We're kickin' it old school with some technology that might not be so modern, but you can't deny that this stuff is cool!
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EPISODE 113 |
Datamancer Ergo keyboard takes steampunk in an oddly comfortable direction
Teac LP-R500: The 20th century CD-LP-cassette geek re-education box
Retro plasma HDTV looks like an ancient TV set
Hand Crank Locomotives Are A Child's Dream Toy
Your MacBook is too classy to be wrapped in neoprene
NES-inspired Nike sneakers take us back to ‘85
$2,500 titanium tricycle seems reasonable
It’s About time (retro edition!)
Alarm clock lets you wake up a winner
Pink Watch
Calling all lady DJs--do we have a turntable for you
Hello Kitty Watch
Hello Kitty’s birthday! (Thanks, Dr. Karl)
FUG
Nintendo garter belt--sexy fun gaming times
Kill Me (I will kill someone edition)
The Keyboard for Blondes makes my blood boil
Kill Me (this will probably kill someone edition)
Burning hair remover lets your hygiene play with fire
(Credit:
CNET Networks)
The eye-catching Portege R500, long one of our favorite ultraportable laptops, just got a little better. Tuesday morning, Toshiba announced the $2,999 Portege R500-S5007V, a new iteration of the remarkably thin laptop and the first portable to incorporate a 128GB solid-state drive.
To put it succinctly, we're psyched. Up to now, the biggest reservation we had about recommending solid-state drives was their relatively puny size, which pretty much required the purchase of an external hard drive to hold most of your media files--a tough expense to swallow after plunking down $3,000 (or more) on the laptop itself. However, 128GB seems like a workable size, and because the drive represents the second generation of solid-state technology, we have hopes that it will perform a little better as well.
The Portege R500-S5007V also features a built-in DVD burner, making it a little heavier than the DVD-free R500-S5003 we reviewed earlier this year. (The starting weight for the new model is still less than 2.5 pounds.) Otherwise, the updated Portege R500 is largely the same as its predecessors, with a 12.1-inch LED-backlit display, three USB ports, a fingerprint reader, and an SD card slot. Like its predecessors, the new version doesn't include a WWAN option, and its slim form factor still requires an ultra-low-voltage Core 2 Duo processor that isn't likely to win any speed races.
Nevertheless, the addition of a larger-capacity drive helps Toshiba keep at least one advantage over such lightweight, SSD-based systems as the MacBook Air and Lenovo ThinkPad X300.
(Credit:
Engadget)
Not one, but two of the upcoming laptops we're most excited about made unexpected appearances on the Interwebs this morning.
The Dell XPS m1330--rumored, leaked, and then finally half-confirmed by Dell (in their infamous "23 Confessions")--showed up again today on Engadget, with several new photos and a rumored ship date (from a "trusted insider") of July 10.
This extra-thin 13-inch looks like a real step in the right direction for Dell in terms of laptop design; leaked images have been circulating online for a while.
(Credit:
Akihabara News)
Perhaps even more exciting was an Akihabara News story showing the eagerly anticipated Toshiba Portege R500 in the wild (in, of all places, Paris). Arguably the lightest full-sized laptop in the world at 2.4 pounds and 0.77-inches thick, the 12-inch R500 was officially announced in early June--but has yet to ship to customers.
That's a tiny step closer to reality for two of the sweetest-looking laptops we've seen in a while. Hopefully it won't be too much longer before we have both of them in hand.
One of the few laptops that has really grabbed our attention with eye-catching industrial design this year is the Toshiba Portege R400, a slim convertible tablet we saw back in January. The just-announced follow-up, Toshiba's Portege R500, is even more impressive.
We got a chance to play around with one of these a few weeks ago, and it was literally one of the thinnest, lightest 12-inch ultraportable laptops we've ever seen. It's got all the requisite ultraportable features, from an indoor/outdoor backlit LED display to a superthin 7mm DVD drive--similar in some ways to the 13-inch Dell XPS m1330 that leaked yesterday.
Some highlighted specs of the system, which will be around .77 inch thick and weigh just 2.4 pounds, include:
How do they cram all that stuff in a laptop less than an inch thick? According to the company: "To achieve this ultracompact foot print, Toshiba utilized its proprietary High Density Mounting Technology process to create a miniature motherboard with dual-sided component mounting." In other words, the system is built around a custom miniature motherboard.
According to the press release, even more exciting developments are coming later in the year, when the company claims: "In the third quarter of 2007, Toshiba plans to further reduce the weight of the Portégé R500 Series to 1.72 pounds, effectively creating the world's lightest wide-screen 12.1-inch notebook." We'll believe it when we see it, but hopefully that means a move to SSD hard drives.
Depending on your configuration the Portege R500 runs around $2,000, and should be available to order starting today.
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