Crave

OK, so not all you Cravers were sold on the idea of the "Icebox" for your kitchen computing needs. Then how about a stainless steel TV?

As part of its new "Regza" line, Toshiba is offering a 26-inch model with a high-gloss steel panel to offset its black cabinetry, according to BornRich. It's designed specifically for the kitchen to match the fridge, dishwasher and other appliances, complete with a built-in DVD player so your kids can watch Ice Age 2 while you're heating up the dinosaur chicken for dinner.

Technology conventions like the Consumer Electronics Show are great places to see what's coming next, but some companies also like to remind you of what's happened in the past. It's always great to be reminded that the crowd went bonkers back in the mid-'70s when Asteroids came out in color or Chuck E. Cheese was upgraded to include food edible for humans.

At this year's CES, Japan's LCD giant Sharp trotted out some tidbits from its history. The calculator pictured here was the first-ever LCD calculator produced. The EL-805 could run 100 hours on … Read more

Sometimes when things seem too good to be true, they're indeed too good to be true. Alas, such is the case for Philips' new 63PFP7422D 63-inch 1080p plasma TV, which was announced at CES with a price tag of $3,500. Turns out $3,500 is the price for the company's current 63-inch plasma model, which features 768p or 1,366x768 resolution. (Really, that makes it your basic 720p HDTV). The new price for the new set is actually $5,500. Oops.

For the record, I did have sneaking suspicion that the price was perhaps overly aggressive, but … Read more

Add one more reason to doubt the iPhone hype: It appears that Apple's uberdevice utilizes a totally proprietary 1.5:1 aspect ratio. While that's wider than the standard square-ish 1.33:1 (4x3) aspect ratio found on older TVs, PC monitors, and iPods, it's 15 percent narrower than the 1.78:1 (16x9) screen dimensions found on most HDTV and DVD programming.

The specs of the iPhone list a pixel count of 480x320. In and of itself, that doesn't prove anything: some displays utilize rectangular pixels, which allows them to deliver a true 16:9 … Read more

You may be tempted to drop-kick, drown, or otherwise abuse the new Dell Latitude ATG D620. That's not because of any sort of personal animosity--the ATG stands for All Terrain Grade, and it's Dell's first semirugged laptop.

The ATG isn't exactly a new system built from the ground up. It's essentially a Dell Latitude D620 with a new case and a few other rugged extras. It has a magnesium-alloy shell with high-durability textured bumpers built onto the edges, a shock-mounted hard drive (a 1.8-inch drive in a cushioned 2.5-inch drive bay), a spill-resistant … Read more

This phone might work fine, but even the most ardent Star Wars aficionado might balk at using it on a regular basis. Just answering Nikko Japan's "Lightsaber" VoIP phone could cause major damage in close quarters.

The handset, if it can be called that, connects to the computer by USB (doesn't everything?) and is cradled in a base that bears the Star Wars logo in blue LED. The phones, part of an ensemble seen by fellow Craver Will Greenwald at CES last week, can even make the familiar Lightsaber swooshing sound. We were thinking of pre-ordering … Read more

Showing that you were a football fan in the past was easy and inexpensive. You just had to paint your naked torso blue and silver and then yell for two hours in the shivering ambience of Cleveland in the winter.

Now, you have to go the distance, and this includes dressing up your laptop. For $29.95, Skinit will decorate the outside of your laptop with the logo of your favorite NFL team. The company is working with Circuit City too, so when you buy a laptop there you can buy the decoration. You can get a personal photo too, … Read more

Subscription music services may be slow at garnering mainstream acceptance, but I--and others--still think that they have a lot of potential. There's something to be said for paying a flat monthly fee for virtually unlimited music discovery. Besides, I don't really need to own that hot song of the moment when I'll probably be sick of it in less than a year.

That said, an iPod-dominated MP3 player market means an iTunes-dominated digital music domain, and it must be tough for competitors to nail down a decent buck in such a closed environment. How does the … Read more

As Apple made clear with the iPhone last week, touch screens are the next evolutionary step in the development of mobile handsets. But Sony Ericsson is going after another one of the human senses: smell.

The company is making a line of aroma phones for Japan's NTT DoCoMo, according to Reuters, "to relax the users while making calls." (So Japanese in so many ways.) The handsets come with your choice of nine "scented sheets" accompanied by different designs.

Why, one might ask, would anyone want a scented phone? Perhaps it has something to do with … Read more