Best computer news

Bayer, a new entrant to the glucose monitoring game, has upped the ante on all of the other big name glucose monitors by having a USB stick Glucometer, the Bayer Contour USB. With the rise in adult-onset diabetes in the world, glucose management is becoming more and more important to many people. Many of them suffer horrible consequences of having diabetes and not finding out until tragedy strikes. Even so, very few people have been willing to get tested as they get older to make sure they haven’t developed diabetes. Many advances have been made in the past decade making diabetes management much less stressful. Modern meters require only very tiny amounts of blood and you don’t have to prick your finger tips. Many meters are just as accurate with blood samples from the hand or forearm. Once the reading has been taken, it’s effectively trapped in the small pager-like device. It’s very hard to get an idea of your daily trends or figure in the effects of stress and time of day on the tiny LCD displays. Bayer’s Contour USB is the first easily computer connected glucometer.

Accu-Chek’s Aviva did come with a built in IR sender but it was not IRDA and required a special IR adapter. All of the other monitors that offer any type of PC connectivity require the purchase of a separate serial adapter cable. One-Touch actually makes a USB connector cable but they all cost almost more than the monitor. Finally, with Bayer’s 2nd Glucose reading entrant, direct PC connection is instant. Using the free Glucofacts DELUXE software, you can upload your readings to your PC and you and your doctor can quickly review and adapt your medicine. Staying fit and trim are your best defenses against diabetes and insulin resistance but everyone can afford to occasionally have their blood checked to be sure that nothing sneaks up on them. Kudos to Bayer for advancing the development of this underutilized technology.
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Notebooks have become more integral to our daily lives more than ever before and while in the past they were specifically designed for mobility and battery longevity, today’s systems can feature fast discrete graphics cards and high-power quad core processors that will blow away any gaming experience, excel sheet and video editing suite. But all that power comes at the price of heat and the sheer annoyance that you can’t even place your notebook on your lap from the fear that it will overheat or lead to pre-mature hardware failures. In the past, I’ve reviewed Choiix’s feature-rich but average cooler and the Antec 200 over-powered notebook cooler, but today I have the Logitech N100 USB laptop cooler in our labs to see what this renowned company can possibly build into a cooler to sway our purchasing dollars their way.
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Buckle up for a new caliber in USB devices as USB 3.0 starts getting exploited. Point Grey wows us with their new video camera which they plan to debut at 2009 Intel Developer Forum. What looks like an HD-wannabe webcam is actually capable of pumping full 1080p video at an astounding 60fps. The widened pipe of USB 3.0 actually may make high bandwidth devices cheaper now that they can push raw data through to the host computer’s CPU. Previous devices would have to include additional circuitry to compress the data before channeling to the host. The camera uses a 3 mega-pixel Sony CMOS sensor to capture the 1920×1080 video images.

Since host controllers for SuperSpeed USB have yet to hit the market they’ve formed a special alliance with Fresco Logic. Fresco Logic’s FL1000 controller is used in their test system via a PCI-Express USB 3.0 interface card. We’ll have to wait patiently for the IDF 2009 to find out the price on either the card or the camera. The first host controllers we are likely to see will likely be included on ASUS motherboards and Fujitsu laptops, but we’re still waiting on confirmation of a production date. Check back with us and we’ll update as soon as they are available.
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Yamaha has a new sound peripheral to sell us, a USB speaker plus microphone called the PSG-10S. While not quite the coolest presentation we’ve seen, and missing anything truly noteworthy at all the company name is the most notable feature of this little bi-functional gadget. Being simultaneously well-known for both motorcycles and high fidelity audio, the latter branch not very surprisingly brings you this device. Marketed almost exclusively for Skype – like the IPEVO Trio, you’ll be able to improve the clarity of reception and transmission on all calls that you make through it. The Yamaha PSG-10S uses built-in echo and sound filtering to maintain the highest level sound quality while you speak. It constantly adapts itself to your surroundings and any background noise is detected and compensated for.

When you are done voice-chatting tip the PSG-10S on its side to activate “Relax dode”. This turns off the microphone and switches it over to purely a single-piece USB speaker. Either use shouldn’t require any drivers and should work equally well on both PC and Macs. The PSG-10S should start shipping this month from the Skype store, but no word yet on an exact date or price.
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Wireless USB got off to a shaky start, and while UWB-based short-range radio protocol is still struggling to gain popularity, Toshiba’s new DynaDock Wireless U docking station has some potential that shouldn’t be dismissed. The Toshiba WUSB dock with dual antennas pointing upwards is powered by Alereon’s AL5100/5350 chipset to cover UWB spectrum from 3.1 to 10.6Ghz. In addition to meeting worldwide regulatory standards, the wireless notebook dock is equally capable as a wired counterpart by offering built-in DisplayLink video; 7.1 surround sound option; 4-port USB hub; 2 Sleep-n-Charge USB ports; and Ethernet.

