day having a speaker that can move with you would be great.  Especially in a home with multiple iPods and kids this little Sentry Wirelesss Speaker would come in handy.  The ipod works wirelessly so you could leave it one place and take the speaker with you.  Even more convenient is that the speaker itself is water resistant.  Granted don’t go dipping it in the pool, but if it gets splashed on or even gets rained on a bit before you can rush it indoors would be okay.

Although the set only comes with one speaker, you can hook up six different speakers to it.  Which means if you felt like blaring music in the entire house you’d have the equipment for it.  As with most docks if you happen to have something besides an iPod you can play that through the speaker as well.  As long as it has a 3.5 mm headset port it will work.  The set includes the dock and one speaker and will cost you $99.99.

Source: forevergeek

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With the population growing and the amount of trash piling up from it, we’ve started finding a need to reuse old items.  One new way to do so is to take old discarded plates and create something like this cute little lamp.  This particular design was done by Denis Belenko and Dmitriy Nkolaenko and posted on their site this month.  They created two different styles, one is extremely contemporary and the other much more childlike and playful.  Which just goes to show with these little lamps you can create any style you like.

I know plates are always the one thing at my local flea market that there is always an overabundance of.  Most people get tired of several plates breaking and then having mismatched sets, so they either toss them in the trash or take them to a flea market in hopes that someone will get some use out of them.  Although this is yet another design you can’t purchase, it is another one that wouldn’t be that difficult to remake.  I’m sure there are plenty of tutorials on how to drill a hole into fragile objects.

Source: boingboing

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