Best computer news

Solar power is going part of our lives in foreseeable future when large mainstream companies make sub-$100 gadgets that harness the free energy. Here’s the first sign first sign: a $50 Energizer Rechargeable Solar Charger.

In a nutshell, it’s a portable AA and AAA battery charger which draw juice from either your typical hefty AC adapter or on-board flip-out solar panel. Your gadgets from cellphones to iPods and anything that recharges via USB are compatible. Additionally, since the Solar Charger includes two semi-environmentally friendly Energizer batteries, anything that need double As and triple As are also good to go. To find out how long it will take to charge up a pair of batteries, you’ll have to wait til CES 2009 where Engerizer will put this solar grabber gadget on display.
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While quality wood, mirror, and multi-level compartments come to mind when one thinks of a jewelry box, Syba is raising your expectations with state-of-the-art security. The OEM likes to call its exquisite biometric storage box, BioMirage Coffer. The high-tech jewelry box provides not one but two security measures: fingerprint authentication and USB key. You are more likely going to take advantage of the finger sensor more as it’s inherently more convenient. The USB key here is a failsafe measure in case the sensor loses its effectiveness, or your fingerprint for whatever reason becomes un-recognizable. Unfortunately, this won’t help you a bit in an event of a fire in which case you will need a fire-proof safe (also happens to support USB too).
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Remember what it is like when carriers first introduced 3G that rivals early broadband speed. You may feel like you can finally get something done in a timely manner with that extremely precious laptop battery life. Yet it will leave something to be desired. Now with WiMax, it’s coming to a point where web pages popping up faster than one could find a hyperlink to click on. Fast it is, but you have to live with a $79 monthly month for two years, drop $149.99 for the 4G U300 USB modem dongle, and be in Baltimore. If you’re fine with that, Sprint welcomes you to its new WiMax network (or Xohm as the carrier would like call it).

So, how fast is it? Early reports are coming in that speed can reach upwards of 6.6Mbps. That’s 50% faster than its advertised claim of 4Mbps, though, there couldn’t be a lot of early adopters sharing the spectrum. The USB modem with a fallback option to connect to 3G is now actually available in Sprint stores throughout Baltimore. Sprint hopes to expand the coverage to major metropolitan areas in 2009, but the 5GB bandwidth allowance is a letdown.
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All these Chinese-themed flash drives from mahjong tile to terra cotta and Beijing Olympics torch are lucrative business opportunities as more people are looking up to China these days. It’s not too surprising that we see Microsoft steps up to grab Chinese market by following other people footsteps.

Here, we see two MS’ wireless Arc mice all painted up in oriental style. There’s one with the Chinese pottery scheme that we couldn’t tell there actually hides not one but four Arc mice. The other one looks much more cartoonish, and might appeal to foreign devils. Despite of the creativity and artistic value, we can’t convince ourselves paying more than twice the amount of a regular Arc for this. A full set – available only in Hong Kong – goes to retail for $199 USD, or you can get it separately for $115.
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The 8-year old OpenOffice (OOo) has reached version 3.0 in October, but for USB apps fan, the portable version has only gone gold in mid December. Ported by none other than John Haller from PortableApps.com, OpenOffice 3.0 is designed to run directly on a USB flash drive – supposedly without concern that temporary files will be left behind on the host machine. The package weighs at a hefty 240MB after installed, but its size shouldn’t be much of a problem given today’s thumbdrives’ capacities.

The latest version of OOo now boasts a fresh look, including a new start center, splash screen, and icons; it also comes with plenty of improvements for the suite’s Writer (word processing), Calc (spreadsheet), Draw (graphics) and Impress (presentation). The most notable addition is perhaps the ability to read MS Office Open XML files, enhancing interporerability with rest of the Office world. Since OOo is essentially in PortableApps format, the integration allows the free office to work with PortableApps.com suite’s menu and backup utility.
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The newest USB flash drive on the market comes from a world leader in memory technologies, Kingston Technology. But can this aged expert in memory still keep up with relative newcomers in the flash market? Our newest review has an in-depth look at the Kingston Data Traveler 150 32GB model sporting both copious amounts of storage capacity and a fancy design that does little to innovate but a lot to refine USB flash drive appearances.
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Possessing the largest LCD of any digital photo frame in its class, the widescreen Samsung SPF-105F is truly a gorgeous gadget for shutterbugs or photo buffs. From the high contrast, high resolution screen with bezel mounted touch controls to the extremely long feature set including USB monitor functionality and 1GB of built-in memory, this beast packs a ton of tech into its sleek and stylish case. Read on to find out if the Samsung photo frame can live up to its promises.
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Not long ago the now-defunct WiQuest was bragging about its market leadership in Wireless USB shipment, and its solution was chosen by most notebook manufacturers, like Dell, Lenovo, and Toshiba. Now is never a better time for someone else to fill in the void with WiQuest closing door. Alereon has just sent out a message to global laptop makers that its AL5708 PCI-Express half-minicard just got FCC approval.

Essentially, the chip is ready for use in UWB bandgroups one, three and six – meaning it has met worldwide regulatory standards to operate from 3.1 to 10.6Ghz spectrum. Alereon’s CEO has high hopes for the embedded notebook solution, with claims it can hit 140Mbps (17.5MBps) when talking to a native device, and being the only solution to support bi-directional, isochronous data transfers – necessary for proper USB speakers and webcam support. The fabless company will commence shipping the AL5708 WUSB mini card in Q1 2009.
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Thanko – as a high-profile Japanese company that takes pride in pioneering all sorts of USB gadgets – is giving spy cam a shot. Most hidden cameras mimic as everyday objects (e.g. sunglasses, pen), and in this case, as an analog watch. The ever so small lens is positioned between the 1 and 2 o’ clock, capturing video at 352×288 with audio in AVI through that pinhole.

Presumably, one of the knobs can trigger recording mode, but largely thanks to Thanko for embed the text in the image, Google Translate couldn’t really help us out in telling what each knob does exactly. To get video off the 4GB internal storage, you need none other than USB which can fully recharge the watch’s battery in 4 hours. In addition to being a spy camcorder (and a watch), the Thanko can easily turn into a tool to plant worms Trojans, and keyloggers in secured facilities with the USB flash drive function. We can say this USB gadget reveals a dark side of the Thanko empire.
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Most of us own at least one USB hard drive, whether it be bus-powered portable or desktop-sized. While nothing beats the convenience of an external storage with universal compatibility, the lack of centralized storage capability is becoming a bigger problem as more households demand file sharing between their computers. Before you decide to shell out for a brand new Network Attached Storage that may cost upwards of $200, Addonics has a USB-to-NAS adapter that can turn any USB hard drive to, well, a NAS device.

The NAS adapter – slightly longer than a C size battery – has a USB connector on one end and a 100/100Mbps Ethernet port on the other. Supplying a maximum of 1.5A at 5V, there’s enough juice to operate even the most power-hungry 2.5″ USB drives. The adapter can be configured as a bit-torrent server, FTP server (supporting 8 users), printer server, or even a UPnP server for serving media files to PS3 and XBox 360 alike. For $55, it’s a viable alternative to a full-fledged NAS solution.
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