Best computer news

Desktops seem to be on the way out, at least for the mainstream consumer or business person. Prices have dropped so low that it’s hard to justify a desktop for any but the most sedentary of roles. As we’ve seen from others lately, notebook accessories such as docks and mice are really where it’s at nowadays. Logitech, makers of all manner of computer equipment have released an elegant and relatively simple laptop cooling pad. The N100 Cooling Pad is a featherweight USB powered laptop cooling pad with a stylish white design. The fan’s are also protected by a slotted vent design so you should get long usage of this before dust and detritus start to gum up the works.

Most of the current offerings in this vein pull air from below the laptop, the N100, however, pulls air from behind the laptop which keeps it away from you and eliminates constricted airflow caused by uneven surfaces. Notebooks up 15 inches will find this a comfortable fit. With its light weight and low power requirements, this could easily end up making it into your travel gear top ten.
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Well almost, it’s more of a ring-finger drive. Seems a creative muse was trying to make up for Darwin’s love for all motorcyclists and struck a Finnish man with some inspiration. Jerry Jalava, after losing a finger to a motorcycle accident, crammed a tiny 2GB USB into his new prosthesis. Accessible just under the fingernail, what looks uncomfortable is quite functional. Being a computer programmer, he had all manner of use for the storage. The enhanced digit (pun intended) is easily removable and can be left plugged in to a computer for extended disturbing use.

Now while he’s not quite being recruited into the Borg collective as yet, he does have even more aggressive plans for finger 2.0. He intends to cram more function into the phony phalanges including RFID chip and more storage. While a USB watch would probably be easier body-mods are going to be just around the corner anyway. Johnny’s mnemonic implants may be next but I’ll be waiting for Molly’s built-in enhanced eyeglasses. What body part can you do without for the convenience of implanted technology? Still we have to commend him for going first. High four!
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File this under “why didn’t I think of that?”, Elecom has built a better mouse. Trappings of a gaming mouse give this first of its kind mouse a SideWinder look. The optical tracking system that has been traditionally located in the center of the mouse has been moved. Originally, this was the location of the ball of the mouse and this was the only place the ball would fit completely enclosed in the mouse housing. Upon the revolution of the optical and then laser mouse, the sensor was left in the center of the mouse out of sheer habit. Elecom decide to think outside the box and moved the mouse sensor to the spot under the hand that a pen would roughly sit on paper.

This positioning should cater to our many torturous years of learning cursive for no reason. Leveraging the dexterity we’ve accumulated learning to write with those graphite sticks and a 1600dpi sensor this mouse promises a great degree of accuracy. In 20 years of professional work including technical writing this would make the first use of those skills since middle-school. For that reason alone i won’t be getting one, I’m not giving my 3rd grade penmanship teacher the satisfaction. For those of you unhindered by elementary baggage, you can pick one up for about $65 MSRP in Japan. Geekstuff4u.com should have them on sale for export soon.
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The WiMedia board, the group responsible for outlining and certifying the ultra-wideband (UWB) standards and protocols including Wireless USB, has decided that it’s existence was redundant. Its governing board announced that it would be transferring its intellectual property to like-minded groups – Bluetooth Special Interest Group (SIG), Wireless USB Promoter Group and the USB Implementers Forum. Not just having similar ideas, these groups actually cross pollinate their members. Most of the WiMedia board members are actually splitting duty, sitting on one of the other boards as well. WiMedia board members include Alereon, CSR, Intel, Nokia, ST-Ericsson, Samsung Electronics, Staccato Communications and Wisair. The board will keeps its doors open long enough to complete the transfer of assets.

While this may seem like another nail in the coffin for UWB that’s not necesarily the case. The removal of this entity will remove one of the barriers for manufacturers and the contingent certifications upon which to keep up. Plus with each of contributing members chairing a recipient organization there shouldn’t be too much lost time due to the vacuum left by their exodus. The economy is surely one of the factors influencing the early disbanding of the group but the members in transition aren’t citing that or any lack of confidence in any of the affected technologies.
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Sony’s recently released NWZ-W202 Walkman is finally small enough to be completely enclosed inside a pair of behind the ear bud headphones. While several attempts have been made to do this before most of them have turned out a bit to clunky to see much wide use. These actually resemble the popular Motorola S9 Bluetooth headphones but don’t require any sort of wireless connection to play music. These headDAPhones if you will pack 2GB of on-board memory and an internal Li-ion battery that is rated at 12 hours of playback. Like the iPod shuffle classic and its new and improved version, there’s no display screen to speak of. Eh, who needs all this AMOLED junk, right?

Unfortunately the NWZ-W202 Walkman doesn’t have any talkback functions for navigation, but it employs “Zappin”. Zappin is the name it gives to its sound-bite navigation assistance system. Trying a little too hard, Zappin acts as a thoughtful cue-seek function. It plays what is (in its cyber-judgement) a “clear” 4 or 15 second section of each song and loop through all songs until you find the song you are looking for. Probably nice for pedestrian listening but may be a little distracting for active use. A few other speed bumps mar this device. Notably, the exposure of the USB connection to sweat, dust and detritus as well as a slightly over-sized ear wires which could annoy wearers of eyeglasses. Happily though it supports file transfer as a USB mass storage devices which frees it from reliance on any Rhapsody / iTunes software. Availability isn’t in stone, but look for it in a few months for around $70.
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Mac support for USB TV nowadays is equally important as Windows support. Traditionally, a tuner sides with one of the two major platforms, but not two. Having dual-OS compatibility at the same time appeals to the ever growing Mac crowd and especially those who also runs Windows on top of Boot Camp. Unfortunately, they are rare largely because of the extra cost of shipping software for the Mac platform.

