Crave

Not to sound Seinfeldian or anything, but what is the deal with alarm clocks? It seems to be the product of choice when gadget makers run out of new ideas. The formula is obvious: Find some marginal feature-ette left on the cutting-room floor, apply it to a piece of hardware and add an alarm clock. Voila! Another factory quota filled.

Witness the "Fred-O-Vision" combo alarm clock and mood light. (Need we say more?) In addition to its dimestore design, this thing plays game show tunes, according to Red Ferret. Even with all this, it manages to tap yet … Read more

How much is too much for a mousepad?

Anything that's not free? $20? $512?

Formula 1 offers a wide variety of overpriced memorabilia on its F1 store and we have seen our share of fashion and sport mice, but never have I seen something so ridiculous.

For a mere $491 you can buy a polished carbon fiber mousepad--excuse me "mouse mat"--with the Formula 1 logo. As if that alone were not outrageous enough, the mousepad will not work with optical mice. You need to shell out $512 for the carbon and leather version if you want … Read more

The McLaren Mercedes MP4-22 had its track debut at the Valencia circuit in Spain on Wednesday.

There were some glitches, however. World Champion Fernando Alonso was forced to return to the pit at one point when smoke began to come out from the back of the car, according to Autosport.

Alonso completed 57 laps with his fastest time on the track (after the smoking pit stop) at 1 minute, 12.053 seconds.

The test follows the announcement that Vodafone is releasing three Formula One cell phones to celebrate its sponsorship of the McLaren Mercedes team.

These LaCie speakers might look like pieces of futuristic white pipe, or the elbow joints of a Stormtrooper costume from Star Wars, but they're actually a cool, design-savvy sound solution that cleans up clutter. They aren't totally wireless, but they come close. Since they connect to your computer via its FireWire port, they don't require an external power source. That means you'll have a free outlet for plugging in your lava lamp night light.

And get this: They're $79 for a set of two. Sure, you can get lower-end speakers for a lot less, but … Read more

Those lucky Japanese. They get the latest in shiny, lightweight laptops, while we here in the States have to wait for the new models to jump to our shores. The most recent example: blogs in Japan, spotted by the folks at Engadget, reported an ultraportable addition to Panasonic's Let's Note line of laptops (known in our neck of the woods as ToughBooks). The compact, two-pound Let's Note R6 features a 10.4-inch XGA display and will pack in a 1.06GHz Intel Core Duo U2400 processor, up to 1.5GB of RAM, and up to 120GB of … Read more

It may not be one of the big four cell phone carriers, but Alltel continues to surprise us. Today the company launched a new product called Celltop that will allow Alltel customers a new way to organize content on their phone. Celltop puts interactive, changeable windows or "cells" on your phone's display that provide shortcuts to a variety of features, including your call log and message in-box. The idea is to let you scan such information without having to press several buttons. It looks sort of cool, as we tend to like anything that makes a gadget … Read more

In the 2007 Pacifica that got dropped off for our review this week, it's obvious that Chrysler is taking luxury lessons from Mercedes-Benz. From all the cars we've seen at CNET Car Tech, I'd pretty much come to the conclusion that Cadillac was the only American car company getting it right. But then I got into the Chrysler Pacifica. Here are my first impressions of this car.

The most obvious cue from Mercedes-Benz are the power seat controls, set in the door and shaped like a seat. These types of controls make it unnecessary to probe blindly … Read more

The AT&T acquisition of BellSouth and Cingular is final, and even though we haven't seen signs of it on Cingular's front page yet, AT&T will slowly roll out an ad campaign to phase out the Cingular brand. It won't be an overnight change, but much like the AT&T Wireless change to Cingular a few years back, subscribers will definitely see a change on their wireless bills within the next few months.

All this changing of hands from AT&T to the various Baby Bells to BellSouth and SBC and all … Read more

While much of the county is suffering blizzards and ice storms, we counted our sunny stars today and hit the dry, open road for a first look at the 2007 Saturn Sky Red Line. Like the Pontiac Solstice, with which it shares its platform, the Sky soft-top roadster exudes bold body styling. Sleek lines, a bulging hood, and aggressively arched front fenders all give the Sky a mini-Batmobile character, an impression underlined by the fact that our tester came in onyx black (that's black to you and me).

As its name suggests, the Sky Red Line is a performance-tuned … Read more