Gadget Dose

As we see it, there really is just too many choices for laptops in the market today. Each of these laptop is competing for a good share of the market. From the simple to the drool worthy, these portable notebooks we see now are either full featured (going for function)  or designed so lavishly (going for eye candy). Really, today’s gadgets as you will notice  pushes all the limits.

Now while many of these gadgets usually go the aesthetics factor,  I have actually never heard of one that appeals to our sense of smell.

Introducing Asus special edition laptop, the F6V, which comes in four different fragrance. Yes, this laptop is scented with names like Floral Blossom, Aqua Ocean, Musky Black and Morning Dew.

The laptop is 13.3 inch in size and has the following features:

• Intel Core Duo Processors and runs Windows Vista Ultimate, Business, Home Premium and Home Basic
• 4FFB of Ram and the SATA hard drive
• a minimum 120GB, maximum at320GB
• ATI Radeon HD4570 graphics processor
• can support DirectX10
• 13.3-inch LED screen with 1280 * 800 resolution
• supports SRS Premium Sound
• built-in stereo speakers and microphone
• 1.3M webcam for video conferencing

Seems all the basic requirements of a good working computer fits into this. The bonus is, you have a computer that’s also a funky air freshener, right? The laptop comes in black or white.

The price has not yet been determined or announced, but what do you think? Scented laptops — yay or nay? What do you think?

Via Aving

This is actually quite a handy gadget to have around especially for those who are always on the go or mobile and would prefer to work using a laptop everytime.

This thing so small, you can just as easily stash it on to your bag, along with your laptop and other gadgetry. And yet, while so small, it actually is very powerful. The USB lamp, Mr. Brightside, plugs into the USB port and keeps your work area a conducive plays for creativity even at night. The lamp illuminates your keyboard and thus helps you fiddle through it better.

The lamp has a flexible neck, so you can adjust it into position, however way you desire it.

The lamp cost about $9 but is offered for a bundle at $20, which in the long run, is actually a much cheaper choice. This one is in red but it also comes in lime, blueberry, black and cherry.

With this, you no longer have to work in the dark, wherever you may be.

(more…)

LG Electronics has announced it is launching their newest netbook called the LG X120.

The laptop is a cute one with only 10.1″ screen with backlit. Powering it is an Intel Atom processor with 1.6Ghz and has wi-fi and HSDPA capability for connectivity. Above the screen is a camera with 1.3 megapixel. This netbook has 1GB of RAM, with 160GB harddrive. The gadget will be able to run Windows XP. Additionally, this has a “smart-on” function which essentially allows for the easy boot (about 5 seconds) of applications that are used the most.

The laptop weighs at 1.2Kwith about four hours to seven hours of battery usage, depending on the kind of battery you use (there is a choice between a 3-cell or a 6-cell battery).

The unit is available in UK in March but there is no word yet on when it will be available in North America.

Via the LG Blog

There must be a good many people like myself when it comes to putting something down and losing it immediately. Wait, I just had it 10 seconds ago! This gadget pairing is made to help us folks with too much on our minds. (or too little?).

It comes with a thin pager you can fit into your wallet and pagers you can tack onto remote controls, keys, your dog, heck anything that might get misplaced.

whenever you need to locate an object, just hit its number and the respective pager will beep.

Its also got a proximity detect mode - so if a pager is buried under a load of laundry and you can’t hear it - it will tell you the device is in range.

Radio Frequency location means the devices can be paged even if they are in the next room and you have cement walls.

Another nice bonus is that every pager is also a remote so each device can find all the others.

Prices range from $24 for a set of two keyfobs - and $12 for the flat wallet style.

Batteries are the ever popular CR2032 type ( the staple of every motherboard on the planet ) Easily found at your local Radio Shak.

If you or someone you know misplace things, this is a wonderfully inexpensive Christmas gift sure to make any gadget lover smile.

Heres the product page -

Some other nifty Christmas ideas (and you have less than 3 weeks left ya know!)

Hitachi Rotary Razor

The Mp4 Video player watch

Sony’s Digital Voice Recorder

We’ll be ramping up the Christmas ideas for you over the next weeks - Happy Shopping!

