Filed under: Digital Cameras

When Samsung decided to target the more discriminating consumer with its NV-series (NV = New Voyage — thrilling!) of “Lifestyle” digicams, it chose to forgo the rather staid aesthetic of most of its older models for more distinctive, high quality designs — but as with so many other “fashionable” products, The Photography Blog reports that you’re getting more sizzle than steak when it comes to the seven megapixel NV7. On first glance it would seem that this hybrid cam has the potential to be a real winner: besides the attractive looks and tight build quality, you’re getting a Schneider lens with long 7x optical zoom, a welcome tag team of digital as well as optical image stabilization, and several manual control options for finicky photographers. Unfortunately, for all its attractive features, the NV7 just don’t take a very good picture. While it supposedly handles chromatic aberrations well and makes good use of that optical stabilization, images tend to come out looking very noisy, even at a low ISO 100 (maximum ISO is 1000, but both that setting and ISO 800 and reportedly unusable). Other faults include the rather ineffective digital Advanced Shake Reduction option, a steep learning curve for getting accustomed to the 13 unlabeled soft keys bordering the 2.5-inch LCD, and the fact that optical stabilization turns off after every shutdown. But the main problem here is those grainy images, so unless you’re willing to overlook picture quality for eye-catching design, it sounds like you’re best off spending your ~$475 on a shooter that gives you better performance.

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BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time

Office Depot Featured Gadget: Xbox 360 Platinum System Packs the power to bring games to life!

Filed under: Handhelds, Tablet PCs

We’ve just come across a complete review of Samsung’s Q1-SSD UMPC, the first device in its class with a solid state NAND flash drive. Sammy’s had some ups and downs with its Q1 devices over the last few months, giving us all the more reason to wonder what Riyad Emeran of TrustedReviews had to say about it. The verdict? That 32GB flash drive is pretty freakin’ fast — Emeran noted the Q1-SSD booted in a snappy 22 seconds, notched a PCMark hard drive score of 5895 (more than twice as fast as an HP Compaq nc2400), and was able to perform a complete system restore in just over four minutes. However, that performance increase for the flash drive doesn’t translate into as large of a battery life jump as we’d like, given that the battery only lasts about three hours, compared to two hours on the original Q1. But the worst aspect of the Q1-SSD, as TrustedReviews notes, is the fact that its retail price is £1,400 ($2,663) — double the original MSRP of the Q1 (£700, or $1,331). For that level of coinage, you may just want to stick to the pokey-but-slim Compaq nc2400 to lighten your gadget bag.

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SPONSORED BY: BOLD MOVES: THE FUTURE OF FORD A new documentary series. Be part of the transformation as it happens in real-time.

Filed under: Household

It’s a rare occurrence when we’re more interested in a product’s reviewer than the product itself, but when esteemed and influential tech journalist Walt Mossberg dropped his pants to get the scoop on a high-tech toilet seat, well, we knew there was some fun to be had. Unkie Walt (as he’s affectionately known around here) and his trusty sidekick Katie decided to throw modesty to the wind and have Brondell’s $800 Swash 800 electronic toilet seats installed in their respective homes; since the main draws of this product are its twin bidet-like spray wands (one for him and two for her), we couldn’t help but picture the distinguished Mr. Mossberg enjoying the morning’s Wall Street Journal while having his nether regions blasted with SuperSoaker-like jets of water — a simultaneously amusing and disturbing image. The Swash 800 also features a heated seat and air drying feature that supposedly eliminates the need for toilet paper, but both Walt and Katie found that it was inefficient for completely, um, cleansing themselves after answering nature’s call. Another downside to this model is that you need to hook it up to an electrical outlet, so unless you already have one conveniently placed behind the toilet (for your iPod dock / toilet paper dispenser, perhaps), you’ll either have to get one installed or run an unsightly extension cord to the closest socket. In the end, toilets come across a lot like Mossberg himself: the old-fashioned ones just seem to do the job better.

