Filed under: Transportation
We’ve been hearing about vehicle-to-grid (V2G) for quite a while, and now a team at the University of Michigan is conducting an extensive study on the technology as part of a national sustainable energy solution. While current electric plants are good at generating power, they often fall short when it comes to storage — which can be a problem when there’s a power surge or when demand increases. V2G will let hybrid-electric owners sell the power their car generates to the electrical power grid whenever the car is not in use. The research team envisions a time when millions of hybrid vehicle owners will come together to create one large battery, allowing us all to play a small part in building our nation’s energy independence. And sure, this all sounds good in theory. But wouldn’t that mean relying on the neighbors to provide a key piece of the nation’s infrastructure? Have you met the neighbors? Doesn’t that seem a little… iffy?
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Filed under: Laptops
Laptop Mag would evidently like to make two things quite clear: if you pick up MSI’s Wind U90, you better love SUSE Linux Enterprise Desktop 10 and be totally cool with the sub-2 hour battery life. For those of you still with us, you can probably guess that the 10-inch Wind didn’t do so hot during its review, with those two rubs really overshadowing the solid design, great keyboard and delicious price tag ($350). For whatever reason, MSI figured it’d be peachy to toss a 3-cell battery in there and let mobile users just deal with the 1 hour, 39 minute lifespan; obviously, that’s an issue serious road warriors can’t ignore. If you’re willing to pony up for an extra battery and install your own OS (if SUSE isn’t your cup of tea), the Wind U90 might not make for a bad companion, but as-is, you better do some serious soul searching before pulling the trigger.
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Filed under: Handhelds
So much for Amazon’s attempts to quell Kindle 2 rumors, eh? Talk of a replacement (or a pair of replacements) for Amazon’s popular — but very oddly-styled — e-reader has been in the mix seemingly since the first model started shipping, and Boy Genius Report has scored shots of something that certainly looks like it could be in the legitimate pipeline. The revised device appears to address complaints over the original’s look head-on, rounding the corners and ditching the oddball angles; the scroll wheel has been replaced with a joystick, the SD slot is gone (don’t worry, there’s at least a gig and a half on-board), and around back, we have grills that seem to suggest integrated stereo speakers. The display is basically the same size — no color here yet, sorry — so unless the sharp edges on your first-gen piece are driving you batty, it looks like this could be safely skipped by current owners while roping in new buyers who wouldn’t have considered it before. Thing is, was ditching the scroll wheel and that trick mirrored bar in favor of a joystick really the right way to go?
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Filed under: Home Entertainment, Media PCs
Okoro apparently doesn’t have much time for design changes, or even model name changes, but the company has at least seen fit to give its low-profile
OMS-SX100 a considerable spec-bump and, apparently, a reduction in power consumption. That latter bit seems to come largely as a result of the low-wattage AMD Athlon X2 4850e processor at the heart of the system, which gets backed up by 2GB of RAM, a 500GB hard drive (upgradeable to 1TB), 8-channel LPCM audio via HDMI, NVIDIA 8200 graphics, and an optional Blu-ray drive, to name a few features. The company is also promising CableCARD and SAGETV HDPVR models in the future, but if that’s beyond your needs, you can snag the current model right now for $1695.
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Filed under: Cellphones, Handhelds
So the good news is that T-Mobile has decided to keep right on taking pre-orders for the G1 through October 21, just one day before the handset’s official launch. The bad news, though, is that it doesn’t mean you’ll be getting your Android on come October 22. Turns out that the initial allotment of G1s set aside for pre-orders is now sold out completely, and any names taken between now and launch will be allotted phones being shipped “at a later date.” It’s not clear if a “later date” means a week, a month, or a decade after the 22nd, but for the sake of everyone involved, we hope its the former.
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Filed under: Laptops
HP’s Voodoo Envy 133, first announced in June, has struggled a bit off the blocks, with manufacturing problems keeping it out of buyers hands until last month. Of course, HP has a good excuse: carbon fiber. The notoriously difficult material wasn’t used sparingly on the Envy 133, and if you’ve been looking for a laptop dripping with the synthetic material, HP’s got your number. We mention this to remind ourselves that, like the MacBook Air before it, this laptop is about looks first, function second, and the Envy 133 succeeds in that regard wildly. There’s always room for taste in these things, but HP makes quite a statement here no matter what your persuasion. We’re not going to run through a full review here, but we’ll let you know our first impressions after the break.
Continue reading Voodoo Envy 133 unboxing and impressions
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Filed under: Portable Audio, Portable Video
Hope you don’t mind two similar worlds running together, because today we’re asking about not one, but two of Cupertino’s latest. The iPod touch 2G and iPod nano 4G were both simultaneously (give or take a few minutes) announced back in early September, and after getting a chance to handle both, we felt that Apple did a stand-up job with the each of ‘em. That being said, there’s always a thing or two that could use tweaked, added or removed completely, but we’ll spare you any additional opinions from us on that. Instead, we want to know how you, dear reader, would change either of Apple’s freshest PMPs. What are you digging? What’s still not good enough? The floor is yours.
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Filed under: Transportation
Pininfarina said it was going to
build an electric car and, go figure, it’s actually built one. As we had heard earlier, the car, now dubbed the B0, is the result of a collaboration with the Bolloré Group, which was mostly responsible for the car’s lithium metal polymer battery pack. Pininfarina, for its part, seems to have handled just about everything else, and it sure looks to have gone all out, with the car promising a range of 150 miles and a reasonable top speed of 80 mph, plus some suitably nifty touches like two LCD screens for instrumentation, and even some solar cells on the roof to help top off the battery (most of the charging while driving is done with
regenerative braking). Pininfarina is also apparently still ticking to its 2010 roll-out date, with mass production set to begin in late 2009 — no promises on a price just yet though.
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Filed under: Cellphones
We’ve long since known that RIM’s BlackBerry Bold was AT&T bound, but in case you haven’t noticed, the rumored October 2nd release date has come and went, and there’s nary a Bold on any of AT&T’s store shelves. According to RIM co-CEO Mike Lazaridis, the handset is still undergoing testing at AT&T, suggesting that it wanted to avoid the complaints that arose when the newest iPhone hit in July. AT&T spokesman Mark Siegel remained mum on the subject when asked, only affirming that the handset would eventually be available this year. Ah well, you’ve been looking for a reason to vacation in Chile, haven’t you?
[Via phonescoop]
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Filed under: Peripherals
We’ve seen a boatload of wireless keyboards shuffle past, but we’ve gotta hand it to you Brando, the itty bitty factor joined with an array of useful features reminds us your heart is in the right place. The USB 2.4Ghz RF Wireless Multimedia Tiny Keyboard is around half the size of an ordinary keyboard and features a 33-foot range, 1000dpi trackball and media player hot keys. This tight little number can be had for $48 — throw in an ice cream cone and we’re sold.
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