Gadgets Connect

by Paul Miller, posted Jun 21st 2008 at 5:18PM Sure, you’ll be able to pay out the nose for a Vista machine with a XP Professional “downgrade” soon enough, but Dell just pushed back its cutoff for straight-up XP machines. They’ll be selling select Inspiron and XPS desktop with whatever flavor of XP you choose up until June 26th, at precisely 6:59AM EST. Naturally after June 26 you’ll be able to buy a Vista Biz or Ultimate machine and downgrade to XP Pro, but we’ll hope it doesn’t have to come to that. We heard that one guy even got a printer to work with Vista. (Read the full post about ‘Dell pushes back desktop XP cutoff date to June 26′…)

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by Paul Miller, posted Jun 21st 2008 at 6:46PM
A few dubious screens from Apple’s upcoming OS X mini-update “Snow Leopard” popped up the other week, but now we’re staring at a full-on collection of shots from the folks at German site Apfeltalk. They seem legit enough, but given the fact that Snow Leopard’s improvements primary are under the hood, there’s not a ton to see. Most interesting is a new Safari feature to “Save as Web Application,” which creates a Safari-lite, double-clickable application out of any webpage. Google Docs, anyone? (Read the full post about ‘Snow Leopard screenshots emerge, reveal Web App functionality’…)

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by Paul Miller, posted Jun 21st 2008 at 5:18PM Sure, you’ll be able to pay out the nose for a Vista machine with a XP Professional “downgrade” soon enough, but Dell just pushed back its cutoff for straight-up XP machines. They’ll be selling select Inspiron and XPS desktop with whatever flavor of XP you choose up until June 26th, at precisely 6:59AM EST. Naturally after June 26 you’ll be able to buy a Vista Biz or Ultimate machine and downgrade to XP Pro, but we’ll hope it doesn’t have to come to that. We heard that one guy even got a printer to work with Vista. (Read the full post about ‘Dell pushes back desktop XP cutoff date to June 26′…)

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by Nilay Patel, posted Jun 21st 2008 at 2:30PM Brain-computer interfaces have been popping up left and right lately, but the latest system from Germany’s Technical University of Braunschweig, might be the silliest one we’ve seen so far. While the system doesn’t involve the careful placement of electrodes, it does require you to don a large metal helmet fitted with sensors, which can even detect brain activity through hair — and makes you look like Magneto on a bad day. The system is solid enough to allow test subjects to control an RC car and researchers say the tech is similarly applicable to wheelchairs and prosthetics. Yeah, that’s great — we’ll stick with the dangerous neurosurgery implantation over this contraption, guys. (Read the full post about ‘German scientists develop nerdiest brain-computer interface yet’…)

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by Nilay Patel, posted Jun 21st 2008 at 2:30PM Brain-computer interfaces have been popping up left and right lately, but the latest system from Germany’s Technical University of Braunschweig, might be the silliest one we’ve seen so far. While the system doesn’t involve the careful placement of electrodes, it does require you to don a large metal helmet fitted with sensors, which can even detect brain activity through hair — and makes you look like Magneto on a bad day. The system is solid enough to allow test subjects to control an RC car and researchers say the tech is similarly applicable to wheelchairs and prosthetics. Yeah, that’s great — we’ll stick with the dangerous neurosurgery implantation over this contraption, guys. (Read the full post about ‘German scientists develop nerdiest brain-computer interface yet’…)

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Omar Khan, an 18-year-old student from Coto de Caza, California attempted to pull a move straight from the movie War Games. And I am not referring to the whole “lets play Global Thermonuclear War” incident, but instead the hacking into his schools computer to change his failing grades to passing grades. Mr. Kahn was “allegedly” changing his D’s and F’s to something a little more positive, A’s. Wow, talk about an improvement, you would think he would have settled to at least pass and just move them up to a C in an effort to avoid detection. But instead he went all the way up, because it seems his intention was not only to avoid failing and the potential summer school, but to get into a good college. (Read the full post about ‘Eighteen year old student fails class, hacks school computer, now faces 38 years behind bars’…)

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Omar Khan, an 18-year-old student from Coto de Caza, California attempted to pull a move straight from the movie War Games. And I am not referring to the whole “lets play Global Thermonuclear War” incident, but instead the hacking into his schools computer to change his failing grades to passing grades. Mr. Kahn was “allegedly” changing his D’s and F’s to something a little more positive, A’s. Wow, talk about an improvement, you would think he would have settled to at least pass and just move them up to a C in an effort to avoid detection. But instead he went all the way up, because it seems his intention was not only to avoid failing and the potential summer school, but to get into a good college. (Read the full post about ‘Eighteen year old student fails class, hacks school computer, now faces 38 years behind bars’…)

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by Paul Miller, posted Jun 21st 2008 at 12:40PM These days, it’s pretty wild and crazy if a PMP manufacturer manages to do anything different than what’s already out there, so we’ve got a soft spot for Shenzhen’s EM-2811, being sold as the “Latte ICE.” Sure, nothing spectacular, and the 1GB-4GB capacity is seriously amature hour, but we like the look of the device, and the interface is pretty strong for a no-name DAP. There’s a miniSD slot to overcome that capacity handicap, a 2.8-inch QVGA screen, FM radio, voice support, AVI / MPEG video playback, and a built-in speaker. Tetris is included, but with the button layout we’re hoping they can finagle a couple emulators on there. (Read the full post about ‘Shenzhen EM-2811 “Latte ICE” is actually kind of neat’…)

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Samsung has unveiled their latest specialty handset, the gold plated edition SGH-D780 DuoS, which is a follow up to the standard (non limited edition) model that was released in May. The SGH-D780 is a dual GSM SIM capable handset that offers the ability to have and use both SIM cards at the same time. The SGH-D780 has triband GSM 900/1800/1900 GPRS/EDGE connectivity and features a 2.1-inch QVGA TFT display, 2-megapixel camera, Bluetooth 2.0, USB 2.0, FM radio and a microSD card slot. The handset also comes with a 1200 mAh battery. The gold plated SGH-D780 DuoS has also become the official handset of the Russian Olympic team. Via [unwired view] Keep up with the latest gadget goodness! (Read the full post about ‘Samsung intro’s the gold-plated SGH-D780 DuoS’…)

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Asus has officially let the Eee Box out of the bag, an official press release has been posted on their website, and it gives most of the details. I say most, because in typical Asus fashion, the neglected to mention any release date or price. They were instead nice enough to give us a complete run down on the specs. The specs were pretty close to the rumored set, so we can only hope the rumored pricing will be just as close, if so we can expect the Eee Box to retail for somewhere around $299. The Eee Box, according to the press release will be running Windows XP Home and powered by a 1.6GHz Intel Atom N270 processor. The mini PC will also include 1GB of RAM, an 80GB hard drive, 802.11n Wi-Fi, a 10/100/1000 Ethernet port and built-in card reader. (Read the full post about ‘Asus officially announces the Eee Box’…)

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