[Via Slashdot]

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Filed under: Peripherals, Portable Audio, Wearables

Even if the the Nike+iPod Sport Kit were inaccurate, unintuitive, and uncomfortable to wear — which it doesn’t seem to be — the handful of reviews we’ve read so far all agree that it possesses at least one attribute that might still make it a worthy purchase: it actually motivated the reviewers to run harder and more often than normal. Fortunately for people who also like their gear to function properly, the wireless pedometer cum personal trainer sounds like it does indeed perform as advertised, offering runners and joggers an easy setup, useful mid-workout statistics and updates, and perhaps most helpfully, a polished online interface to plot one’s progress against personal goals or compare esoteric stats with exercise enthusiasts around the world. There are a few downsides here, though, not the least of which is the fact that this is basically a disposable product; the non-rechargeable, non-replaceable battery will supposedly crap out after about 1,000 miles or a year of regular use (and that’s assuming you remember to reach into your stinky shoes and turn off the transmitter after each run). You’ll also have to shell out for a new armband to secure your nano, as most currently available options (except for those from Nike, of course) won’t hold the combination of iPod plus wireless receiver. Overall, it doesn’t seem like the kit alone is compelling enough to encourage more folks to snatch up a nano, but if you already own one of these diminutive DAPs, it’s a cheap way to give it some extra functionality — especially if you forgo the special pair of $100+ Nike sneakers for a quick and easy DIY mod to your current kicks.

Read- Cnet
Read- Shiny Shiny
Read- Tewks

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Filed under: Gaming, Laptops

Okay, so right off the bat: do they even know what it means to drop the f-bomb in Canada? We’ve seen a lot of ridiculously-named products around here — Nintendo’s Wii and Sony’s PooS come immediately to mind — but this Eurocom model, with its allusion to the most hardcore cuss word in the English language, is by far one of the worst. Besides the unfortunate branding, however, the company’s 17-inch D900K gaming notebook sounds like a pretty good performer, according to MobilityGuru, with the dual core AMD Athlon 64 X2 4800+ processor and nVIDIA GeForce Go 7800 GTX graphics card helping it to achieve pretty impressive benchmark results. You’re also getting a 1,920 x 1,200 resolution, DVD burner, 802.11a/b/g, DVI out, and 4-in-1 card reader for the $3,500 pricetag, though the 5,200 RPM hard drive and 1GB of pokey 200MHz DDR RAM keep this rig from delivering the outstanding results you’d get from a machine like Dell’s XPS M1710. Still, if you can’t afford a Dell (we never thought we’d actually say that) and don’t mind lugging around 15 pounds of gear to get your mobile computing on, you may not find this particular F-bomb to be all that offensive.

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Filed under: Displays, Gaming

Filed under: Digital Cameras

For the most part, Sony’s latest ultra-compact member of the ultra-popular T-series line of digital cameras sounds like the perfect all-around point-and-shooter — with a few important caveats. For starters, the DSC-T30 features a Carl Zeiss lens backed up by a 7.2 megapixel CCD, and Sony was gracious enough to toss in some optical image stabilization for steady hand-held shots even at slower shutter speeds. You also get a 3-inch display that fills nearly the entire backside of the camera, and that, according to Imaging Resource, performs much better than average in direct sunlight. For as low as $400, it would seem that this followup to the DSC-T9 should be unrivaled in the marketplace, but several non-minor flaws — including heavy noise in low-light shots captured above ISO 200 and audible artifacts in some video clips — would suggest that this model is not for everyone. Still, the small size, good overall photo quality, and superior battery life (400+ shots) are enough to make the T30 one of Imaging Resouce’s coveted “Dave’s Picks.”

[Via Photography Blog]

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Filed under: Digital Cameras

Proving that there's still a little bit of life left in the so-called megapixel race, Casio is offering a compact digital camera that packs a 10 megapixel sensor into the smallest space we've seen since Samsung's latest ridiculously excessive cameraphone, and what's more, Let'sGoDigital finds that the company actually puts some of those extra pixels to good use. Besides its unrivaled maximum resolution of 3648 x 2736, Casio's EXILIM EX-Z1000 initially impressed us with a high res 2.5-inch display and unusual maximum ISO of 3200, but LGD finds that while the screen indeed delivers superior performance, the latter feature, as we suspected, produces unacceptable levels at noise. Images captured at ISOs below 400, however, were judged to be "impressive," with good color accuracy and visible detail, and there are plenty of options available to manually tweak such settings as white balance, flash intensity, and even aspect ratio for slideshows on either 4:3 or 16:9 TVs. The biggest downside to the Z1000 is probably its sub par 3x optical zoom, although this is one area where the camera's abundance of pixels helps to compensate somewhat, as Casio includes a "Non Deterioration Zoom" mode that lets you sacrifice image size for better-than-average digital zooming at settings as high as 17.1x. Overall, it sounds like your $400 buys you a well-built, full-featured, and solidly-performing camera -- with a very respectable 300+ shot battery life -- along with the dubious distinction of being the only person on your block to own a point-and-shoot sporting more megapixels than most people's DSLRs.

