Computers

January 13, 2006 Now here’s a good idea from Sony that doesn’t quite fit with the company’s normal fare. Sony will release a VOIP telephone crossed with a mouse onto the Japanese market next month. Dubbed MouseTalk, it looks and acts like a normal scroll wheel mouse, but when a call comes in on Skype, the mouse flashes its LED lights and emits a customisable sound. The mouse opens like a clamshell phone, becoming a Skype handset and it can also be used in hands-free mode. When used as a telephone, the mouse scroll-wheel adjusts the volume and clicking the wheel can mute the microphone.  Read More

January 11, 2006 After months of speculation, Apple today unveiled its new MacBook Pro notebook computer featuring the new Intel Core Duo processor – more importantly, it confirmed what everyone already had read, that the new computer delivers up to four times the performance of the PowerBook G4. The new MacBook Pro, the first Mac notebook based on an Intel processor, features an aluminum enclosure just one inch thin, weighs 5.6 pounds, includes a built-in iSight video camera for video conferencing on-the-go, and the Apple Remote and Front Row software for a simple, intuitive and powerful way for users to enjoy their content wherever they go. The new MacBook Pro will be available in February.  Read More

January 7, 2006 The partnership between Acer and Ferrari dates back to February 2003 when Acer became the Official Supplier of the team. Since that time, Acer has been developing and selling Ferrari notebooks with such success it has now announced the Ferrari F-20 LCD Monitor. The new 20" Ferrari LCD display uses exclusive materials and advanced technologies such as Acer CrystalBrite, which offers greater luminosity and brighter images. It also has a completely unique feature – a Ferrari badge and the guarantee your desktop will be as up-to-date and stylish as possible – for US$600.  Read More

January 7, 2006 Anyone spending eight plus hours a day on a computer knows that using a conventional desk and chair is not the answer to ergonomic happiness. A quick recap of the evolution of the human body will show we’ve been a work in progress for countless millennia, that desks and chairs are a very recent invention, and that the lure of the computer is causing millions of people every day to have sore shoulders, necks, backs etcetera There has to be a better way and we’ve written about quite a few alternative chairs in recent years including the Topform computer lounge chair, Netsurfer Ergonomic Computer Chair and the very promising MYPCE (My Personal Computer Environment). Now there’s a new chair we clocked at the 2006 CES which we think has a big future – the NETHRONE. Highly adjustable (including the keyboard, screen and every aspect of the seat), very comfortable, with electronic adjustment, massage facilities, and a wow factor just short of 10 on the Richter scale, the chair goes on sale later this month at US$2500 in blue, red, green, purple, and yellow. Extensive image library inside.  Read More

January 4, 2006 We’re not sure if this will become a trend or not but the closer you look at the Cybernet ZPC being shown for the first time at the Consumer Electronics Show, the more it makes sense. The ZPC-9000 is a complete PC with a Pentium 4 CPU, LAN, and other PC parts inside a normal-size keyboard. While some of the benefits of this layout are obvious, such as the saving of space, a cleaner desktop and a significantly reduced number of cables, there are some additional clever features which make additional sense of the design. The ZPC-9000 uses just 120 Watt power supply compared with the usual 250-300 Watt power supplies used with a traditional PC.  Read More

December 27, 2005 Last week it was the prospect of 5 terabyte drives, but the buzz of the Gizmag Christmas party was the news that Panasonic has modified its existing pilot production line for single-layer Blu-ray Discs, called BD-ROM, so that it is able to replicate dual-layer BD-ROM discs with 50 gigabytes (GB) of storage capacity. The 5 TB drives are still five years away, but the new pilot replication line is happening NOW at the Panasonic Disc Manufacturing Corporation of America, located in Torrance, California and is sure to be one of the talking points of the Consumer Electronics Show (CES) in Las Vegas next week (January 5-8, 2006). Single-layer Blu-ray Discs have 25 GB of storage capacity for holding video and other data, while current DVD discs have 8.5 GB of storage at most.  Read More

December 21, 2005 Those of us who can just never have enough portable digital storage will be heartened to hear that Hitachi Global Storage Technologies is working on a 5 terabyte 3.5 inch hard drive aimed at the PC market. Though it’s not due until 2010 – less than five years from now – it’s a reminder that the technological bar is being raised significantly every day, regardless of the industry.  Read More

October 30, 2005 We first wrote up Personal Computer Environments two years ago and we’re still enthralled by the company’s vision and products, specifically the Total Immersion PCE. The environment created by MYPCE turns the idea of a computer workstation station inside out, making users the centrepiece of a personalised, ultra-comfy command centre, designed on the premise that the traditional desk and office environment is a detriment to employee health and productivity. MYPCE is designed for power users such as programmers, designers and video editors who spend long hours working on a computer screen and wish to benefit from the productivity advantages of a comfortable environment using more than one monitor (20%+ productivity increase). With the need to refine the workspace, the PCE provides a narrow footprint and give facility managers and office designers an exciting new possibility for efficient office configuration. You can have up to three LCD monitors and serious shake-your-fillings-out 6.1 surround sound and an ideal environment for gaming, surfing and interacting with the rest of the world on-line. We see one of the ultimate evolutions of this machine as a workstation but it’s a bit restricted at the moment cos there’s no-where to leave a mess … oh, sorry, err, that’s one of the advantages.  Read More

We are all a sum of our experiences. So when Sony researched its product offerings for the living room of the early majority, it obviously decided that when the TV and PC merge, people arrive the convergence point from two main perspectives – people who are TV people first and PC people second, and vice verca. Both represent convergence at its simplest – Sony’s new VAIO VA TV-PC combines a fully-featured computer with an LCD TV running on a 20-inch display. Sony’s new VAIO XL1 DLS combines home theatre functionality with the brains of a PC.  Read More