Crave

(Credit: Honest Technology)

With the proliferation of digital cameras, everybody and their mom probably has one. In fact, you may come away from parties with hundreds of images just waiting to be displayed. So why wait for the next gathering to showcase your photos?

The Fotobox Plus is an SD card reader that comes with embedded flash memory. But what's unique is that the internal memory also contains an editor that converts your images into a slideshow with music.

The finished product can be uploaded to YouTube or converted into various formats such as DVD, MPEG-1, MPEG-2, and WMV, as well as iPod and PSP formats. The Fotobox Plus works in Windows XP and Vista environments, though Mac and Linux users can still use this device as a memory card reader. It will be available starting next month for $79.99, excluding shipping.

The built-in editor comes in both easy and advanced modes.

(Credit: Honest Technology)

(Source: Crave Asia)

Radically overhauled last year, Apple's MacBook line of laptops moved to aluminum construction, edge-to-edge glass over LED displays, and oversize multitouch-touch pads (with the exception of the lone $999 white plastic model). The latest round of updates is more of a refinement than another revolution, but it adds some much-sought-after features, while lowering prices on many configurations.

Most notable, the 13-inch aluminum unibody MacBook has been promoted to join the MacBook Pro family. It's a move that makes sense, as the differences between the two lines were becoming increasingly blurred. To complete the transformation, the 13-inch Pro regains its missing FireWire port, making it even more useful for creative professionals on the go.

New to the Pro line is something we never thought we'd see on a MacBook--an SD card slot. Standard on the 13- and 15-inch Pro laptops, this corrects one of our main MacBook annoyances. We're also pleased to see the backlit keyboard--previously found in only the more expensive 13-inch versions--filter down to even the $1,149 base model (which is a nice discount from the previous $1,299 entry price).

Some have strong feelings about the nonremovable battery--similar to those already found on the MacBook Air and 17-inch Pro. It's a legitimate concern, but we think the promise of better battery life (Apple claims up to a 40 percent improvement), and three times as many recharge cycles as older batteries is just as important.

There are still a few items on our 13-inch wish list--matte screens, mobile broadband options, Blu-ray--but Apple has done an admirable job in filling in some of the major missing pieces. By offering more features for less money, the 13-inch MacBook Pro remains one of the most universally useful laptops available.

Unboxing: It's New MacBook Day

The last MacBook standing.

(Credit: Sarah Tew/CNET)

Apple's lowest-end laptop occupies a special place in the Mac spectrum. As of WWDC 2009, it's the last MacBook standing in the lineup--all the other Apple notebooks are now MacBook Pros. The MacBook (we can call it "the" MacBook, now) also is the last to retain the polycarbonate white plastic glossy casing that once defined a whole line of machines.

While the MacBook's more pedestrian appearance may not catch the eye as much as the unibody aluminum MacBook Pros, don't be fooled by its throwback looks--inside, Apple's done a good job of keeping the components on par with its more expensive brothers. In fact, the white MacBook has very comparable specs to the lowest-end 13-inch MacBook Pro. Its 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo processor is close to the MacBook Pro's standard 2.26 GHz one, and the Nvidia 9400M graphics processor is the same one that's in the MacBook unibody 13-inchers, so the gaming and media capabilities are comparable.

Depending on your specific needs, for $999, you're getting a real bargain with the last MacBook. You can either approach this as "for $200 more I can get a MacBook Pro," or "I can get something nearly as good as a MacBook Pro and save $200." The latter perspective, however, requires you to be willing to skip some of the Pro-level features.

The MacBook comes with two USB 2.0 ports, a mini-DVI port, a FireWire 400 port, and both a headphone and mic jack. The 160GB hard drive can be upgraded to a maximum of 500GB when ordering, a first for a MacBook. The polycarbonate body, as always, feels sturdy and well built, if thicker than the aluminum versions, and the pleasingly minimalist glossy plastic exterior and matte white interior might be more prone to picking up scratches and staining.

What you're missing by not upgrading to the $1,199 13-inch MacBook Pro is a better color-depth LED-backlit screen, a thinner, lighter body, FireWire 800, DDR3 RAM (the MacBook only has DDR2), a longer-life seven-hour (according to Apple) non-removable battery, the oversize multitouch touch pad (this smaller one does support some multitouch gestures), and an SD card slot.

If you can live without these, then the $999 MacBook just might be your bet. Even better, Apple's current back-to-school promotion throws in a free 8GB iPod Touch (minus sales tax) if you're a student, sweetening the deal a bit more, although the promotion runs across all Macs.

Unboxing: It's New MacBook Day

Apple's entire laptop line gets revamped.

(Credit: CNET)

Not to be left out, the MacBook's been updated too, and it's no longer just a MacBook. Following in the wake of the 15-inch MacBook Pro updates, the 13-inchers will also be called MacBook Pros (because as Phil Schiller noted onstage, "At what point isn't this just a MacBook Pro?") The mid-range unibody aluminum laptops launched last October now have upgraded color screens, SD card slots, FireWire 800 ports, and backlit keyboards across the board. Prices start at $1,199, $100 less than before for the low-end aluminum MacBook, for an upgraded 2.26 GHz Core 2 Duo with 2 GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce 9400M graphics, and a 160 GB HDD. $1,499 gets you a 2.53 GHz Core 2 Duo, 4 GB of DDR3, and a 250 GB hard drive. RAM can now be expanded up to 8 GB, and hard drives can be upgraded up to 500 GB.

