Gadget Access

How does one choose a USB hub for their desk when there are so many different ones out there? Since most of them will be the same on the inside, there are only a few things to consider. One is whether or not you want a powered hub or not. Once you’ve figure that out you just have to find one that looks cool, because lets be honest, that’s really all it comes down to. If you’re a Transformer fan, then there’s a good chance that you’ll like this All Spark 4-port USB hub.

I’d love to tell you about all of the exciting features of this wonderful gadget, however, as I’ve said before, there’s not much to a USB hub. The only useful things to know are that it does not require power, it will cost around $35 and won’t be available until August of this year.

Source: EverythingUSB

One of the more, innovative laptops in recent days, the Lenovo X300 is about to get some company with the new ThinkPad line-up. By September, we should be seeing the X200, X400, and the X500, all to accompany the popular X300. Now, all three of these laptops will feature HSDPA and EVDO, sport a 25% better battery life and 6MB L2 cache, all guaranteed to please just about everyone. The differences between these new laptops is that the X200 will be sporting a 12-inch screen, the X400 has a 14.1-inch screen and the X500 has a 15.4-inch screen.

Next, we have the Lenovo R-Series, which doesn’t seem to come with a whole lot details, but will be your basic Lenovo laptops. The 2 models of the R-Series that we know of so far are the R400 and the R500. They weigh 5.1 pounds and 6.4 pounds, respectively. These new laptops are slated to be on sale sometime in July of 2008, and no word on pricing.

Moving on, Lenovo will also be adding more laptops to the T-Series. These laptops are a little more advanced than the R-Series, but still not the best Lenovo has to offer. They sport 256 or 512MB of ATI HD3650 graphics, and the cool thing here is that they can be turned off, especially if you want to conserve battery life. Not much other information on the laptops, however, we do know that the T400 weighs 4.3 pounds and the T500 weighs 5.8 pounds. Word is that these laptops will be available in June 2008, and again, no word on pricing.

Furthermore, we have the totally new W-Series from Lenovo, which features some pretty nice laptops, and instead of the “w” standing for widescreen, it now stands for workstation replacement, which tells you something that Lenovo is refraining from just making widescreen laptops. The new W900 sports a 15-inch screen and comes with the aforementioned graphics of the T-Series. There are also reports indicating they are working on making a 17-inch model which should be available later on.

There is also a number of things in which almost all of these laptops have in common. Beginning with 6MB of L2 cache, optional Turbo Memory up to 2GB, optional Blu-Ray drive, 2 PCI express slots, 1.6GHz DDR3 RAM, all but the R-Series comes with LED Backlighting, HSDPA and EVDO, 9 cell batteries with the 25% more battery life, GPS, WiMAX, wireless USB (not available in all laptops), and solid state hard drive - not for the W-Series.

Lenovo has a good plan and they are going to start manufacturing all of these laptops in May, so there will be plenty available for their slotted shipping dates. All in all, I think that with all these new laptops, Lenovo will get a lot more popular in the laptop sales department. Especially, with the X300 getting their name known, these laptops will probably sell nicely.

Via [Gizmodo]

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Until iPods start shipping with wireless headsets, you have to deal with the usual tangle of headphones when you pull them out of your pocket, your purse, your gym bag, your laptop bag, and even from laying innocently on your desk. No more with the $9 Earbud Jack. Earbud Jack is a neat little plastic guy who stands in the right stance location and has the right-sized arms and hands for your iPod headphone cable, earbuds and jack. Get the name now?!

While it may take you just a tad bit longer to wrap up your headphones around Jack, consider this: you won’t have a tangle to deal with the next time you want to use them, you’ll prolong the life of your headset because you won’t be breaking the copper wires inside by tangling or folding too tightly, and you’ll also be indirectly donating to 2 charities currently - the American Hearing Research Foundation and the Hearing and Speech Center of Northern California.

The most important thing about Earbud Jack is learning to use him - all of about 2 minutes. My only gripe with Jack is that he’s mainly designed for ipod headphones and other similar earbud-type headsets. A pair of my weird over-the-ear Sony headphones didn’t quite go as well, but I found a way after some tinkering to get them onto Jack.

All in all, a neat little gadget. What If Widgets is the San Francisco-based company that promises to turn out more clever, practical products like Earbud Jack.

Posted in Audio/Video, Home Theater, Portable

If you’ve ever forgotten an anniversary or birthday of your wife, you’ve likely felt the fully wrath of a woman. Regardless of the gift you get her, you’re still likely to be in the doghouse after forgetting such an important date. But fear not, as modern technology has found a way to make sure you’ll never forget again.

The Remember Ring looks like an ordinary white gold wedding band which can be set with a specific date. 24 hours before the progammed date, the ring will heat up to 120 degrees for 10 seconds every hour on the hour for the entire day. This should be enough notice to run out and get a last-minute gift for your loved one.

