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Gadgets

Cutting-edge gadgets of yesteryear

Fosfor Gadgets has come up with a fun retrospective that features a few choice gadgets of yesteryear, comparing them with their modern-day counterparts. The best news: This list, which includes such gems as an 11.5-pound "transportable" phone, is apparently just the first installment.

Originally posted at News Blog

By Mike Yamamoto

HP gives Pavilion and Presario a makeover

In addition to a torrent of new and refreshed business laptops, HP has added two new models to its home and home office lineup--the Presario V3000 and Pavilion dv2000.

HP has upped the ante with the V3000 and dv2000's processor options: you can configure each with an Intel Core Solo or Core Duo processor--or, when it debuts, AMD's dual-core processor. We're glad to see HP continuing to offer consumers a choice of processor, and we can't wait to get a version of each to pit head-to-head.

Having both undergone a significant redesign, the Presario V3000 and … Read more

Belkin shipping 802.11n router

So-called "pre-N" wireless--Wi-Fi technology that predates the new draft form of the 802.11n wireless standard--is old news. The 802.11n standard is not due for final approval by the IEEE until sometime around July 2007, but that isn't stopping wireless vendors like Linksys, Netgear, Belkin and a host of other companies that do not want to be left out of the wireless competition from embracing the draft standard. It should be noted that the newest draft standard was ultimately rejected on May 2, which is ironic because some manufacturers announced the availability of a 801.11n … Read more

No more bargains lost in the laundry

LOS ANGELES--It's the discount hunter's nightmare. You get to the cashier sweating, with a cart sagging under the mountain of sodas, washing detergent and toilet paper that will be sooo cheap with those little coupons you cut out of the mail in the morning.

You load everything onto the conveyor belt, browse your pockets, purse, wallet and your pockets again for the precious pieces of paper. As the groaning of the long line behind you increases, you realize that the inconceivable has happened: You have forgotten your coupons at home--again.

Brent Dusing, CEO of the San Jose-based company … Read more

When playing guitar became PC

Guitars--especially electric guitars--are highly adaptable tools. Not only are they among the most musically versatile instruments, they can be outfitted and accessorized with enough gadgets and electronics to fill Metallica's tour bus.

It was just a matter of time, then, before we'd see something like the Intel/Fender Telecaster, a concept guitar introduced last fall. It's a Fender Telecaster--the guitar of choice for many lead players in country-music and rock 'n' roll groups--whose solid wood body has been routed out to accommodate a Hewlett-Packard TC1100 tablet laptop with 1.25GB of RAM, an Echo Indigo I/O … Read more

Originally posted at News Blog

By Richard Defendorf

Plug and play for guitar players

Guitar players tend to be gearheads, which is to say that if they can sneak another guitar or guitar-related toy into the house without incurring terrible debt or interrogation from a spouse or partner, they will do it.

The LightSnake, a cable that converts the analog signal from your guitar to a digital signal for your PC, is a good candidate for acquisition. More important, it's likely to actually be used rather than collect dust. For those who want to add guitar lines to files being mixed on Apple Computer's GarageBand or Sony's Acid Music Studio, the … Read more

Originally posted at News Blog

By Richard Defendorf

Activision sued for overtime

A Boston law firm has filed a class-action suit against Activision, the world's second-largest video game maker, alleging that the company failed to pay overtime to employees as required by law.

The suit, Erimez v. Activision, was filed Tuesday in Los Angeles Superior Court, and argues that Activision illegally declared its animators as "exempt" from overtime pay.

Activision did not return a call for comment Tuesday.

The suit comes on the heels of Electronic Arts' decision to pay $14.9 million to settle a class-action suit by employees who also alleged non-payment of overtime. The firm filing … Read more

Little Sony earphones make lots of noise

Sony's out with a new set of little earbuds designed to deliver the big notes.

The MDR-EX90SL earphones feature a 13.5-millimeter sound driver. A driver that size wouldn't fit into the ear, so Sony has attached it diagonally to a smaller 9-millimeter swiveling tip that does fit in the ear canal (see attached photo for a closeup). Because that swiveling tip is attached to a driver that can pump 5 to 25,000Hz of audio, you're getting a whole lot of sound.

The in-ear headset will hit the Japanese market May 10 for 11,800 yen ($… Read more

Samsung's Q1 UMPC not a processing powerhouse

Samsung chose Intel's Ultra-Low Voltage Celeron M processor for its new Q1 minitablet PC unveiled Monday, in what has to be one of the least powerful chips in Intel's current lineup.

The Celeron M 353 runs at 900MHz, and comes with 512K bytes of Level 2 cache. Even though we're all aware that there's more to performance than clock speed, it still counts for something, and the 353 is slower than any current chip on Intel's pricing page, not counting the XScale handheld chips. In fact, the 353 doesn't even appear on that list … Read more

Hi-fi Skype speaker for conference calls

As my fellow gadgets blogger Shawn Conaway noted recently, you can't open a magazine or a browser these days without seeing an ad for a new device that integrates with Skype's voice over Internet Protocol service. And while one Skype-related gadget can tend to blend into the next after awhile, the latest entrant to the product parade may bode well for the future of Skype and untapped segments of the enterprise market.

Polycom, a leading maker of conference phones, has gone Skype with its Monday announcement that it's teaming with the VoIP provider to offer "integrated, … Read more