Gadgets and just Gadgets

For all WOW lovers and not only, the World of Warcraft XPS M1730 Laptop from Dell
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Dell’s $4500 WoW-themed XPS M1730 gaming notebooks are hot shit, even if you aren’t into WoW: overclockable Intel Extreme Edition Core 2 Duo processors, NVIDIA SLI DX10 graphics cards, PhysX card, Full HD 17-inch widescreen, pre-loaded with WoW and Burning Crusade expansion, plus a plethora of other limited edition WoW merch. Check out a more thorough presentation with all the specs :.

 Special XPS M1730 World of Warcraft content includes:

* Custom design featuring original art by Blizzard artists on LCD back, and Honor Badges on the wings
* World of Warcraft and World of Warcraft: The Burning CrusadeTM pre-loaded on system, including the latest content updates
* Original desktop background artwork and screensavers
* A World of Warcraft-themed backpack that includes:
Retail box copies of World of Warcraft, World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade, and the Warcraft® Battle Chest , which includes with Warcraft III: Reign of ChaosTM and Warcraft III: Frozen ThroneTM
Latest Brady Games strategy guides for World of Warcraft, The Burning Crusade, Warcraft III and The Frozen Throne
World of Warcraft DVD with a behind-the-scenes look at “The Making of WoW”
* A special Quest Envelope that ships separately with exclusive rare items:
A Golden Ticket allowing customers to receive a special custom FigurePrint based on the actual World of Warcraft character that they play1.
An Account Upgrade Certificate enabling the upgrade of a World of Warcraft account1 to receive the Collector’s Edition pets from both the original World of Warcraft Collector’s Edition and the World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade Collector’s Edition
A World of Warcraft Beta Club Card to enable customers to take part in upcoming public beta tests.

Starting at $4,499 (USD), the XPS M1730 World of Warcraft Edition system includes:

* Aggressive styling with backlit Honor Badges, touchpad and keyboard
* LightFX perimeter lighting for added immersion during game play
* Full-size keyboard with 10-key number pad to help navigate games
* AGEIA PhysX mobile processor and built-in Logitech® GamePanel LCD
* NVIDIA SLI graphics power and 512MB of dedicated video RAM with DirectX® 10 realism
* Optional over-clockable2 Intel® Extreme Edition CoreTM 2 Duo processor, up to 3.4GHz
* Optional dual RAID 7,200 RPM hard drives for fast access or even faster access with an optional 64GB solid state drive
* Full HD 17-inch widescreen and available Blu-ray DiscTM to provide the ultimate mobile viewing experience
* 7ms average display response time3 to ensure quick overall system performance
* Complete wireless connectivity with built-in Optional Mobile Broadband4, Wireless-N, Bluetooth, and Dell’s exclusive Wi-Fi CatcherTM
* Built-in camera and digital array microphones to clearly see and flame the competition
* Dual headphone jacks, noise-isolating ear buds and a portable ExpressCard media remote

We have little choice but to take Joey Roth’s word for it, but we’ve got our reservations about this one. The so-called Felt Mouse forgoes the typical dome shape that most mice made this millennium share in favor of a totally blockish — and likely uncomfortable — design. Conceptually, at least, the critter is indeed wireless, and while you will notice a right and left click, you can forget about finding one of those fancy “scroll wheel” contraptions. The unit will apparently conform to your hand when you grab hold.

This wireless mouse is made from natural wool felt and laminated bamboo ply. The felt’s softness and playability makes the mouse comfortable without looking “cartoonishly” ergonomic. The button layout follows the golden rectangle.

I appreciate his thoughtful approach towards materials and the theory of 3/4 design, the brick design just makes my palm ache looking at it.
[tags]
art, bamboo, concept, design, felt mouse, FeltMouse, joey roth, JoeyRoth, mouse, wool, yanko, concept[/tags]

The new Slingbox Solo has a lower price ($180) than its predecessors and has built-in jacks for high-definition gear probably won’t mean much to you.

