Laptops

This is something for those of you who really get into your games--maybe even a little too much--but can't afford a life-size cockpit.

NEC and Takara have teamed up to offer a laptop designed to look like a panel you'd find at mission control. It's a natural extension for Takara, which Akihabara News says has already made such troubling items as a "destruction button" to turn off your PC and a fan shaped like a rocket launcher. (And here I was worried about my son having a toy six-shooter to go with his Halloween cowboy … Read more

Rant against Starbucks Wi-Fi, Part II. To recap: The last time we checked, Starbucks charged $10 for a single day's Net access through a T-Mobile wireless connection. And unless you're planning to hide in the restroom all night, that probably means $10 for a few hours, not the full 24.

So a very viable alternative is to ditch Starbucks altogether and find another, friendlier coffee shop that offers free Wi-Fi. In our last episode, we offered the possibility of finding just such a caffeinated oasis via a $70 Wi-Fi detector. But now, Coolest Gadgets has found one much cheaper, … Read more

You say you want an all-in-one device? Be careful what you ask for. Samsung has created something that looks like it would have been created by Dr. Frankenstein if he were a computing engineer instead of a nut job with a lab.

Where to begin: The SPH-P9000 is part PC (Windows XP, 1GHz Transmeta processor, 30GB hard drive), part multimedia player (5-inch screen, MP3, video on demand), part PDA (QWERTY keyboard, WiMax) and part smart phone, without the phone part (1.3-megapixel camera, CDMA, Bluetooth). And it all folds up into a 5.6- by 3.7-inch case that's … Read more

Tablet PCs used to be a niche product, to put it kindly. They were bulky, underpowered and rarely worked. But the idea of being able to scribble on your laptop screen is hard to resist, so PC makers kept working on tablet designs until they perfected the Transformer-like convertible tablet--a seemingly normal-looking laptop, with a screen that rotates 180-degrees and folds down over the keyboard.

A lot of people must be adding convertible tablets to their holiday wish lists, because we know of several new models that have either been released lately, or are about to be released. Fujitsu announced … Read more

Remember when practically every computer maker's product line sported such stunning colors as putty or battleship gray? What morons. Until Apple came along with the iMac, you'd think that they all lived in the monochromatic half of Pleasantville.

All that has changed, of course, but one name had been noticeably absent from the peacocking of the PC landscape: Swarovski. That's right, as in the crystals. In case you hadn't noticed, Swarovski has been making its way into all manner of hardware, ranging from Paris Hilton's cell phone to wireless mice and refrigerators.

Apparently Swarovski has … Read more

A lot of portable DVD players look like they were made for kids--probably because they were. With DVD drives standard in so many laptops these days, adults have fewer reasons than ever to lug around a separate player.

But for those special occasions when you actually want to leave your computer at home (gasp) and don't plan on watching Spongebob or Dora, this player from Amadana may be just the ticket. It reminds us of a gutted and renovated San Francisco Victorian: Inside its beautiful bamboo exterior all the modern amenities you need. It has a 10-inch LCD, flat-touch … Read more

The most noticeable feature about this item is that, by looking at it, you can't tell what it is. When we first saw a photo of Microsoft's LifeCam NX-6000, we thought it was a USB drive. (On second thought, it's not gold or bejeweled, so it's obviously our mistake.) Then when we found out it was a camera, we thought it was one of those 007-vintage spy gadgets we always wanted as a kid.

But it's a Webcam, and one made for a notebook at that, so it doesn't look anything like its more … Read more

I was psyched when a reader said this little box can show in dollars and kilowatt-hours just how much every last lightbulb, TV, and forgotten camera charger in your house costs you. The Energy Detective, or TED, will flash an alarm when your hourly or monthly power consumption reaches painfully expensive levels, and when spells of high or low voltage might damage connected gear.

At $150, TED costs the same as the Kill-a-Watt and its ilk, which can measure only one gadget's power hunger at a time. You could recoup that cost in a tax refund and then some, … Read more

While slightly larger than the usual USBs, Chip Chick points out, the Pexagon Store-It portable USB 2.0 hard drives pack in a lot.

The 1.8-inch Store-It comes in a 60GB version for $199, or 20GB for $139, and the 2.5-inch Store-It comes in up to 120GB for $179. They all include an EZ-Touch One Button that instantly backs-up your stuff. The idea is that in age where more and more applications are tied to the Web, you no longer need to carry them with you.

Instead of carrying personal laptops for trips, you can take the more … Read more