In details, the DisplayLink video card can deliver up to 1680×1050 thru DVI interface, and Toshiba throws in a second wireless radio to further improve performance. The DynaDock Wireless U also has a convenient one-touch undock button to ensure all USB peripherals shut down properly when undocking. That’s certainly better than selecting every connected product to eject individually. The WUSB driver is optimized as well to allow bi-directional isochronous support for wired USB video and audio products. Otherwise, neither USB headsets nor external webcams would work wirelessly. Toshiba DynaDock Wireless U will ship with a WUSB dongle and native XP/Vista support for a MSRP of $299, and Windows 7 driver is slated for release on October 22nd, the same day as the OS launch.
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Until we get a holographic interface, or interactive mo-cap body-suits that don’t make you look chunky, gyro mice is about as cool as it gets. Gyration, one of the first to bring us a deskless mouse, is back with the Gyration Air Mouse Elite. Only recently gaining competitors, Gyration is hoping to separate itself from the pack with this latest update to its line. With 100 ft. range via an RF wireless connection, you can control your desktop, gaming rig, HTPC or conference room while you walk around. The USB RF connector can be hidden anywhere without hindrance. The small gyroscope in the 3.3 gram mouse senses motion with great accuracy, allowing you to not only control the mouse but to program open-air gestures.

The Gyration Air Mouse also works on a desk as a normal high-res laser mouse. Besides uses that truly warrant free movement, you might also consider this as an option for ergonomics. Take a break from being hunched over your keyboard and lean back and work in a more reclined position. The $99 price tag might be a little steep, but the cool factor definitely offsets it a bit.
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Okay, I get the foldable table with a USB-powered laptop cooling fan—but what’s with the mouse platform? The product page fails to mention why it looks like a bear.
Product Page ($30)

The PCTV picoStick is a tiny, almost nano-sized DVB-T TV tuner launched today. DVB is growing in its adoption throughout the world, but DVB-T is only widely used in Western Europe. For signal reception, the picoStick comes with an MCX connector and an a small telescoping flip antenna, which can be attached to the device itself or by cable to a free standing antenna stand. Pinnacle’s TVCenter 6 adds DVR and time-shifting software for recording shows for later watching. Recordings can be saved in MPEG-2, DivX (off-line transcoding) or H.264 formats for permanent collections or transfer to other devices. They also included some additional software for video editing.

Although only available for Windows XP, Vista and 7, special attention has been paid to making this a low-power CPU, netbook friendly nano device. This is reflected in their hardware requirements minimum being listed as Intel 1.6GHZ Atom and 256MB of RAM. This tiny unit will go on sale next week but only in Europe for around $80. No hint of an ASTC version is mentioned so we are still stuck with these USB TV dongles for the time being.
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Opera, gaining rapidly on the big dogs, is the favorite internet browser of more and more people. Highly configurable, skinnable and portable, Opera has just released version 10 of its able browser, adding a Turbo mode and a handful of other new features to an already extensive list of well polished functions. The new Turbo mode targets netbook users compressing requested images on the way down to the browser greatly decreasing tethered bandwidth delays and data plan usage. The USB variant Opera@USB contains all the features of the original but can run off of a flash drive keeping all your settings and temporary files private and in your possession.

These new features join a huge list of bonus features already present in Opera. While many of the features are available as user generated plugins for FireFox, the most popular Firefox plug-ins are polished and included natively in Opera. Ad-Blocking, Windows 7-like tab preview thumbnails, fast Javascript engine, email, password management, mouse gestures, torrent downloads, skins, and customized searching are all built in and easily customizable. On top of all that, the Opera Link function let’s you synchronize your favorites, searches, notes and other settings from your PC or flash drive or smartphone version of Opera. It’s available for free download here.

Another popular USB friendly variant is maintained and developed here. It contains all of the same features but is able to run off of a CD or read-only media and uses an alternate method to erase or store personal data.
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Belkin’s Home Base has just shown up on the scene to bring a whole lot of network to your network. If you need to play catch-up with Jones’ this tiny wonder can leap frog you all the way up to today with style. The slick little white box has WPS, a push button for wireless joining to your home network with 802.11b/g/n, or you can opt for old school Ethernet. The four USB ports in the back are for printer and USB storage compatibility, and it’s most simple ability is to allow wireless sharing of USB devices. It essentially combines the wireless capability, network USB sharing and streaming media serving.

Stepping past the ordinary, the Home Base can take your pedestrian USB-only printers, and turn them into wireless printers. Hook up a USB hard drive, and it’s a NAS serving up storage for your network. Attached storage also enables the backup software. Now any device on your network can use Belkin’s backup software, and start automated backups protecting your precious files. The Home Base will also take any media files you have, and can enable DLNA media streaming. DLNA is the preferred protocol for the XBox 360 and the PS3. Now you can really take advantage of your game console’s media capabilities, and have downloaded music and movies anywhere you like. The Home base should be available soon for about $129 where Belkin devices are found.
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