They will also have non-removable 7-hour batteries. This makes the entire Apple laptop line a family of sealed-in batteries, except for the lowest-end white MacBook, whose specs were bumped last week.

Also updated, to some applause, was the MacBook Air, upgrading the processor speed to 2.14 GHz and lowering the price range, now $1,499 to $1,799. That's required in light of CULV Windows laptops that are emerging at very competitive price points. It's available in two configurations: $1,199 for a 1.86 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB DDR3 RAM, GeForce 9400M graphics, and 120 GB HDD, or $1,799 with a 2.13 GHz Core 2 Duo and 128 GB SSD. For the SSD model, the cost is $700 less than before.

(Credit: SanDisk)

The Computex trade show, which opens Tuesday in Taipei, Taiwan, could also be known as Netbook-pallooza. It seems as if every tech company has something related to the rapidly growing category of mini-notebooks to announce there.

SanDisk is one of them, and though the company doesn't make a Netbook, it is eager to hitch its wagon to this PC trend. On Monday afternoon, the company is preparing to launch two new Netbook-centric products at the show: an SD card sold specifically for Netbooks, and its second-generation pico SSD, or PSSD.

The SD card will be available in storage capacities of 8GB and 16GB. SanDisk went with the SD specification because "95 percent of Netbooks have an SD card slot," and this way portable storage wouldn't take up one of the few USB ports the devices usually have, senior product manager Susan Park said.

It's also another way to make Netbooks even less expensive that they already are, according to Don Barnetson, SanDisk's senior director of marketing, by making additional storage portable instead of increasing the size of a hard drive or solid-state drive inside the machine itself.

And when you do that, more and more mobile carriers will start offering Netbooks for sale subsidized by wireless contracts, bringing the cost to consumers down.

"Netbooks with ARM processors, coupled with Linux, and SSDs, could get to a $199 price point, which could be free with a subscription," he said. Barnetson thinks this will start to happen more frequently in the U.S. next year.

Once carriers are subsidizing Netbooks for free or almost free, then it would be in those carriers' interest to upsell Netbook buyers on things like SD cards for expandable storage, and other add-ons.

SanDisk also officially announced the availability of its PSSD, first announced at CES in January, to its original equipment manufacturing partners. SanDisk declined to name who would be offering its PSSD drive in new notebooks at this time.

Eye-Fi, maker of memory cards that can automatically upload photos and video to the Web, announced Tuesday its two new video-uploading SD memory cards called Eye-Fi Share Video and Eye-Fi Explore Video.

(Credit: Eye-Fi)

These two 4GB cards are capable of uploading photos and video clips to more than 20 online photo-sharing and social-networking sites, such as YouTube or Flickr.

The differences between the two: the Eye-Fi Explore Video card can also automatically geotag photos and videos with location information about where the image was captured. It also offers hot-spot access at more than 10,000 Wi-Fi locations for photo and video uploads when you're on the go.

These new cards are available later this month and cost $79 (4GB Eye-Fi Share Video) and $99 (4GB Eye-Fi Explore Video).

The company also said that it's going to release an iPhone application that allows Eye-Fi users to share photos from their iPhone's photo library to one of 25 online photo-sharing Web sites. iPhone users who own an Eye-Fi card will be able to download the application for free from Apple's App Store.

Last month we reported that the Wii was about to get a storage solution and that it wasn't going to be a hard drive. Nintendo has finally released information on what this solution actually is, and the good news is that you won't need to buy any additional hardware--except for maybe an SD card.

At the fall press conference in Japan, the company announced that in the spring of 2009, Wii owners will have the ability to download, store, and play games directly off an SD card via the console's SD slot. While data can currently be stored on an SD card, you cannot access this content in-game.

But there's a catch: The Wii currently only supports SD cards with a maximum capacity of 2GB. Also, it'll be interesting to see how Nintendo handles the inevitable DRM that will need to be enforced to prevent the swapping and trading of games. Also, will Nintendo expand the amount of channels available on the Wii dashboard? Or will we see an "SD Channel?" What do you think?

(Via Joystiq)

With yesterday's launch of the WiiWare service, it's now easier than ever to fill up your Wii to the point of full capacity. It doesn't take much to fill up those 2,163 blocks (about 512MB)--between additional channels, the virtual console, and now WiiWare, you're going to need to be doing some serious maneuvering if you want to experience everything the Wii has to offer. So why hasn't Nintendo come up with a solution that can allow owners to expand the storage capacity?

(Credit: Nintendo.com)

While the SD card slot is nice, for many Wii owners it has become strictly a way to back up game saves. You can't directly access it in-game nor can you play virtual console or WiiWare games directly off of it. Why not enable this? Surely this can be accomplished with a Wii system update. And by limiting the memory capacity, Nintendo is essentially preventing customers from buying more virtual console and WiiWare titles.

Rumors of a storage add-on have come and gone, with nothing ever manifesting. If Nintendo plans on adding a new WiiWare title every Monday--in addition to the new virtual console titles they release each week as well--something needs to be done to address this growing concern.

While we'd all like for the SD card slot to allow in-game read and writing capabilities, or for the ability to connect a USB flash-drive, we're guessing it will probably be a Nintendo-branded ... Read more