Wow - this has got to be the most incredible thing to get any time of the year - let alone for christmas. Touted as the worlds first video glasses with built in media player - these glasses make it seem like your watching a huge 50″ display. Imagine watching a huge screen while lying down in bed or taking a bath even. ( Just don’t drop ‘em in the water! )

Qingbar glasses features a sleek, light weight design with LCOS micro displays, which deliver crisp, vivid-color, QVGA video image simulates the image of a 50” display from a distance of 2M away. You just insert a mini SD card into the slot, and then you can entertain yourself with your favorite movie, MP3 music, lovely photos, or e-book text.

E book text? thats an idea I hadn’t thought about - now thats the way to read a book eh? a 50″ book!
You can also connect it up to a TV tuner to watch your favorite shows. Another well thought out feature is its user replaceable battery.

Sporting a digital signal processing video chip the Liquid Crystal displays have a resolution of WQVGA (432×240) - which is to say that they are not high def. Really though - who cares ? The cool factor of these things outweighs that by a good margin methinks.

Here is the Product page

The suggested price is $399 - but if you preorder now…. you get ‘em for $299.

Merry Christmas !

Todays Gadget is one of those types of gadgets where simplicity is the dominating benefit.

We all ( well, a lot of us) have gadgets that charge via a USB jack. Cell Phones, Headsets, Cameras, Mp3 Players, etc….

some times its wasteful to be running a 400 watt desktop PC to charge a low voltage device. Then again sometimes your just not near a pc - or you dread the 15 minute boot process.

Here ya go - simple and cheap ( I expect they will be as heck - how much could you charge for them really? ) - These are to be released on November 28th - and when they do I’ll update the post with price and availability.

Product Page with more details HERE

Todays post is more of a hey - look at this type of post - Buy.com has the Sandisk Sansa e250 2GB MP3 Player, FM tuner, FM on-the-fly Recording, Built-in microphone, Video, Expandable Memory - Refurbished

for $39 bucks! thats a heck of a price reduction off of the $199.99 price tag. IT sports a user replaceable battery - micro Sd expansion slot (max 8 gigs) - video playback - picture playback - voice recording - FM radio recording - all with a 1.8″ TFT screen.

the deal is HERE

And you better hurry as they have limited stock - tell me this isn’t a fantastic Christmas gift - and at this price you can afford to make it a stocking stuffer!

I remember back in the 80’s when I bought an electronic car compass, back then there were no gps models for cars- and heck in my teens I just wanted it because it lit up in blue. The accuracy of car compasses back then was awful. My blue compass picked up the coils in the engine and always pointed East.

Well, car based compasses have come a long long way since then. This model lights up in green. It still has the ability to impress however. It touts a precision digital compass with heading display.

As if that weren’t enough - it also has an atomic clock. So the unit will set itself to the atomic time server automatically. Just tell it what part of the USA you are in and the time is always accurate to the 1000′th of a second.

It has an altimeter to tell you just how far above or below sea level you are at, a barometer - so you can read the air pressure and figure out when your ears are about to do the dreaded pop.

Also included is a 12-24 weather forecast to give you the heads up on what the weather is about to do on your drive.

Very handily backlit in todays ultra cool green - the unit runs on a high powered Lithium battery so theres no need for wires going down to the lighter socket.

Suction cup mounting adheres the unit to the window - and with no wires this trumps my poor old Radio Shack compass of the 1980’s by a long shot. - Whats more is this unit wont always point East

You can find it at Skymall for $89.95
and might I add theres just about no man with a decent love for his car that wouldn’t love this for Christmas. If you want to go a bit further and get a GPS system for a gift - check out the Mio DigiWalker C320 GPS Receiver We spotlighted a while back - as its price is unbeatable.

At first look this nifty little gadget looks like any other SD card on the market. Tiny, full of space for all your digital pictures, but it boasts a hefty advance in technology. This tiny little gem carried a full ethernet card with wireless capabilities. That means when you need to dump your pictures theres no need to find the card reader or grab that USB cable ( now where did I put that again? ).
Really all you need to get your pictures from the camera is a wireless connection. ANY wireless connection. So if your laptop is nearby - boom.. connect and dump with no hassle. If you have a home or office wireless network you could put the pictures on any pc connected to the network.