The Slingbox’s purpose in life is to transmit whatever is on your TV to your laptop or smartphone (like a Treo or Windows Mobile phone) across the Internet. The point, of course, is to allow people who travel — to another room, another city or another continent — to view all the channels and recordings that they’re already paying so much money for at home.

The new Slingbox Solo is tiny; its trapezoidal shape is meant to evoke the shape of a gold ingot, and it’s now about that size, too (9 by 4 by 2 inches). That’s about half the size of its predecessor, the Slingbox Pro.

(The Pro is still available, however — for $230, plus $50 for an accessory if you want to connect to high-def equipment. The Pro lets you connect up to four video sources — TiVo, satellite box, Apple TV, DVD player and so on — and switch among them by remote control. The Solo, as its name implies, connects to only one.

There are a few other ways to perform a similar stunt, but none with the Slingbox’s high video quality, super-simple setup and ability to display both recordings and live TV.

Tags: high def, place shifting, slingbox, Slingbox SOLO, TV,

Cyborg gaming mouse from Saitek

Saitek’s got a new gaming mouse for those in need of a little more precision than your standard off-the-shelf model, with its new Cyborg mouse cranking the dpi all the way up to 3200. That, of course, can be dialed back to accommodate various mousing tasks, and you’ll get a good number of non-standard mouse features as well, including a programmable four-way hat switch, and two extra buttons that can be set up however you like. You have also an horizontal scroll button.
THe design is not to be ignored. Even though the taste is subjective, the Cyborg can easily compete with the Microsoft SideWinder and the Logitech G9. Also the weird case can be adjusted to fit our hands, for maximum ergonomic features.

While there still doesn’t seem to be any official word on a release, Gizmos.es points out that Amazon UK currently has it listed with a release date of January 11th and a list price of £40 (or $83), although it can be had for £30 (or just over $60) at moment.

cyborg, cyborg mouse, , gaming mouse, , mouse, saitek,dpi, Microsoft SideWinder, Logitech G9

Swarovski Fashion Rocks for DJ headphones

Today, is blinh bling day. After the pimped iPhone, here comes a more sparkling device, of course in pink. I would be a DJ just to have an excuse to wear these headphones whenever and wherever I want. They look absolutely amazing, I woudl use them as a day to day accessory. Of course, I’m a girl, and now the estrogen speaks for myself. “Him”, is to be blamed for this attraction to sparkling ,pink things.

We have already seen Kate Moss’ Topshop dress adorned with 60,000 Swarovski crystal beads, which was created as part of the 2007 Swarovski Fashion Rocks for the Prince’s Trust. Here is yet another sparkling item from the event, an extravagant set of DJ headphones. The headphones are festooned with Amethyst Crystals throughout and include a luxury box and small carrier bag. The flamboyant DJ headphones cost a cool €1670 Euros (approximately US $2400)…Uhhm… Maybe a smaller pink sparkling necklace would look nicer on me, don’t you think?

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Tags: Swarovski Fashion Rocks, DJ headphones, sparkling,

Star Trek fans, here comes the Enterprise putter

Now I’ve officially seen it all. But apparently some Startrek fans go out of the house and some of those play golf, with this limited-edition Golfsmith Star Trek Enterprise NCC-1701 putter likely to be in the bag.

By all accounts, it’s a good putter too, with the club designed for its golfing merits and overall balance on the greens. But once the end result had the look of classic craft, there was only one way to go - the whole hog with Star Trek official licensing.

The Golfsmith Star Trek Enterprise NCC-1701 costs $130 and there are only 1701 available, which is probably 1700 more than there are golfers who are big enough Star Trek fans to buy this and use it on the course. Or, you can just collection it with all your other Star trek freakies.

Tags: star trek, putter, star trek enterprise, golf, golfsmith,

The Xtreme N Gaming Router

D-Link announced today that it has begun shipping the next increment of its Xtreme N Gaming Router. The DGL-4500 comes complete with GameFuel technology which is essentially a QoS system that is optimized for game traffic.