The AVerTVHD Volar MAX is one of the few USB TV dongles that is able to offer the best of both worlds. The ASTC tuner bundles with in-house Windows media center that lets you watch multiple channels simultaneously and that records H.264 in real-time at QVGA resolution. The Mac version seems as just capable, but it doesn’t say which EPG AVerMedia has partnered with, and H.264 recording is surprisingly absent for Apple platforms. To tap into ClearQAM through your coax, you’ll need either aforementioned media center, Vista MCE TV Pack 2008, or AVerTV for Mac.
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Aegis Mini series from Apricorn has been around since the debut of 1.8″ hard drives. Toshiba looks like to be the sole supplier of the mini drives beginning as early as Apricorn ships the 20GB model. What makes the Aegis Mini somewhat special is that it runs on USB bus-power unlike some power hungry external hard drives. That’s MacBook Air- and netbook-friendly. As 1.8″ drives are also slimmer than what regular notebooks use, the Aegis Mini are more pocketable. Apricorn now picks up Toshiba’s latest 240GB 1.8″ that has been shipping late last year, and puts it into one of their mini-USB enclosure. The MSRP isn’t pretty. At $269, the 240GB version is well over $1 per GB, and the warranty is a bit lacking. Good thing Apricorn offers $25 mail-in rebate which brings the price to $244, which still doesn’t make us feel any better.
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Proprietary notebook docks have become things of the past; they are just laptop vendors’ big money sucker that offer zero flexibility. USB docks now hit big time, providing near universal support for laptops, and with the recent DisplayLink USB video innovation, video can now be carried through USB, along with audio other peripherals.

This Toshiba DynaDock U10 notebook dock is going to be the cream of the crop. In addition to boosting universal compatibility, the DynaDock U10 mini-tower the first one to support Full HD (or max. 1920×1200) display via DVI or VGA. As a dock, it offers four USB ports on the back, and two “sleep and charge” USB ports on the front, doubling as an iPod and cellphone charging station even when the notebook is either closed or disconnected. You’ll also find built-in 7.1 surround audio, microphone hole, Gigabit Ethernet, and serial 9-pin port. Expect the DynaDock U10 to hit retail during mid-March with a MSRP of £109.99.
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Take your mark! Get Set! Sell. In the race to get USB 3 solutions to market, it seems we are now into step 2. Two of the chip makers that made news recently jumping on the USB 3.0 road are now working together to tool up and play off their respective strengths. With the major hardware specifications set, hardware manufacturers have to move to the next level and start to establish, implement and perfect the software protocols that allow for data to move along the hardware path. One of the early favorites for storage protocols is the USB Attached SCSI Protocol (UASP) – an overhaul of the current storage standard that will leverage SuperSpeed USB transfer rate while providing some performance improvements for legacy USB 2.0 MSC devices.

Symwave and Ellisys are working together to both develop storage devices and develop testing hardware to meter and diagnose said devices. Striving to be the first to market with a USB 3.0 Storage device led Symwave naturally to testing-analysis solution provider Ellisys. The Ellisys Explorer 260 has been created to test SuperSpeed USB 3.0 solutions. The availability of these tools will allow other hardware manufacturers in addition to Symwave to more rapidly test their hardware devices through the creation process. As updates are made to the standards and new developments arise in the UAS Protocol, Ellisys will provide firmware upgrades to keep its Explorer systems up to (Super)speed. The arrival of more development tools for SuperSpeed USB designer means faster product development and cheaper releases.
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Elgato released a USB accelerator dongle that promises to offload video conversion CPU load when converter to the very popular H.264 video format. This format is now widely used in iPod / iPhones, PMPs, cameras, camcorders, Apple TV and media centers. The Turbo.264 HD Encoder/Accelerator will take almost any format of video and using on-board hardware rapidly convert it to H.264. Their comparison is 60 minutes for a 15 minute file conversion reduced down to 20 minutes using the Turbo.264 HD. AVCHD Video, QuickTime, AVI, DV, WMV, MPEG-1, MPEG-2 Program/Transport Stream, MPEG-4, MP4, M4V, H.263, H.264 AVC, Xvid and VOB are natively supported as well as many more they didn’t take the time to list.

There are 10 generic H.264 conversion profiles to start with. They range from YouTube to 1080p High definition as well as just about every flavor of iPod (at least the ones with video). Previous entrants into this market were able half as hearty as Elgato Turbo.264 HD. The software included with this dedicated encoder also has rudimentary video editing features for trimming or making adjustments to the video prior to conversion. And it will automatically detect many of the AVCHD enabled camcorders that are coming out now. Making it possibly a ZERO-step process to drag and convert camcorder video files for varied consumption. Available now at their online store for $149.95.
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