But it goes even farther than that. If you upload your pictures to a photo sharing service (any of these ) The pictures will be automatically uploaded to the web whenever you are within range of the wireless network.

That means as soon as you get home you just put the camera down and automagically the pictures go to the web. If you’d rather have your photos go to a network drive - you can do that too - or how about both?

It works with 802.11b 802.11g and 802.11n - so the only folks left out are the 802.11a folks and lets face it - its time to update if you are still running that.

So you say your Sony camera runs on memory stick (I or II) - or maybe you use Compact Flash or another format? No problem - they sell adapters for those too.

This functionality is worth its weight in gold - imagine the time saved doing it the wireless way vs. booting up your desktop - getting into the operating system, and downloading all pictures and then uploading all of them to the web.

The card itself stores 2 gigs of pictures and is fairly priced at $99.99 or $129.99 with adapter

Product can be found HERE

Some accesories you might want to go with this are the wireless range extender -(to take your wireless all the way to the back yard…

or the Wireless hotspot detector T-shirt to find public hotspots for your use.

oh - and thanks to DT at Turnthescrew for sending this in!

Now just to get things straight - I’m not advocating using this to find otherworldly spirits in your house If you want to go ghost hunting, you probably want one of those um “special” units.

You then might ask yourself - Just what do I need an EMF detector for?

Use #1
Well, for starters we all have some kind of magnetic media in the house, be it cassette tapes, VHS tapes , (maybe home videos?) , Floppy disks, camcorder tapes, etc.

You want to find a place in your house to store these where the EMF fields are the lowest.

Use #2
High EMF fields can indicate excessive current draw - so if your doorbell transformer is giving off a huge field, it may be shorting out to some extent and costing you money each month. ( note you could also find improper wiring faults using the same principal)

Use #3
High EMF fields are also unhealthy - if you knew your living room couch was right over that 220v 40 amp run - you might just re-arrange the room around that.

Use #4
Tv Screens ,Monitors etc. -they by nature give off quite a field, you could use the meter to find the best spot on your desk (or under it) where the monitor would affect the pc (and its drive within) the least.

Probably the biggest reason I’m even bringing this gadget up is that my favorite Science Store Edmund Scientific has it for only $24.95 !

Old razor getting you down? There comes a time in all razors lifespans when it is time to upgrade, even if your old one was you favorite for years. Thats the kind of spot I’m in - I love my old Panasonic electric - but its not holding as much of a charge and blades are almost impossible to find now. This model from Hitachi has my attention - its a wet/dry model so you can shave in the shower. If you do plan on shower shaving, go a pay a few bucks for a fog free mirror.

The batteris are Ni-CD and for a 1 hour charge they figure you’ll get a week of shaving out of it.

Like my old model - this razor uses a very high rpm - formerly touted as being sonic - 3500 rpm to be exact. Users new to this high frequency shave will need to get their skin accustomed to the unit. Expect a curve of about a week, however after that you’ll get a shave thats just as good as a blade.

Estimated life of the omni directional blades is 3 years, (keeping the unit properly oiled that is).

Here are the detailed specs -

The Hitachi Rotary Razaq SX110 comes with:
• Travel Pouch
• Power adapter
• Shaver oil, brush, and blade cleaner
• Instruction manual (Japanese)

Specifications:
• Color: Blue or Silver (default). Please specify.
• Power: AC100V 50/60Hz
• Rechargeable internal ni-cad battery
• Weight: 145g
• Size: 65 x 150 x 45m

Where can you get one you might ask? Japan. Don’t worry - I didn’t go and write this whole article only to tell you that you can’t have one …

You can get one online from the wonderful gadget store CScout HERE
Price is $149.00 - yeah, thats kinda pricey - so your probably gonna find this info on how to get some free food at your local restaurant useful.

How many times have you wondered what exactly your pooch or cat is up to while your away? Sure, you could set up webcams around the house - forward them to external ftp addresses and view them as webcams, but the hassle of that vs. the power requirements are restrictive.