The device uses the latest Draft 802.11n standard and promises wireless transfer speeds up to 300Mbps. It also supports Gigagabit ethernet, for those of you who can deal with wires. D-Link also claims that the device is further optimized with a high-performance CPU that could, conceivably speed things up somewhat.

But the coolest feature by far is the OLED network activity display. It allows gamers to actively monitor transfer rates and to keep an eye on network settings. Plus it looks quiet sexy. What’s not exactly sexy? The $240 price tag, but what the hell, people will pay top dollar for products with gamer in the title.

Tags: game, The Xtreme N Gaming Router, gaming, oled network, D-Link, DGL-4500, gamefuel

Hanns. G HG281D 28″ LCD monitorSource

The Hanns. G HG281D 28″ LCD monitor has been taken out for a spin by the folks at Extreme Tech, and they are pretty impressed with it overall.

As you might expect, while the monitor hits all the right spec marks, including a 1920 x 1200 resolution, 3 ms response time, and 800:1 contrast ratio, it doesn’t quite hold its own against similarly-sized, and significantly more expensive monitors. The biggest problem, it seems, is the monitor’s poor gamma curve and dark color performance which, when combined with the utter lack of any extra features, make the monitor tough for them to recommend. Not only that, certain extras we have come to take for granted like extra USB ports aren’t included - I guess you get what you pay for after all. On the upside, it apparently does have good fast-motion performance, and there is that price, but it sounds like you may want to wait for some of the competition to go on sale before taking the plunge on this one.

The monitor is available soon with a recommended retail price that does not breach the $700 mark ($650 actually).

Tags: hanns , HG281D, contrast ratio, gamma curve, USB port, Extreme tech, 28″ LCD, monitor

PS3 Controller Lava Glow

It’s time to change your old PS3 controller for the new improved toy with real lava glowing handles It’s the Lava Glow controller and I think it looks pretty interesting and “outerspaceish”.

I know you might be wondering if they particularly better than standard controllers? It’s common sense to launch some thing better than the previous model. Well, they’re cheaper and they glow, so that’s two pluses right there. They take 3 AAA batteries and a copy of Freedom Rock. For those eho were convinced, they are available wherever fine controllers are sold.

However, it seems that Sony Playstation 3 may not have as many stellar hits as the PS2 and PS1 had. Apparently Sony is actually begging third-party developers to stay on board and finish PS3 games despite the console’s lack of popularity. This is a statement from Dean Takahashi of Mercury News:

“The argument is that the PS3 will show its strength as developers learn how to make games for it. But developers know they can staff four or five Wii teams with the same number of people it takes to make one PS3 game.”

The death of the PS3 isn’t going to happen for a few more years, so let’s sit back and see what Sony can do to save its latest system.

Tags: controller, cruncharcade, hot, lavaglow, ps3, playstation 3, platform, ps1, ps2

Nokia’s N81, 8GB toy shipping with N-Gage preview

Nokia announced the global availability of its Nokia N81 multimedia computer, which also ships with a preview of the N-Gage gaming service. As you may or may not recall, the N81 is available in two versions–an 8GB model and one with a microSD expansion slot that can accept cards up to 4GB–and both are optimized for gaming and music. They are equipped with 3.5mm
headphone jacks and dedicated game keys (when held in landscape position). And while the N-Gage service won’t be available till later this year, the devices will come with playable demos of EA Sports’ FIFA 07, Asphalt 3, Street Rules, and Space Impact Light. Other highlights include Bluetooth 2.0 with A2DP support, Wi-Fi (802.11b/g), a 2.4-inch, 16 million-color QVGA screen, an FM tuner, and side-mounted dual stereo speakers.

Those same games will be available for free download-and-preview over HSDPA when the service goes live sometime “later in 2007.” Still, while Nokia touts a global launch, the fact that this quad-band GSM phone only sports 2100MHz WCDMA will limit its effective use in North America.

Pre-tax, pre-subsidy €360 / $515 for the 2GB microSD model or €430 / $615 for that full 8GB of on-board flash experience.

Tags: n-gage, n-series, n81, n81 8gb, N818gb, nokia, cellphone, street rules, asphalt 3, space impact light