Filed under: Digital Cameras

Fujifilm‘s got a new ruggedized camera for those whose photography takes ‘em into less than ideal conditions — or anyone that just tends to beat up their equipment, we suppose. Its BIGJOB HD-3W also doesn’t seem to skimp too much on features to accommodate your abuse, packing in a reasonable six megapixels and a 3x optical zoom, along with ISO settings up to 1600, VGA video recording, 23MB of built-in memory, and an xD slot for expansion. Just don’t plan on going too crazy with it — Fujifilm apparently doesn’t recommend drops of more than two feet, although the cam is water and dust resistant. Price and availability are as yet unknown quantities, as is so often the case.

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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: Laptops

If any of you have plans to venture towards the Sahara desert or Arctic Circle, but can’t bear the thought of making such treacherous journeys without a laptop in tow, Itronix has the goods to keep you connected while fending off the brutal elements. The latest laptop to make it out of Itronix’s testing facilities alive is the XR-1, a lightweight and rugged notebook that doesn’t sacrifice performance in order to operate in less-than-ideal conditions. The 6.8-pound beast sports a 12-inch XGA touchscreen display, 1.83GHz Intel Core Duo processor, 40GB SATA hard drive, 512MB of RAM, and a fancy glow-in-the-dark keyboard to boot. While specs this good aren’t usually found in such rough and tough machines, the XR-1 also manages to rock WLAN, WWAN, Bluetooth, and built-in GPS antennas that can all be utilized concurrently to presumably track down a signal from any corner of the globe. Making sure that all this internal goodness remains functional, the company designed the notebook to meet “military standards” for drops, shocks, vibrations, and water / dust resistance, not to mention its ability to survive a “bleach-water” bath if exposed to toxins. For those headed towards a pole, the built-in hard drive / display heaters warm up your fragile components before attempting to boot in sub-zero temperatures (and probably double as a halfway decent space heater, too). While we’re impressed with the amount of power found beneath the plates of armor, er, casing, the (practically) everything-resistant XR-1 demands a premium for its abilities, and we’d humbly suggest changing your vacation spot unless the $4,330 (and way up) pricetag doesn’t deliver a shock of its own.

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Filed under: Tablet PCs

So what is it with Xplore Technologies’ and their insistence on calling random strings of letters and digits “model numbers?” Regardless of the nonsense, they’ve expanded their lineup further with a new offering that boasts a host of new security features like a finger print reader and user accessible hard drive and PC card bays for those who deal with sensitive data . This tablet was built for a beating — its magnesium alloy shell and shock-resistant hard drive complement its ability to withstand dust, moisture, and extreme temperatures. Powered by an Intel processor and sporting an XGA screen, you’ll have the world at your fingertips with all this connectivity: wLAN, wWAN, PAN (Bluetooth) and GPS wireless are all options here. If you just can’t wait to get your hands on the iX104C3, well, you’ll have to anyway; complete specs, pricing and availability are all currently unavailable — but but that’s no big surprise.

[Via Mobilewhack]

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Filed under: Handsets, Motorola, Sprint-Nextel

If push-to-talk isn’t too sissy for you now that those href="http://www.engadget.com/2005/12/02/cingular-goes-live-with-push-to-talk/">Cingular kids can do it, Motorola
is prepping a rugged version of their href="http://www.engadget.com/2005/10/31/motos-i870-antibacterial-widen-phone/">i870 iDEN phone, the i580. The
phone has the same WiDEN connectivity, PTT (of course), Bluetooth, 1.3 megapixel camera, and dual displays of the i870,
though the external display on the i580 is a smaller grayscale one. The phone does lose the external MP3 controls,
though it can still play your tunes off of the internal microSD slot. Of course, the main addition is the rubberized
shell and military grade resistance to rain, dust, shock, and vibration that the new handset includes. The i580 should
be available in Q2 of this year for an undetermined price.

[Thanks, Allen]

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Filed under: Handsets, Others, Windows Mobile, GSM, GPRS, EDGE

She may not be pretty or pocketable (and “invincible” might be going a bit far), but unlike your typical consumer-grade Windows Mobile device, Symbol’s beefy MC70 is probably going to handle the occasional drop, dunk, toss, or burn. The quad-band GSM / EDGE handheld comes equipped with your choice of Windows Mobile 5.0 Pocket PC Premium or Phone Edition, 802.11a / b / g plus “comprehensive VoIP support,” Class II Bluetooth 1.2, and — being that this is a Symbol device and all — the obligatory barcode scanner, all sitting atop a crazy fast 624MHz PXA270. Of course, we’re suspecting everything-proof smartphoning doesn’t come cheap, but for the accident prone among us, it does have a certain strange appeal.

[Thanks, Cristian P.]

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