While we’re waiting for the official announcement of the Dell E Series, we saw that rumors about a 10″ version were circulating. Of course, the news originated from Taiwan. According to some sources, the 10 inch E Slim will be launched in October, while the 8.9″ version will launch this month. 10″ seems to be what it takes to have a real keyboard (although the HP 2133 does pretty well with 8.9″). Hang in there with us while we’re digging for more info. Tags: cameras, PDA, equipment, Hi-fi (Read the full post about ‘Dell E-Slim Series to Include a 10-inch version?’…)

by Darren Murph, posted Aug 12th 2008 at 6:33AM It’s tough for us to go six months without a newfangled approach to hacking the famed USB missile launcher, so it’s with great joy that we present to you this particular one. By utilizing a spare Wiimote, a USB-enabled PC, a USB missile launcher, a few strips of duct tape and a minor amount of programming knowledge, you too can craft an auto-aiming launcher which can find, aim at and attack IR targets. Grab the aforementioned items and hit the read link, just take care to not poke your eye out, alright?[Via HackNMod, thanks Joe]Read PermalinkEmail this3 CommentsFiled under: Misc. (Read the full post about ‘Auto-aiming USB missile launcher makes good use of your Wiimote’…)

H16 Windows Mobile 6.0 Professional smartphone has been certified by AT&T and now the guys at Opticon Mobility Group can rejoice. The company is also seeking certification for the H19 smartphone and it may be released this September. Compatible with AT&T’s GSM and GPRS networks, the smartphones offer superior scanning abilities and the affordability make the phones stand out in the market. The H19 has also been named the Best New Network Compatible Device and has GPS and navigational facilities. The H19 runs on Windows Mobile 6.0, and is a quadband phone. It also has Wi-Fi, Bluetooth and a laser barcode scanner. The H19 could create a lot of competition for the iphone 3G. (Read the full post about ‘Opticon releases H16 and H19 smartphones’…)

There is a new GPS company called Enzym (what a weird name), that recently came out with a new GPS called the SG-350. The SG-350 is set to retail in both the U.S. and our northern neighbor, Canada. This GPS sports a 3.5 inch touch screen, boasts Navteq maps from Q2 of ‘08, which come with full maps of the States and Canada. Additionally, it comes with 11 million POI’s, a 533 MHz processor, and it also plays music in MP3 format, video in MP4 format, and displays pictures. All in all, it is a pretty good GPS and is going to sell for the inexpensive price of $200. Enzym doesn’t stop there, however, as they have 2 more GPS’ planned called the SG-250 and SG-430. (Read the full post about ‘Enzym’s work fast to produce new GPS’…)

Sprint is currently hoping to push themselves into the top spot where wireless data providers in the US are concerned, and they’ll do this without beating around the bush by offering reduced wireless modem data rates. This means the previous $40 monthly fee for phone-as-modem (PAM) plans will be getting a huge price cut, and while the figure has not been finalized just yet, we could potentially be looking at a $15 price point instead. Now is that not attractive enough to help you go online on your laptop without the need to look out for a wireless access point wherever you go? (Read the full post about ‘Sprint To Reduce Data Rates’…)

by Joshua Fruhlinger, posted Aug 11th 2008 at 9:56AM Back in May, we heard that MTI Micro was working with “an elusive Japanese developer or digicams” to get its Mobion fuel cell tech into actual products. Given this Canon Fuel Cell DSLR patent, it looks like we can no-so elusively safely say where the camera is being developed. The patent itself is straight up enough: “The present invention related to an electronic equipment system having fuel cells, and more particularly, to a camera system in which fuel cells are provided to a camera body and a connection device connected to the camera body.” It looks as though the fuel cells will power the entire camera system, including flashes and other motors, complete with a separate power management system, sort of like having your own mini generator. (Read the full post about ‘Canon patents fuel cell DSLR, we’re ready’…)

VIA has thrown in the towel where motherboards are concerned, which is not so surprising considering that they have close to non-existant market share (1%?). VIA will still continue to develop low-power chipsets for integrated motherboards that are powered by the Nano processor though, but Intel and AMD can forget about getting VIA’s assistance in this aspect. These are tough times we’re living in, no doubt about it.Each of the other players: Intel, AMD, NVIDIA have an edge from intellectual property like SLI for NVIDIA or simply because they make the processors that connect to the chipset. (Read the full post about ‘VIA Quits Motherboard Business’…)

by Thomas Ricker, posted Aug 11th 2008 at 7:43AM Seems everyone is coming out with a cheap, do-it-yourself SATA adapter to convert all your extra flash memory cards into a makeshift SSD. This time, we’re looking at the ¥10,000 (about $91) PhotoFast CR-9000. The 9.5-mm tall, 2.5-inch, 3Gbps SATA adapter accommodates up to 6x SDHC cards and should fit into most slim laptops. That’s enough slots to make a 192GB SSD (using 6x 32GB cards) for a bargain $900 or about $270 for a 48GB SSD based on a quick calculation of SDHC cards found on-line. While performance depends upon the weakest card of the lot, Impress Watch was able to squeeze a respectable 111.4MBps reads and 55.17MBps writes from their RAID 0 setup using class-6 rated, MLC-based, SDHC cards. (Read the full post about ‘DIY SSD adapter takes 6 SDHC cards, the cake’…)

by Darren Murph, posted Aug 11th 2008 at 8:35AM We’ve heard about iHome’s twistable iH41 since CES, but it looks like the outfit finally got its act together and began to ship these out. (Read the full post about ‘iHome ships rotatable iH41 iPod alarm clock’…)

by Joshua Topolsky, posted Aug 12th 2008 at 12:01AM Like your laptops to be over-achievers? Like, the really annoyingly stacked variety of over-achiever? Enter Lenovo’s newest outrage — the ThinkPad W700. Containing enough computational artillery to level a small village, this for-creatives-only behemoth is designed for sheer pixel pushing… and little else. The system packs in two features aimed at graphic artists and photographers which are fairly unique to a laptop: a built in Wacom digitizer just to the right of the trackpad, and an on-board color calibrator. But what’s happening under the hood you ask? Well for starters the 17-incher sports the first ever Intel Quad Core Extreme CPU in a laptop (no wo (Read the full post about ‘Lenovo intros the monstrous ThinkPad W700, and we get our hands all over it’…)