Tomorrow is Halloween so let us check out these creepy gadgets made for mouse potatoes. Full list after the jump.
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Hot on the heels of the Gigabyte announcement yesterday, Asus has re-announced its production of a pair of motherboards packing USB 3.0. Great news on the heels of the Intel production delay last week. The two Asus motherboards, the P7P55D-E and P7P55D are built for Intel’s latest Core i5 and i7 processors. The P7P55D-E is the big dog of the two and carries USB 3.0 and the new 6GB/s SATA support on-board. The P7P55D has the same 2 hot new features but only when accompanied by their U3S6 expansion board. This mobo actually was announced 2 months ago along with the SATA 6GB/s expansion card. Whatever setback they had on the original P6X58, which was unexpectedly cancelled, has been overcome on the P7P55D-E as well as being added to the daughter card.
Asus, we still love you, you still have our hearts from the eee. But considering that Gigabyte hasn’t broken our heart, we’re putting you on notice. One more mix up and we’ll drop you like a hot soldering iron. The
Gigabyte mobo boasts most of the same specs. The race is on now between the P55A and the P7P55D motherboards to see who will be the first on sale. Pricing for the Asus P7P55D-E is set at a respectable $299 and the daughter card at $29.
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2009 marks the unofficial eleventh anniversary of the flash memory based portable media player (PMP). In that time, we’ve seen capacities balloon 1000-fold from 32MB up to 32GB and beyond, with 100+GB promising to be commonplace in the not-too-distant future. The bottom-end of the market now boasts up to 3″ diagonal screens, with full touch control and video display as well as music playback. Packing all of this into the sub-$100 category is the Archos 3 positioned as a step above the postage stamp screen media players but also steering well clear of iPod touch territory. Read on for the full review.
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3D display technology keeps taunting us from around the corner. Pioneer brings it a lot closer today. One of many manufacturers showcasing new technology at the Digital Contents Expo in Japan, Pioneer’s next generation 3D display is actually available for order as we speak. The display, called Floating Vision, is able to float a 3D image in its USB connected display at 640×480 resolution. Drivers and software are available for both Mac and PC. The 6 inch device has fairly narrow, 10 degree, viewing range currently, so its applications will tend towards a single user.
Why? The display is geared towards a few niche markets which may take some time to develop. Video chatting and instant messaging is one. The device bears microphone and a pair of speakers, but no 3D camera. Digital modeling for medical and artistic uses are facilitated with the aid of
motion sensors which allow you to physically interact with the 3D images. The most immediate use will likely be as a virtual catalog capable of letting potential buyers view and interact with products. Although the display is available now it only ships with a very simple 3D viewing program. The Floating Vision will play/create special images and videos, but Pioneer warns that you need to purchase this with the intent to develop applications. You won’t be using this for much out of the box. So if you’ve got the stones to take on a serious project like this, you can get it today for roughly $540 but you’ll need to find an importer as it’s only available in Japan for now.
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The days of government spending and the $900 hammer are all but over (or at least obscured from view) but this mouse begs for their return. The ridiculously priced wireless mouse breaks the bank at a whopping $1200. Never has a mouse craved so much cheese than the one bred from the artists at Intelligent Design. This mouse skillfully rendered to our desktops might more suitably find a home in a Ferrari or a Tesla Roadster with its hand-crafted titanium (not sure how that one works) form. It sports the requisite 3 buttons and a neodymium scroll wheel. The rare earth neodymium has long been known to promote better spending err spinning, it’s about time it was included in a mouse.
To give you just a little more for you money they include a USB BT dongle for pairing with this elegant. Although, that may be little comfort to you as you commit a house payment for this fancy clicker. They also graciously include the 2 AAA batteries it runs on. When you add up the value of all those freebies it brings the price down to… well it’s still pretty much $1200. Currently, this mouse isn’t for sale it’s on display. If you are interested in buying please have your butler kindly click
this link for you.
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This mini VW Bus can play tunes from your MP3 player, your PC via USB or function as a standalone FM radio. It also features rolling wheels, functional head and taillights and horn sounds.
Product Page ($150 via Swissmiss)
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Able to leap small setbacks in a single bound, USB 3.0 bounces back in a pair of Core i5 and i7 motherboards. Gigabyte is beginning to ship its P55A-UD6 and P55A-UD4P motherboards, and they have a few USB surprises on-board. They are one of the first makers to launch a USB 3.0 motherboard and have done so with an NEC controller. This is a great piece of news since the admonition by Intel that it is tabling some of its efforts with SuperSpeed USB.
Besides just including
USB 3.0 support, Gigabyte is also going above and beyond on the power requirements. Both USB 3.0 and USB 2.0 certified minimum power outputs from the USB port have been tripled on these boards. This increases maximum current for USB 2.0 and USB 3.0 to 1500mA and 2700mA respectively. That means that any device that has an optional power supply more than likely will be fine without it. Look for these super-powered SuperSpeed USB motherboards in November pricing is still TBA.
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While we tend to distrust anything that’s too good to be true, the USB SuperCharger appears pretty legit. Easy Co is apparently selling licenses now, per flash drive with gigabyte tiers, for USB write-optimizing software. The SuperCharger essentially targets the small file writing challenge faced by flash drives. While most MLC flash drives can actually turn out pretty good read speed and decent write speed for large files, small files are a major problem. Try and copy a folder with a few MB’s of icon files, clip-art or fonts and you’ll find yourself stuck in molasses. Without getting too technical, the USB SuperCharger changes the way data is written to the drive, and should be able to add some serious snap to small files and portable applications. Most applications are designed to read and write freely from the drive, moving an application from a normal HDD to flash makes many applications unusable. Changing the file pipe-lining could open many doors for more portable applications, virtual servers and IO “chatty” applications. This technique should also reduce the wear on your flash drive, significantly reducing the number of writes which slowly degrades memory.
The only downside, besides their Microsoft-esque licensing scheme, is that it’s only currently available for Microsoft platforms and only works on non-NTFS drives. A Linux variant is in development, which means Apple versions will follow as well. SuperCharging an 8GB flash disk will run you $12. This really isn’t bad considering that
truly fast flash drives are
scarce and still fairly expensive.
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Microsoft has finally owned up to the exciting new tool it’s releasing with Windows 7, a bootable USB Installer creator. Aimed squarely at netbook owners, which have eschewed the venerable optical drive for weight and battery life. Microsoft’s tool will let you take your downloaded install files and turn a sufficiently sized USB drive into a bootable installer. Be prepared, if you’ve never tried to put a few gigabytes of files onto an average flash drive in one sitting, you’re probably in for a bit of a wait. A USB hard drive is probably a better bet but not as cool. The program may also be called Windows 7 USB/DVD Download Tool (WUDT).
Microsoft’s site describes the process as downloading the installer directly to the USB drive. We’ll have to wait for a few people to report back to find out exactly how it works. Having the option will definitely help netbook owners as well as system administrators. Being able to do away with CDs and DVDs for installs would definitely make support installs and server installs go a lot faster. It’s available now at
Microsoft’s online store for download and purchase.
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