Dell made waves in the PC industry last month when it announced it would sell two of its desktop computers in Wal-Mart stores. On Friday, the company said Sam's Club would carry two Dell models, a desktop and notebook.

Beginning in mid-June, 580 Sam's Club stores will stock Dell's Inspiron E1501 Notebook, which will sell for $899, and Dimension E521 Multimedia Desktop for $829. More than 3,000 Wal-Marts will have two versions of the Dell Dimension E521 Multimedia desktops--for $698 and $498--on its shelves starting this Sunday.

All models will ship with Windows Vista Home Premium … Read more

A new spate of rumors are cropping up about a new Nikon top-end professional-grade digital SLR, the D3, with some asserting that a new camera will be announced this month and ship in August.

Many of the reports are cropping up on the Nikon SLR message boards of Digital Photography Review. One May posting cited French photo publication Reponses Photo as saying the Nikon D3 would have an 18.7-megapixel built by Sony and, in what would be a significant departure for Nikon, an image sensor nearly the size of a full frame of 35mm film.

A posting on Thursday … Read more

Where can you find some primo vintage desert footwear, a discussion of probability algorithms, and a solar-powered robotics operation? Why, it's Crave's slideshow of 2007 DARPA Urban Challenge entrants!

DARPA's 2005 Grand Challenge was a 132-mile Nevada desert race of autonomous vehicles. This year's Challenge is focused on urban operations--navigating a four-way intersection, performing pretty involved street driving moves--all without a human operator. How much time, manpower, equipment, research and programming does it take to teach a car how to drive itself? Read the story.

Seriously though, check out the boots on that dude from the … Read more

It was only a matter of time before in-car Internet went mainstream. Over the past couple of weeks, Avis has begun to roll out its in-car Wi-Fi service, which allows drivers to turn their rental cars into mobile Wi-Fi hotspots. The service, called Avis Connect, is provided by Autonet Mobile using 3G and 2.5G (EVDO, 1xRTT) connections.

For an extra $10.95 per day, Avis says renters get wireless broadband connectivity "at all times and places during their travel, from airports to meetings to hotels, and everything in between." We're not sure how the Wi-Fi signal … Read more

They're not quite as distinctive as the "Cloud of Promise" design that's gracing Lenovo's special laptops, but Samsung has announced its own contribution to the Beijing Olympics with three new mobile phones dedicated to the event.

The most notable is the E848 slider pictured here, which has a 2-megapixel camera and is 0.42 inches thick, according to CrunchGear. It's unclear from the scant photos in Samsung's press release, however, whether they'll bear any Olympic logos or designs (which kind of defeats the purpose, in our opinion).

And now here's a … Read more

Teenagers, persuade your parents to buy this lawnmower and you can get your weekend afternoons back. The LawnBott seems to have some competition.

The Auto Mower from Husqvarna eliminates noise, hassle and is environmentally more friendly than your average gas-powered lawnmower.

It works similarly to the Roomba robot vacuum in that it self-charges at a docking station, navigates on its own and can be set to run on schedule. You shallowly bury a boundary wire around the general perimeter of your lawn and any gardens to let the machine know its limits. It can handle inclines, rain and simply reverses … Read more

When CNET reviewed Turtle Beach's Ear Force HPA headphones in 2005, we found that they produced a very convincing surround sound effect, thanks to the presence of four drivers in each ear cup--effectively mimicking the front, rear, center, and subwoofer channels of a 5.1 surround system. But there was a big catch: the PC-only headphones required a tangle of wires--including an AC power adapter--in order to connect to the necessary outputs on a computer's soundcard.

Now, Turtle Beach has gone back to the drawing board and delivered a more streamlined version of the headphones. The Ear Force … Read more

The soldier of the future is looking for a little help from Congress in the here and now.

One of the Army's high-tech works in progress is a program called Land Warrior that's designed to loop individual foot soldiers into an electronic battlefield network. Helmets would be fitted out with headphones, microphone and a miniature computer display in an eyepiece. Assault rifles would have a digital video camera along with a laser rangefinder and thermal sight. GPS tech would help soldiers know whether the noise around the corner comes from friend or foe.

The Army this week put … Read more

I guess there are some kids who, given a toy chainsaw playset, would innocuously use it to pretend they were trimming the hedges or sawing dead branches off trees. And yes, this toy might be branded with the name of fictional kiddie do-gooder Bob the Builder, but come on. Let's be honest.

Call me cynical, but I'm guessing that the average 5-year-old who wants a toy chainsaw probably just wants to chase his friends around with it while laughing maniacally. (We've warned you about it here before. Kids are evil.) And we all know what that leads … Read more