These are currently only a concept item, however, they expect to sell it in both white and yellow gold for $760.

Source: GearFuse

HKC has announced two new Pocket PCs, the W1000 and G1000. Both pocket PCs sport dual sim with an added hotkey for accessing stock market information. Business individuals who are always on the go would certainly find any one of these pocket PC’s useful for their needs.

Both W1000 and G1000 feature 2.8-inch QVGA touchscreen with 6.5M color, 256MB ROM and 64MB RAM, Microsoft Windows Mobile 6 for Pocket PC, support for SMS, MMS and EMS, and data storage can be supplemented by microSD cards.

The W1000 runs on 200MHz Qualcomm 6025 CPU while the G1000 runs on 200MHz Dragonfly CPU. One difference between the two pocket PC is that the W1000 works on GPRS, EDGE and CDMA, while the G1000 works only with GPRS and EDGE.

Don’t expect to find Wi-Fi or GPS capabilities in both either model though, as you won’t find any. But HKC has still managed to throw in a couple of nifty features to make the W1000 and G1000 pocket PC’s worthy of competing with the iphone. These include; 2.0-megapixel built-in camera, integrated Word, Excel and PowerPoint applications, Bluetooth and an mp3 player.

The W1000 and G1000 are now available in the Chinese market. The fact that HKC is releasing two identical versions of the Pocket PC with very few minor differences seem to point to the possibility that one of the two models is being geared for an international release. Let’s hope so, as the iPhone certainly needs a worthy if not lame competitor.

Product [HKC] Via [Unwired View]

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by Richard Lawler, posted Apr 11th 2008 at 7:22PMDISH Network hasn’t taken “no” “denied” or “not yours” for an answer before in its battle against TiVo, and it’s not going to start now. In a statement, the company expressed its plans to appeal the Federal Circuit’s ruling against a rehearing to the Supreme Court. No matter how it ends, customers don’t have to worry about jackbooted government agents (or software updates, whatever) stealing their precious DISH DVR functionality, because its “next generation” DVR software has already been downloaded to your box, and does not infringe on any patents. We’ll leave this up to the lawyers to fight out (and write amusing disclaimers about), but in the meantime hit the read link to hear DISH’s side of things.

[Thanks to everyone who sent this in]

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Filed under: Home Entertainment

by Donald Melanson, posted Apr 11th 2008 at 8:51PM We’ve seen the official images, but those itching for a better look at 3DConnexion’s new SpaceNavigator 3D mouse for laptops can now get their fix courtesy of Flickr user zeta.phoenix, who has kindly chronicled the traditional unboxing process for us. As you can see above, the peripheral definitely won’t take up too much space in your laptop bag, and the just-long-enough USB cable means it likely won’t be doing double duty on your desktop (at least without an extension). If that’s whet your appetite, you can find plenty more pics where it came from by hitting up the link below.

[Thanks, Jon]

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Filed under: Peripherals

by Joshua Topolsky, posted Apr 11th 2008 at 11:33PM
When you’re playing Samurai Shodown on your virtual Neo Geo, you need more than that rinky-dink controller to immerse you in a world of arcade magic. When you need to reach for a controller than can match up to your memories, you need the Neo Geo Stick 2. That’s right, this fully Wii-compatible controller can send you hurtling back through time to a happier day when your only concerns were cruising in your IROC-Z, shredding to Winger, and making sure you had enough quarters in your pocket to play Fatal Fury. Ready to do the time warp? $59.90 gets you through the door.

[Via technabob]

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Filed under: Gaming

by Darren Murph, posted Apr 11th 2008 at 6:30PM
After hacking away on Art Lebedev’s utterly gorgeous Optimus Maximus for a few days, we came away both awed and disappointed. For as beautiful and functional as this beast is, we still felt that actually typing on it — you know, its primary purpose — left a lot to be desired. Still, it’s hard to deny the ingenuity in the OLED-stuffed ‘board, but with such a lofty price tag and even loftier expectations, we can’t imagine all of the lucky early adopters being a hundred percent satisfied. For those that laid out for this exquisite piece of kit, how on Earth could revision two be better? Want a few more keys to play around with? Could it stand to lose some of that clicky tactility? Or will it really only be worth the coin once it bags your lunch, irons your shirt and chauffeurs you to work? Do tell.

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Filed under: Peripherals

Remember we told you about the Samsung T339 being added to T-mobile’s low end line up? Well, some more juicy information has been leaked from the FCC and it looks like the SGH-T339 will be HotSpot@Home capable.

While this particular phone having Wi-Fi is not really a big deal by itself, the fact that it could be used as a HotSpot@Home phone is really good news. But the bad news is, there is still no official word yet on the full specs, pricing or the official launch date. Looks like Samsung and T-Mobile are going to make us wait. The Samsung SGH-T339 is rumored to feature a clamshell design, microSD slot, music and video player, plus built-in Wi-Fi.

Via [phoneArena]

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