This neat gadget from Tomy allows you to get a “pets-eye” view of fidos day. Just strap it around your pets neck and either manually take shots ( via the remote ) - or set it to go off in timed intervals. Just imagine the satisfaction of catching your dog in the act of chewing your slippers. Or if you have a cat- you can find out where he or she goes throughout their daily rounds.

Features and contents:
Wonderful Shot features:
• 3.5 megapixel camera
• 8 MB internal memory (good for 90 photos)
• Rechargeable battery (via USB)
• Timer: Every 1, 3, 5, 10, 15, 30, or 60 minutes

Included in Delivery:
• Wonderful Shot camera
• Remote control
• “Bone” USB cable
• Collar clip
• Camera pack
• Weight: 38g.
• Manual (Japanese)
• Instructions in English

For $79.00 it isn’t exactly cheap, but if you have a little room on that Mastercard it seems reasonable. You can buy one HERE

While your at it you might want to get your dog or cat a cell phone so you can speak to them while your away…

and if you are looking for similar pet type gadgets theres an excellent online store Petgadgets

MP4 Watch II is a novel and fashionable design Portable Media Player (PMP) device. Just plug and play into USB port to transfer music files and data. You can Listen to Music, Watch Movie and Record Conversations wherever you go.

And just get a look at the massive feature set for this gem -

# Features: 2GB or 4GB flash memory
# MP4 Player + Music Player + FM Radio + Digital Watch + Voice Recorder + Photo Album + E-book reader, all in one featured product
# MP4 watch, support MP4(AVI) video
# High in focus 1.8″ TFT screen, 160*128 pixel image
# Shows time and date and watch design is outstanding
# Supports MP3, WMA and MP4(AVI) format, up to 8 hours of music playback
# Supports JPEG format, also displays lyrics and picture
# High-quality digital record, song circulation function and support several languages
# 5-equalizer modes, super bass 3-D sound effect playback modes
# E-book browse function
# Supports FM radio
# Build in speaker
# USB 2.0 High Speed transfer

The only thing not stated is battery life - which I cant see being more than 4 or 5 hours tops in video mode. Mp3’s and Recordings should have a much longer time frame.

It comes in a 2 gig and 4 gig size, and cost $92.00 and $118.00 respectively. Thats more than enough room for a high quality movie or two. OR 22 - 44 hours of mp3s.

You can buy one HERE

At 4.3-inches diagonal, the Mio C320 provides easy viewing. The screen enables you to see the full map view and a selection of route information as well. Easily identify route information, such as Points of Interest(POIs), without quitting the navigation function. And this very thin GPS unit slips easily into a briefcase or purse.

This little guy could help you navigate in almost any situation - from hiking and camping to visiting your family out of state. Small is the key - you could easily tuck this into your pocket.

# Touchscreen is easy to use and provides a smooth operation
# Full U.S. maps include Hawaii and Puerto Rico
# Compact and thin so it’s easy to take along
# 1.7-million preloaded businesses and landmarks let you search for gas, food, entertainment and more
# Turn-by-turn voice navigation in 16 languages (English, French and Spanish included)
# SD card slot lets you play MP3s through the unit

Yup it plays music too - and with turn by turn directions you wont have to pay 500 - 700 dollars for a separate car gps unit,

The price is great at $299. - and its being offered exclusively through Radio Shack — yeh - go figure.

How many time have you been on the road - saw someone driving like an utter idiot and thought.. “Man, I wish I had a camera - I’d turn this guy in.”

Or on the other hand - when you get into an accident and its purely your word against theirs.

With this dash mounted video camera all that can be a thing of the past - and if you want to take the camera out of the car to record something - pop in 2 AA batteries. Wherever your car is ….you are likely to be as well - so you’re never far from a video camera.

You can record up to 5 hours of video on a 2gb flash card - and to record more - just slap in a second card. - It records in .avi format so its very easy to work with on a Mac or PC.

Imagine your insurance companies surprise when you tell them not only was it not your fault, but you got the whole thing on tape.

and its only $79.95 Product Page

One thing to keep in mind is there is no built in transfer port so you’ll have to pony up 20 or so bucks for a flash card reader.