by Darren Murph, posted Jul 28th 2008 at 6:25AM Maybe it’s the 16.4-inch panel, or maybe it’s the built-in Blu-ray drive. Whatever it is, Sony’s VAIO FW has garnered quite a bit of attention. Just a fortnight after getting (extra) official, this nimble monster made its way into the loving arms of NotebookReview, where critics couldn’t resist giving us a sneak peek before penning the fleshed-out review. We’ll just get it out there — initial impressions are really positive. Fit, finish and build quality were all deemed “excellent,” and the overall design was dubbed “beautiful.” Performance seemed to be above par during limited testing, though the screen is apt to be one of those love it or hate it ordeals. (Read the full post about ‘Sony’s 16.4-inch VAIO FW laptop gets previewed’…)
How many of you actually get so frustrated that you decide to take it all out on a gadget? A Milwaukee man is currently looking at six years and three months in the slammer along with a maximum fine of $11,000 after he was caught shooting his lawnmower with a shotgun after the machine plainly refused to start for no apparent reason. Keith Walendowski, 56, was not entirely sober when that happened, so good thing he was pissed off at the lawnmower and not another human. Tags: Hi-fi, laptops, audio, Ogg (Read the full post about ‘Man Executes Lawnmower in a Fit of Anger’…)
The Sansa Fuze from SanDisk, is a cool little MP3/4 player along the same vein as the iPod Nano. We’ve recently been sent one to play with so here are our thoughts and findings (or a review so to speak). Aesthetically the Fuze is a cute little player.The physical UI consists of a rotating front dial which also acts as the 4 navigation buttons with the center button for selection. The display crisp with a resolution of 220 x 176, large enough for watching the odd music video but you wouldn’t want to watch a feature length film on it. Sound quality was good (though as with just about any mp3 player the supplied headphones aren’t the greatest). (Read the full post about ‘SanDisk Sansa Fuze Review’…)
Yahoo! has announced that it will be shutting down it’s DRM (Digital Rights Management) servers on September 30. As a result, all music purchased from Yahoo! Music will no longer be able to transfer to computers or devices they are currently on. This all goes with Yahoo’s migration of services to the Rhapsody music service. The move isn’t all that bad, however. Yahoo has announced that it will “compensate” anyone who has bought DRM music files though Yahoo! (Read the full post about ‘Yahoo! to shut down DRM servers September 30′…)
Macworld asked its readers for Apple horror stories, and today they have the best of them listed for our reading pleasure. The tales range from the annoyingly avoidable — PowerBook plus Latte plus yappy dog tied to the table leg equals drowned computer — to the almost unbelievable — the guy who managed to leave three ipod in different airports and airplanes has now sworn off Apple products: “I no longer buy Apple mobile devices. Go with run of the mill stuff instead.” But the most toe-curlingly annoying story involves a precocious brat and its brain-free mother. Passenger and Mac owner John Van Nierop took a bathroom break and returned to find his computer gone. (Read the full post about ‘Cringe-Inducing Laptop Horror Stories’…)
More than two weeks after the launch of the iphone 3G, queues are still forming at Apple Stores throughout the US. And Apple is doing something about it. The crazy demand coupled with handset shortages has meant that some of the bigger storeas have had almost permanent lines outside and that even the smaller ones are being mobbed in the mornings to mop up the new deliveries. To alleviate this, Apple is now opening all Apple Stores at 8AM instead of 10AM, and is hiring new staff to cope: Your favorite Apple Retail Store is making it easier and more convenient to purchase an iPhone 3G. All stores will now open at 8:00 a.m. every day but Sunday and, to accommodate demand, we’re adding staff to help you get up and running as quickly as possible. (Read the full post about ‘Apple Opens Stores Early, Hires Staff to Cope With IPhone Demand’…)
Asustek, maker of the Eee PC, is planning to fix the biggest problem with its littlest computer: battery life. The company will introduce “whole day” battery life, which we take to mean a bigger, better battery. It could also mean that there will be other hardware changes which would simply sip less juice, but the report from Digitimes doesn’t make this clear. To be sure, the Eee isn’t the only mini-notebook suffering from battery woes. The tiny form-factor of these ultra-mobiles makes it hard to squeeze enough cells in to keep a computer running for more than a few hours, despite the lower powered processors and the smaller, less thirsty displays. (Read the full post about ‘Asus Says Eee Batteries Will Last a ‘Whole Day’’…)
by Thomas Ricker, posted Jul 28th 2008 at 4:55AM Japan’s Impress Watch had the good fortune to attend this year’s Robo-one tournament with a Casio EX-F1 in hand. The result is vise-to-vise combat captured at 300 frames per second. See a perfectly executed German suplex performed after the break. Makes us almost feel sorry for the little guy… almost. (Read the full post about ‘Video: Robo-One carnage shot at 300fps’…)
Check out these hot-looking Xbox 360 consoles that are currently on parade at ComicCon. They consist of one Watchmen, one DC Comics, one Gears of War, and one Terminator Salvation models, and all of these could end up in your home if you emerge as a winner in the Warner Bros contest. These cases will surely make you the toast of the neighborhood, but the (super)heroes depicted on the case itself aren’t guarantee that they won’t end up with a case of RRoD (Red Ring of Death). Perhaps the sizzling hot artwork has something to do with it? Tags: MP3, laptops, PDA, audio (Read the full post about ‘Xbox 360 Custom Consoles’…)
For the one percent of .Mac/MobileMe email account holders who are left hanging for a week without access, there is some good news, if you could call it that under the current circumstances. The outage that started on July 18 may be coming to a close. Apple has posted a tech note on the ongoing issues, launched a blog to cover MobileMe introduction challenges, and provided some additional details about what happened. As of 10pm PDT last night, the one-percenters should be able to log into MobileMe webmail and retrieve messages from the July 18–25 outage window, though you won’t be able to do much about mail and messages received before the problem started. (Read the full post about ‘MobileMe email Users May Get Relief’…)
