Gadgetell | Tech News, Reviews, and Interesting Things

I have to admit that this post is way overdue but better late than never. A full three months after the end of the 2008 CES we would be crazy not to thank our sponsors. Without these three companies we would have gotten nowhere while out in Vegas.

Pentax - We were thankful to be hooked-up with a Pentax K-100D Digital SLR. The pictures were fantastic, storing photos on a SD card made posting extremely convenient, and the zoom lens helped us get some great close-ups even when not up front. Just check out the great photo galleries. Now we are left drooling for the K200D.

Energizer - Energizer? Yup, Energizer. If you learn one lesson after your first trade show, it is that you can never have enough batteries. In the past we have been burned by buying after-market computer batteries but because of the major cost difference between the manufacturer models and OEM models, we continued to search for a high quality solution. This search led me to Energizer and their line of rechargeable computer batteries. Personally I went for the ER-L385X extended battery for my Sony VAIO, and it could not be happier.

Sprint - Last but certainly not least would be Sprint. Without a whole bunch of mobile broadband cards there would have been no way for us to offer our non-stop coverage from up and down the Vegas strip. I think we may have had every single card, all EVDO Rev. A from the Sierra Wireless ExpressCard to the Pantech PCMCIA card.

So, thank you to these sponsors and we hope you, our readers, benefited from them supporting us.

I have the patience of a four year old.  I don’t want to know about things available in six months, I want it now.  OK, really I wanted it five minutes ago, but you get my drift.  CES is all about the future and that is fine, but what about things you can take away now?  Here is my list of cool things I took away:

SimulScribe - I’ve been waffling back and forth on giving this a shot.  This service takes over your voicemail from your carrier and then emails/sms you the transcribed version along with a wav file.  That sounds scary at first, but it is simple and completely reversible, not unlike a vasectomy.  The result is you don’t need to stand there listening to voicemail (which is a complete waste of time).  Instead of playing the message and listening to callers stumble over their ideas, you cut right to the chase and speed-read their message.

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Motorola introduced two new handsets at the recent CES in Las Vegas. The W230 and W270 are GSM handsets with music capabilities and expandable memories, supporting microSD cards of up to 2GB. They also offer a simplified interface for texting. Both devices also offer a digital music player and FM radio with recording features and an integrated Radio Data System that displays the artist and title of the song playing.

In addition to the music capabilities, the devices also offer great phone features such as Motorola’s Crystal Talk technology, which reduces background noise, and up to nine hours of talk time. The W230 comes in a slim candybar style with two interchangeable faceplates while the W270 is a slick clamshell. They are slated to be available in Q1 of this year.

Read [Motorola]

Sony Ericsson announced the release of its newest Bluetooth headset at CES 2008. The HBH-PV712 Style Edition is aimed toward busy yet style conscious women. It features Bluetooth 2.0 + EDR, digital signal processing and fast automatic volume adjustment technology, up to 15 hours of talk and 500 hours of standby time, a comfortable ear hook, and three stylish accessories:

1. Style Up Covers: These covers are designed to allow the headset to match any outfit. They come in red and silver, black with red, silver and purple, and purple plated.
2. Necklace: The HBH-PV712 Style Edition comes with an adjustable silver plated necklace accented with red, silver and black pearls.
3. Carrying Pouch: It also comes with stylish red and white carrying pouch designed to hold the headset and a phone and still fit in a handbag.

Sony Ericsson hasn’t announced a price yet, but the HBH-PV712 Style Edition is slated to be available for purchase beginning in February.

Read [Sony Ericsson]

At the recent CES in Las Vegas, Toshiba announced several additions to its AMD based A215 notebook line. The Satellite A215-S6805, A215-S6814, and A215-S6820 feature AMD’s Turion 64X2 Dual Core Mobile Technology processor, which provides power and productivity in a mobile form factor. They also come with Windows Vista, a 15.4-inch TrueBrite widescreen, and a DVD SuperMulti Optical Drive. The new additions to the A215 family can be found at ToshibaDirect.com and retailers nationwide. Here’s a detailed look at the specs and suggested price for each new model:

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At the recent CES in Las Vegas, iriver presented its entry into the handheld PC market when it debuted WING. This device features web browsing, instant messaging, email, photo, music and text messaging ability along with an FM radio and camera. The Linux powered device is a black and white clamshell boasting a 4-inch TFT-LCD touch screen and full QWERTY keyboard, 4GB of memory and an SD slot for additional storage.

iriver also debuted the new UNIT 2 Multimedia Home Networking Device. This device has it all: Audio, Video and DVD player, DiVX player, CD player, FM radio, VoIP phone,
text messaging, web browsing, and email. It also boasts a 7 inch touch screen,built in stereo speakers, a 30GB hard drive and 2GB of NAND flash.

The UNIT 2 is designed to be an all-in-one solution for integrating your digital content with your TV and set top box. Both the UNIT 2 and WING are expected to be released later this year.

Read [iriver]

At the recent CES in Las Vegas, Toshiba announced it is lowering the price of its HD DVD notebook line to just $899, beginning with the Satellite A205. This allows more users to have access to these powerful, high-end machines. Toshiba also announced that the Qosmio G45 now features the world’s first notebook HD DVD-R/RW drive. The total HD DVD line consists of 4 widescreen models ranging from 15.4- to 17-inches. For a limited time consumers who buy an HD DVD notebook from Toshiba will also receive 5 free HD DVD movies. This special offer is good until February 28th. With all the trouble HD DVD is having lately, Toshiba seems to be making every effort to get back in the game.

Read [Toshiba]

In cased you missed it, or want to watch it again, here is the video spoof shown during the CES 2008 Bill Gates keynote about his last full day at Microsoft. The production team pulled out an all-star cast for Mr. G, including: Brian Williams, Steve Ballmer, Matthew McConaughey, Robbie Bach, Jay-Z, Bono, Steven Spielberg, George Clooney, Jon Stewart, Kevin Turner, Hillary Clinton, Barack Obama, Al Gore, Ray Ozzie and Craig Mundie.

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To be at the movies and yet also in your pajamas and bunny slippers is the ultimate hi-tech entertainment experience for movie buffs everywhere. Home theater surround sound, however, can be cumbersome to wire and hang. The way around that is to single-enclose sound bars for mounting under flat panel TV screens. Proud as a peacock to be among the first, Definitive Technology displayed its best at CES, the Mythos SSA50, which is slated to go on sale next month.

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Back at CES this week, iriver had quite a bit of new products to show - some were closer to production than others, but all looked slick.  One of their new products that we got some hands-on time with was the P10 media player/viewer.  The device has a 4.0-inch TFT LCD touch-screen display at 800x480, and pretty much supports anything you can think of: video, music, voice recording, T-DMB, Office viewer, PDF viewer, picture viewer, and an e-Dictionary.  To hold all of this media madness, the P10 boasts 33GB of memory crammed into a 1.3” internal hard drive.  The P10 comes with Flash Lite 2.1 pre-loaded, has a customizable GUI, and is a touch-screen, of course.  Read on for the supported file-formats…

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Check out the gallery: Hands On: iriver's new P10 media player