Crave

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

Developments in the Blu-ray/HD DVD format war kicked into high gear in the past couple of months. November and December saw the bulk of the long-delayed HD product lines finally hitting store shelves: Blu-ray players from Sony, Panasonic, and Philips; the PlayStation 3; the Xbox 360 HD DVD add-on; and the second-generation Toshiba HD DVD players. In the new year, both camps came out swinging at CES 2007. With so much news to process, we've taken the opportunity to collect all the major developments into one easily digestible chunk.

Enter the combo player: LG officially unveiled the BH100, … Read more

And here you're worried about a little silly radiation. The San Francisco Chronicle reported yesterday that a man's cell phone burst into flame while he was carrying it in his pocket. Luis Picaso of Vallejo, California, received second- and third-degree burns to his body, back, right arm, and right leg after the fire spread to his clothes and ignited a nearby chair. Fire officials refused to disclose the phone's make and model but insisted the handset was the source of the blaze.

Though the story may sound too odd to be true, other instances of cell phones … Read more

Talk about a niche within a niche. While we've become resigned to the persistence of designer special editions, no matter how eGregious, we've got to wonder how well this one can possibly do.

From the outset, the leather-bound Dooney & Bourke Sony Reader eBook has three disadvantages. First, Dooney & Bourke doesn't have the cachet of higher-end labels; second, e-books in general have yet to take off; and third, it's being marketed as a "special Valentine's Day edition."

An e-book reader for Valentine's Day? How utterly romantic.