Filed under: Handsets, Reviews, Windows Mobile, HP, GSM, GPRS, EDGE

We’ve been on the fence about HP’s hw6000 line of Swiss Army phones ever since we first spotted the GPS-equipped iPaq hw6515 — these models include everything but the kitchen sink, but they also force you to use that non-standard 240 x 240 screen. Still, MobileTechReview’s in-depth look at the latest member of the family, the hw6915, makes us think we could overlook the square screen and lack of 3G data options because, well, the rest of this Windows Mobile 5.0-powered smartphone sounds like exactly what us convergence-geeks are seeking. According to MTR, the quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE handset impresses on many fronts, including its solid keyboard, powerful internal antenna, GPS performance, and best-in-class benchmark numbers. HP also throws in some nice extras, like helpful Today screen plug-ins, a full-featured wireless radio manager, the ability to location-stamp photos, and even A2DP in the Bluetooth stack, which isn’t normally included in WM5 AKU2 devices out of the box. Besides the fact that this screen resolution may not support all third-party apps, the only real knock to this model concerns the camera’s startup/shutter lags — and if that’s the worst thing to be said about a device that seemingly does it all, then we’re totally sold.

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Filed under: Cellphones, GPS, Handhelds

We’ve been on the fence about HP’s hw6000 line of Swiss Army phones ever since we first spotted the GPS-equipped iPaq hw6515 — these models include everything but the kitchen sink, but they also force you to use that non-standard 240 x 240 screen. Still, MobileTechReview’s in-depth look at the latest member of the family, the hw6915, makes us think we could overlook the square screen and lack of 3G data options because, well, the rest of this Windows Mobile 5.0-powered smartphone sounds like exactly what us convergence-geeks are seeking. According to MTR, the quad-band GSM/GPRS/EDGE handset impresses on many fronts, including its solid keyboard, powerful internal antenna, GPS performance, and best-in-class benchmark numbers. HP also throws in some nice extras, like helpful Today screen plug-ins, a full-featured wireless radio manager, the ability to location-stamp photos, and even A2DP in the Bluetooth stack, which isn’t normally included in WM5 AKU2 devices out of the box. Besides the fact that this screen resolution may not support all third-party apps, the only real knock to this model concerns the camera’s startup/shutter lags — and if that’s the worst thing to be said about a device that seemingly does it all, then we’re totally sold.

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Let’s face it. We can all appreciate the simplicity and importance of the “emergency whack”. An “emergency whack” is a quick fix in a situation where you would be otherwise unable to sleep, or to calm down. Need to sneak a quick one while your girlfriend or wife is asleep? OnTheGoX is for you! It’s a revolutionary new service which provides you with millions of pictures and thousands of movies specially formatted for your Pocket PC, PSP, Video iPod, or any Portable Video Player! In this review, I will explain in detail how to make it work with your Pocket PC, although it is also easy to get these vids on your other devices as well.

I have been a member of OnTheGoX since its inception about a year ago. OnTheGoX is a high-quality adult site with tons and tons of adult pictures and movies for your pocket pc. They offer a trial for $4.99 so you can get a taste of the multitude of movies and pics and just how easy it is to get this content onto your pocket pc.

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Your options for getting the movies to your device are many. If you have Verizon’s or Sprint’s EVDO service, you can expect good download times on these movies. If your pocket pc has wi-fi and you are connected to a wireless router, your downloads will likely go even faster. Thirdly, you can do it the old fashioned way and download the movies to your computer and put them on your device via card reader or through activesync. I can help anyone who may need help in this department.

When the video is playing, you can make it fullscreen by simply hitting the button under the “x” on the top right. Voila, you are on your way to years and years worth of high-quality adult content for your pocket pc. I must stress the high-quality part because at one point, I found myself checking to see if it was true high-definition… and that was a low quality movie.

Another excellent part of OnTheGoX is that it is also a full-featured adult site for you to access from your pc. We are talking insane amounts of content here, and real high quality stuff. If you have a membership at another adult site, you can cancel it. You really are getting two sites for the price of one at OnTheGoX.

OnTheGoX also offers movie downloads for your PSP, Video iPod, or portable media player, so you are covered in those areas as well. The site makes it easy for all you noobies by posting very detailed instructions to get the movies onto your device as well.

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clickclickPOP!, the front-runner in Pocket PC News, has posted a review of Verizon’s All-in-one Pocket PC Phone, the XV6600. The phone has built-in EV-DO, Bluetooth, a nice sliding Keyboard, and lots of memory. Check out the REVIEW!